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In The Wrong Age

And here, Itzik, a recipe for mimicking a pea

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The humor of the comic pair Avi Grainik and Idan Alterman, best known for their show YELADIM SORGIM, i.e. Knitting Children (rhymed in Hebrew with YELADIM CHORGIM, i.e. Step Children, hinting to the drama film God's Step Children) reflects the range of causing-to-laugh skills of the two: from sophisticated physical humor, through clever mimicry, to sharp linguistic wit.

Instead of mimicking personalities and celebrities, Avi Grainik mimics vegetables: a cucumber, a pickled cucumber, then a banana, and then a squashed banana. Actually there are several levels of humor at the same time here: a simple physical humor of impersonating, a humor caused by the mere  "selection" of the mimicked objects, and a parody of the subject of mimicry - the efforts invested by entertainers to study thoroughly the mimicked object and the willingness of an audience "to be entertained" by someone trying so hard to look like someone else in order to make his audience laugh.

It's not incidental that much of their skits are based on the motto: "I am Hezi and this is my brother Itzik" ("Hezy" is the Israeli nickname for Ezekiel and "Itzik" - for Isaac) – when the two enter the stage as a pair of brothers, not too bright, not very polished, as if they are just two ordinary people invited by someone to do some skits "for the guys".

This pose, of a couple having "some idea" about what things should be done in order to be considered entertainers – is, in my opinion, Knitting Children greatest contribution to the Israeli entertainment scene: the very authentic design of the causing-to-laugh craft concept, the transition from "just two ordinary people" to "a pair of entertainers".

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