2/12/99

NetanYAHOO!

    When the toilet squirted me in the face I yelped which got the parrot squawking over my head and sent me reeling into a skeleton that started jitterbugging on a tunafish tin setting off a skittering bear which plowed over the raisin. And the dish ran away with the spoon, almost.
    Those fairy tales that give kids nightmares? That's what Nisan's toy store is like.
    "Yeah, sometimes I open the door in the morning and four or five toys start hopping. It's uncanny."
    His tiny shop, "We're All Kids" at Netanya's Kikar Ha'atzmaut, is possessed by frolicsome demons. Come to think of it, so is Nisan. He's as cartoonishly animated as his merchandise.
    "My name is Nathaniel Gratzanio Nunzio Maximillian Drufor III," he says, as if his real name, Cohen, just won't do. He's 62, originally from Brooklyn, and that's about all he was willing to say about himself; he just wants to play with toys, and if he has to speak, he does so playfully.
    How long have you been into toys, I asked. "Since I was a kid," he shot back. What did you do in the past? "Toyed with my future." What kind of toys do you sell? "They're animated and alive. I'm very much against death. I like to say if it winds up, it winds up here." After a day's work? "I unwind."
    His retorts come out lickety-split, and all the while, he's cranking up a donkey or marching a pencil in a plastic caterpillar. A Walking Hamburger suddenly flees the shop.
     "I make my own toys, you know. Remember that scene from ג€˜King Kong,ג€™ on top of the Empire State Building? Watch this:" The ape, mounted on a log shaped like the skyscraper, shakes a handful of Fay Wrays with little airplanes bobbing about.
    "Hey, you'll love this one. Ever see a levitating dreidl?" He spins it, it rises, it magically floats. And stays there!
    "Y'know why I like toys? They're friendly. They respond to you." He winds up a little critter, which promptly nosedives off the counter. It responded. It committed suicide.
    "Oh, here's a very interesting toy I made. This is called 'Don't Ask.' It's a conglomerate of rhythm, visual excitement and uh, jealousy. It's very jealous when I go to another toy. It always happens." Chika-chika, clackety-clack.
    The dreidl is still spinning in mid-air. Nisan picks up a Jimmy Carter Peanut, puts it down, picks up a grinning California Raisin. A toaster, a rubber ducky. Nisan's having a blast.
    "This one, this is The Blue Band. Pay attention." It's a sort of rhythm-and-blues concoction on a margarine tub, tak-tak-tak.
    "You know why a drooping giraffe is like Monday? Its neck's weak. Yeah. Van Gogh was framed, y'know."
    Bugs, flies, eyes, an ugly red fish. They're everywhere, even hanging from the low ceiling. A toaster, a toilet.
    I ask if the toilet does anything. I should not have asked. Shpritz! Right between the eyes. "This water is from the Kinneret, so don't feel you've been abused, please."
    He's big on skeletons. A skeleton connected to a wind-up mechanism dances on a coffee can while a set of false teeth clackety-clacks on a tuna tin. He turned to the Bible for inspiration in assembling a toy he calls Ezekiel's Prophecy, "like it says, where the bones come back to life. Lookit this:" Skeletal bones writhe on a tuna tin covered in green burlap with disgustingly real-looking flies buzzing about and a dove wired above it. Sick. Brilliantly sick.
    "I call these 'animated toy sculptures.' This is The Dance of the Nails. Watch carefully:" he sets the gears in motion, and rusty nails slink like a belly dancer. "Beautiful, no?"
    He sizes me up, and for the first time seems to be pensive. "I'll show you something special. It's kinda strong. Not everybody would want to look at it." This one he keeps hidden. "It's my Holocaust Toy. A personal monument, really. It's awful, a bitter toy." A skeleton, a halo, dead babies, on a throbbing, blood-red base. It winds down, and he quickly puts it away.
    "On the other hand," he brightens again, "this is my Millennium Toy, it expresses peace and all that." It looks like a dancing Israeli hockey puck.
    The dreidl is still hovering.
    He picks up discarded junk, "remnants that seek to be rebuilt": soda-can tabs, egg cartons, driftwood, food containers, pieces of this and that. Says he "likes to bring things back to life." His Celestial Space Toy is an ET made of cut-up egg cartons.
    When there aren't any customers, he tools around with his plastic minions, incorporating flotsam, garbage and Made-in-Taiwan shmontzes into bizarre, animated creations. Like The Chatter Box: clattering, chattering sets of false teeth that clack open and shut by a swinging stick. It's marvelously mad.
    "The most expensive toys are the ones I make, but I don't want to sell them. I once sold a music box for $35,000; here, I have a $1,000 music box, which is handmade by hand maidens. But most of the toys aren't expensive -- five, 15 shekels.
    "My toys are guaranteed for the life of the toy. Now, not everyone gives such a guarantee."
    Out of the blue, he gets serious. "I also sell toys for handicapped children, toys with therapeutic qualities -- cause and effect. I work with a firm that devises the mechanisms that allow a child to reach his potential in terms of motion, movement, motoric improvement, incentive; communicative toys, toys that give a reward, whether it be a visual explosion or music stimulus or something rattling. So we try to get the most out of a child's abilities. I work with therapist in hospitals." He doesn't stock them in his shop.
    Out comes what appears to be an amputated cat's leg. "This is one of my most misunderstood toys. It's sensational. It abounds in different meanings." He squeezes the bottom end, and the paw jerks. It looks disgustingly real. "This is good if you want a massage, and for getting a seat on a bus, y'see, (he pretends to grab a tusik with the paw) take this with you on the bus, you get a seat no problem. By the way, we have a sale on this."
    Newton was not wrong after all: the dreidl has just crashed.
    Is this guy anything like the typical salesman in the typical toy store?
    "You gotta go? Just remember, like I always say, don't postpone joy. Next time bring the kids. You don't have to buy. We'll have fun."