Pop Culture

Ronna and Beverly are loud, opinionated, and wear too much lipstick. Watch as they harass an innocent bookstore employee while publicizing their new book for Jewish singles, "You'll Do a Little Better Next Time." Yes, these yentas are fictional (yet eerily reminiscent of my mom's friends), and if you love them as much as I do, there are many more chapters in the Ronna and Beverly saga to enjoy. Here is one of the best.

HBO is having an Israel moment. The network’s new show, "In Treatment," is so closely based on an Israeli series that the American actors aren't allowed to watch the Israeli version, lest they learn too much about the future of the characters. And after six months of negotiations, it looks like HBO will be buying the rights to another Israeli drama, “A Touch Away."

Says Carolyn Strauss, president of HBO entertainment, “I don’t know what’s in the drinking water there. But for as tiny as that country is, they make some interesting television shows.”

“A Touch Away” follows the romance between a secular Russian immigrant and a haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) girl who’s already been matched off with an observant fiance. Reviews in the Jewish media have been hugely positive. As one reader who saw a screening at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival put it on IMDB: “No one left the theater to go to the bathroom. A 10 out of 10.”

So far, opinions about HBO’s version of "In Treatment" -- including ours! -- have been mixed, but Blair Underwood’s episodes, in which he plays a former army pilot who bombed a madrassa full of children, look like they should be good. Check out the clip below.

Gabriel Byrne: buttoning that top button might go a long way towards avoiding transference issues.HBO's buzzed about new series, "In Treatment" -- about a therapist, his clients, and his own therapy -- offers an interesting variation on the usual TV series rhythm we all know and love. Instead of one episode per week, the show will air every weeknight: each episode a therapy session with one patient, including, on Fridays, the therapist in therapy himself!

The show is adapted from a smash-hit Israeli show called Be' Tipul ("In Therapy").

Since we (Jews and the Jewcy staff, both) know a thing or two about therapy -- insert Portnoy and/or Freud and/or Woody Allen reference here -- we felt we should watch the show (consistently, because consistency is key) and work through some of our feelings about it. But not our feelings about our feelings, because that would be fucked up. You should never have feelings about your feelings.

For those of us still deep in mourning for the philosophical miracle that was "Six Feet Under", watching "In Treatment" may serve as a healing balm, much like actually being in therapy, but without all the, you know, talking and shit. Critical response has been mixed. But whatever. How did it make us feel?

 

Continue reading...

No, no, no: Maybe this time Amy will actually be rehabilitated! People reports that Amy Winehouse bowed to pressure from her record label and headed to a treatment facility yesterday. "She has come to understand that she requires specialist treatment to continue her ongoing recovery from drug addiction and prepare for her planned appearance at the Grammy Awards. She is nominated in an incredible six categories," Universal Music Group's statement reads. Accentuate the positive!  The recent video of her smoking what seemed like crack may have been a factor.

Everyone's had the skeevy friend request on a social networking site from someone they don't know well. But what about a request from someone you know very well, but prefer not to hang out with in a given digital realm?

USA Today (via Howard Rheingold's SmartMobs) points to the case of Deb Levine, executive director at Internet Sexuality Information Services in Oakland, who faced a tough decision when her rabbi's wife added her on LinkedIn:

Then the wife of Levine's rabbi asked to "friend" her on the site, and Levine felt compelled to say yes.

Now Levine has mixed her religious life with her work life online, something she never intended to do. And she worries that having a personal contact listed among business associates will make her look less professional.

"I'm using LinkedIn to further my professional projects," Levine says. "There's just no way (the rabbi's wife) could be helpful in that. I don't talk about my religion and religious affiliations" while at work.

 

Levine's quandary raises some important issues about where religion fits into the scheme of social networking, including sites like Friendster, Facebook, or that other one that Darth Murdoch. Social networking norms also complicate how users interact with smaller, more specialized sites that are accessible to the public, including sites built around cultural spheres -- such as religion -- that tend to be volatile. (At least one such site for riffraff comes to mind.)

In addition to Jewcy, so far I've toyed with a professional network for my career, a private blog for family and friends, started a new social networking account, lapsed with an old one and tried out social bookmarking.

In the process, I've grown less concerned with my digital footprint. But I've grown more concerned about which footprints I allow my different friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues to follow. Users might not always consider it kosher to let all of their friends into a specialized social networking space. I'm sure that if Levine was also a member of a social networking site for say, single Jews, she might think twice about importing all of her LinkedIn contacts.

Online social networking seems to work best at its two extremes. Facebook and the rest work splendidly as general spaces. And the most advanced, forward-thinking online magazines -- sites I like to call digital magazine communities -- make the most of their readerships by capturing their activity online, beyond the mere consumption of content. In other words, the larger platforms are trying to specify their features while the smaller platforms are trying to broaden them. After all, every social networking site wants to be profitable, and profits depend on two things: audience and activity.

In the grand tradition of technology causing problems that only technology creates, this doesn't make things easier.

Call it networking creep: if online social networking works best at its two extremes, does that mean we all need X number of specialized digital magazine communities in order to satisfy our particular digital craves? There's obviously a terminal limit, if for no other reason than there are only so many hours in a week to maintain one's spot in every community.

Of course none of this solves Levine's quandary. Then again, I'm a little bit less concerned with users who worry about religious friends and acquaintances -- oh, that pesky rabbi's wife! -- creeping into other social networking sites, and much more interested by the opposite scenario. Should religious networking sites make an effort to blockade non-religious users?

Put differently, who owns the right to define the community?

 

 

A video made the night before scabby British songbird Amy Winehouse appeared in court in such a disheveled state that even Carla Sosenko's bubbe got concerned shows the singer wandering around talking unintelligibly for five minutes and then smoking crack from a pipe.  Now we know why Amy Winehouse looks like a crackhead: it's because she smokes crack. 

Words I thought I’d never say: The new Adam Sandler movie (trailer below) looks kind of…good. And not totally-competent-romantic-comedy good like The Wedding Singer, or look-at-me-I-can-do-indie good like Punch-Drunk Love. Don’t Mess with the Zohan, about a Mossad agent who fakes his own death so that he can pursue his secret dream of becoming a hairstylist, might actually be funny.

This is probably due in large part to Sandler’s co-writer, Judd (Knocked Up ) Apatow. But I think it’s also because this might be the first time a mainstream comedy has tapped into Israel’s inherent comic potential.

Americans tend to find the hallmarks of Israel’s pop culture—the tight jeans, the Euro-disco music, the machismo—completely hilarious. Then again, we’re equally amused by any country where men wear tight pants. But what makes Israel funnier than, say, Spain, is the lethal military gloss over the entire nation, and the fact that everyone’s Jewish, which in America has become a kind of lazy shorthand for comedy.

Borat has pretty much killed the genre of jokes about how non-American males are more comfortable with their bodies. Years of bad news have made it difficult to say anything truly funny about Israel’s military situation. And Keeping Up with the Steins may have tossed the final scoop of dirt on the coffin of Yiddish shtick (OMG she said "shtick"! FUNNY SOUNDS!) But when you combine those three elements, you get something new. Something fresh-feeling. Even if it stars Adam Sandler.

 

Give me your headless, your poor: The Cloverfield poster No time to read The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, the Sunday New York Times, Harpers, The Nation, The New Republic, and New York Magazine during your morning commute? Don’t worry – we’re here to help you convince those around you that you’re a big ball of erudition.

Start by wondering whether your conversation partner saw the intensely disapproving review of Cloverfield in the Times this weekend, and quote Manohla Dargis’s final line: “Rarely have I rooted for a monster with such enthusiasm.” Burn!

Then point out that Anthony Lane in The New Yorker seemed to like the movie, even though he said the film’s gimmick—it’s a monster movie shot entirely on a camcorder held by one of the kids fleeing the monster—was “a bit pre-millennium.”

And, finally, address the real monster in the room—not the film’s 9/11 imagery, because duh -- but a little film everybody was really excited about back in the summer of ’99. “Remember The Blair Witch Project?” you might say, and then, if you’re feeling saucy, “Yeah, me neither.”

Last week: Teen Angst Edition

No, no, no: A shonda.Amele,

We don't know each other, but I saw in the news today that you were "disheveled and unkempt" at your husband's court hearing. I am worried about you, mameleh. You are a Nice Jewish Girl, and your life is going down the toilet. (What do you mean she's doing well? What music nominations? But…she's missing teeth! She is bleeding through her ballet slippers! She can't even afford real street shoes! Ok, bubeleh. Sorry, sweetheart.)

My granddaughter Carla played me one of your songs on the computer. (She's very good with the computer. Such a smart girl. So she went to Boston University and not Dartmouth, like her first cousin Barry. BU is a very good school, certainly better than where her good-for-nothing cousin Lonny went, which is nowhere. His grandmother, my beloved sister Ruth, she should rest in peace.)

You, my dear, have the voice of an angel. A black angel, but an angel still. All that talent wasted on so much tsuris. Ach.

Honey, Nice Jewish Girls don't go to the drug rehab. No, no, no. (I beat my chest with each word I speak, bubeleh.) And I took it upon myself to throw an English muffin in the brook on your behalf during tashlich. You're welcome.

Listen to Carla's bubbe, Amy: she just wants what's best for you!Carla says I have to wrap it up, so listen closely to your bubbe: If you should decide to turn your life around and might one day like to be buried in a Jewish cemetery (poo poo poo, you should live a long and healthy life) and not in some shiksa garden with crosses everywhere (but I don't judge), and you'd like to remove those farshtunken tattoos, might I suggest Dr. Stuart Lerner, a lovely boy who's not so hard on the eyes. (Yes, Carla, I remember that she's married and has a male companion, but what she needs is a Nice Jewish Boy, and you got so mad that time I gave Riva Goldenblatt your phone number at the beach club to give to her grandson that I don't interfere anymore.) Stuey is a dermatology resident at Cornell Medical, and I'm sure he could help you. (He actually went to Harvard, but his hospital is affiliated with Cornell, where Carla also didn't go, though I assure you she got a good education, even if Boston University is not Ivy League.)

Your body is a temple, mameleh. (No, sweetheart, I wasn't suggesting she go to temple, though it wouldn't hurt.) Speaking of temple, we have a lovely new cantor at Sons of Israel. I'll save a seat for you, Amila. Bring a sweater (it gets cold in the sanctuary) and your appetite. The whitefish salad at the kiddush is to die for. (What
do you mean she doesn't eat?)

Love,
Carla's Bubbe

A smattering of cultural moments, both high and lowbrow, from today's news:

Making his wife proud: Beckham's new Armani ad • David Mamet talks in New York Magazine about his “surprisingly positive” new play about election season.

• Posh Spice says she’s proud to see her husband’s package “about 25 feet tall” in his Armani ad.

• The Golden Globes, um, happened.

• On his personal website, New York comedian Bill Dawes publishes a heartbreaking and extremely weird story about his three-year romance with amnesiac "Project Runway" contestant Elisa Jimenez.

• Joshua Ferris, whose novel Then We Came to the End was recently declared the only non-disappointing book of 2007 by the LA Times, has a melancholy short story in the current issue of Tin House.

The first season of “Rock of Love” ended with aging Poison frontman Bret Michaels getting rejected by Jes, the self-consciously "punk" chick he’d chosen to be his one true VH1 soulmate. This season, which premiered Sunday, seems to feature fewer Jes types and more inflated stripper types like Angelique, who distinguishes herself in the clip below by having a delightful French accent and taking off her panties.

Angelique actually looks a lot like Bret circa 1988, which makes sense given that most of the “Rock of Love” contestants seem more interested in being Bret Michaels than doing him. They’ve all got fake hair like Bret, they all have melty faces like Bret, and they all claim to be really excited about going to strip clubs and making out with girls like Bret. Also, it’s pretty clear post-Jes that what these girls want isn’t Mr. Every Rose Has Its Thorn—it’s that special kind of fame that comes with being known nationwide for your sexing-and-drinking abilities, exactly like Poison in its heyday.

So the whole show turns into a contest to see who can best emulate Bret in his youth— with Bret competing hardest of all.

New York magazine examines the psychological traumas of growing up wealthy, What A Nightmare: Paris Hilton, Cautionary Taleand profiles the therapists who try to keep ultra-rich kids from becoming Paris Hilton. You see, it's good that you never rode a private jet to school.... of course you wouldn't want a private jet.... why would anyone want a private jet?!?

Warning: reading this article might result in jealousy-induced suicide. Especially if you can't afford to hang yourself with a Gucci scarf.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hits theaters in May, and the new Vanity Fair has a long, oddly bloggy article about how very rough it's been for George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, two of the highest-grossing filmmakers of all time, to make the first Indiana Jones movie since 1989's Last Crusade. Yes, it's been a long, trying process for filmmakers and stars alike -- Harrison Ford, at 65, says he hadIt was 97 degrees in the New Mexico desert that day: Movie stars' jobs are hard! trouble getting back into Indy's psyche, not to mention his uncomfortable outfit. “It’s a very bizarre costume, when you think about it ... It’s this guy sporting a whip, who’s off usually for someplace really hot in his leather jacket.”  Also, they're pretty sure everyone's gonna pan the movie: Lucas says he knows the critics "already hate it. So there’s nothing we can do about that."

Crystal Skull is set in 1957, so the villians are now Russians instead of Nazis. But -- nerdgasm alert!-- the film might also feature a more exotic breed of bad guy.

  "No one outside of the filmmakers will know for sure until May 22, but it would be pretty cool if it turns out that Emperor Palpatine had dropped a crystal skull on Earth. Or maybe one was left behind by the skinny dudes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Or maybe it’s, like, E.T.’s cell phone. :)"

Star Wars meets Indiana Jones! Also, emoticons meet Vanity Fair! Weirdness.  

 

 

Possibly the best costume drama ever to grace YouTube stars Michael Cera as Alexander Hamilton and a borderline-unconscious Scotch-drinker as the narrator:

Serena van der Woodsen and Dan Humphrey, sittin' in a tree: She loves him despite their minimal differences!

 

 

Tonight's finale of the strike-shortened first season of 'Gossip Girl', the buzzed-about CW show based on the ubersuccessful series of young adult novels about the lives of rich Manhattan private school kids, promises to be a doozy. Will Blair Waldorf's life of privileged partying come screeching to a halt when she finds herself knocked up? Is the putative baby's daddy bad boy Chuck Bass or floppy-haired Nate Archibald? Will Lily van der Woodsen sacrifice her daughter Serena's happiness to pursue her fated luv with Serena's Williamsburg-bred boyfriend Dan Humphrey's improbably youthful dad Rufus? Did the actress who plays Serena really get a nose job right before the series started filming? (Well, yes.)

 

Some or all of those questions might get answered on tonight's show, but this one probably won't: what is up with the show's insistence that almost everyone in its purview, including those downtrodden Humphreys (they have to live in Brooklyn!) is so incredibly WASPy?

Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. After all, much has been made of the show's inclusion of two mostly-mute characters who fans have unceremoniously dubbed Black Girl and Asian Girl. And of course there's Dan's alternative love interest Vanessa Abrams, who lives on the Lower East Side and is sort of brownish. But as writer Jonathan Liu puts it, it's the dearth of Jews among the students at Constance Billiard which makes the show's portrayal of the scions of Manhattan's ruling class (even) less believable: "I doubt that an all-WASP elite actually exists anywhere anymore." Times magazine interview-lady Deborah Solomon even specifically took the show's creator Josh Schwartz to task about this, quizzing him, "Why are the characters uniformly white, with old-money names like Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen that hark back to a time when high society was not integrated? Why are there no Jewish characters?"

"It’s interesting, because on 'The O.C.' I went out of my way to make those characters Jewish, not what you would expect to find in Orange County. But in New York, weirdly, I failed. I was working off of the source material," Josh explained. Well, fair enough (though the show does diverge from the books in a million other ways). If that excuse doesn't work for you, you can always go with Meghan McArdle's explanation for the show's "anasemitic" quality: "Media executives are leery of portraying rich New York day schools, or the entertainment industry, as being chock full of Jewish people for fear of encouraging the stereotype that Jews control all the media and the money in this country." Hmm!

Of course, a huge part of GG's addictive charm lies in the fact that it in no way resembles present-day New York -- the prep school fantasyland it depicts seems almost to be set the 60s, but with cel phones. For me, at least, this is what makes the show such an escapist pleasure. But even if just for superficial reasons, some of the show's fans mourn the Semitic sex appeal of Schwartz's last hit. Musing about the charms of Dan Humphrey, a gal of my acquaintance sighed: "Well, he's no Seth Cohen."

It's been 70 years since the Man of Steel first sprang forth from the imaginations of Jewish writers Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Now the Jewish Museum of Florida has a new exhibit on display called Zap! Pow! Bam! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books 1938-1950 about the fascinating, and Jewcy, history of the comic book industry. If you're not headed to Miami any time soon, take a look at the Miami Herald's informative review of the exhibit, as well as a slide show of some featured comic book covers.

The excerpt herein is from my humor book, Oh, the Humanity! A Gentle Guide to Social Interaction for the Feeble Young Introvert, which was published in October by TOW Books. I was interviewed on this very site a few weeks ago, actually. You might find it helpful to read a conversation with a writer you've probably never heard of before diving into his equally obscure book. Sorry for the hard sell.

The portion below deals with tactics for wriggling out of deadly conversations. Some of you will find these bitterly familiar.

People Are Strange
Those lyrics are most commonly associated with Jim Morrison of the Doors, and you probably know the song even if you’re not a fan of classic rock or haven’t seen the ’80s biopic starring Iceman. But people are strange, not to mention frustrating. If we all walked around in sandwich boards that revealed our inner thoughts, we would know from a distance if a woman disliked her sister-in-law or if a man had fulfilled his dream of wearing a sandwich board. Unfortunately, we usually don’t know what we’re in for until we’ve entered into a conversation, and by the time we realize that we’re in the presence of somebody we should have avoided, it’s too late. But that doesn’t mean you’re defenseless. Before we look at specific types of undesirables, let’s touch on some general strategies for extracting yourself from an unpleasant conversation.

Call upon your biological urges. You usually can’t walk away from a conversation without at least some sort of slipshod pretense, and hunger’s a good one. If someone’s wearing you down with their reminiscences of gift certificates they’ve received over the years, you can excuse yourself with, “I think I’ll get myself some of those tasty appetizers” or, “Sounds like they’re slaughtering additional chickens. I’m going back for seconds.” Unfortunately, all the other person has to do is counter with, “Delicious! I think I’ll join you” and you’re stuck. That’s where going to the bathroom comes in. It’s an incontestable excuse that begs no follow-up. It’s rare that someone declares his intention to use the facilities and in response hears, “Really? Are you a fan of toilets?” or, “Delicious! I think I’ll join you.” Of course, people are generally squeamish about bodily functions. They just don’t want to know. If you’re worried that your restroom excuse is too transparent, simply concoct something anatomically obscure and unsettling.

• “Hate to cut you off, but my membranes are lathering.”
• “Sorry, I need to void my pus nodes.”
• “I’ve been coughing up sussudio all week.”

Bring in a third party. Some people are so hungry for closeness that they won’t even let you get your name out before presenting you with your half of a heart locket. They exchange poems with prisoners about things like freedom and incompetent public defenders, and they’re not 100 percent sure, but they think the person who sent them an e-mail regarding “vigara schoolgirlz who wants 2 gag on your best hippo cock” is probably their soul mate. No rhetorical maneuver will detach these needy people. And yet, you’re not really special to them, either. You’re just a human who, for the moment, is keeping them from being dragged away in the undertow of their loneliness. You are easily substituted, and you can swap yourself with someone else. If you’re at a social function, it’s not difficult to find someone else, but you can’t just flag down an acquaintance and say, “Listen, Heather, I have to separate myself from this horrible, horrible person. I propose you talk to him.” The trick is to make the switch seem beneficial to both the person you’ve recruited and the person you’re retreating from. Then, as they explore their common ground, you can bow out with a clear conscience.

ALISSA: Heather, come here for a second. Remember when you studied Celtic folklore for a year in Ireland? Well, it just so happens that Brad here also spends most of his paycheck on masseuses who are willing to “finish the job.” I’ll let you two get acquainted. I’m surprised your paths haven’t crossed already.

Reinforce the positive. Even if you’re with someone who hasn’t made the best impression, it helps to end on a supportive note. You never know when you might need a professional contact or want access to someone who really frightens you. You’ll score extra points if you encourage the person in terms of something he or she mentioned earlier in the conversation:

• “Well, it was nice meeting you! Thanks for all the unsolicited recipes for placenta.”
• “I’ve really enjoyed our chat! Ecoterrorism seems like a dynamic field.”
• “Hey, it’s been a pleasure! I’ll be sure to pick up that DVD you recommended next time I’m in the mood to watch people old enough to be my grandparents fuck people old enough to be their grandparents.”

On that repellent note, I'll thank you for reading. (And what would any excerpt be without an Amazon link?)

 

 

 

Not a Supporter of Adolph Hitler: Cinema's Will SmithRecently, Will Smith caused great controversy when he stated that all human beings, including the likes of Hitler, seek to do good in the world.

In an interview for the Scottish paper The Daily Record, Smith said:

"Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today'. I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good'. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming.”

Not surprisingly, these comments have enraged many people who believe that Smith had trivialized the actions of Hitler and the Nazis. The Jewish Defense League, to take an extreme example, issued the following statement in response:

"Smith's comments are ignorant, detestable and offensive. They spit on the memory of every person murdered by the Nazis. His disgusting words stick a knife in the backs of every veteran who fought so valiantly to save the world from those aspirations of Adolph Hitler. Smith's comments also cast the perpetrators of the Holocaust as misguided fellows rather than the repulsive villains of history they truly were."

The JDL ended their statement by calling on movie theaters and their patrons to boycott Smith's new movie I Am Legend; challenging Barack Obama (a friend of Smith's) to repudiate the comments made by the actor; and threatening to confront Smith if ever the chance occurs.

In response to such outrage, Smith issued a perfunctory statement explaining that he was misquoted and that he really believes that Hitler was “a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet.”

It seems to me that the controversy surrounding Smith’s original comments revolves around a basic misunderstanding of the actor’s words. Smith did not say that Hitler was good, or that his actions were good, rather he said that Hitler thought he was doing good. As the old saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Don’t believe Smith, then take Hitler’s own words for it: In a speech to the Reichstag given 1936 Hitler said, “I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work.” A person who believes that he is fulfilling God’s will is indeed a person who believes that his actions are ultimately good.

Note to the JDL - Will Smith is no Mel Gibson. The man was simply making a correct if mundane statement about the man who led his country to infamy. There was nothing anti-Semitic about the actor’s observation: I am sure that Smith would have said the same of Bin-Laden, Stalin, Pol Pot, or Ganges Kahn.

As far as I am concerned, the only off component to Smith’s comment is his assertion that Hitler just needed “reprogramming”. Unlike computer programs, people’s values and believes are not something that can be easily changed. Furthermore, there something very cult-like (Scientology anyone?) about the notion that people can and ought to be programmed in the first place. Perhaps Smith has acted in one too many sci-fi movies. Other than that, I have no qualms with the man.

#1 moms: Jamie Lynn and role model Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney's 16-year-old sister and the star of Nickelodeon's "Zoey 101," just announced that she's got a little Sean Jayden Preston James on the way. Ditto Lily Allen, who at least has "has spoken on numerous occasions about her desire to start a family and leave music behind," according to the Guardian. Which makes me wonder: is there no birth control in Hollywood?

Seriously: These people are rich. They've got minders, publicists, personal shoppers -- all the amenities of the modern world. And yet they're reproducing at the rate of 16th century French peasants. Or, if you want to go in that direction, of certain third world countries. If Hollywood were a malarial backwater, there would be a UN group devoted to teaching its citizens about planned parenthood, and then the Bush administration would cut its funding because it preached methods other than abstinence.

I've been baffled about this ever since the knocking-up of 16-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes, the teeny star of the movie Whale Rider, though Nicole Richie's ridiculously unplanned pregnancy is what really made me start wondering: I mean, would YOU want to raise a child with Joel Madden? People bitch about birth control pills, but honestly, they're pretty easy to manage. Ditto condoms, though I can imagine that it would be tough to wrangle someone like K-Fed into such a contraption. Most of the women I know have made it past the age of 16 -- hell, past the age of 30 -- without accidentally bringing new life into the world. Why is it that much more difficult for celebrities?

"The Hills" may be the ultimate in guilty pleasures. With all the fights, gossip and fashion, how could you resist? Apparently, the New York Times can't resist either. Their style blog got a hold of Whitney Port and sat her down for an interview, during which they offered her a job after she commented that she was getting "too old" to be working at Teen Vogue. Gawker didn't seem too happy with the Times blogger's gushing affection for Whitney, or his spontaneous job offer, but I say, why not? If starring in a reality TV show gives her enough cred to be called a "style muse" then why shouldn't she move on to a more prestigious gig? And if that doesn't work out, she can always come work for Jewcy!

I know you want this t-shirt so that you can wear it every day until New Year's Eve, but it's sold out. Anyway, there's got to be a more inventive Hanukkah LOLcat, no? Suggestions welcome -- you can send them to submissions@jewcy.com.

Alan Sacks is the original Sweathog. A buttoned-down N.Y. producer who relocated to Los Angeles to be closer to the happenings of the late ‘60s, Sacks helped create Welcome Back Kotter by drawing upon his tough childhood in Brooklyn. We talked to Sacks about the inspiration behind the Jewish Holy Trinity: Kotter, Epstein and Horshack.

How did you create the show, where did it come from?

I was inspired by a couple of things, both of which happened around 1956. That was a pivotal year for me. That was the year "rock n roll" was invented by Alan Freed ...

Another fine Jew.

Yeah, exactly, too bad he's not around to be interviewed. But yeah, Alan Freed came up with that phrase "rock n roll," and all summer long I was listening to him over the airwaves, his top forty countdown on Saturday morning. I'd be in the schoolyard with a lot of my Italian friends, Vinnie Barbarino and Joey Caluchi ...

Wait, did you just say Vinnie Barbarino?

Right.

So the John Travolta character was based on a real person with the same name?

Right ... No wait, his real name was Joey Barbarino.

Oh.

I mean Joey Caluchi. Yeah, Travolta's character was really based more on the other friend I mentioned, Joey Caluchi. You know, Joey Caluchi's other claim to fame is he was the first person ever whacked by Sammy the Bull.

That's great. I mean, that's horrible, but that's great.

(Laughing). And Sammy the Bull went to my elementary school.

So you were saying?

So we would listen to Alan Freed's top forty countdown show, and it would come over these little Motorola portable radios that we had. Well, during that same year, three movies came out in very close proximity to one another: The Wild One with Marlon Brando; Rebel without a Cause with James Dean, and The Blackboard Jungle. These were movies about juvenile delinquents. When we went to see The Blackboard Jungle, it began by showing what today they would call an inner city high school, though it was just a Lower East Side or Brooklyn type of high school; and they had guys dancing over the main titles with each other and suddenly Bill Haley's music came on - "Rock Around the Clock" - and it was the first time we ever heard music beyond those small little radios, we heard this huge music coming over the speakers, this rock n roll, and it became like tribal, we started banging our chairs, you know, throwing things, destroying the theater and they had to shut down the movie. That stayed with me my whole life. So I always thought when I came out here to California, I was going to write and create a television show about that moment, the tough things that I grew up with in Brooklyn.

The other thing that inspired me was a series of films called the Bowery Boys about these east side kids, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, these tough kids from New York.

These were mostly Irish kids, right?

Yeah, mostly Irish kids, but I think Huntz Hall, he might have been Hebrew, I think so, he might have been.

You kind of identified with him when watching it?

No, I didn't, I identified with Leo Gorcey, who was the tough, short leader of the pack, even though he was Irish. Huntz Hall was Jewish, and was played with a big nose, and he was, you know, the goof.

Ok, so you had this idea, and you pitched it to the networks?

It wasn't just my idea. It was also Gabe Kaplan's, who played Mr. Kotter on the show. He had an act all about kids he knew in high school, and I had my experiences with my friends and we combined the two. Like "Epstein the Animal." He was a character in Gabe's stand-up routine. He was the toughest kid in the neighborhood. We liked the idea of having a tough Jew, cause there are some, you know. Gabe's joke was, "This kid was so tough that all the other parents would take their kids off the street one hour a day so Epstein could run out and walk through the streets." So that was kind of what Epstein was based on. But [Michael] Eisner, who was then head of programming at ABC, said I think we should make Epstein half Puerto Rican and half Jewish. My personal feeling about that was I didn't know any half Puerto Ricans and half Jews, I didn't quite buy that idea, but I also knew that he wanted to contribute creatively, so I said, ok, let's go with this. As it turned out it was a great idea, it gave us a wealth of material, a wealth of jokes. And the irony of it is I have a cousin who moved down to Florida and she came to visit about seven or eight years ago, and I hadn't seen her in years, and she'd married a Puerto Rican guy and her last name is Gonzales now, and her children are half Jewish, half Puerto Rican, so in fact I have cousins who are in reality like the fiction that I created.

Kotter lives!

More than even that. I had no idea I was going to become a college professor. I'm teaching now seven or eight years, I forget, and that's accidental, I didn't plan it, I didn't start out to be a teacher, I'm not in retirement, I didn't say ok I'm a teacher now, it just happened, you know. So the irony is I became a teacher and my students love the idea that I created Welcome Back.

So do you divide them into different characters from the show - and do they act like those guys?

No, but they like to think they do, they have a big joke like that. (laughs) But you know, it's funny when you say that because when I went to my high school reunion in Brooklyn, I'd lived in Hollywood so long that when I got there I half-expected it to be this huge event with klieg lights and like a red carpet, that was my frame of reference. As it turned out, there was just the old gym, and the whole school packed in there and I felt out of place. But then, everybody started coming up to me and asking me who they were. "Was I Barbarino?" "Was I Horshack?" They all wanted to know which one was based on them.

Were any of them?

No, because it was mostly from my junior high school. I turned it into a high school for the show.

Did any people actually want to be Horshack?

Errr, I think some people did (laughs). Yeah, I think so.

Who picks Horshack as the person to be?

I think people who are happy being the nerd, you know, the person satisfied about being a goofball. I wouldn't want to be Horshack.

You wouldn't?

No, no, (laughs), he was a goof.

It's funny, because in terms of Jewish identity, he's probably the most interesting character. He seems very Jewish.

But I never wanted him to be Jewish, I didn't want the nerd, the complete nerd to be Jewish, the stereotype, you know. That's the one thing about being Jewish that you get typecast as, and that's not necessarily, you know, who Jews who are. Jews are cool!

But in some ways it seems unavoidable, like maybe you were making fun of that idea. I mean, he's got the name, which sounds kind of Polish-Jewish...

"Arnold, hi, I'm Arnold Horshack."

And the accent, and the nose...

He's Italian, and the accent was Robert Hegyes trying to do Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy. But, I understand what you're saying and people interpreting that. Still, I always found that a little offensive that people felt that.

I don't mean to be offensive.

No, you're not being offensive at all...

But I got to ask you a couple of things about that, because, one, in Dustin Hoffman you've got ...

Yeah, yeah, right.

...a Jew playing an Italian, I always think Jews and Italians are so alike anyway, it's like...

Right!

...it's like Jews are decaf Italians.

Exactly, that's funny.

So I wonder if on some level Horshack was an unconscious projection of negative feelings of how Jews are seen.

My own negative feelings?

Maybe, or Gabe's. Was he your character more, or Gabe's character?

Gabe's. Though I always thought Gabe himself was a nerd. So maybe it is Gabe. We're analyzing Gabe now! (laughs)

Well, it's easy, you know, what's he gonna say? He's not here. We should call him up and get him on a three-way conversation.

I spoke to Gabe this morning.

Maybe we should check in with him and give him like a little P.S. at the bottom. You know, like "I'm anyone but Horshack." We'll talk about that later. But one other thing about Horshack - I was remembering what I think is one of the final episodes where he gets married...

Yeah.

Isn't there a moment where they need something for him to step on at the wedding, a glass...

Did he step on a glass ... oh, yeah yeah yeah, I remember that now, right.

I think it's something other than a glass because they can't find one. I can't remember now.

I can't remember.

So he must be Jewish.

(Sounding defeated) Right.

Like he came out of the closet at the end of the show...

Well, he wasn't Jewish for the first two years. (Sighs then laughs). You know, Gabe and I have been talking about developing a movie and in the movie we've talked about Horshack coming out.

Of the closet? Not as a Jew, but as gay?

Yeah.

I like it. Because that was the other thing about him you always wondered. He seemed a little too attracted to Mr. Kotter all the time. You know, "Ewww ewwww ewwww, Mr. Kotter!"

(Laughs) Yeah, right.

Interesting. So what about the rest of the Sweathogs? What are they doing?

In my mind? Creatively?

Yeah.

Oh. Well, like I said, Horshack is coming out. He's a beautician. A hairdresser. This past week he was getting married in San Francisco. Not that that matters to me at all. I think that's great. And let's see ... Barbarino ... he's just gotten out of jail. He's written a memoir about the Sweathogs and he's sold the movie rights and he's a millionaire in L.A. And Freddy "Boom Boom" Washington is like, you know, still like one of the cool, ultimate brothers. He's still going to basketball games, still shooting hoops, he's very stylin'. He's a music producer, he's into music, and he's playing keyboards.

And Epstein?

Oh, Epstein, he's like on his fourth wife. And he's a butcher.

Is he still in the neighborhood?

Yeah, he's still in the neighborhood, he's a butcher in Brooklyn.

And the ladies like to drop in?

Oh yeah!

As he does every Friday afternoon around 5 PM, Michael Weiss just dared me to post a picture of Christopher Hitchens getting his bikini waxed. This time, I've accepted the challenge. Why is male body hair everywhere this week?

[Note: This is a response to Izzy Grinspan's anti-beard polemic.]

Mountaineer plus prophet: Jim James of My Morning Jacket

A hipster beard isn’t supposed to be sexy. It’s post-sex. Sex is over; the only body part we’re looking to stroke is our beard. We’re onto the next thing.

We’re not hiding behind these beards. They’re more of a revelation than a dodge: look, here is how hair grows on my face. There is some red, and some grey, and some odd patterning. In a sensitive culture, beards may merely be declaring, “See, we’re at least this different from women.” And that’s enough.

The hipster beard has evocations of the madman, the mountaineer, the hippie, the pioneer, and the prophet. We’re not exactly any of those guys, but we like to think we’re descended a little from each.

A beard is a sign of authority, especially familial. Dads have beards. But we’re not dads. In fact, in many cases our beards themselves are the closest things we have to actual dependents.

A little stubble may be the by-product of laziness, but a real beard takes real commitment. You need to work through the itchy stage, and come to terms with the fact that you will be classified as “bearded.” Others will work though deep issues through what they see in your facial hair. There’s some trimming involved.

The headband keeps the sweat out of his mustache: Inspirational face-furI admit I’m a fashion follower, rather than an innovator. I like doing things while they’re cool, and maybe a little bit afterwards. I know my place in the curve. It would be too lonely at the front of it. Being part of the sanctioned now is fun. In this way beards are both an assertion and renunciation of individuality.

Now, when I see young, arty men bopping around the city without any facial hair, they look wrong to me, naked. I want to counsel them to start growing. Heed the fashion pendulum, even if it is largely based on a contrast with what came before—jeans were low, now they’re up; shoes were pointy, now they’re round. What’s the Biblical origin story, if not the ultimate contrast? Before there was chaos, now there is meaning. All beards are religious.

Which way does your hipster beard point tonight? Nowhere. Just to itself.

The hipster beards won’t be here long. They might be gone already. So while they’re around, on their cyclical and cryptic mission, it is important to welcome them. They are like comets—a streak of wonder where usually there is empty space.

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ALSO IN JEWCY:

Izzy Grinspan explains why beards are creepy.

Marjorie Ingall loves her some man-hair.

[Note: The following is an opinion piece on the creepiness of hipster beards, those scraggly face-warmers sported by young, underemployed, flamboyantly-dressed men in cities across the nation. For a defense of these beards, see Andy Selsberg's response.]

An early specimen: This was FOUR YEARS AGO and people's chins are still hairy

One of the most disturbing moments of my (admittedly boring) childhood was the day my dad shaved his beard. When he walked out of the bathroom, all three of my brothers burst into tears, demanding to know what this smooth-faced interloper had done to our father. I was old enough to understand the transformation, but I still felt shaken. With a beard, he’d looked authoritative, serious, almost Solomonic. His nude chin bespoke an entirely different man: someone young and frivolous, more likely to flirt with strange women than to arbitrate disputes over Lego ownership.

For the past year or two, I’ve revisited this shock almost every time I walk down the street, only this time it’s the converse: how did all the boys turn into my dad? It might have started with Will Oldham’s near-Freudian bush-face on the cover of 2003’s “Master and Everyone,” an achievement in hair-growing so monumental that it nearly eclipsed the record itself. It might have something to do with Devendra Banhart, psych-folk, and the need to have a chin as goaty as one’s voice. Wherever the hipster beard came from, I wish it would go away. I think my dad is pretty great, but I’m a little freaked out by how much my boyfriend is starting to resemble him.

Wait, actually this beard is kinda sexy: Kristofferson Not everyone has a bearded dad, obviously. But if you’re young enough that your facial scruff qualifies as hipster accoutrement and old enough that it’s not just pubertal bragging, then your parents probably came of age during the golden era of stubble liberation. In April 2005, the New York Times explained that beards are hip because they’re subversive. Fair enough: fringe forces often have fringed faces. Beards can signify passionate devotion to a fundamentalist cause and/or the inability to toe the social line, making them quite literally countercultural: look at Osama Bin Laden or the Unabomber. The Brooklyn beard might well be a symbol of wild-eyed pre-modern weirdness, an unruly protest against the uniformity of our flat globalized age. But the Times was thinking more of Kris Kristofferson’s chin in the 1978 movie Convoy. It’s hard to be nostalgic and subversive at the same time.

Of course, there’s nothing categorically wrong with re-heated trends. It’s just that in laying claim to the beard during their own youths, the boomer generation stripped it of its powers. The untamed mountain-man beard at least suggests some kind of feral intensity. Once filtered through the dad matrix, though, it becomes by definition unsexy. The virtues it implies—responsibility, maturity, prudence—are certainly all fine things, but they don’t make a girl’s pulse start to rise when spotted walking down Broadway. Whether or not we’re evolutionarily wired to like dependable men, we’re culturally programmed against anything that reminds us too much of the previous generation. And without his clothes, a bearded guy looks like the gamy dude in the line drawings illustrating the erotic boomer bible The Joy of Sex, which makes him shorthand for all sorts of disturbing primal scenes. (Oldham, as always, is a total genius: in bearding up like Freud, he somehow both presaged the trend and pinpointed exactly the kind of anxiety that goes with it.)

No matter how obscure or obscuring, fashion is always about sex. Someday, all you beardos might have kids who depend on your hairy chins to make sense of their little worlds. But until you’ve reached that point, it might be wise to shave once in a while. Nobody wants to feel like she’s making out with the scratchy symbolism of her parents’ generation.

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ALSO IN JEWCY:

Andy Selsberg defends the face fluff.

Marjorie Ingall loves all male body hair, whether it's facial or dorsal.

 

A Levantine Dolemite awaits you:

A new movie showcases the Heras of Jewish comedy:

To remember and to honor the contributions of six famed Jewish women comedians was the goal of the Jewish Women’s Archive, based in Brookline, Mass., in creating their documentary, Making Trouble. The film grew our of plans to host a gala celebration, “So Laugh A Little, An Evening of Jewish Women’s Comedy,” in New York City in March 2005. Contemporary comics Judy Gold and Jackie Hoffman performed at the show and their work, combined with archival footage, got the Archive staff thinking. “We thought, ‘there’s a history here and a tradition that they belong to,” says Gail Reimer,