My name is Rob Kutner. I’m a writer for “The Daily Show,” as well as the creator of annual NYC Purim spiel “The Shushan Channel,” and the co-writer of a little piece of fun-with-stereotypes you may or may not have seen called “Jewno.”
But most recently, I’ve authored a book entitled APOCALYPSE HOW, a tongue-in-cheek “survival” guide that goes through topical chapters n Food, Clothing, Shelter, Social Life, Dating, Politics, Career, Recreation, and Finance — to show you how the world to come will be much better than the current one.
However, since the book’s publication, I’ve received numerous complaints from Jews (I know, can you believe it???) that the book does not sufficiently address specifically Jewish end-time issues.
So, I want to assure you that the next edition will contain an entire “Olam ha-Bagraphy,” including such critical tachliss as:
-Food — Ten low-fat, delicious, and totally blecch-friendly recipes for Levyatan (ever tried it smoked with a nice shmear?)
-Relocation — Finding a comfortable place to stay in Israel when all the world’s Jews have returned there (Hint: How do you feel about the Negev?)
-Home Makeover — Design advice for Beit HaMikdash 3 (Ex: Who makes the best dolphin skin, and where you can buy it wholesale)
-Personnel — Telling the real Mashiach from impostors (Spoiler alert: It is Schneerson after all - should have donated to the telethon!)
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BUT, I cannot release this updated version until ALL COPIES of the current run are sold out. So it’s up to you guys. Â Go towww.apocalypsehowthebook.com
and buy one now! Hint: Makes a great Bar/Bat Mitzvah gift — and much funnier than a savings bond.
Sure, we disagreed about a number of things. You liked to tote guns around and champion the 2nd amendment. You opposed Affirmative Action and became a Republican later in life. You campaigned for George W. Bush, George Bush Sr., and Reagen. You boycotted Ice-T.
But at one point in your life, you supported the Civil Rights movement and became inextricably linked as an icon of Jewish Biblical history. For many of us, before our political awakening, we knew you as the man who carried the tablets down from the mountain. Or, a different subset of us knew you as the man who fell to his knees and cried out, “You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
So God bless, Charlton Heston. May you be remembered for good (at least on TNT’s annual pre-Passover Ten Commandments screening).
Okay, no one really thinks so. For one thing, Hoffman’s been dead a while, and Sacha Baron Cohen is still alive and kicking. Also he appears, as a general rule to be adequately groomed. But this just in:
In Spielberg’s new movie on the trial of the Chicago seven, Baron Cohen will play Abbie Hoffman. A rather more serious film than Baron Cohen’s incredibly strange, and disputedly funny (some say yes, others not so much) Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, The Trial of the Chicago Seven is about the famous dust-ups resulting from protesters of the 1968 Democratic party convention (not “Democrat party convention,” as the TimesOnline refers to it, incorrectly)
The Trial of the Chicago Seven follows protesters who disrupted the 1968 Democrat party convention with an anti-Vietnam-war “carnival†that turned nasty. Demonstrators threw bricks, police responded with tear gas and the centre of Chicago was engulfed in flames. Curfews only escalated the violence.
After the clashes, independent investigators blamed eight police officers and eight protesters including Hoffman, who had already disrupted the New York Stock Exchange with showers of fake money.
The police were not charged but the protesters were accused of inciting a riot. One was jailed for contempt, leaving the seven to fight the charges.
It was, said the late writer Norman Mailer, who testified for the seven, a noisy televised clash between the old order and the burgeoning counterculture.
Hoffman and four others were found guilty of attempting to incite a riot while crossing state lines, but the convictions were overturned and none served any jail time.
Hoffman, of course, was well-known as a prankster who used his somewhat outre pranks as a form of protest against the Vietnam war. That, I’m sure is the attraction for Baron Cohen, but he also had a much longer history as well. He had been active in the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and later a leader of the Yippie movement. Hoffman was also somewhat of a tragic figure, as he committed suicide at 52 , having somewhat earlier been diagnosed as bipolar.
I think it will be very interesting to see Baron Cohen’s take on Hoffman. Note to Baron Cohen: What could you change with your comedy if you put your mind to it?
This is one part amusing, two parts horrific. The first thing we learn in this trailer for You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is that Adam Sandler has gotten buff and doesn’t do an Israeli accent very well. That doesn’t stop him from playing Zohan, a Mossad agent who fakes his own death so that he can move to New York City and become a hairdresser. Until his past catches up with him… Sort of like Shampoo, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zymoFHGYBnQ&feature=related
“>Exodus and Munich rolled into one.
If the trailer is anything to go by, the film half mocks, half affirms American stereotypes of and fetishes for Israeli soldiers. Still, you know you’ll see it when it hits the theatres in June.
Update: according to CNN: “It is an awful and disgusting lie,” Smith said in a statement Monday provided by his publicist. “It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation. Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet,” read the statement.
What I want to know, now, is what he actually did say. I suppose we’ll never know.
OK, so everyone in the world must now know that actor Will Smith was in the Scottish press, who quoted him saying, “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. I wake up every day full of hope, positive that every day is going to be better than yesterday. And I’m looking to infect people with my positivity. I think I can start an epidemic.”
I’ve gotten a dozen emails about this, and I’ve seen it reported in an assortment of blogs, and what I want to say is: STOP! More »
93-year-old screenwriter Irv Brecher (Meet Me In St. Louis, Bye Bye Birdie and many more) offers his perspective on the writers’ strike in this video called “Same Old Story.”
Irv Brecher is one of the few surviving veterans of the Golden Age of (Jewish) Comedy, having written for Milton Berle, the Marx Brothers and a host of others.
(Obligatory yet self-serving full-disclosure notice: I’m publishing his memoirs, The Wicked Wit of the West.)
So the Sci Fi channel has this reality show called Who Wants to Be a Superhero?
Thousands of hopefuls begin with an original idea for a superhero, a self-made costume and their best superhero mojo. From those thousands, [Marvel comics creator] Stan Lee chooses 11 lucky finalists, who move together into a secret lair. There they begin their transformations — and their competition for the opportunity to become real-life superheroes.
The winner of the competition walks away with their character immortalized in a new comic book created by Stan Lee himself.
And this season, the show, which premieres on July 26th, features a Jewish superhero named MISTER MITZVAH!
Joanna Angel was raised in an orthodox home, and is now making porn. She’s interviewed in Mr. Skin (by “Rabbi Mo Gaydau”), and discusses her religious upbringing, the relationship of her religion to her work, and Jewish views on sex in general.
May I publicly “out” you as Jewish?
Of course! I am not ashamed! I am proud to be one of the Chosen Ones.
Are you religiously observant?
Well, I don’t know. I mean, really no . . . I grew up religious, like didn’t use electricity on Saturdays, went to temple almost every week, etc., so yeah. I don’t do all that anymore, but I spend most of the Jewish holidays with my family, and they are observant, and I respect their rules when I’m there.
I wasn’t with my family this past year on Yom Kippur and I still fasted, and I don’t eat bread on all the eight days of Passover. It sounds like a bold statement, but I would venture to say I am the most observant Jewish porn star . . . but you know . . . compared to how I was raised I feel like the way I am now is pretty goy-ish.
[...]
Did the melodic voice of a cantor ever make you touch yourself in temple or just climax from the sheer power of faith?
My sister is a cantor in a synagogue in Indiana. And if you say something dirty about my sister, I will kick your ass.
OK, let’s change the subject. Are you into messy fun? Like what if I asked you to join me in a vat of schmaltz for a game of find the kosher salami?
I would tell you that I am a Sephardic Jew, not an Ashkenazi Jew, so I don’t speak Yiddish.
Get your Passover Coke, kids. It’s, like rare and stuff. I’ll be buying up all the Cali supplies and eBaying them off to you East Coast Hymietown suckas.
Read more here.
Don’t ask me to explain what this is or where it comes from. The only thing I can make out is that the narrator is speaking Persian, he sounds completely serious, and he actually seems to be conveying the fascinatingly bizarre notion that Woody Allen is intentionally attempting to corrupt Western values as some sort of Jewish conspiracy.
Jesus H.
Moderate Islam, please, for the love of Allah, we’re trying over here. Please, try harder over there.
The Today segment on MSNBC had a section on the Jewish view of heaven. Although IMO the treatment of Judaism was listing heavily toward comedy - I suspect they won’t treat Christianity this way, on their segment- I have to admit that Joan Rivers was in fine form (if it’s heaven, that means I’ll be able to get Wavy Gravy flavor, right?). But I do have to ask, where were the other five questions?
Shabbat 31a:
Raba said, When man is led in for Judgment he is asked, Were you honest in business, did you fix times for learning, did you engage in procreation, did you hope for salvation, did you engage in the dialectics of wisdom, did you understand one thing from another? Yet even so, if ‘the fear of the Lord is his treasure,’ it is well: if not, [it is] not [well].
According to LAist, Michael Richards’ publicist is running around town swearing up and down that Richards is a Member of the Tribe. There’s just one problem: Despite whatever Jewish heritage he may possess, Richards was raised a Catholic and is currently a practicing Freemason.
Sorry, but no posthumous admission of Jewishness is gonna let you off the hook for this one. It doesn’t make you look good, it makes us look bad. So I’m gonna side with the Jewish Journal on this one. Michael Richards: Not a Jew.
The Israeli authorities have censored posters of Borat sporting his signature neon-green singlet because they are “indecent.” However, if Shlomo Amar gets his way, that’ll be the least of Sacha Baron Cohen’s worries.
Should Cohen and his bride-to-be, Isla Fisher, choose to make a life for themselves in the Holy Land (yeah, right, who am I kidding?), Fisher, who has recently converted to Judaism, may no longer be eligible for Israeli citizenship under the right of return. Amar has petitioned the government to deny citizenship to Jews who are not considered halakhically Jewish — ie., those whose mothers are not Jewish, or who did not receive an Orthodox conversion.
Luckily for Cohen, a Habonim veteran with an Israeli mother, he already has Israeli citizenship, so Fisher could apply for citizenship as his spouse, bureaucratically-choked a process as that may be. But for those who have made the leap to non-obtuse forms of Jewish observance and have committed to a life in an already inhospitable nation, should Amar succeed, their good deeds shall not go unpunished. That is, of course, unless they can dribble a ball.
Did Michael Richards attack the Jews? Two Los Angeles residents have come forward and said that’s exactly what happened last Spring at L.A. comedy club, The Improv.
Carol Oschin and J.P. Fillet say they were at The Improv on April 22 when Richards took the stage. They say that in the middle of Richards’ skit, a man in the audience said something to the comedian, when Richards allegedly launched into an anti-Semitic rant. According to Oschin, Richards screamed at the audience member, “You f***ing Jew. You people are the cause of Jesus dying.”
Unlike some other, ahem, popular Jewish bloggers, it is far from my prerogative to publicly gawk at and/or drool over Jewish celebrity hotties, thus participating in the fetishization and objectification of the Jewish woman. Hence, when Jewish celebrity hottie Scarlett Johansson was named Sexiest Woman Alive (NSFF*) by FHM magazine, I didn’t consider it blogworthy.
However, now that it’s been disclosed that Ms. Johansson and I share an appreciation for moody, scratchy-throated baritones, I simply couldn’t help myself. According to Fox News’ Roger Friedman:
Scarlett, I am told, has signed a deal to make her first record. “Scarlett Sings Tom Waits” is being recorded now and through the winter, with a possible release next spring from Rhino Records’ recently reactivated Atco label. The eventual release date will be coordinated with Johansson’s movie schedule.
Certainly, I have no idea what to expect, but I genuinely look forward to hearing Ms. Johansson’s debut effort. Though I somehow get the feeling she won’t be touching “I’m Your Late Night Evening Prostitute” with a 10-foot pole. But hey, you never know.
Joanna Angel was raised in an orthodox home, and is now making porn. She’s interviewed in Mr. Skin (by “Rabbi Mo Gaydau”), and discusses her religious upbringing, the relationship of her religion to her work, and Jewish views on sex in general.
