Yeah, so, enjoy: 

(Jimmy Kimmel, you’re a douche-nozzle for letting her go.)

The post Sarah Silverman Wants You to Schlep Your Fat Jewish Ass to Florida appeared first on Jewcy.

Her first two novels, Swimming and The Outside of August, both beautifully drawn contemporary narratives, prepared me not at all for this imaginative, deeply researched tale of the American frontier as inhabited by German Jews in the nineteenth century. It’s not exactly the usual “Jewish” setting we’ve come to expect from contemporary “Jewish” novelists (you know, mix-and-match: psychiatry, the Holocaust, masturbation, Yiddishism), which is perhaps why the New York Times couldn’t quite figure out how to properly essentialize: the title and opening of the Times review are pretty goddamn idiotic and offensive given that Hershon’s novel has nothing whatsoever to do with Yiddish culture.

But hey! It’s a “Jewish” novel about 19th century pioneer Jews in the great, untamed west — throw out an “Oy” and a reference to “Blazing Saddles” and that oughta do it, right? Um, no.

If you’re interested in a somewhat more nuanced, thoughtful peek, check out the fascinating interview Hershon gave to Ha’aretz.

And pick up a copy of this gem for your more discerning literary friends. (Your other friends will probably do just fine with this.)

The post Summer Reading: The German Bride appeared first on Jewcy.

A debt of gratitude, then, to Rob Kutner, the man responsible for lots of funny stuff in several media for throwing us all a demystifying bone. In "Apocalypse How" (now a national bestseller, because you assholes just love reading books without too many words in them), Kutner illuminates our inevitable collective fate with just the right brand of realistic-terror-fueled humor. Need more proof that the end is near? Here's what Amazon customers are buying alongside Kutner's opus: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie, by Max Brooks Nine Lives, Steve Winwood Third, Portishead I Am Legend DVD Infected: A Novel, by Scott Sigler A Practical Guide to Racism, by CH Dalton And last but not least, The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks

The post Daily Show Writer To Apocalypse: Ha appeared first on Jewcy.

It doesn't take a Liberal Arts degree to note that the expensive, humiliating, Sisyphean task of removing our naturally occurring, pretty much universal, and persistent-as-hell hair is something of an attempt to pass as (choose one):

1. white
2. pre-pubescent
3. manufactured-by-Mattel
4. all of the above

I'd be a huge, hairy hypocrite if I said teenage girls should just, like, roll with their hirsutism—if hair removal methods were drugs, I'd've been the motherfucking Keith Richards of Camp Ramah. But honestly: "excess" hair has pretty much come to mean everything but eyelashes. And that just 'aint right.

Every so often we encounter someone bold enough to own her shit (see: Jennifer Miller, self-proclaimed circus freak); on occasion you'll hear a half-assed defense of the full-brow via mention of Frida Kahlo. But where's the protest? Where's the outrage? Where's the ethnic pride? Where's the New-Jew/hipster/I-Have-Chin-Hair-Like-My-Grandma-And-I'm-Proud movement? Where are the "Hitler Can Kiss My Hairy Jewish Ass" T-shirts?

For the record, and only slightly off-topic, my mostly heterosexual research has shown that adult males who are bothered by standard human adult female body hair are, with no exceptions, abominable lays.

The post Hair Removal is for Pussies appeared first on Jewcy.

Parked at the intersection of imagination, evangelism and propaganda, The Mantra Trailer is a traveling mediation space, recording studio and site of mysterious broadcast in the form of a 1972 breadbox trailer. The Mantra Trailer invites us to contemplate, chant, voice and explore our prayers, aspirations, desires, frustrations and petitions for the transformation of self and society, or whatever resonates within us, even the nonsensical. By-passers drawn to the Mantra Trailer are invited inside one at a time to contemplate and record their mantras in privacy.

Yes indeed, the mantra trailer is exactly what it sounds like! Click on any number of mantras (from the expected"Let It Go" and "It's All Okay" to the inscrutable "Pet The Wolf Run From The Rat") to create your own multi-layered mantra symphony. I especially like "Keep Your Eye on the Doughnut" plus "You Shall Know The Truth" plus "Concentrate and Expand." "Love" plus "Open Your Heart" is awesome. "It's All Gravy" goes well with pretty much everything. Go nuts.

The Sanskrit word mantra consists of the root man- (to think) (also in manas, or mind) and the suffix -tra (tool). So literally an "instrument of thought" or "mind tool." A mantra is a sacred word, chant or sound that is repeated during mediation to reduce our everyday material worries and elevate our worldly, spiritual aims.

Mantra Trailer mastermind Sherri Lynn Wood says mantras are "a homeopathic remedy for the mass media slogans of the day."

(Dig especially, then, the clever soul who chants "Visa takes Life.")

The post Mix and Match Mantras For An Extra Spiritual Kick appeared first on Jewcy.

It's a cool town. Around Valentine's Day, when I got here, they were having their annual, massive festival de Los Amantes, which is about a medieval Romeo & Juliet (Isabel and Diego) who basically love each other a lot and both wind up dead as a result. There's a story, but it's convoluted. Romantic!

Hundreds of people were hanging out in full costume and roasting shit over open flames and selling tinctures. There was even a "Jewish quarter" with actors playing the three Jewish families who apparently lived here before they met their various heinous fifteenth-century ends. We hesitated before exclaiming "Somos Judios!" and were met with blank stares.

Anyway, it's far away from home. There are none of the global chains that have invaded many an international metropolis. It's quiet and chill. No one speaks English. There's a café in town that serves little cups of the thickest, crazy-good spicy hot chocolate, which you consume with a little spoon.

But it's also kind of far away from home and no familiar chain stores and no one speaks English and really quiet and ever so slightly depressing (I mean, if one were prone to depression in the first place, which I wouldn't know anything whatsoever about; I've got serotonin to spare). Ah, life: the bad in the good and the good in the bad. I know you've got to roll with travel, and that the discomforts and compromises required can yield enormous rewards. But it invariably takes me a little longer than I'd like to get into the swing of that.

And the food. The food has been a problem. I'm a hard-core vegetarian. (Skip the next few lines if you hate airtight conviction.) I think eating animals is completely amoral. It requires an inexcusably willful ignorance. It's totally irresponsible in light of our current environmental quandary, and it's just plain disgusting in general. (It also, for you self-identified Torah freaks, goes absolutely against the spirit of the laws of Kashrut. Like, one thousand million percent.)

And since the diet here consists almost exclusively of animal products (giant bloody rumps of dead pig hanging in every third store window, along with ubiquitous sausage, which in combination make me think fondly back on my first eye-opening read of The Sexual Politics of Meat) eating has been a challenge. I kid you not, they sell Pringles con Jamon in the supermarket. It's made me reflect on the many ways our food choices mark and distinguish and separate us. And how eating restrictions can be a powerful statement of personal ethics and priorities. And how adherence to personal ethics can be a pain in the ass. And also, how much I miss Perelandra in Brooklyn Heights.

Thankfully, after a few days of extremely crankily (sorry, babe) subsisting on bread and cheese and potatoes in some kind of orange mayo-sauce (they're not huge on greens, either), my beloved found me not only a little produce market, but an honest-to-goodness health food store to boot! (Now that, Los Amantes, is love… and no one wound up dead). I wandered the aisles caressing the tofu and green tea and seitan and olive oil soap in a trance. Life's been much improved ever since.

It's really hard to appreciate badass 15th century Mudejar architecture when you're hating on an entire country's eating paradigms, you know?

Related: From Krakow, With Love

The post Dispatch From Spain: Meat is Gross appeared first on Jewcy.

The post Ben Katchor Creates A New Kind of Musical Theater appeared first on Jewcy.

The results are riveting, if not always seamless. At the center of the alternately sad and raucous family portrait is Josh: only son, pudgy math geek with zero direction, and (wait for it) budding Orthodox Jew. Seemingly overnight, Josh has become religious, sending his (educated, secular) parents, sister, and grandfather reeling. It's a family like so many other contemporary Jewish families: they know they're Jews, they feel inexplicably Jewish, but they don't observe Judaism in any tangible or practical way. They can't fully articulate why, and perhaps they know it's illogical, but religion makes them uncomfortable. Israel has resonance, Kibbutz ideology has resonance, the Holocaust still carries that dutiful, if beleaguered, capital "H", but beyond those vagaries lies… what, exactly? Leigh himself recently told Time Out New York he's a "Jew who doesn't bother to be a Jew very much."

This ambivalent sort-of-identity (or lack thereof?) is, according to the BBC, "the heart and soul of the play, and Leigh uses it to also address contemporary issues that impinge on the family such as the Israeli-Palestine question, the failure of the kibbutz ideal, the war on Iraq, and even the recent New Orleans hurricane."

All well and good, but what makes the play really worth seeing (and it's oh-so-worth seeing) is the inherent hilarity of the inter-familial relationships portrayed. They're not the cliché, vaguely-Jewy brand of hilarity, however. Merwin Goldsmith's Grandpa is alone worth the price of admission. And! Wrecked actress Natasha Lyonne, best known these days for her disturbing, severely unkempt public appearances in lower Manhattan, makes her New York stage debut as Tammy, Josh's freewheeling but well-adjusted younger sister.

The post Natasha Lyonne Suitably Convincing As Bourgeois Jewish Girl appeared first on Jewcy.

The post ‘In Treatment’ With Jewcy appeared first on Jewcy.

FOUND Magazine has by now achieved cult status. Publishing shopping lists, mash notes, Polaroids, and other scraps of human interaction, it celebrates all things abandoned and secret. The notion that nothing need ever be lost or meaningless, and that we are all connected, no matter how tenuously or humbly, is the engine of the whole enterprise. For the past three years, filmmaker David Meiklejohn has been working with FOUND's co-creator Davy Rothbart on a "documentary for the terminally romantic" called My Heart is an Idiot (trailer below.) The film takes place on the road — the FOUND crew tours incessantly, doing events all over the country — and chronicles Davy's attempts to sort out his complicated love life.

Says Meiklejohn: "For those of you who are familiar with Ross McElwee's film Sherman's March, imagine an updated version of that with more alcohol and swearing, and you'll have a sense of the movie." I talked to Davy about the film, FOUND, PostSecret, touring, love, suicide, and secrets.

You’ve been on the road for about how long now? We’re driving through Tennessee. It’s beautiful. Smoky mountains. Been on the road for two and half months, and collecting everywhere we go. Every night is unpredictable.

Last night in Charleston, West Virginia we met this sword swallower. So we took him on tour with us. He’s in the van right now. So you’re collecting people as well as objects? Right, traveling through the country telling stories and hearing stories, too.

What kind of vehicle are you driving?

We’d been driving this big red van, but in New Mexico it died and we had to hitchhike for three hours. Now we’re driving a wretched minivan, which feels small, given the sword swallower. Do you think you’re frustrated in love because you’re forever on the road, or do you think you’re forever on the road because you’re frustrated in love? A long distance relationship can be tough. It feels like you’re making a choice to go on the road, so you’re choosing the road over the relationship. Which is difficult for anyone you’re involved with.

The other thing is that you’re less able to meet people at home, but I’ve met people who live in other places…I’ve met amazing women on the road, but…you’re always starting at a deficit. It’s a tough course.
Do you have groupies? I wish. But I don’t know if groupies is the right word. My brother Peter — all the girls fall in love with him. I’m like “Hey remember me, I’m the funny guy?” But no. What is love, do you think? I fall in love with girls all the time. A lot of times there’s love for someone you’ve never spoken to, someone you just see. It’s confusing to me. The sword swallower was telling me about this girl sword swallower, and I was thinking that would be cool, to get her and bring her on the road with us. How did you connect with David Meiklejohn and start to make this film with him? I immediately recognized what an awesome filmmaker he is, and I thought it’d be fun to document our travels. We didn’t realize at first that it would focus on love. In 2004 he came along for like a week. Then in ‘05 and ‘06 he was on the road with us for like three months at a time. We did realize early on that the issue at hand was love and relationships. We were talking to family, friends, people we met on the side of the road, and trying to weave our own struggles with the stories of people we met. Collecting stories. Found stuff is a backdrop that way. So it’s about another kind of “finding," really. You’re scavenging all these experiences and advice and information about how other people navigate their love lives. Yeah. Modes of communication can be different, but experiences are so universal.
You’ve been doing tour dates lately with the PostSecret folks. This is such a natural, organic, awesome match: Where Found picks up what amounts to the detritus of life on earth — the forgotten, discarded, heartbreaking, hilarious relics of lives lived all around us — PostSecret is something of a safe haven for our most brutally honest immediate, intangible realities, realities that, it seems, “real” life can’t often support. How do you see the link between you guys, and how did you hook up? Frank Warren’s a friend of mine. He came to some early FOUND shows. He’s overgenerous, but he claims I was his inspiration for starting PostSecret. Some elements might have come from FOUND, but I think he’s doing something really distinct.

My Heart is an Idiot actually got its name from PostSecret — we were at Frank’s house and the postal lady came and brought the day’s postcards (two bricks!), and we start looking through them, and my friend Andy pulls this one from the pile and he goes: “This is name of your movie.” I see Found and PostSecret as two sides of the same coin: collecting and preserving the things we’re not individually often brave (or visionary!) enough to own or hang on to. And there’s something incredibly powerful about the effect of both on people: It makes the world feel smaller, makes loss seem like no biggie, and makes connection seem not only possible but inevitable. That’s some heavy stuff. What are some of the most intense ways FOUND has affected you over the years? No matter what you’re doing, you’re always stuck in your own head, sort of, and I feel like looking for FOUND stuff and being aware of what’s on the street around me makes me aware of the people around me, and the life around me. It's taken me out of my head and into the world a little more. I’m constantly immersed in people’s stories through their lost artifacts. So now I'm less shy about engaging with people, talking to strangers, being part of the world in real life. Some of your recent dates benefit HopeLine, a suicide-prevention organization. What’s the connection to Hopeline and why do you think Found stuff has this unique kind of hope/catharsis to it? We thought we had an opportunity to make some money for some good causes. Frank’s been involved in Hopeline for a number of years, and it’s such a great organization. And with grassroots organizations a little money goes a long way. Tonight in Nashville we’re doing a benefit for prison book program. Tomorrow in Durham it’ll be for The Sun, one of my favorite magazines. It’s about recovery and spirituality.

* * *

Here's the trailer for My Heart Is An Idiot (note the Ira Glass and Zooey Deschanel cameos). Find out more on the movie's MySpace page.

The post Found Magazine’s Editor Tells Us His Secrets appeared first on Jewcy.