Very Hot Jew Leading Men(sches)

a postcard from the edge from Sera

Gosh, who knew being a producer meant I would have to produce so damn much?

I've wanted to check in with you in a hot, Jewish way, but I've been waylaid by the challenges of trying to not go all Apocalypse Now with the budget of my current TV episode. In fact, I'm still ... well, not in the heart of darkness, but certainly heart-adjacent ... let's call it the lung of darkness. So this post will be brief and scattered, like a phone call home from college during midterm week. Here goes.

Much has been happening, my feverishly hot friends! For example, I have been digging into that Michael Chabon novel. It's terfrickinrific. Sime lapped me — he's done — and I keep telling him to shut up about the book because I'm terrified he'll let slip some juicy detail I haven't yet gotten to. I watch so much TV that I sometimes forget I'd rather read a book.

Another tragic thing about watching (and writing) so much TV-- I barely ever go to the movies, unless I'm on hiatus. I'm dying to see Michael Moore's new one, for instance. And that Irish indie, Once? I'm full-on white-on-rice when it comes to anything involving Irish guys singing. Yes, there's a story there, and it's a true story, and it does in fact involve my standing on the rainy streets of Dublin at one in the morning while a motley band of smoldering countrymen drunkenly serenade me, but that's a story for another post. Possibly a post about how I exaggerate stories.

The last flick I caught was a surprise Jewy treat. Knocked Up. Didja see it? It feels odd to say that, since you probably saw it long before I did. It's because I'm so busy working and reading Perez Hilton and listening to the tousle-haired Irish troubadours who sing softly in my ears. Really.

Anyway: Seth Rogen plays a menschy young man doing right by his splendiferously bosomed fling-turned-babymama. His posse is mostly Hebraic as well. They represent a woefully underrespresented demo I know well — the nice Jewish boy with a bong. They're secular as all get-out, but they do groove hilariously on their own Jewishness. And the brass tacks of 'em is that they're simply good guys. In that way of being raised right by a couplea Jews. Their slackerliness is thoroughly benign. They're devoted to their stoney girlfriends, if they have them. Their get-rich schemes are for the public good — yes, we do need websites that tell us the exact moment a starlet disrobes in an otherwise B-minus movie; they save us time and discomfort.

And while some of the nice Jewish boys in the flick are a tad immature, the message is clear: when they choose to step up, they really step up. Knocked Up is a testament to the warm-fuzziness I feel when my friends email me and say, "hey, I took your advice and went on a date with a nice Jewish boy and HOLY FUCK!!!"

Hello, Stealth Hotness: Seth Rogen.

Also: my fave thing? They totally have the Munich conversation! You know the one-- we ourselves had it on this very blog eons ago. Apparently we weren't the only ones stoked to see the smorgasboard of semitic manliness that movie offered. Knocked Up is rip-roaring in general, and also kind of touching, not that I cried or anything. Except for, like, four times. But don't get the wrong idea, it wasn't like Leaving Las Vegas bawling — more like Denny-dies-on-Grey's mistiness.

There's also Harold Ramis, who plays the father of Seth's character. He's been married a few times, and looks at his son's relatively arrested lifestyle with cool amusement. He's not your typical movie dad, by any stretch of the imagination, but there's a scene in which father and son sit across from each other — the son in distress about his life — and Ramis, positively glowing with love for his boy, shows us with a few deft strokes what's magical about Jewish menschiness. It's one of the most accurate presentations of a certain kind of Jewish parental affection ever put on screen. Let's say that tissues were required. We wish there'd been more of him in the flick.

So, yeah, see it if you haven't. It's pretty sweet, even if you're not a Jew. And if you are, there's the added bonus of feeling pretty okay that you're a big fat stoner — as long as you'd at least consider trading in that skull-shaped pipe for wedded bliss with Katherine Heigl.