My Very Hot Pencil Is Down.
(by Sera)

So as of 12:01 Monday I am, for the first time in my life, on strike. Which is weird. Is it good? Is it bad? It's good if it works. It's probably going to be difficult in the short term. If it doesn't wrap up right quick, it's gonna play hell on the Hannukah shopping season in Los Angeles. Bad, for sure, for that post on dreaming that's been pending for over a month now (I'LL GET TO IT!). I suppose the best question is: necessary?

A: Yes.

More on that... probably not here, because I am not a Very Hot New Media Expert Jew. There are better places to go if you want to plunge into the heated debate. For instance:

The Writer's Guild, Nikki Finke, Defamer, The WGA Strike Captain Blog.

Many, many Smokin' Fierce Jews and Gentiles will be picketing. You will see them on the news. You may think we writers are passionate and righteous; you may think we are spoiled, overpaid, and by and large pasty. You may think movies and episodes of television spring fully formed from the lucious mouths of your favorite actors, and have never really thought about s0-called "writers" at all. Think what you will, I am all for this strike. It's necessary at this point, because the contract we were offered was somewhat like being told to turn around, touch our toes, and perform a certain famously uncomfortable sex act, without the benefit of lubrication.

I missed the first day of school on the strike line. The weeks leading up to the expiration of our contract was a harried sprint on all fronts (including a front or two that exposed me to whatever virus is goin' round), and now I'm paying the price in sheer physical exhaustion. But my comrades are there, and so I shall join them. Though probably not wearing a red shirt, since they flash me back to my unhappy past life in Communist China.

I may or may not blog more about le strike here at Very Hot Headquarters. Just because I'm fighting for a cause doesn't mean I'm any more reliable than I used to be. But the silver lining for our blindingly sexy readers is, Simon and I don't get paid a bum nickel to write this stuff, so I can keep doing it while still striking against the conglomerates. We do it for love, we do it for fun, we do it because there's shit we really should be doing and we take procrastinatory activities where we can find 'em. So I thought, hey, check in, say yo to the readers, and tell you I'm alive and well and ready to stick it to The Man.

Till then, I leave you with two pieces of good news.

1. You can get the new Radiohead album online for as little as 46 pence , because they too are grooving on the sticking of It to The Man. So they released the album themselves, and - I dunno why, but I like to think it's to prove to all the player haters that they didn't just do it to be greedy - they let YOU pick how much you pay for it. And... it is beautiful. It is the kind of album that makes you think of staying up all night with someone you just met, talking and talking and falling more and more in love. So, go experience the wonders of new media in the hands of the creative at their website.

2. Mojo spent Halloween trick-or-treating with my goddaughter. (I wasn't there, 'cause of the aforementioned work sprint.) My mom emailed me to ask for my permission to... put clothes on my dog. Which I am against as a rule; I feel dogs should be given their dignity. But since it was only a costume, I decided it didn't count. So, the upshot is... photos of Mojo dressed as the devil. Gaze upon the sheer hilarity every time your morale wanes.

Mojo says you're welcome.

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Sincerely Yours, The Very Hot Jews.
(by Sera, flying solo while Simon jetsets through... Michigan, I think.)

This is not part two of the post on Dreaming About Kissing Hot Writer Man. That will come soon, i.e. when I can muster the level of concentration necessary to write it.

This is, instead, a sweet little post about sincerity. No, really. Stop laughing.

I was a teenager in the 90s. The age of grunge, and the Scream movies, and just generally a time in which deep emotion was expressed through eye-rolling, sarcasm, and the layering of flannel shirts. Occasional whining was also allowed (think Winona Ryder in... every movie she ever made). If you were actually yelling about something, you were advised to look down, whereupon you'd doubtless discover you were holding an electric guitar and the yelling was singing and the guy standing next to you was Stone Gossard.

I get the sense irony hasn't exactly gone out of style. So allow me to be way, way uncool and step over that steaming, java-scented pile of cynicism and over to the frolicing happy gnomeland of sincerity.

Not that I haven't been known to affect a fairly convincing Sylvia Plath glower when the weather turns crisp. There's something about fall that's innately depressing. I chalk it up to the influx of cold, the sooner sunset, and the traditionally Holocaust-heavy Yom Kippur sermon (with special bonus discussion of how the current Israel situation is shittastic) that you have to sit through when you're really, really hungry. Summer's all bye-bye, and with it that lazy feeling of entitlement: of course you're doing something - you're enjoying the weather!

I live across the street from a non-descript apartment building that seems to house a large number of Orthodox Jews. I suspect it's some kind of co-op situation, with a synagogue/preschool on the ground floor, lots of yarkulka'd men and women in long, unflattering skirts, and ancient big wheels in the yard. If I could read Hebrew without the vowels, I'd be able to tell you what the sign over the door says, but alas. Let us live in the mystery.

The thing about the Jews across the street is that they sing their asses off at the slightest provocation. Friday night, Saturday night, mysteriously important non-Sabbath-related nights, holidays, and potentially also just for the fuck of it. Classic, nasal Chazan type singing. LOUD. Till, like, midnight. And lately there's also been some bangin' and some poundin', and I walked Mojo by their place the other day to discover a nice plywood Sukkah in their yard. Ah, yes, of course, Sukkot. Forgot about that one. The redheaded stepchild of Rosh Ha'Shanah and Yom Kippur.

Sukkot makes me happy. Why? First, because it carries itself with charmingly little gravitas. Build a tent, shake a palm frond, sniff a thingy that's not quite a lemon. In Day School, Sukkot always called for lots and lots of crafting. Long construction paper chains fashioned to hang from the rafters. Plus drawings involving glitter. It wasn't about a New Year in which you were kindly advised to do way fucking better than last; it wasn't a Day of Atonement marked by endless crazy praying of the beat-your-chest variety and, in my family's case, Mom fainting from low blood sugar. It was about making fun art.

So, the sight of that Sukkah stoked me. Shook me out of my traditional High Holiday snit. Gently coaxed me to notice the general yumminess of Santa Monica in fall. October (sorry, rest of the world with your shitty weather) is Indian Summer here in Los Angeles. Balmy in the sunlight, curl-up-chilly at night. I think of it as flavored-Starbucks-latte-appropriate weather. Perfect for walking. And so last Sunday I took the opportunity to do my own hemi-quasi-Jewish ritual.

In fairness, it's only really Jew-adjacent. Well, call it Jew-inspired. It's this simple yearly thing I do right after the High Holidays, aka those Holy-ass Days I don't particularly enjoy. What I do is get through the HH one way or another. This year, I skipped services and instead helped throw a disco. I recommend that for all of you who, like me, are made jaw-achingly depressed by the HH. Yeah, I know, apples and honey, fresh start, blah blah. Some of us find the HH as viable as the Hannukah/Christmas season when it comes to lying on the couch feeling all Jean Paul Sartre about the world. So - I wait till they're over, and then I do all the contemplation. I'm a good little contrarian. Here's what I did:

Got up, tossed my laptop in a bag, leashed Mojo, and took an early morning walk to the Mom and Pop cafe five blocks up. I passed the plywood Sukkah, and actually gave it a happy little wave. And then I counted my blessings.

Yep, that's the yearly post-HH ritual:

1.take walk;

2. count blessings

(3. now with special bonus French Bulldog!)

Mojo, enjoying quality time with his bone. We know: he's hot.

I know, counting blessings sounds so lame-alicious. I'm with you. I'm kind of embarrassed to even write it, because I know all you bitches are sitting there with your ironic glasses and your ironic haircut and your vector-line-drawing tattoos, judging me for my cringe-worthy Chicken Soup for the Soulness.

I can only deal with it myself by keeping things really simple and not at all Oprah-y. So: no gushing. Just: I am stoked to live in Santa Monica. I am stoked to have such a great writer job. I am stoked to not have a traumatic brain injury that knocks 40 IQ points out of my head, thereby ending my great writer job which would cause me to lose my apartment in Santa Monica. That sort of thing.

Mojo and I took the patio couch. The weather was fantastically room-temperature. The coffee was just bitter enough. (Yes, fine, I'll go ahead and quip it, "like my men." Happy?) The horror script I was working on hummed right along with pep and vim and an appropriate number of eviscerated corpses. The other patrons were using their indoor voices, which I appreciate. The fountain in the center of the patio tinkled soothingly, as if to say, "I am rocking the ace feng shui, my brothers." Mojo curled up next to me and fell asleep, and I thought: I want for nothing. I'm totally blessed up to my eyeballs. Whatever comes my way from here on out is pure, sweet icing. The irony coiled deep in my bones, in my darkest proteins, somehow deactivated, and I just sat there, sincerely liking my life in the way you like someone in grade school that inspires you to work on their valentine for two whole weeks. Wow, I thought, I'm feeling so happy. I'm so... sincere. This is awesome. Also, I'm really glad no one's here to see it.

Later that day, things kind of devolved, but that's to be expected. (What can I say. I'm not just Jewish, I'm Polish Jewish. I'm never surprised by entropy.) Sometimes you get a perfect moment, and when you do, I think you should at least blog about it. Especially when your secret motive is to subtly start a revolution of sincerity that's not syrupy or fake. More like wabi sabi sincerity. Caffeinated sincerity that occasionally falls off the wagon and smokes half a pack of cigarettes in four hours. You know: no-bullshit sincerity.

Up with no-bullshit sincerity, people! Try it for a week. Report back.

What Do We Have To Be Happy About?
(by Sera)


First things first:

Mojo, as I mentioned before, had his munitions factory surgically removed last week. The vet sent him home in what I've been calling The Conehead but which is technically referred to as an Elizabethan Collar. When Mojo wears it, he becomes a bat with fucked-up sonar. He runs into things, he drags the bottom edge on the ground and then scares himself with the noise, he looks at me with a mix of self-pity and confusion: Why hast thou forsaken me?

So we decided to take it off him with the stern warning not to lick his nuts (or what's left of 'em) and lo and behold, he understands English including the vernacular for testes, and he's totally left himself alone.

Are you already bored of me talking about my puppy? If so, sorry. Sorry your heart is so ice-cold that not even the sight of this perfect manifestation of cute can thaw you.

In case you're wondering, the shaved bit on his arm is from the IV. And the look on his face? Well, that's 'cause we done took his jewels.

I talked to the vet the day after the surgery. He's a family friend, an earnest, excitable Polish immigrant running a pet hospital in San Bernardino. Judging by the waiting room the day I was there, San Berdoo boasts a highly inappropriate per capita share of the nation's pit bulls. They're cute when they're puppies, those li'l killing machines. It's all fun and games 'til somebody eats a toddler. My point is, Dr. Z's not only a nice Polish man, he also takes his life into his hands every day to serve the populace of SoCal and its cornucopia of hellhounds.

Anyway, so I call him the day after the surgery, and I go, "Mojo's just lying there. Is that normal?"

And Dr. Z goes, "He just had his testicles removed. What does he have to be happy about?"

This struck me as an incredibly Polish thing to say. In fact, "What does he have to be happy about?" was pretty much my parents' mantra about all things and people throughout my childhood. Sort of like — well, we survived the war, but it isn't like life's a fucking Chuck E Cheese.

There's an awesome Polish restaurant just down the street from my house, and they kindly provided me with another perfect example for you, dearest blog reader, of an Incredibly Polish Thing To Say. They recently hung a banner to advertise their happy hour drink specials. It invites passersby to the "Is Anybody Really Happy Hour?" The first time I saw it, I immediately called my mother. She cracked up, out loud, for approximately 0.8 seconds, which on the Polish scale of amusement falls somewhere between Tickled Giddy and ROTFLMAO.

I've been trying to parse the differences between the morose Jew in me and the morose Pole. It's a strange exercise. Both cultures wear this "We're bound to get fucked again" attitude like a waterlogged parka. I know Jews are all "Yes, shit happens, but why does it always happen to us?" But that specific tenor of We've Been Fucked Repeatedly feels different to me from the uniquely Eastern European brand of Yes, Of Course I'll Have A Vodka, Because Life Is Exactly As Shitty As Usual.

When my parents emigrated, they didn't go back to Poland for 25 years. That's because being Jewish in Poland is kind of like being Black in Lynchville, KKK County, Red State, USA.

I came with them on their first trip back to Poland. I was in college at the time. I watched them swallow down a pretty intense internal conflict: they were nostalgic for the country of their youth, but the country of their youth had treated them like shit. They'd been beaten up and called dirty Jews. Their own parents were trying to move on from the un-move-on-from-able: their friends, their cousins, everyone who didn't flee Poland in 1939? All dead.

So, suck city. The 'rents didn't feel at home in Poland when they lived there, but it remained the closest thing they'd ever had to a home.

Sime and I have written a lot in this here Hot Blog about the attributes shared by all us Jewsy types. My brother read it, and then called me to say he thought I had it wrong. "You and I have more in common with all those kids whose parents jumped the Mexican border than with Jewish families who have been here for three or four generations."

I've been thinking a lot about that. First of all, Ben usually talks about poker and chicks, so I was a bit surprised by the sudden introspection. And second, well, he's onto something.

I've always had a lot of Immigrant Kid friends. Perhaps this is fairly common in California, but my brother's comment prompted me to examine my relationships with all those I.K.'s. And I realized there's a reason we gravitate towards each other.

We know what it's like to grow up in two cultures at once — one at home, and one that began as soon as we stepped off the front porch.

We've been teased mercilessly for our difficult-to-pronounce surnames (no, Gamble isn't the last name I was born with. The name on my driver's license includes a "w" that is pronounced "v," an "i" that is pronounced "ee," and a "cz" that is pronounced "ch").

Whether or not our parents had money, nearly all of us were raised with the understanding that nothing we got came easy, and that our parents had to work way harder than their American colleagues.

We are almost always punctual. We experience great anxiety if we're running late. In general, we're trying to keep it together and be perfect in every way.

We are the force that Americanized our parents. And generally speaking, we yanked them in directions they were deeply ambivalent about.

We can talk to a wide variety of people flavors. Rich, poor, more or less melanin, jocks, geeks, we learned early to pick up social cues and blend.

We sound totally American. We are totally American. Some of us even look like regular old white Americans. And when you talk shit about someone's funny accent or clothes or customs, we may say nothing. But inside, we are taking it very, very, very personally. We would like to kick you in your stupid face.

Not you, of course. You'd never do that. But stupid people.

I went to that Jewish Day School — you know, when they showed us pictures of Auschwitz in the first grade? But I just gotta be honest with you here. I never felt like I fit in with all the other Jewish kids. I know, I know, I'm writing a blog about Jewishness. I'm supposed to be writing about how you and I and our Jewish pals in Tel Aviv and Tehran and Beijing are all hilariously similar, all slightly varied recipes of the same fantastic chicken soup.

But now you and I've gotten to know each other a bit. We've joined forces in celebrating the lusciousness of Rachel Weisz's breasts and Aimee Bender's prose, we've basked in our shared boredom in schul, we've swung bats in synchrony at the Very Hot Jew Perpetual Hitler Burning Effigy Piñata.

So it's time to deepen the convo a notch. Talk about the ambivalent shit. It's time for me to tell you that when I'm in a big crowd of L.A. Jews, I don't always feel like I belong. I feel like my history is vastly different from most of theirs. (That even includes Simon. Obviously, we share many traits and get on like a house on fire, but there are also a lot of things about my background that I have to go into some detail to explain to him. And vice versa. And yes, maybe we could explain things more simply if we had the conversation before the tequila came out, but come on. Like we want to talk without our dear friend, Watermelon Margarita.)

Want to hear the funny part? I can only imagine you do. And by the way, thank you for hanging with me through so many paragraphs with no jokes. You're swell.

The funny part is, when you add up my Morose Jew DNA and my stressy Immigrant Kid childhood and my Existentialist Polish influence ... you get a pretty happy chick. Weird, right? I mean, it's not like I'm Little Miss Sunshine, but I'm not the Gay Proust Uncle, either.

Either the depressed Pole/oppressed Jew gene spontaneously mutated, or all their hard work being bummed finally paid off, because I seem to possess an unusually high amount of the "fuck it, this'll all work out somehow" hormone. I'm one of the most optimistic people I know. And I'm a writer. It's almost ... eerie.

I revel in discovering people's quirks. I love to hear folks speak broken English. I could write scripts full of cholas and Pakistanis all day. There is no cuisine I will not sample. Okay, well, I hear there's this nomadic people subsisting on rancid yak's milk, so maybe I'd draw the line there.

No, actually? I'd drink it. Life's short. Perhaps it is delicious.

All this is just to say: What about you, Jew? Do you feel like you belong? Are you One Of Us? What do you feel like you're One Of? That's what I want to know. What's your particular flavor?

And why aren't you shouting it from the rooftops?

Because "What do you have to be happy about?" is not a rhetorical question. That's what I discovered when I started writing about my very hot self right here. I discovered that when you stand up and declare yourself — it feels fuckin' hot.

More Thoughts on Hotness

Your loyal, lethally attractive Semite pals have spilled ink aplenty on this blog's crowning theme: What constitutes hotness, especially the Jewish variety?

We've delved into the damaged self-esteem of the proto-hot Jew, glumly hiding his/her light under the proverbial bushel — and we've brandished the burning mirror of truth.

We've proffered tips for cultivating and maintaining that hotness in the face of esteem-flattening photos of shiksa pop stars and phone calls from relatives.

We've delivered profiles of VHJs in our midst, complete with revealing personal insights and ravishing photos of smoldering Hebraic hotitude.

But there's so much work to be done.

And that work just got harder, because there's a new man in Sera's life and she's rather preoccupied.

His name is Mojo, and he looks like this.

The uninitiated might suspect that we're simply flashing cute puppy pics because it's an easy way to pad out a blog when in fact you've already chugged an aquarium full of Zinfandel and are out of ideas. But boy, would you ever be wrong.

Now, where were we? Oh, that's right; we're here to tell you that Jewish hotness is on the upswing.

We're here to tell you that the spectacle of waifish blonde singers shaving their hapless heads is a harbinger.

The sad sight of Fox News idiots foaming at the mouth is a signal.

The sorry tale of astronauts in diapers hauling ass over the highway is proof positive: The culture is ready for something else.

It's as tired and toxic as Brandon Davis stumbling sweatily out of Hyde at 6 am and barely managing to hoist his gut into the (luckily airbagged) passenger seat of Paris "I do it in the butt for coke" Hilton's gajillion dollar Whore Car while dozens of paparazzi just try to put their kids through school by snapping, snapping, snapping photos of every millisecond of the utter non-event.

Yes, our culture desperately requires something far removed from the white-bread, jailbait, powdered-suppository nightmare we've lived lo these past seven years.

We're ready for a renaissance of curly-haired, full-figured, sensuously verbal, playfully philosophical Judaic heat.

We're primed for dark-featured, mystically sexy, conversationally adept, Kabbalistic icons of desire, far from the desperate squawking of surgically enhanced, dancing-as-fast-as-I-can blonde anchorladies and helmet-haired political hatchet men.

Jewish hotness is on the rise. Hot Jews will storm the frigid battlements of conservative hegemony and plant a flag of freedom.

As surely as spring is in the air, the world is in for an infusion of smokin' Semitism. Will you recognize it when it arrives? Look for:

• Brown-eyed talk-show conquerors who unravel the pathetic claims of would-be moralists with earthy good humor;
• Ringleted troubadours whose songs neutralize the anxious narcissism of our time;
• Proud-nosed citizen-leaders who pounce on bullshit like a cat ambushing a lizard;
• Swarthy physicians with a cure for what ails us;
• Shtetl-descended theoreticians wielding the Next Big Idea;
• Eyebrow-wagging anarchists who defang the powerful with 100-proof nonsense;
• Blogs that make you want to strip down to your underwear and tell the world: "I'm a Jew and I'm HOT!"

Keep your eyes peeled, world.

Okay, so you're dubious? You're not so sure Jewish hotness needing to be on the upswing is the same as it actually being on the upswing?

We understand. You've predicted the wane of Paris "If you enjoyed my drug-addled beaver shots, you'll love my snickering racist remarks" Hilton's appeal every year since she was fifteen, and when the AP recently ran a story detailing their efforts to ban all P-Hilt news for one single week — and failing — you threw up your hands in despair. You reached for the nearest analgesic (Merlot, Vicodin chaser) and drunkenly called your friends from oh, wherever, film school or schul or the dojo, and wept for the good old days when Madonna was considered disposable pop culture rather than a solid subject for a PhD thesis or, ancestors protect us, an emissary of Jewish mysticism.

In that case, let this blog entry be a rallying cry. There is a medicine for our ailing culture. And it's fantastic. The good stuff. Primo. When every channel on planet Earth obsessively covers the death of a spokesperson for Trimspa, AKA the second lead in Naked Gun 33 1/3, civilization requires a potent shot in the tuchus.

So: more Jews, please. We're begging.

More Jewish politicians, because Lieberman is stale as a month-old bialy.

More hot Jew singers, because if recent Pete Doherty impersonation photos are any indication, fantastically talented Hebe songstress Amy Winehouse ain't long for this world.

More hot Jewish actors (Sera suggests that specifically aiming to use the technology on Jake Gyllenhaal might make many people reconsider their stance on cloning).

More smokin' Jew writers, because we've long since loaned out and forgotten to whom our books by Jill Soloway and Francesca Lia Block and Aimee Bender.

And yes, more Very Hot Bloggers. Because, frankly, we're not that reliable. We know you crave daily Jew like a perfect cup o' java, but we can only do so much. And, as you know, are unlikely to do even that much.

More Jews. That's the ticket to grounding a popular culture so absurdly out there that if frivolity were rocket fuel we'd be waving buh-bye to Pluto.

Tonight, when you are watching that mensch Jon on his Daily Show, or out on the town whispering to your girlfriends, "See that tall one? Think he's Jewish?" or reading bedtime stories to the next generation of hot Jews, or surfing the internets for porn — whatever, we don't judge — do us a tiny favor. Send up a little prayer for increased Jewishness in the coming months. Jesus knows we need it.

P.S. from Sera: Mojo had his nuts cut off today, but the vet called to say he's doing well. So far, the little pisser is lucky he's adorable, because he demanded we go on ten walks yesterday. Also, just to give you an idea of how superstitious my Jewish mother is, she told me it was too soon to blog about the new puppy, because it might be bad luck. And just to show you how Jewish-superstitious I am, I wrote the preceding sentence in the explicit hope that talking about it would prevent anything untoward from happening. As the men in our reading audience would doubtless agree, getting one's testicles surgically removed is quite bad enough.