Life Is Too Short Not To.

We have a headache. Which is to be expected, considering that less than twenty-four hours ago, we consumed a MASTERFUL AND GENIUS SEVEN-COURSE MEAL WITH WINE PAIRINGS. No, we didn't go to some schmancy Zagat-touted restaurant. This event of worldwide importance transpired at the homey abode of Simon's lovely sis-in-law Jo. All 84 plates of wonder were created by VHJ-inner-circleite Matt. Sime and Sera, when not moaning in full-mouthed ecstasy, kept exchanging burning glances that clearly said, "We must blog about this immediately. The world needs to know."

The chef at work.

We don't know about you, but we love us some food porn. Also, we enjoy reading about other people's personal lives. This post is for you if you are like us. It's a glimpse into the VHJ's near-n-dearest at their boho best. (If you aren't into fatty meals or candid snaps of folks you've never met, this post will bore you to tears; sorry; come back later; love you, mean it.)

You've heard of Matt before. He is the one who, when Sera was feeling like emo crap in a bucket of suck, arrived at her pad bearing pasta maker, bacon, Gorgonzola and cream. He's a fine writer, but more pertinent to this here blogversation is his blessed food-related obsessive-compulsive disorder. Matt owns a cookbook written by the psychotic genius who chefs the French Laundry, which is one of those restaurants that require reservations six months in advance. The cookbook talks about cutting little squares of meat "against the grain," fridging fresh fish in exactly the position in which they swam at the moment of their demise, and other frankly weird shit. Many of the recipes start with unseemly bits of offal, and end four days later. Not joking.

Most of us would treat such a cookbook as a novelty item, a glimpse into the inner-mindfuck of a true artist we could never imagine emulating. Matt, on the other hand, sees a fun challenge. He's the foodie equivalent of those crazy bastards who decide they want to swim the English channel.

As you can see, Matt likes to eat.

Matt called Sera up a few months ago and told her he hankered to engineer a feast for twelve. It would be a bit of work, he said with hilarious calm. Would she pitch in her producer's mind for drama and help him create an evening so cool, Oprah would beg to film it for a segment concerning the joie-de-vivreiest Angelenos in the history of ever? Strategy meetings ensued; invitations zipped into the hot little hands of our lucky, lucky jury; and the harmonic convergence of this weekend was the orgiastic, drunkarific result.

Our motley tribe descended upon Jo's, dressed to the nines. Here is the part we recommend to all of you. This is the thing that life is too short (and also waaaaaay too long) not to do: next time you plan a soiree, do mention to your friends that there's no such thing as overdressed.

We know, we know, there's no way in hell you're cooking that much. We understand; when supper's left to us, we usually end up serving pizza and cupcakes. Not everyone is lucky enough to know a cook as talented and maniacal as Matt. But even if your dinner party was catered by drive-thru, it shouldn't stop you from requiring festive attire. Believe us when we say you will derive special pleasure from dining in your finest. You will rediscover the deep hotness of your friends. Also, drunk people are more fun to watch when they're dressed to give an acceptance speech.

So, we mingled in the candlelight, champers-tipsy and newly re-in-love with one another. Simon rocked the orange velveteen blazer and pearl tie-bar. Lovely Wife Julia donned black silk, platform heels and a sideways tiara.

Power couple.

Jo poured her Semitic loveliness into a sparkly gown previously worn by a chanteuse at Cannes.

Sparkly Jo with longtime companion, Wiener.

Dinda and Mollie came as that couple at the cocktail party who make you reconsider swinging as a lifestyle.

Mols and Dinda, on the drive over. You know you want them.

Shana wore a blue crocheted flower in her hair; her Brit beau Dave, natty vest and rocker hair.

Intercontinental love in action.

Michael mixed thrift-store finds with designer duds in that envy-making way that overworked, sleep-deprived, yet nevertheless supermodelesque production designers do.

Matt's Very Hot Musician bro Andy wore a hat that made us reappraise our previous dismissal of Abraham Lincoln as unsexy.

Matt's girlfriend-cum-sous chef Lindsay wore her slinkster dress from Junior Prom, because it still fits, bitches.

Sera wore silver leather flowers in her hair and a capelet fashioned from 100% muppet fur.

Sera as rejected Dorothy Parker's Vicious Circle candidate.

So, we ate a lot. We took pictures of that, too, which we will share here for your droolification.

First, Matt served a soul-crushingly delish amuse-bouche of hamhock paté (sounds gross, tastes like a three-picture deal making artistic horror movies executive-produced by Guillermo del Toro - oh, and you get final cut on the films, and also James McAvoy/Natalie Portman will wake you each morning with a loving round of oral sex. Actually, as good as that all sounds? The paté was better).

Then he served us soup we would gladly kill for. Matt's initial inspiration for the whole event was Sera's offhanded remark that she quite liked the onion soup at Doughboy's, a hipsterlicious Hollywood bakery. "Dude, I can make an onion soup that will make you believe in Jesus," Matt shot back. And so he concocted a heavenly liquid requiring several days of simmering and several pounds of asiago - hands-down the best fucking soup Sera's ever tasted (and, full disclosure, very nearly enough to make her consider emailing Christ an application for the position of Personal Savior).

We strongly suggest someone get this soup on the table for the next Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. If anything can get 'em in the mood to lay down arms, it's a still-bubbling bowlful of broth, spongy bread, and ooey-gooey cheese.

If memory serves, right around the soup course was the first time Jo burst into tears of joy. This behavior would continue throughout the evening, as new and miraculous taste sensations were set before her sparkling bosom.

Many charming toasts were made, and glasses of wine were imbibed. We can't remember how many. More than four but less than all the wine in the world. Matt and Lindz split their time between the table and the roasting-hot kitchen, from whence nirvanic smells wafted. They emerged bearing skate - the fish, not the wheeled shoe - in a vertical sculpture of garlic and pan-seared lemon slice on a nest of oniony delight. Several people proposed marriage to Matt. When he gently refused, we offered to be his slave forever, as long as he cooked us skate every day.

Next came this complicated ravioli-esque pasta dish we can't recall the name of. Redolent of cheese, bursting with sweet buttery goodness, many members of our group decided that they would rather eat pasta created by Matt than anything else they could think of. Yes, including that.

Jules with her pasta plate.

After that, a palate-cleansing grapefruit-tarragon sorbet which Sera failed to photograph on account of she was shrieking with laughter and already so full she feared it was a mistake not to rent forklifts to get people back to their cars after the party.

The Very Hot Jews like meat. We like it so much that we suddenly realized we weren't really that full when Matt set before us a dish of lamb so beautiful we wanted to bronze it. It tasted just as good as you imagine.

Plating the meat course, sexily.

Then we took a much-needed breather - from the food, if not the drink, since Matt took that moment to bust out an epic bottle of dessert wine - and exchanged funny and embarrassing personal stories. Not to harp on the whole dress-up thing, but wearing spangly getups tends to jog one's formal-event memory banks. Visions of Sadie Hawkins Dances past pop into one's head. Michael charmed us with tales of helping his date - a girl! - make her dress. Sera recalled being helpfully informed that her prom dress made her look like a stripper. (It so didn't, at least in comparison to the stuff she started wearing later in life.) Tuxedo war stories abounded. Recollections of exotic travels punctuated by sumptuous meals that lead inevitably to heinous, gut-annihilating food poisoning. Life - isn't she grand?

Finally, Matt served dessert. He ended with another paté, the perfect symmetry of which seemed to soothe that OCD part of his brain. It was made of dense, dark, spiritually enlightening chocolate in a créme anglaise with pistachios. We all had seconds. Plates and fingers were licked. Groans of delight and overindulgence filled the air. Everyone swore they'd take a bullet for Matt, because protecting his gift had become the purpose of our lives.

Dessert, by the time Sera remembered to snap a pic of it.

And then, weary, some of us sloshed enough to require a cab, we collapsed into satiated heaps.

And that, handsome readers, is how the VHJ party. L'Chaim!

Dance Dance Revolution!

Happy Jew Year, you luscious hunks of readership you. On the first mewling day of this baby-fresh year I went to visit Sime and Lovely Wife Julia. Armed with a bottle of bubbly and a screener of a Very Important Movie which we never got to because of the yakking and the noshing and the sipping and the kvelling, I plopped onto their comfy leather couch and launched into a tale of Just Where I've Been for the last week.

I told you before about Esalen, the shiny butterfly paradise by the sea – so replete with Human Potential. The week of Xmas, I slid up the 101 and back into the arms of my Big Sur hideaway for seven days of organic food, crazy hot springs action, sleepless nights whispering with my NYC Shiksa Queen roomie "P", and several hours a day of dancing my ass off. Not just any dancing - ecstatic dancing. Dance as a spiritual practice. That's right, I said it: when I get jiggy, I'm not just being Very Hot and Jewish, I'm also being Deep. I'm Tapping In. I'm Communing. I'm doing loads of stuff just begging to be capitalized and hyperlinked.

Man, dancing is the shit. Not, like, choreographed dancing. That kind of dancing is, well, hard. It makes you feel stupid if you can't get it right, as Sime will tearfully confess if you ever get him started on his adolescent "performance workshop" phase. It might make you look stupid even if you do get it right. Britney Spears spent a lot of time with choreography, and we all know what that led to.

My kind of dancing is more about gettin' loose to the beat at hand. Sweating it up with like-minded revelers who just want to reach that feeling of not being in their heads for ten or fifteen minutes of the long and harried day. Grooving like I'm alone in my living room, except with a bunch of other people also jigging their way through their own private Idaho. Like the Classic Rock Singalong, 'cept you don't even need a lyric sheet.

Maybe you want me to say I've found the cure - the cure to stress, and feeling separate from one's peeps, and loneliness, and sorrow. Maybe you want me to say the cure is dancing. But I am not here to lie to the Very Hot. Therefore I will tell you the truth. Here is the truth:

I have found the cure. The cure is dancing.

This is especially fortuitous as Sime and I have been endeavoring to come up with a good catchphrase for the new year. A curmudgeonly writer friend of mine, a Spicy Hebe With Dreadlocks, fired me an email declaring he was "all about the Hate in '08." His first target: Diablo Cody. You might be next.

This alarmed me. Because it is easy to slip into the hatin'. Not just when a chick with the hipster-ironic version of your backstory nails a massive hole-in-one with her first screenplay (worry not, dear reader; I live by the golden rule: don't hate the player, hate the game. And, since I don't hate the game, we're right back where we left off in my admittedly difficult to follow train of thought). It's easy to reach for a big bloody bag of O, Negative in the absence of something to hold onto. Hence the need for millions of Starbucks, one on every corner. The cynical bastards of the world require a black, bitter cup o' overpriced joe to nurse along with their vehement disdain.

The Very Hot Jews wish for you to avoid the Hate in '08. We love you too much to see you flail down the shame spiral of mysanthropy. So we're sharing our new slogan with you - Simon declared it, after I told him of my mystical Esalen adventure (which, by the way, also involves being busted by Institute authorities in the middle of the night for doing something I cannot tell you about on this blog because, well, I'd rather you use your imagination but I will say:

1. It wasn't illegal but was definitely frowned upon in that location and context, and


2. The other busted individual was another dancer and even Jewish, which I know would matter to some of you if you knew what we were doing which you don't so go wash your brain out with soap).

This isn't going to be much of a reveal, considering all of the above. But the VHJ would like to gently but firmly suggest you Dance It Out In '08.

Seriously, my brothers. Obviously, my sisters. We Jewy types can talk a thing to death. Poor horses - maybe if they were kosher our people wouldn't spend so much time beating dead ones. If you're like me, on any given day you can Freud yourself into a self-reflective stupor before your first hit of latte kicks in. You can Jung yourself silly. You can dive into your worried mind and turn every damn stone, then freak out over each tiny pillbug of insecurity revealed beneath.

A certain amount of this is a good idea. The unexamined life, etc. Also, if you didn't worry at all, something bad would surely happen that could easily have been prevented if you'd just let your neurotic imagination run wild for a few minutes. Sure, Joan Didion would call this magical thinking. But as your mom will gladly remind you, the worrying brain acts as a giant backwards magnet that repels disaster.

Plus, some of us – like for instance both halves of this here blogging duo – need to camp out in our hot little minds so that we can produce scripts and ad copy and other written things that pay our mortgages. Our calling requires extended rappelling into the scary, solemn, Stygian reaches of the grayest of gray matter. Not to get all neo-Cartesian on your ass, but, as Simon likes to say: We think, therefore we are ... paid. (Or, if you like, Cogito ergo fork over my sum.)

So, yeah, I'm not entirely disparaging the notion of living like a hermit in one's own head, as Death Cab For Cutie so alterna-rockishly put it.

But. You have a body. You're in it right now, like it or not. You may regard it as a brainstand or head pedestal, but it still requires loving care. You don't get to dump it for a sleeker model. You don't get to leave it and go flying around visiting Jennifer Love Hewitt, at least until you get hit by a stray bullet and die without getting to tell your family something real important. It is sitting there right now, a dumb lump of muscle and bone and possibly THC-saturated adipose tissue, listening to all your thoughts. I'm sorry, but it is. That's why your back does that ow-y thing when you're stressed. That's why your shoulders have meandered up into your ears and why when you can't pay your bills you weirdly discover you also can't take a shit ... look, enough examples, I don't really want to get quite this into your business.

I'm just saying. Your body is a wonderland and you're totally missing the ride.

Hey, at least it isn't a picture of John Mayer.

2008 is unlikely to be quiet and contemplative. There's an election coming up - you can tell by the look of horror on Simon's face. Gas prices are still zooming (and you know by now I mean that less in terms of shelling out at the pump and more in terms of all the kids coming back from the war minus limbs. Or not coming back at all). Most of L.A. is gonna be out of work soon if this strike doesn't resolve. Apple will come out with something new and shiny you need to have. Beyoncé will release something loud and cursedly catchy. JLo will have her babies and the ruckus caused will only be superceded by Jamie Lynn having her baby. (BTW, WTF with THAT story? I leave civilization for a week, and when I come back not only is Benazir Bhutto dead, but Britney's sister is preggers by some old, disgusting fucktard who is inexplicably being protected from public stoning?!)

Anything could happen at any time, people. And everyone I know has this uneasy sense that in '08, if it can happen, it will. Get flood insurance. Get fire insurance. Get meteor insurance.

Or hey, maybe I'm projecting. Maybe 2008 is merely unlikely to be cool, calm and collected for moi. My industry is in a supercalifragalistic clusterfuck; I'm elbow-deep in a bunch of time-consuming projects; I'm suddenly, out of nowhere, developing crushes on living and eligible humans in my close vicinity (as opposed to comfortably rolling my eyes at every dude I meet, because when you're as busy as I am it's easier to apply your idle crush-ology to that pillhead doctor with a limp on that show where he's all mean and sexy all the time); the gaping maw of the VHJ blog will never cease demanding wordy sacrifice; my goddaughter is orbiting ever closer to adolescence, a situation which requires constant vigilance; I don't want to fall behind on the Y:The Last Man comics; and if I don't stay on top of things with Mojo, he'll eat something that makes him fart like a hurricane.

So, shit's gonna happen. And when it does (and when it doesn't, even) I'm gonna Dance It Out. So is Sime, and if you're lucky you'll get to watch, because his "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" dance is legend. Most of my friends will be Dancing It Out too. Are you one of my friends? If you are, do this for me: pull up your iTunes or go to your radio or whatevs, and play that funky music, Person Of Whatever Race(s).

It doesn't matter if you're tired, if you threw out your back chasing your diabetic cat around with a syringe in your hand, or if you're in a wheelchair and can only dance with your arms and your eyebrows. It doesn't matter if your only prior experience on the dance floor was swaying imperceptibly between chugs of Heineken.

This isn't a competition. It will not be televised. No British suckwads will wittily deride your efforts. It's for you. It's a way to be down with reality for a hot second. Reality feels like loud sounds all around you that you cannot control so you might as well enjoy. It feels like that noise's percussion vibrating your soles. It's other people's smells and their secret vulnerability that peeks out to say yo when you move with them. It's the stick of sweat on your nape, the ache in your knees, the jagged impulse that wants your pelvis to swing thataway, ASAP. It's a world populated by lots of other ordinary miracles like you, moving through their days in the best way they can, trying at worst not to cause bodily injury and at best to feel pretty damn great. You don't want to dance, you say, because your dance is lame? Let me rephrase the question: You think you're the only one of us trying to be all perfect? I sympathize, but you oughtta know - perfection is sooooo '07. In '08, we dance.

You will likely feel self-conscious, at first. Even if you've knocked back a coupla gin fizzes or called in your ancestors with a wand of white sage or whatever you use to launch the rocket of disinhibition. You'll be hyper-aware of your "stock" moves. Nighmarish recollections of teenage embarrassment might caper before you like red-eyed demons. But gradually, the part of you that really wants and needs to move will show up and go all Saturday Night Fever and your body will take it from there. And the euphoria that rushes out of the center of your being? That's the real hotness, as opposed to the coiffed, airbrushed and artfully scented substitute the world tries to sell us 24/7.

Dancing is the human equivalent of pressing Ice Crush on your blender. Juices get stirred. Everything blends and gets smooth. And, yes, you become more and more delicious.

That's your mandate. Go forth and Dance It Out. You're not allowed to be cynical of it till you try it twice. When have we led you wrong? The VHJs exist to aid you. We're bringing you gold here.

Happy 2008. Batten down the hatches. See ya on the dance floor.

We Need to Talk.

Nîmen hâo, Beijing!

Howdy, Plano, Texas! Bienvenidos, Coro, Venezuela! Hej, Speke, Sweden! Shalom and Greetings, Tel Aviv, London and Indianapolis!

OK, yes, we’ve been digging on the VHJ blog statistics, and kvelling just a smidge because folks from all over the planet (Aloha, Honolulu!) are peeping our humble Semitic scribblings.

You know how it is: You work on something and you put it out there, and you’re happy if a few of your friends get a chuckle out of it. But when people all over the world (Namaskar, New Delhi!) check it out, well, sue us if we’re excited about it.

Khush amadeed, Tehran.

Tehran? Really?

We don’t know if there are Iranian Jews out there reading up on their American mishpuchah, or non-Jews seeking a perspective outside the locally available offerings. Perhaps a few were drawn to the title but expected something a tad more, shall we say, explicit.

(It should be noted here that while Simon was instantly tickled to hear that Iranians were reading this, Sera experienced a momentary shock of fear. What if someone high up in some funadmentalist group is reading this and basing their opinions of all Jews on our oversexed, nasty-minded, sailor-mouthed, inebriated, über-über-liberal, evil-TV-writing Jew asses? We're totally going to be responsible for some kind of attack! It should further be noted that is also Sera's first thought when she sees that we have readers in Mississippi. First comes the vision of a guy in a pointy white sheet sharpening a pig-sticker by the glow of the Very Hot Jews homepage ... then comes the realization that it's statistically likelier that (a) whoever is reading our blog, anywhere in the world, is awesome, because our readers by and large are unusually awesome, and also (b) the people who actually do hate Jews and want to attack us probably don't need a joke-tastic blog for motivation. But it should also be noted that the infantile, superstitious view of Hollywood Jews as sacreligious libertines who dine on the blood of fair-haired children is not so very far from the vulgar, dumbfuck stereotypes we've casually absorbed about people in other parts of the world. So, to reiterate: If you're reading this, wherever you are, whatever you are, you're awesome. And we thank you.)

But here’s our official statement – especially for the DOJ watchdogs monitoring the Internets for seditious signals, whose little ears perked up at the mention of Iran: The Very Hot Jews are all about peace, love and understanding. Put another way, we think dressing humans up in uniforms and giving them bombs to throw at other humans is so fucking stupid it makes Britney Spears look like Stephen Hawking. It makes Zalman King look like Martin Scorsese. It makes the hosts of Entertainment Tonight look like Roland Barthes. Bombs are for rap songs.

When we hear anyone (let alone our fellow Jews, who really should know better) talking blithely about dropping bombs on people, we’re fully horrified. In fact, we suppress the urge to do a double-take, like, are you serious? Did you just say we should drop a giant explosive device on a location where people are? Did you just justify that dumb-ass idea by saying some other genius in the past did it, so that justifies it? What the fuck is wrong with you?

Bombs don’t just magically fall on the heads of bad guys – they kill kids in front of their parents, parents in front of their kids, scores of shopkeepers and bicyclists and people in cafes and doctors and their patients. Forgive us if we're preaching to the choir here. Yes, it seems like a no-brainer, but nary a week goes by where we don't hear some geopolitical wizard in a Starbucks line waxing rhapsodic about his or her revolutionary idea that we can stop war by killing people. It is the primary reason that we eschew cable news. Well, that and the fact that the commentators actually get spittle on the camera lens. But even the sound bites that make it onto the Daily Show are enough to make us want to tear off our own skin in exasperation and despair.

Everybody seems to have a plan for the Middle East that involves more explosions – it’s the one thing most of the participants seem to agree on. Call us old-fashioned, dewy-eyed idealists, but we tend to think that if we communicated with each other, the worldwide tension level might dissipate slightly. (Ahlan, Amman and Riyadh!)

OK, straight up? Now that we've clarified the necessity of everybody sitting down and, like, opening up to each other over some baba ghanouj and Diet Fanta, we should put our cards on the table and admit that we’re a little nervous. Because we’re about dialogue, but the stakes seem incredibly high.

We thought this might be a good time to stop just marveling at human stupidity and give some clear and concise pointers to the powers that be. We realized there was much that we did not know about Iran and its honchos, so we hit up Wikipedia, that fountain of truth. We expected to find little to nothing in common with various and sundry highest-ups over there who have been known to deny certain events that occured in our families' recent history. But boy, were we surprised. Turns out we have so much in common we'd probably be insta-matched by the love computer at eHarmony.com!

You know how you meet somebody and you totally hit it off right away? You admire their blazer, and they compliment your shoes. And they say, I'm totally obsessed with my blog, and you reply, no way — I'm obsessed with my blog! And they’re like, my birthday’s October 28, and you’re like, omigod, that’s my sister’s birthday! And they go, I have a Ph.D in transportation and engineering, and you go, no way, I’m from L.A. and we need that! And they say, I was mayor of Tehran, and you say, what a coincidence, my mom once knew the mayor of L.A.! And then they go, the Holocaust never happened, and you’re like, um … what?

Yes, we’re looking at you, President Ahmadinejad. Seriously. You gotta cancel that shit, along with that tired line of garbage about wiping Israel off the map. We know you don’t really mean it, because you also talked about how much respect you have for Jews. The fact is, we know what it’s like when a President says something incredibly offensive and stupid and hurtful while playing to his base.

But our President has an excuse: He’s a blithering fucktard. What’s yours?

Remember when you told the BBC that you had nothing but respect for Jews? Well, we choose to believe this is the real you. You can't blame a lot of our friends for being skeptical, given all that Holocaust denial and wiping-you-know-who-off-the-map nonsense. But maybe you were just going through a difficult phase. Under a lot of pressure, sleep-deprived, maybe hitting the Xanax a little hard? You're listening to the wrong people. You've read your history; you know the way to be a player over the long term is to broker agreements, not drop antisemitic bullshit.

Prove us right, bubby, so we can get back to that enchanting conversation about your blazer and our shoes and the engineering of urban traffic.

We saw a news story today that says talks between the U.S., Iran and Syria are finally going forward. Great news! Remember to speak slowly and clearly, so our guys can understand.

(The news is so awesome, it even makes up for the other major news story of the day, that contract talks have completely broken down between Grey's Anatomy and angelically breasticled shiksa goddess Katherine Heigl. Grey's. Come on. I know you fear that if you give Katie a raise you'll have to give every homophobe and homo in the cast a raise, but she's the eye-candiest little weeper in a cast full of nails-on-chalkboard whiny-ass bitches. You should be slipping her and Sara Ramirez some extra cash just for assiduously avoiding the highly infectious TV disease of skeletal lollipop-headedness. Pay the bitch, would you? Also, we don't want to hear it about budget, since you are clearly shooting on the set of a daytime hospital drama circa 1983 and it shows. You're making House look like a science-fiction movie.)

And President Ahmadinejad, don't pretend like you don't watch Grey's. We know what you're going to say: It's totally manipulative, and a lot of the characters are poorly developed, and Katherine Heigl's ravishing ta-tas are, like, the only reason to tune in. But we also know you're hooked. We just know it, and so does the love computer. And don't try to front like you don't have time to watch it because, like, you're entering into serious, complex negotiations with the world's only remaining superpower.

We can read you like a book: You're gonna TiVo that shit.