Existential Threats
Yet another rant by Simon

OK, campers — time for today's thought exercise.

Pretend, just for a moment, that the President of your country is a total douchebag. A smirking bigot who milks religious prejudice for political gain. An anti-Semitic, homophobic jerkwad who treats indisputable scientific and historical facts as, at best, untested hypotheses. A tyrannical hyena who fecklessly utters terrifying threats against sovereign nations. A power-mongering shitheel who's gutpunched a modern country until it staggered backward in the direction of the Middle Ages.

I know, I know. But try to picture it. Stretch that long imagination of yours!

Got it? Good for you. Now let's say that a seriously huge, badass foreign power has decided that your President is a threat to the security of the region and, indeed, the very globe. You might even be inclined to agree; fact is, if President Scumbucket choked on a lamb shank or a pretzel or something, you'd be unlikely to slip on a black armband.

But here's the catch: The danger posed by your leader, the big foreign government declares, necessitates that bombs fall on your neighborhood, your electricity grid, the closest hospital, the little market where you buy vegetables, all nearby sources of potable water, the buildings housing ancient treasures of your civilization, TV and radio stations, etc. Perhaps one of these bombs will fall right on your home, scattering the limbs of your relatives and pets into an interspecies jumble.

As much as President Creep makes your gorge rise, you might be thinking that this is not the preferred way to bring about regime change.

So as the weird reverberations of Ahmadinejad's visit to New York begin to subside, as the Liebermans, Podhoretzes, Cheneys, Bushes and other bloodthirsty excuses for human beings populating the political class amp up their demand for military strikes right now just in case Iran might one day build a nuke, I want you to forget about the leaders for just a moment and pretend you're just somebody who lives on a street in a city where bombs might go off.

Speaking personally, even if I believed our weapons could surgically scrub only evil leaders off the planet without collaterally singeing the flesh of the innocent, I'd still be agin it. America should finally hang up its illegal-foreign-intervention jersey once and for all. It was always wrong, and now it isn't even accomplished competently. But the fact is, our bombs aren't as smart as our leaders say they are. They can't tell a Caligula-like dictator from an apple-cheeked schoolchild, and guess which one is better equipped to survive an explosion?

Once again, I rant about this because we Jews are going to hear a lot, right in the wake of making our yearly amends for tiny wrongs and insults, about how Tehran going up in flames is somehow good for the Chosen. Even though Jews will be among those blown to bits by those righteous explosives. Even though Jews will suffer reprisals from idiot terrorists who glory in the extension of the war against the Great Satan. Even though Jews will be blamed by certain parties for how it all turns out, regardless of what we do or say.

Once again, with my full throat, with the flying, curly locks of all my Semitic forebears urging me on, I say: Fuck you, Neocons. Fuck you, Joe and Norman and Dick and George and fucking AIPAC. Go to hell. Even those of you who are nominally Jewish are not good for the Jews.

Once again, I say that if I really thought that being a Jew meant I had to go along with this destructive nightmare I would become an Episcopalian. But it doesn't. Jews have been great, strong voices against misguided militarism for eons. It's time for us to speak up, VERY LOUDLY, against a new, disastrous war in Iran.

Paging Dr. Sandman

Hi, guys. Whatcha been up to? I've been dreaming my ass off. Usually, I leave that to Simon. I generally wake up with only the vaguest notion that my brain was doing something off in the corner while I slept the sleep of the dead. But not lately. Lately I have full technicolor dream recall.

I think it might be because I'm writing something about dreams for my job. I've been ruminating on the twisty logic of dream images, reading about the unconscious mind and its weirdnesses. Perhaps it's unsurprising that I've remembered a disproportionate number of dreams lately. And so I've found myself doing the thing that I do when I recall my dreams: trying to figure out what the high holy fuck they mean. What can I say - I took Psych 101 in college, but I was kind of hung over that semester.

I've had a good dose of "the usual": trying to dial a phone, but I just can't get the numbers right; going someplace else but inexplicably ending up at my therapist's house; getting a tattoo I instantly, vehemently regret; discovering that a dead loved one has been alive all this time; and, of course, the one where I wander down to the ocean and everyone's taking their clothes off and jumping in. (Yes, I know that one's about sex; even I got the memo on water imagery.)

Dream of this tattoo, wake up screaming.

I've had dreams lately that have proved fantastically useful. I've plagarized them for work, for one thing.

And I had a dream where I ran into a writer who's in the middle of a ginormous and daunting project - a guy who'd slipped my mind for months. (In my defense, he lives in New York, which is really, really - check a map - really far away.) I woke up doing the "I shoulda had a V-8" head slap and emailed him copious good wishes. Because God knows that when I'm the one gnawing a hole through the outer limits of my brain (did that metaphor work? I'm thinking no) trying to write something hard, I like to be reminded that someone out there assumes my work is going passably well. So, file that one under Dreams Leading To Mildly Menschy Behavior.

And I had this other dream, about this other person, and in the dream I was beating the shit out of her. I didn't check the credits, but my guess is - directed by Tarantino. It goes without saying (I hope) that in life I rarely punch people so hard my hand goes all the way through their sternum. But in the dream, I was a total cartoon ninja supreme. I was scary. I was She Whom You Shouldn't Have Fucked With. It felt awesome and queasy, like a roller coaster ride at an amusement park known to occasionally kill a customer or two. And I woke up not angry but the opposite: in this zenlike state of blissful calm, fully aware for the first time that I really. Don't. Like. That person. At all. And therefore have a great excuse to use that new word I've been hearing tossed around, "frenemy." How awesome is that word? Wish I'd had it in high school. Coulda applied it to everyone!

And then. Oh, and then. I had this dream.

In the dream, I run into a male acquaintance. Someone I know casually. You know, a friendofafriend. (Quick, someone coin a shorter word for that.)

We're on some mazelike studio lot, don't know which - kind of like in waking life, where I've gotten lost on every lot in Los Angeles. I once walked around the Paramount lot for a fricking hour trying to find my car. And no, it's not that big. Anywho. He walks me to my car. We give each other a friendly hug. And then, out of nowhere, incredible, movie-caliber kissing ensues. If that kiss has really happened? Top five of my lifetime so far. No joke.

It bears mentioning that this gentleman has been entirely off my radar in real life. You know, the Radar Of Bangability. Never once thought about it.

So, naturally, I wake up feeling all tingly, and, well, slightly obsessed with that particular man. But more important to you, oh faithful Blog Reader, I woke up asking myself the appropriate question, which is, "What the fuck was THAT? What did it MEAN?!"

I've decided to stop at nothing to answer that question. But let me tell you, it's not simple. There are just so many rows to hoe when it comes to interpreting the Unconscious As Auteur. I asked a lot of people, and I got a lot of contradictory opinions. Then, I remembered this is a tangentially Jewy blog, and I emailed a real life rabbi. Posed the question to him: what's the proper Jewish way to interpret dreams?

I have so much to share. I'll tell you all about it... in our next installment. Unless there's an installment in between, which could happen. But point is, I'll be getting back to you, with rabbinical fruits of wisdom. In the meantime, enjoy your nap.

5768

Great to see so many foxy Jews at the Dip't in Honey par-tay at the Echoplex. For those of you who couldn't attend, you missed a devastating spread from Provisions (the apple tartlets! the red velvet cupcake tree!); Jill Soloway's rockin' PowerPoint slides, which mixed sumptuous imagery with stirring messages; Mocean Worker's spontaneous DJ duet with a shofar blower, which was pretty much the essence of Reboot; Paul V's devious mash-up mixology; thought-provoking materials from PJA, Mazon and other forward-looking organizations; and lots of joyous schmoozing among a cross-section of sexy chaverim.

Thanks to Julie and Mitchell for the use of the hall, to Jane for organizational wizardry, to Lisa for going all out in the sweets department, to Adam and Paul for rocking the tunes, to Jill for inspiring visuals, to POM for bringing the juice, to Neil of Gilly Flowers for a typically wicked centerpiece, and to everyone else who helped make it happen. Can't wait for the next throwdown — it's always great to see your pretty punims.

Dick Clark's Rockin' Rosh Hashanah

Yo, my peeps! What year is it? A new one, we're told, although your loyal ultra-secular pals freely acknowledge that we don't really spend much time cozied up with the ancient calendar. In the past, we further admit, our Rosh Hashanah activities have been limited to the pro forma get-togethers coordinated by our relatives.

So it's a new thing for us to be co-sponsors of Dip't in Honey, the Happy Jew Year spectacular set to go down at L.A.'s Echoplex next Tues. night (9/18), also brought to you by Reboot, Pom and the fine folks at KCRW.

But we're getting into the spirit, and we hope you will too — not only by attending, if you happen to be in town, but also by submitting your holiday blessing/wish/invocation, which will appear on a big screen as DJs Mocean Worker and Paul V lay down the smokin' grooves, Provisions LA's Lisa Feinstein serves the primo treats and scores of attractive Jews (and sundry chai-curious gentiles) sip on tangy, holiday-appropriate Pomtinis and shake their groove things.

So: Send us the good word, chaverim, and when we say we'll see you next Tuesday, be assured we mean it in the nicest possible way.

Today Marks an Important Anniversary.

So, it's Sept. 11 again, and it seems like an appropriate time to remember something that happened a few years ago.

Well, yeah, that too. We mean, six years ago, when we were all clammy with fear and despair and body counts were rising and dire reports were raging and the newscasters and Republican politicians tried very hard to conceal their boners, we had an inkling this date would, you know, go down in infamy.

But 9/11/01 was also the day Sera and Simon's better half, Julia, had a date to drink tea together, and they decided — amid the shockwaves of that rough beast smashing into America's Jerusalem — not to cancel. Chado Teahouse was closed, even though they said they'd be open, so Sera and Jules proceeded to Elixir, where their disbelief was mingled with conversation about a host of other topics. The sense that "everything has changed" hadn't yet sunk in.

Sera came back to Julia and Simon's dingbat apartment in North Hollywood and they watched cable news reports of the unfolding nightmare; Simon, newly stricken with Hepatitis A (a delightful story in its own right), was stretched out on the couch, viewing the horrible footage with a literally jaundiced eye.

But despite the surreal terror of it all, there's a nugget of sweetness at the heart of this dreadful memory. Because we all became much closer, dearer friends that day.

Indeed, it was such a milestone in the history of our bonding that Sera came over to Julia and Simon's house five years later to commemorate the anniversary. And on that night, in addition to recalling the disorienting events of that prior 9/11, we proceeded to celebrate our friendship anew with quite a bit of champagne.

Out of that joyous round of toasts on 9/11/06 came a great deal of squealing, uproarious laughter and the first tenuous steps down the road that became this blog.

As we've mentioned in the past, Sera and Simon first envisioned a book, but stupid, stupid literary people were for some inconprehensible reason not prepared to cut us an enormous, debt-annihilating check. So, after a couple of weeks, we turned the scribblings engendered by our bubbly blowout into the nascent Jewy bleatings you've come to know and love.

So, to reiterate: 9/11 is, in addition to everything else, the anniversary of the birth of the VHJ. It's also a sacred holiday that honors a miraculous friendship for which we're hugely, incredibly grateful.

In a way, it was a foregone conclusion that right-wingers would see the fiery death of thousands of our people as an opportunity to shove their wretched Christo-fascist vision down our collective gullet. And it was probably inevitable that terror alerts would eventually become fodder for Jay Leno and that the "war" would simply be a new frame for the standard U.S. policy of blowing up whatever stood in the way of the oil supply. The solemnity of those first freakish hours and days gave way mostly to a bitter but not entirely un-hilarious comprehension of the frailty of our own system and the venal unworthiness of our so-called leaders.

But what are you gonna do, lay down and die? Not these Jews.

We don't laugh at the tragedy so many people are reliving today, but we go on laughing in spite of it. And we're able to do so in large part because we have some fantastic fuckin' friends.

How I Crashed My Immune System

by Simon

I know quite a few people who live in perpetual cringing terror of catching some nasty bug. They don't shake hands (some give a non sequitur "namaste" gesture instead, while others prefer the Clintonian elbow grab); they have a dispenser of antibacterial liquid rigged into their sleeves like James West's derringer; and they swallow a daily bolus of mysterious, system-enhancing supplements.

I'm not like that; I maintain my health with the time-tested virtues of a positive attitude, gallons of coffee and at least seven hours a day resting on my divan watching premium cable. But sometimes I slip. I'm now enjoying day six of a delightful cold, and I blame it on too much of a good thing.

That good thing? Trayf, my friend.

Cards on the table time: Julia and I don't just celebrate our birthdays. We celebrate the entire birth month (and I've lately been lobbying for the birth quarter, but I don't think I have the votes). My birth month, a veritable orgy of comestibles and libations, came to its 1812 Overture of a climax with a meal at Cobras and Matadors, a tapas joint with a menu that can induce fainting spells in your average gourmand.

Faithful readers of this blog know of my fondness for pig meat. I have written passionate verse in its honor, and thoughts of its golden hue, crisp yet pliant texture and explosive bursts of fatty, salty flavor on the tastebuds forever distract me from whatever task is allegedly at hand. Still, I was half-joking when I asked Julia if she thought it would be possible to have a meal consisting entirely of The Other White Meat.

Some joke. Here's what we had, I kid you not:

• Bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with Cabrales and almonds, in a honey-port reduction


• Bacon-wrapped prawns on toast points in a garlic cream sauce


• Serrano ham and Manchego sandwiches on Catalan bread


• Albondigas (veal-pork meatballs)


• Breaded pork loin stuffed with bacon and ham

In addition to this pork-ucopia, we inhaled socca cakes in honey, beet salad with goat cheese and an onion conserve, a bottle of great wine and several glasses of killer sherry. It was an epic culinary debauch, and I delighted in watching Julia's customary gesture of food-induced ecstasy — her eyes rolling back in her head — almost as much as I enjoyed stuffing my face.

Then we got home and rolled into bed. Then I rolled out of bed. Then I tried to sleep on the couch. My head felt funny. My stomach rumbled ominously. I was visited by the ghosts of St. Augustine, Edith Piaf and Buddy Hackett, none of whom offered much encouragement. No sleep was forthcoming.

Julia is at pains to point out that among the first symptoms I experience with a cold is denial. I try to pawn it off on allergies or some damn thing, because admitting that I'm about to plunge into a vision quest of sniffling, coughing, throat-clearing and general whiny misery is too much to contemplate.

In any case, my immune system crashed like the L.A. power grid during a heatwave. Also, there was a heatwave.

Sera suggested the possibility that God was punishing me for my excessive flouting of the Chosen Peeps' dietary laws. I reject this hypothesis for several reasons. Among them:

1. Julia didn't get sick, and she ate all the same stuff.
2. Why hit me now, when I've been consuming the cloven-hoofed for ages?
3. I don't believe in God.

The question is this: Would I go back and substitute a healthier meal in order to dodge this bout of stuffed-up bullshit? I would not.

And that's what makes me the trayf-lovingest Jew in all of Christendom.

In fact... I could totally go for some bacon right now.

Harry Potter and the Very Hot Jews

"Cheeky Blog’s Jewish Obsession Strikes a Funny Bone of Contention."

When we read the title of that article, we thought for sure they meant us! Cheeky? Check! Blog? Check! Jewish Obsession? Pass the Paxil!

Turns out the blog in question is Gawker, which made some not very funny Jew jokes while hashing out a recent controversy. Then, when called on it, the blog made more Jew jokes, in that defensively "ironic" way that clues you in on the author's vague understanding of what irony might be. So, Jewish Daily Forward: The next time you're looking for a cheeky blog with a Jewish obsession you'll do a little better, no?

Oh, the aforementioned controversy? It's about Israeli booksellers breaking the sabbath in order to put the final installment of Harry Potter into the country's hot little Hebraic hands the very nanosecond it was released. Apparently, certain among the Orthodox made a big-ass mountain out of what seems to us a tiny little shmidge of breakin' da law of God. I mean, it isn't like the youth of Israel were indulging in murder or mishandling holy scrolls or surgically reconstructing their foreskins. But we, like, don't really get the Orthodox thing anyway, so who are we to say?

Well, duh, we're us, so we're gonna say lots.

First of all, the fact that Harry Potter is responsible for more tsunamis than that fucking butterfly in China with its insistence on flapping its wings cannot be denied. Oh, the endless issues people take with poor rich happy blonde J.K. Rowling — for not being literary enough, for not making kids read other books besides her own, for spreading the word of Satan, for spitting on the Sabbath. We at VHJ disapprove of her excessive use of the adverb, but otherwise have found her work charming and benign.

Until recently. Recently, those fanciful books have become an interesting study in perceived-anti-Semitism sensitivity. As in: If enough people tell you that something is anti-Semitic, can you avoid seeing the hate yourself?

The verdict: not entirely. It bears mentioning that we have no idea how J.K. really feels about Jews. We've never met her. We concede that this could be a case of widespread misunderstanding. All we really know for sure is that she thinks goblins are very culturally different from magicians.


And yet, reading Harry Potter has come to feel eerily reminiscent of college Women's Studies classes. By the end of a good lecture, every billboard in town seems to be screaming sexism, sexism, sexism. Every magazine is exploitative. Every miniskirt is a lightning rod. So too with The Noses Of Harry Potter.


I (Sera) have a dear friend, a hip and secular tribesmember, who insists that Harry Potter is deeply anti-Semitic. He believes the goblins described therein are based on caricaturized Jewish moneylenders, and equates Rowling with Mel Gibson in her obvious hatred of our peeps. Here is a quote from the email he sent me in response to the above-mentioned article:

HOWever, lost in this gerbil-in-a-wheel argument is the true problem with the harry potter books. it's not when they go on sale, young sera, but what's inside...

Believe me when i tell you, the harry potter books are so stereotypically and virulently jew hating as to be dickensian in scope.


the bankers, sera. they're small, grunting, hunchbacked little men with big noses and crooked teeth who care about nothing but money. sound familiar?

I initially scoffed at his assertion. "In your head!" I cried. "Paranoid! Lay off the wacky tobacky!" I exclaimed.

Until I cracked open the last tome and got to this description of possible-bad-guy Severus Snape wherein Rowling calls Mr. Evil (Or At Least Gross) Dude "hooknosed."

Something in me bristled. "Oh REALLY?" I thought. "Is that the shorthand for untrustworthy? Gosh, it's been a while since I've read that word. Probably because people avoid it because it seems, how you say, not very cool in light of the long history of anti-Jewish propaganda featuring evil noses that hook?"

Having been sensitized to the possibility of anti-Semitism, I zeroed in on that, my stomach turned ... and I didn't really enjoy the rest of the book as much as a wanted to. Those banker goblins pissed me the fuck off. I tried to let it go. I mean, I really like the Harry Potter books, and I've been looking forward to the finale for eons. I tried to decide it was nothing. But, in the end, my sudden fear that all you non-Jewish folk hate the shit out of the Jews won. Bad for reading pleasure — but, hey! Good for blogging!

My imagination, all this? I dunno. All I do know is, I'm leading a by and large sheltered, Jew-friendly existence here in LA-LA land. I interact with lots of secular Hebes, my social circle is a multi-culti gaystravaganza, and nary a spraypainted swastika confronts me on my daily dogwalks. I'm able to pretty well convince myself that anti-Semitism is way '06, that it's just not of the now, that it's o-vah, babycakes. And then someone points out a perceived, subtle prejudice, and when I behold it ... well, at the very least I understand a little better what it must be like to walk around being all foreign or not white or lesbionic. Casual jabs coming at you from all sorts of unexpected places, like bland TV or children's books.

(Okay, so this Amber chick — from Cameras-In-A-Locked-Whorehouse reality show "Big Brother 8"— is a raging fucktard, but still, it's the obvious bland-TV example of anti-Semitism. I found this girl's words shocking. And it hurt my feelings, Amber. I think you should apologize. Or henceforth wear a t shirt that clearly warns viewing audiences that you're an uneducated bigot with bad hair. Oh, wait, everyone already sees that last part.)

Here's what AIN'T my imagination. The people that commented on the article linked at the start of this here entry? Some of those bitches need schooling. Look at this:

Bill said:

Perhaps if Jews were not the 'average New York media professional', and some other ethnicities were allowed to amass in any real numbers in media professions; they would be ridiculed as well. But we'll never know, will we? I guess Jews will have to be satisfied with world domination, and work on mind control in their free time (if they wish).

Thu. Jul 26, 2007


I'm not here to get all indignant. I hear it speeds up wrinkles, and I'm too vain for that shit. But, um, allowed to amass? Excuse me? Now, I know I happen to be a Jew working in a media profession. But I nevertheless must call not only foul but also asshole on young Bill, if that is in fact his real name.

Bill, my darling? If there were some kind of Jewish media mafia holding deserving goyische pros — like, I assume, yourself — down? In order to hoist less-deserving Jewlicious pros like Simon and myself up, up, up? Then God knows the VHJ would have gotten some kind of phone call by now, inviting us to come, like, control the media. And I promise you, had we gotten such a call, we'd have blogged about it by now. We're nothing if not blabbermouths. Forget invited - I'd gatecrash, if only I'd heard of such a thing, which I haven't for some reason that I assure you is unrelated to my hardy Hebrew heritage. Perhaps I should call some of my most intelligent friends to ask them to explain it to me. Oh, wait — they're struggling Jewish media professionals. It's been hard for them to break in. That's odd. You'd think they'd get in quick on that Chosen Folk Fast-track. Oh well.

At least we've got our world domination to fall back on.

Just Think About It—No Rosh

There will be dancing, courtesy of incredibly hot DJs from both coasts.

There will be drinking, with cocktails augmented by thematically appropriate sponsor Pom Wonderful.

There will be schmoozing, courtesy of Jews and their Chai-curious friends.

There will be incredible nosh from new catering phenom Provision L.A.

It will go down on Tues., Sept. 18 at The Echoplex, in the basement of the fabulous Echo in Echo Park.

It is Dip't in Honey, a dazzling night of Rosh Hashanah debauchery and introspection co-sponsored by Reboot, Very Hot Jews, Pom and local public-radio giant KCRW.

Another thing the event will feature: New Year's resolutions from you. So submit 'em, baby! Let's hear what you've got. How are you going to expand your horizons, deepen your soul, soften your heart and harden your resolve? These Jews wanna know.

So mark your calendars, put Yellow Cab on speed dial and burnish your dancing shoes, and we'll see you on the 18th.

Breaking: Simon Gets Older, Hotter.

The Very Hot Jews are in need of Advil and a fatty breakfast this morning, my friends, because last night we celebrated the birth of our masculine half.

Many knuckle-bitingly attractive Jews (and reasonably appealing Gentiles, we might add) attended the festivities, several bacon-themed gifts were bestowed, and a methuselah of mysterious mixed beverage called "Geisha's Kiss" was consumed.

We thought you might enjoy some photographic proof of Simon's ever-deepening hottitude. Snaps by smoldering Hebe Josh Pickering. (Just goes to show you, your mama was right when she said, "Honey, some things you leave to professionals.")

Oh, and the mustache, while slightly reminiscent of the trademark lip-garnish of He To Whom We Stick It, is emphatically not a Hitler 'stache. If we cut it in half, maybe. As it is, it's a hirsute hybrid of Inspector Clouseau, You Bet Your Life-era Groucho and a smidge of Edgar Allan Poe; on this chart, it probably falls somewhere between "box car" and "business man."

Let's just say that a ride on this puppy'll cost you more than five cents.

Speaking of which: When Sera wears it? Extremely porn-o-rific. Who knew she bore such a striking resemblance to generously endowed tribesman Ron Jeremy?

Unsurprisingly, Sime's Semitic goddess wife looks positively edible rocking the Coffee Strainer Of Hotness:

We wanted to photograph each party attendant In 'Stache Delicto, but it stopped sticking. Plus everyone was in the hot tub by then.

We don't offer this slideshow merely as proof that the Yin and Yang of VHJ are genuine pals and more than a partnership forged by Hollywood dealmakers, or to vouchsafe that our communication is not always by IM. We present these photos as a tribute to the most important thing in life: Having a loving mishpuchah.

Because when you come right down to it, there's nothing quite like having friends who just "get you," friends who can detect your tiniest eyebrow movement and chime in with "I know, right?"

This is what it's all about. We are blessed.

Why The Internet Doesn't Suck.

Hi, Sera here. I just spent the last two weeks thinking about how the Internet really sucks ass.

I think it's because I reached saturation about Britney Spears, finally, after all this time. I got to work, did my usual morning round of the gossip blogs, and there was a picture of her, out at night in clothes she hemmed with a pair of cuticle scissors, wig askew, gum lodged in the edge of her maniacal laugh. And I had this sudden moment of clarity: that young woman is seriously mentally ill.

I mean, here's a thought exercise: Think of a dear friend or family member, someone you adore. Got it? OK, now picture that person engaging in all the same droolingly oblivious self-destruction we've seen from Britsay Lospears et al. Horrific, right? Now imagine that your dear one's every intoxicated misstep is chronicled everywhere for the amusement of the general public, with whole industries springing up based on poking fun of said beloved person as he/she swirls down the drain.

Some among you might wonder what took me so long. Others might be shaking their heads, thinking, "That Sera, what a goodhearted sucker. Brit's just drunk and acting out."

Whatever: two Jews, three opinions. I'm just saying that, as someone who has never met Britney Spears, is not a mental health professional, and is in no other way qualified to make this assessment, I believe the chickie has biopolar disorder. She has that look about her. I've seen people having that kind of episode. They tend to do a lot of drugs and shave their heads and stuff.

And when I realized that without serious help the only people fucked-er than Brit are her kids, the whole enjoyment-of-trash-blogs went sour for me. Not that I stopped looking. I just felt nauseous and unsatisfied while I smoked my fix of Perez-- who, by the way, logged something like 8 million hits the day Lindsay got arrested.

Let's not mince words: I'm in the fix-it cycle of tabloid addiction. The highs aren't fun anymore, because I'm having them at the expense of people who are actually in serious trouble. For a long time, I was cool with that, because they're driving drunk in fabulous clothes surrounded by a hilarious entourage. But now, I'm going back to a well that's run toxic.

I thought about this here blog. How it's so much easier for me to discuss Amy Winehouse's jailhouse tattoos, dime-sized pupils, nickel-sized ass and white-hot death wish than pick a new Jew topic of substance to write about. I mean, Amy's Hebraic, but she's not exactly an example plucked from from the median average of our people. And, oh, how I'd rather discuss deeply non-Chosen preacher's daughter Ashlee Simpson's surgery than the kerfuckety Middle East clusterbang going on even now. And I though, well, I suppose I'm part of the problem. Might as well throw in the proverbial blogging towel.

Then, while clicking vaguely from celebretard site to celebretard site on my embarrassingly long list of Bookmarked Fave Sites That Prove My Liberal Arts Education Was For Naught, I accidentally clicked postsecret. I played the little video below, and I rememebered that the Internet, when used for good, has as-yet-unmeasured power.

So, enjoy the vid, ruminate about how alike all us weird weird weird odd strange Jews and non-Jews are, and check back in soon. We've got a thing or two to say about the fucktard anti-Semites on Big Brother 8.

On Bringing the Funny

A lot of y'all have been asking Sera about how to get into TV writing, because you envision a candy-flavored world of inspiration and fame and nice clothes and nonstop validation from strangers.

You are mistaken, of course; like any other comparatively gainful employment, writing a show involves a lot of squinting at your monitor with a feeling in your gut that's not unlike the grind of threshing spikes, along with a lot of weird politics that leave you distinctly uncomfortable; bouts of sleeplessness; prodigious ingestion of alcohol; occasional feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, friendlessness and fatness; and periodic bouts of homicidal rage.

And that's on the good days.

Now, we know that many of you apple-cheeked show-biz aspirants won't be deterred in the slightest by such non-utopian testimony, and that's just fine. Just fine. But the really good news is this: You can stop asking Sera for advice, because your nice Jewish pals are gonna give you the hook-up.

That's right: We're going to tell you where to send your comedy script so that influential professional funnyfolk will look at it and give you feedback.

Oh, that is so sweet, but please, put your clothes back on. A simple thank-you will do.

Here's the deal. There's this thing called The Un-Cabaret here in La-La Land. It goes down at M Bar in Hollywood and features comedians and comedy writers doing a very intimate, personal kind of performance. It's not about setups and punchlines; the Uncab performers get personal, finding the funny (and sometimes the poignant, and more often the foignant) in the most difficult, challenging areas of life. It's always inspiring, even when the featured performers aren't comedy superstars like Margaret Cho, Patton Oswalt and Julia Sweeney or writers of shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sex and the City and The Simpsons.

Uncab was founded by two amazing people, Beth Lapides and Greg Miller. They came here from New York with an idea that comedy could be deeper, more meaningful and just plain better than the dude-with-microphone-in-front-of-brick-wall monotony that had prevailed since the '80s.

Soon their events grew so popular that they expanded, offering Uncab Labs for fledgling comedic performers, putting out CDs, gathering brilliant un-aired pilots for exhibition via The Other Network, and much more. Beth herself is a wonderful performer and writer and motivator; during Uncab nights she serves as a hilarious foil to the featured artists. She writes haikus and does yoga and is, in general, what you'd call a peach. Greg is a brilliant producer, organizer and evaluator of comedy talent, not to mention a funny, wonderful guy.

Together they run a little thing called the Other Network Comedy Contest. For a nominal entry fee (and please, no tirades about entry fees — no one owes you a freakin' contest, you whiny baby, and by the way, if you want to be in TV you'd better get a thicker skin), you can submit your stuff if it follows the following Other Network guidelines:

- Can be an original piece of writing or a 'spec' of a TV series that has aired

- Any comedy format on paper, tape, disc or file (sketch, short, animation, monolog, etc.)

- Multiple submissions & re-submissions OK (but please do a serious re-write!)

- Material that's been optioned by another network is NOT OK (this contest is about opening a pipeline for people who don't already have access to the business).

Once your work has been received, it'll be evaluated by people who actually know what the hell comedy is, because they make their living at it. This is not the Kamp Komedy Kollege of Ha-Ha. Recent winners of the contest got scripts into the hands of key execs at Comedy Central and got notes from showrunners who said they'd like to be attached to the projects. Yeah, baby. Others had their work reviewed by agents at William Morris and UTA, managers at Brillstein-Grey and TV comedy wizards like:

• Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show, SNL, Tenacious D)
• Cindy Chupack(Sex and the City, Everybody Loves Raymond)
• Brent Forrester (The Office, King of The Hill, Undeclared)
• Rob Cohen (The Ben Stiller Show, The Simpsons)
• Jon Kinnally (Will & Grace)

and tons of others.

These folks don't promise you riches and fame. But no matter what happens, you'll get genuine feedback that actually means something from people who know what the hell they're talking about.

Nu, enough already. Just go to the contest page and follow the instructions. Just don't forget us if you get, like, all famous and junk.

Full disclosure: Very Hot Jews are an affiliate of the contest. Call us pisher.

Whither Hotness?

A bittersweet incantation by Simon

So, my birthday's coming up and I'll be 43 years old. And I co-write a blog called Very Hot Jews and lately we haven't talked very much about hotness, though we have talked about stuff like interest-free loans and TV writing and repairing sewage pumps.

I've started to feel a little guilty (I know, try to stifle your disbelief) that our little Jewblog wasn't really living up to its name. After all, do people really come to this site to read about our petty foibles? Do we have regular readers (or at least momentary visitors) in Iran and Saudi Arabia and China and Norway and Tuscaloosa because we write so tellingly about the myriad headaches and meager rewards of modern existence? No, I say! Folks from all over the world click over our way because they long for tall tales of Semitic hotness.

And yet. And yet.

Well, here's the thing. As the hooded specter of advancing age swings its razory scythe over my form, graying my hair (fuck me, even the chest hair), inscribing ever-deeper crevices into my once-pillowy flesh, I feel my cherished sexual vanity dissolving like a bar of Irish Spring in a volcano.

I know! Unbelievable, right? But it's a thing with guys. Bear with me.

Look, I'm an educated man. Probably too educated. I recognize that most of the capering image-circus known as pop culture is, for reals, a vast truckload of perfumed pigshit. Do I understand that the seamy fakeworld of advertising cultivates our insecurities the way ants corral aphids? I write ad copy for a living, fucker! Do I realize that all publicity photos are airbrushed, that perfection is a matter of lighting and camera angles, that the glistening fleshpots in all torrid love scenes are daubed with Vaseline by pot-bellied union guys? I do!

And yet.

I want to feel hot like the hot people on the hot shows! I want to be a sparkling object of desire! I want my wobbling midsection to be taut as a snare drum — not as a result of agonizing daily crunches but simply because I'm young and supple, though I consume multiple cheeseburgers at a sitting! I want that terrifying avatar of a double chin to revert permanently to singlehood!

Most of all, I want the look from babes in the street. I want that hungry slide of female eyes over my chest. I want to be openly fantasized about on girlblogs. I want to be surreptitiously phone-surveilled and texted about by desiring co-eds. Is that so terribly much to ask?

Cut to shot of once-chunky Irish Spring bar, now a pale-green sliver.

I am at some upscale shopping mall in a commercial neighborhood that bears a striking resemblance to Pasadena. At every turn there are fair-haired hotties who sport the all-knowing mien of the sophomore. Their skirts are microscopic. Double entendres stretch enticingly across their T-shirts. Their satiny feet are shod in flip-flops made of solid gold. They smell like gardenias and vanilla.

And I look down and realize that — for reasons having to do with my having been too preoccupied to do laundry of late — I am wearing shorts with black socks.

This is, to employ the technical term, the attire of the gross old guy. And if these terrestrial angels notice me at all, it is to mark my shorts and black socks with a snort of derision.

Not, as they say, too hot.

Here's the question caroming around the spongy interior of my brain like a queasy drunk: Have I passed the point of no return? Am I consigned to either invisibility or gross-old-guyhood from here on out?

And the answer should itself be a question — something like, Why, silly man, do you give one solitary shit whether or not you're appealing to a bunch of nattering girls at the mall? And yet.

I see all the forty-plus guys on TV who still look great, like David Duchovny, who's in a new show all about being a writer of a certain age swimming in pussy, and the little caged monster of diminishing self-regard shrieks Why not me? When the answer should be: That is a TV show, a fiction to stoke the dreams of premium-cable subscribers.

This is the madness that causes men, silly, vain men of a certain age who used to be objects of lust, who were once a coveted demo but now see the gilded surface of their erotic confidence flaking away and revealing a dull, lead-colored redundancy, to plunge headlong into midlife crisis. You know the story: One day, receding hairline or limp dick or, heaven forfend, black socks with shorts. Next day, ill-advised cherry-red convertible in which to troll for pneumatic girlfriend.

I have stared into this abyss, people, and been rescued. Hallelujah.

How? By love, of course. Because I share my life with someone who celebrates my birthday all month long, who sees me stumble into the muddy pool of my own wounded ego and pulls me out.

She looks at me and, apropos of nothing, says: "You're hotter now than you've ever been."

And you know what? Fuck it. She's right. Happy Birthday to me.

Jews Against Usury

A note (of credit) from Simon

I just finished paying off a $10,000 loan to a bunch of Jews.

Before you leap to any stereotypical conclusions, here's the twist: It was an interest-free loan.

That got your attention, didn't it?

Oh, and you don't have to be Jewish to qualify.

The Jewish Free Loan Association may be a relatively unassuming organization, but what they're doing for people is undeniably hot. Because although I qualified for a business loan for my fledging company a few years ago — and believe you me, that money was crucial in getting us off the ground — most of JFLA's lending is done in the form of emergency loans to low-income residents of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

And while predatory lenders are everywhere, right down to the paycheck-cashing rackets that rip off poor folks who don't have bank accounts, JFLA actually gives moneylending a good name.

So when I wrote my last check to them this week I vowed that I'd mention their good work on the blog.

JFLA began in 1904, and its earliest loans paid for sewing machines and pushcarts. Over the years, when people were dislocated by World War II, the Watts Riots, the Northridge earthquake and countless more prosaic emergencies, the org was there with needed funds.

The organization is attempting to redress California's shortfall in nurses with the Brandman Foundation Loan Fund for Nursing Students, providing interest-free loans to future nurses of up to $5,000.

What JFLA does is humbling and inspiring. If you know of someone in immediate need, let them know about this amazing organization. If you're fortunate enough to be "comfortable," as our people like to say, consider making a donation.

Just don't ask us to lend it to you.

Would you like to get an e-mail notification when the blog is updated? E-mail VeryHotJews@aol.com and we'll put you on the list.

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.

The One True Alchemy

Religions, both mainstream and cultish. Politics, both mass-mediated and underground. The Secret and scads of other poorly copyedited loaves of self-help twaddle, along with their attendant TV specials, CDs, DVDs, workbooks and decoder rings. Miracle diets, pills, soaps and herbal suppositories.

What do all these phenomena of human hype share? They all purport to offer some sort of transformative formula for human experience.

They'll show you six practical steps to change your life for the better. They'll stretch your sagging flesh into a burning canvas of desirability. They'll save your soul and unite the world. They're gonna take ya higher, baby. They've got a deal on two tickets to paradise.

Is every single one a shallow, disappointing scam when it comes to delivering the goods? Far be it for us to say yes. But yes.

As Sera has carefully elucidated in a previous post, The Secret is all box and no cereal. Religious ritual is all well and good, but it's had quite a few millennia to turn us from our brute nature, and how's that coming along?

And politics? As the TelePrompTers say, pause for laughter. Meanwhile, if you think you can shop your way to a better you, lotsa luck.

These are all fascinating chapters in humanity's search for the philosopher's stone, that alchemical holy grail that will change base metal into gold, and perhaps give its possessor eternal youth in the bargain. If you only know it from the title of the first Harry Potter movie, you should know that the stone preoccupied scientists and mystics alike for many, many moons.

In a way, it's the ultimate intersection of faith and knowledge — and what better illustration of that concept than the Mutus Liber, a "silent book" consisting only of illustrations that purports to be an instruction manual for creating the stone?

So they searched and searched. They filled their vials and beakers with every substance, fastidiously tracked a virtually infinite series of chemical interactions and mapped the zones between air, water, fire and earth. But no dice. To put it another way:

Not one gold nugget
Was made from lead
Not one grey hair
Turned black on a head
The fabled stone
Did not exist
But undeterred
Was the alchemist.

We call that denial up in my neighborhood. But brothers and sisters, I have good news. There is true alchemy in this world. There is a way to transform dross into gold. But it isn't through some elixir of mysticism and science. It's through art.

Art is the one true transformative magic we humans possess. It enables us to take pain and turn it into joy. Its miraculous process dissolves misery into laughter and discovery and illumination.

We can suffer and, in the telling of our suffering, be redeemed. We can narrate our awful stumbles and they emerge as slapstick. We can turn dread uncertainty into delicious suspense. In the crucible of creativity, it's all possible.

We say this not to offer some treacly, up-with-people empowerment product (buy our life-changing 10-DVD course! ) but as a reminder, in these dreadful times, that you've got better stuff inside you than about 99.9997 % of the ideas, beliefs, platforms and antioxidant lotions being launched at you by the giant marketing slingshot that is commercial culture.

Here's where we get all controversial on your ass: We think the key to the survival of vibrant Jewishness in very hot times is not JHVH. Nor is it arming ourselves to the teeth and dropping bombs on whomever The New Republic tells us is an "existential threat." The key to our survival, through diasporas and donnybrooks, through pogroms and pilot seasons, through Torquemadas and Theocons, has been our ability to turn death and despair into deidel-deidel-deidel. You dig?

So nu, if you're full to bursting with feelings you don't know what to do with, blog! Draw! Sing! Squirt mustard onto an old math textbook! Not because it'll make you famous. Not because it'll let you look into the iris of the Divine. But because it will transform your terrible, unfathomable feelings into something beautiful or funny or scary or odd or in any case fathomable.

They didn't call the philosopher's stone a holy grail for nothin'. And as with other grails we could mention, it's right there. Right next to you.

Um, Sorry.
A Message From Simon

Could we really call this a Jewish blog if we didn't periodically get too busy and then neglect to update it for long periods of time, feeling horrendously guilty all the while? Even if our neglect can't always be chalked up to a hectic schedule, and is sometimes a byproduct of many hours spent browsing hotties on MySpace? And even if feeling the guilt required more psychic energy than banging out a few amusing paragraphs? Genug!

We're sorry, is my point.

We're sorry because we know you've taken the time and effort to steer the majestic craft that is your browser over to our Jewy little marina more than once and found the same old stale posting there. Perhaps you've huffed off, vowing never to darken our splash page again. Or maybe you were wracked with concern — are Sera and Simon OK? Has something happened to them?

That said: Sera has been busily crafting killer-chiller scripts for a TV show and tending to the myriad needs of her burgeoning canine, Mojo. I, meanwhile, high-tailed it out of town (accompanied by the lovely Julia) for a largely DSL-free vacation in the glorious state of Washington.

During that time, I spent many blissful hours with my nose in Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union, a cracking good novel set in an alternate reality where the Jewish state, Sitka, is in Alaska. It's a noir thriller mixed with Pynchonian magical realism and a ton of Yiddishkeit. Nu, read it. One of the book's most vivid characters is a half-Jewish, half-Tlingit detective; he was much on my mind as I surveyed the Jewish guests of a wedding party at a lodge on an Indian reservation abutting a rainforest. Colliding worlds make great fiction and fascinating reality, no?

We spent a few days in Seattle, but the revelation was staying on the Washington coast (thanks to the offices of our beloved pal Mollie and her generous family), where the weather was largely sublime and where we saw quite a few of these:

That's right, people: bald eagles.

Making their way over a vast, flat stretch of surf between the ocean and a prototypically Northwestern stand of Conifers, rousted by crows, they flaunted their magnificent wings as their white keppes glinted in the sun. It was if they were saying, "I am this close to being removed from the Endangered Species list."

And they were finally delisted mere hours after we returned home, thanks in part to the offices of meshuggeneh nature people who took bald eagle eggs from nests in order to fertilize them in labs (they left fake eggs in their wake, which must've been awkward for the eagle parents).

We spent a lot of time spying on the eagles — sometimes squinting through binoculars, sometimes just gawking right underneath whatever tree one happened to be perched in. I learned a lot, especially about the gap between an eagle's patience for sitting and my own.

If I'd had DSL, I could've given him a run for his money.

I promise a more substantive post soon. It will confront big issues like art and the soul. And Jewish identity. Or something.

Oh, and don't worry. We're fine.

Thanks to Mollie for taking this pic.