Why We Kvell
a quick note from Simon - who knew?

So, Sera is mysteriously out of town but flashed a special Jew Signal in the sky to remind me to tell our bloggy mishpuchah that she's got an essay up on Why We Write, a site where film and TV writers tell about how they ended up that way. Sera's piece is a juicy recollection of her angsty youth, which will furnish you with both understanding and delight. Nu, so read it already.

And if, after that burst of discursive candor, you're in the mood for a geekier shade of writing about writing, perhaps you'll meander on over to the newsletter that the fair Julia and I just released. It's got a sampler plate of goodies about language on the business side, and there's even a place to subscribe, so's it can sidle up to your inbox every month.

OK, enough pimpin' for one post. I know what you're really wondering: where's Sera?

Since we exist to stoke your imagination, we invite you to use the comments section to concoct short narratives about where in the world our smokin' Jewess might be (extra points if it's done in the style of a bodice-ripper paperback). Or, if you prefer, about where I might be going when I leave town tomorrow night. No fair chiming in if you actually know. The winner will get a shout-out in a future post, which could possibly mark the start of a dizzying rise to fame (and subsequent Britney-level crash-and-burn). So get to scribblin'!

A Thing About Stuff
by Virtual Simon^TM

Blogging has so quickly and pervasively become part of what the culture talks about that it's easy to forget why people do it. Sure, a lot of the time it's just a way to blather without interruption or vent one's spleen (guilty as charged), but the most rewarding thing about doing this here Very Hot writing has been exchanging ideas and wishes and pleasantries with all of you. The comments just get more moving, perceptive, wise and funny every day. Please keep 'em coming.

I've been laid up with a mysterious virus for a week or so, during which time such strenuous activities as going to the store or standing up for five minutes or longer made me feel as though I'd run a marathon. Thankfully, Sera's been kicking serious ass with her last few posts – as the comments below amply demonstrate – and like a lot of you, I've felt inspired and more than a little challenged by the ideas she's been exploring.

I don't mind telling you that the pleasures of VHJ.com are accompanied by nagging anxieties: What can I write about? Will I sound self-involved and/or pompous? Are readers disappointed because my discursive hobbyhorses are so often less hot and less Jewy than they have reason to expect? Should we be updating the site every day with little newsy bites rather than more infrequent, long-winded vision quests?

Now Sera has raised the bar. I can't see myself following her provocative, revealing meditations on sacred dancing and silence with some riff on pork products or monster movies. Not that those aren't worthy topics, but I want to follow her lead for now and explore some more trenchant territory.

Fact is, I've been thinking about stuff.

No, not "thinking about stuff." Thinking about stuff. Material goods. Possessions. The items we covet.

Like Sera, I'm a professional writer. I don't write a TV show (and even if I did, I wouldn't be writing one now, would I? Solidarity!); our clients hire the fair Julia and me to craft all manner of marketing materials, lifestyle-branding collateral, entertainment hype and other glittery promo-prose. We do pretty well, but running a business in the ruined Bush economy can be punishing, especially if you've got a mortgage and insurance and kindred grown-up expenses. Checks come in and the money's already gone, devoured by a ravenous pack of bills.

Which doesn't keep me from wanting more stuff – shiny Fender Telecasters, vintage barware, some groovy art from a local gallery, an Armani coat, an SLR digital camera, moon boots, a jet pack ... you get the idea.

But even when I do get more stuff and bring it home, my awareness of all my old stuff is enhanced. It's as though everything I already own and have neglected has let out a collective sigh, like weary prisoners welcoming a new inmate.

I've realized that what I really want is less stuff.

This thought feels super Zeitgeisty. Peeps are buzzing about a book called The History of Stuff. The Green movement may be too late (or WAY too late) to save us from spending our golden years in wetsuits, but they've certainly raised awareness about reducing consumption and petty acquisition. And in our own sphere, our beloved housemate is moving out to co-habit with his beloved GF and now faces the herculean task of transferring his boatload of possessions from our place to various storage locales.

And then there was this story I heard on NPR not long ago about the decline of commerce on Second Life. For those of you who don't know, that's a "3D online digital world" where people can log on and have a completely digital existence. They can even spend real money to buy virtual money ("Linden Dollars") so they can purchase virtual things like online land and furniture for the online cribs that sit on that land and cars for their online commutes. Real brands like clothiers and athletic-shoe makers and soft-drink purveyors have thrived there. Third-world businesses have busily evolved manufacturing centers for virtual goods; dirt-poor residents of Asian villages actually "make" stuff on computers for netizens to buy. I shit you not.

But everything in the cyber-sphere is ahead, so Second Life and kindred sites are experiencing a debilitating downturn now; the NPR commentator noted the grim site of shuttered stores on the virtual thoroughfare.

Imagine telling your virtual child that there'll be no imaginary Chanukah this year, and that you'll all have to tighten your (unreal, though likely Prada) belts and spend less money on nonexistent things.

This story didn't impress itself on my increasingly forgetful gray matter simply because of its rich comic possibilities. In my mind, the virtual production of virtual stuff for virtual acquisition – and the virtual economic collapse of said industry – engendered a kind of spiritual metaphor.

Because when we have reached such an ethereal summit of consumption – when the "thing-ness" of the things we buy is subordinated to the crackish intoxication of buying itself – we are confronted by a paradox of koan-like dimensions. We are focusing our energies on buying ... well, not nothing, exactly, but no-things. But what we have to show for it is nothing. The experience of acquisition is all. Scratch that: the virtual experience.

I don't have a flop on Second Life, but the piles of things that clutter the margins of my world, so many of which I lusted after and schemed to get, may as well be made of ones and zeroes.

I want less stuff and more (non-virtual) experience. I want to unload what I've got. Want to give me a present? Make a no-interest loan in my name to an entrepreneur in the developing world via Kiva.org, or send some livestock to a third-world villager through Heifer International so he or she can raise goats in the fresh air instead of making virtual crap.

Now, tickets to a show? A trip to Hawaii? Those I'll take.

P.S. I speak only for me. Sera's birthday is upon us, and as far as I know she will still accept material goods. Thank you.

On Shutting Up.
(a thinly-veiled rant by Sera)

In the middle of my week-long workshop at shiny happy Esalen, my teacher made a suggestion that changed my life for, I hope, evah. Here's how it went down.

We spent the morning dancing (ecstatically). At lunchtime, she rang her little Tibetan bell and gestured for us to gather 'round the tealight votives. And then she told us she'd chatted with one of her students, who gave her a great idea for an exercise. This exercise, she said, was totally optional. But she felt it would help us stay with the stuff we were learning in the workshop - because we only work for four or five hours, and spend the rest of the day eating organic food and soaking in the hot springs and staring dumbly at the beauty all around us... and, of course, yammering on and on to each other about our jobs back home, our favorite yoga position (I like Buddha Reclining On Futon With Remote Control), the dubious merits of polyamory, our awesome therapists, the horror wreaked by Tara Reid's plastic surgeon, and whatever other topic best serves that universal Esalen pastime, flirting like it's 1968.

The idea, she said, was to Hold Silence. That means this: outside of the short discussions we have while working, no talking for 24 hours. Little stickies reading "In Silence" would be provided; if we wore them, everyone would know not to be offended when we mutely pointed at stuff. "Just see how it goes," she said. "It's optional. But it could be interesting."

Noise erupted in the Dance Dome. Excited chatter, with an edge of panic. I knew immediately that I would be grabbing the opportunity to be In Silence for 24 hours. God knows I've never done it before, and who knows when I'd ever get to try it again?

I've long been fascinated by silence. I keep thinking (and then forgetting) I'm going to google the phrase "silent meditation retreat," for example. See, I am a person who knows she talks A LOT. Words are my living, my fluffy pillow, my titanium shield, the fat marshmallows in my Ovaltine. You know those t-shirts that say "Jesus Is My Homeboy"? The English language is my homeboy.

This is so true of me that it deserves another paragraph or three. Y'all know I make my Very Hot mortgage payment by typing words in script form. Did you know that before I sacrificed my freakish ability at the altar of College Substance Experimentation, I was also a Spelling Bee champion? It's t-r-u-e. My seventh grade year, I was nine nerdy kids away from going to Washington to compete in the Nationals. (Remember that the next time you think you're the geekiest person you know. You know me.) I have this inner sense of words, their little motors and gears, the weight of their individual letters, how they came to be. When I first read Lolita I cherished it for what it was: porn. Not kiddie porn - though there are a couple of nice moments if you're into that too - but word porn. I could feel Nabokov rolling around in the English language like Demi Moore on a bed full of a crisp nonsequential bills. I saw a kindred spirit - hey, I ain't saying I'll ever write like the dude, I'm just saying I feel where he's coming from.

Back in the day, when I was a poor freelancer, I often churned out press releases and artist bios for Sime's Lovely Wife Julia, then an editor for Dreamworks Records. Those pieces were essentially two pages of interview quotes, each followed by a variation of the phrase "he said." Jules sent me a three page list of alternates for the word "said." Hazarded, relayed, quipped, elaborated, confessed. Some so useful, some so awkward, some so unexpectedly intimate. Oh, how tickled I was by that list of said words. I still have it somewhere. I think it is awesome. The fact that Simon and Julia understand my deep and abiding affection for that list is a primary reason we're such good friends.

So, yeah, I heart me some blah blah blah. But I also know that there's more to life, and more to me, than just pleasurable discourse. And I'm a curious kind of chick. I wanna know what's on the other side. So I grabbed a stickie and declared myself In Silence.

Full disclosure: I had a moment of oh fuck no, what have I done?! I couldn't figure out how I was going to shut up for that long. I've never even shut up through an entire dinner. Not even when pissed at parents or boyfriend - I always opted for the acid "pass the butter," at the very least. But I got a hold of myself. The anxiety passed, replaced my a warm, glowing nugget of excitement in my belly. I do love an exercise.

So, the next 24 hours were epic. I learned so much about myself that I could easily fill four or five posts - not that I'm going to, because a lot of it wouldn't translate. Well, that's a lie, it probably would, I just don't want to tell you about it. It's not that I don't love you - I do. You're so damn Hot, who could resist you? It's just... a lot of what happened isn't funny. It's not light, blogarific material.

Some of it (lucky you!) is blog-friendly - like when I got busted in the Dance Dome in the middle of the night by an irate Australian Esalen employee in a strange hempy hat for doing various [redacted] things with another workshop member. And then there was dinner in the packed, buzzing dining hall, In Silence amid a sea of blabbing folk, unable to shut out their gobsmackingly inane conversation with the sound of my own voice. Around the third time the guy at the next table repeated the key phrase of his disturbingly meal-inappropriate tale ("I was so disgusted with myself that I just vomited. I vomited and vomited and vomited!") I started laughing hysterically and simply could not stop. Tears rolled down my face. My In Silence dinner companion stared at me with benevolent confusion before finally shrugging and returning his full, rich, intense Silent focus to the brownie he was consuming with near-erotic concentration.

Anyway, a lot of my experience can be summed up by saying: I had a few of the best conversations of my life.

I had no idea people would keep talking if I didn't punctuate their tale with "mm hmm"s and wry observations. Turns out - people will talk. In fact, if you just wait long enough, they'll tell you the thing they really wanted to say all along, the thing they were scared of saying, the thing they were half-hoping you would cut them off before they got to (and half-praying you wouldn't). Because I wasn't speaking, my only job was to listen. I did a fair smattering of nodding, too. And I cried a bit - I had a conversation with a woman that lasted over an hour, in which she told me some pretty deep and serious personal shit. She spoke simply and clearly about being scared, and my heart broke like a loose pill in a handbag. I felt helpless and honored. Afterwards, I thought about how I ordinarily would have tried to give that woman advice. But what do I know, really? Doubtless nothing she hasn't heard before. All she really needed was someone to listen. So: yay for that In Silence Stickie. It helped me do what, under normal circumstances, I am probably not mature enough to handle.

Why am I telling you this? Well, this morning my well-meaning neighbor stopped me while I was walking Mojo.

"I heard on the news," she said. "Tough break."

I asked her what she was talking about. She said she'd just heard a report indicating that the WGA strike might go on for another year.

I assured her it was all rumor. No one knows how long the strike could last - that's the nature of striking. A year... well, that is serious doomsday predicting. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying it's not fact, and it's upsetting, so why spread that around?

I know a lot of you distractingly sexy people have found this blog because you are TV fans and you are looking for info, any info - even, in the absence of something better, speculation from a random producer on a show that gets ratings that would cause Shonda Rhimes to stick her head in an oven. So I would like to take this opportunity to say: NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN.

By no one, I mean people who are not media moguls. If you are not hearing the gossip from Peter Chernin, you are doing the strike-time equivalent of feeding Britney another frappuccino. No good will come of it. And at this point, we are all getting tired. Tired people are vulnerable. They get upset more easily. I work off my strike hours these days at WGA Headquarters, cleaning out the musty, musky vans and pulling staples out of wooden sticks. I stand in a room stacked high with picket signs, listening as a half-dozen or so increasingly tired and vulnerable writers speculate. Optimism for up to fifteen minutes devolves quickly into resigned exhaustion - teetering dangerously close to raging hopelessness. Luckily, we have electric staple guns into which to channel our frustration. BAM! BAM! Another sign successfully constructed. Take that, AMPTP! By 7:45, the conversation magically turns to this year's object of writer player-hate, Diablo Cody. I'm not kidding - this happens every single shift I work. Someone disparages the authenticity of her stripper background and says people don't talk like Juno. Which is apparently unacceptable because... Juno is meant to be a searing look at the cold hard reality of the word choices of plucky preggers teeny-bops? Since she was going to be writing about it, Diablo wasn't really all up in the body odor of the lapdance-ee of the moment, but rather safely ensoconced in The Matrix? (Hey, Diablo - if you're reading this? Just between me and you, I think you deserve the hype. I checked your box on the nomination ballot the WGA sent. And yes, you can buy me a coffee.)

Anyway, whilst the night shift of bespectacled writers duct-tapes splintery sign handles, bitches pithily, and prognosticates like a bunch of balding Cassandras, I think you know I am telling the truth when I say: I say nothing.

Wouldn't you like to join me? In saying a little more nothing? I think we could all use the company, because it is difficult to sit still with agitation. Any good Buddhist will tell you that - trying to cope with anxiety and worry is why a whole shitload of 'em dumped their previous church of choice and picked up meditating to begin with. I'm not even a bad Buddhist, I'm a secular Jew who eats bacon and mostly dates gentiles, yet I know this truth with the same deep certainly with which I know that the word for something way uncool to religious people is not spelled the same way as the word "religious" (i.e.: "sacrilegious," a word that totally would have sent me to Washington if I'd gotten it instead of stupid, stupid "tectonics." Not that I'm bitter.)

It is difficult to just be with the Not Knowing. Actually, the word "difficult" is too mild. It is totally fucking hard as shitballs in the Sahara to just be with the Not Knowing.

But the other option - spinning rumors, worrying, kvetching, trying to turn suspect information into a cohesive grid - doesn't help. Just because a theory is logical doesn't make it true. The true thing is that we little guys, writers and viewers alike, have next to zero control over the strike. We can choose to picket, send pencils to moguls, write a blog. But we can't tell either side's negotiators what to do. We can't make the big shit happen, or stop happening. We are along for the ride. Sucks, but it's true. Now you know how 99.9% of people felt during any historical event you ever read about. Honestly, if you set your mind to it, you can probably have more impact on which candidate lands the Democratic presidential nomination than on the outcome of this strike.

I've been contacted a few times since the new year by various fan site administrators and journalist types, asking if I could verify a rumor that the show I work for has been cancelled. Apparently the rumor is strong and pernicious. I'd like to use this rumor briefly, as an example of why we should all put on In Silence Stickies. Here goes.

If a network TV show was cancelled, it would be in the legitimate press. And before that, it would almost certainly be scooped by the likes of Nikki Finke - who herself is so sick of sifting third-hand info that she just took a week off. It wouldn't happen in secret. It couldn't. Nor would a network in wartime want it to - cancelled shows are pilloried for the masses, their gruesome severed heads set up on stakes. The better to freak out striking writers.

It's natural to want to feel some sense of control in crazy times. To search for a fact, any fact, to quell the insecurity. But I got bad news: what you're clutching to your chest ain't a fact. It's a crazymaking little rumor. It's about as good for you as snorting a pound of pixie stix.

So, in the absence of grasping at straws, what are we left with? Good question. Here's what I know - and I am a supreme expert, because I spent an entire twenty-four hour period in silence, which, I'm not sure, but may be some form of worldwide Jewish record.

We are left with listening.

Not listening to the rumors - that's almost as bad as repeating them. They're like... let's pick a good metaphor here, shall we? They're like mosquitoes. They bite you. What they carry gets in your blood stream. Swat 'em, yo.

But listening to people - even the people spouting streams of totally unverified crap - is pretty damn fascinating. You learn a lot about a person by how they tell a story. By what they latch onto. By what upsets them, what energizes them, what they need reassurance about. Any time your friend opens their mouth, they are giving you the opportunity to get to know them better. No matter what they say. Same with your parents; same with that disgruntled Hollywood florist fearing for their job; same with WGA Commander-in-Chief Patric Verrone. Slap a mental In Silence Stickie on yourself for a hot second. Wait. See listening as an exercise less in grasping for something to comfort your harried mind and more as an opportunity to learn a little something about whoever's doing the talking.

I don't mean to sound all teacher-y about this. All kidding aside, I consider myself to be a near-total novice in... well, a whole fuckload of things having to do with human interaction. I didn't become a writer because I was so genius at understanding people; I did it because I was so confused by people that I figured if I reconstructed their behavior on paper, I might be able to make better sense of it. I'm sharing because a)I am over the fear-mongering, and wanted to announce it publicly; and b)the above-suggested attitude adjustment has turned this time of grand weirdness, ick and uncertainty into a fun experiment for me. Talking people are the test subjects, the strike is the lab. If you want to come talk to me, I'll be in the corner with a clipboard, taking notes. I'm the Jewish one with all the hair. You know, the one with her mouth shut.

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.

The Year of the Hot Jew

Perhaps we flatter ourselves, but we like to believe that this blog's end-of-2007 message is something special – unlike, say, the typical year-end roundups of what Britney said and what Barack wore and who Paris vomited on – if only because this was the year in which our humble blog was born.

As devotees of VeryHotJews.com are well aware, we hadn't intended to be online pontificators. Sera and Simon had every intention of funneling their wet, wet opinions into a shimmering infinity pool of a book. It was only the parched and parsimonious (and, I might add, pusillanimous) paucity of publisher pelf that evaporated their dream and its accompanying aquatic metaphor.

But enough about Sera and Simon. In the third person, that is. We'll now switch back to the royal "we," because thanks to wonderful, steadfast and hot readers like you we feel royal.

In this, our first year, we stuck it to Hitler; praised bacon; bemoaned the vicissitudes and extolled the virtues of the writer's life; pondered religion and loss; prodded our emotional gums, as it were (thanks for the genius expression, Julia), in contemplation of sexual vanity and romantic mysteries; mused about dreams and pitch meetings and French bulldogs and Harry Potter and our gratitude for the compassion of Gentile friends. We wrote about the writers' strike and the unbelievably powerful support expressed by our readers for the strikers' cause. We kvetched about dentistry and sewer pumps, kvelled about love and New York and singalongs and gourmet food, and most of all carried out Phase One of our mission: Carve out a space in the blogosphere for Hot Jews and those who love them.

We also got a lot of warm fuzzies from our cyber-pals. Sera was interviewed by the one and only Susie Bright, among other admirers, while the VHJs were featured on Susan Henderson's wonderful LitPark site and contributed to Jewcy's "Most Awesome Events of Jewish 2007."

We hope that our readers of the Tribe have been able, in some measure, to claim it, to work it, to own it. Because you don't have to be the protagonist of The Bluest Eye to feel that the popular definition of hotness is invariably something we are not.

(Which is not to say we think all Jews are hot. Quite the contrary. But we hope we have gone some distance in helping to define Jewish hotness, in part by identifying the smokin' Semites in our circle.)

So thank you for being you and for being hot – and for making our first year a bloggy miracle.

But we can't jump into the champagne fountain that is our New Year's birthright without reiterating our code one last time:

Own it.
Live it.
Be it.

We love you! May 2008 bring blessings in abundance.

The VHJ

Thanks again to Josh Pickering for the photos.

The Faith of Habitual Liars
Simon's final rant of 2007

Spoiler alert: This post says unkind things about religion, and some things about avowedly religious people that make my words about religion look practically glowing by comparison.

Regular readers will have gathered that I'm one o' them pinko relativist humanist atheist Jews, the cultural bête noir of choice for today's crop of asshole demagogues. The advantage of hewing to this despised set of beliefs is that it clears up all the ambiguity: What you see is what you get.

Not so, however, for more than a few of the ostensible humans now seeking the job of President of the USA.

Sadly, it is now a prerequisite for politicians to parade their religious beliefs (though it's de rigueur to employ the nauseating euphemism "faith") as a cornerstone of their campaigns. So we are treated to the spectacle of these office-seeking ghouls touting the spiritual values they hold so deeply as they grub for votes in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and other primary states.

"Hold on there just a minute, Jew," I hear you object. "MY candidate isn't like that. MY candidate is a genuinely spiritual person for whom church attendance and quiet contemplation of the scriptures are the purest sustenance – and his/her pious nature, once apotheosized in the presidency, will fill the world with magnificence."

It's awfully sweet of you to believe that. But let me tell you something really, majorly super-important about your candidate, no matter who he or she may be.

Your candidate is a sociopath.

Please, don't get upset; I'm just stating facts here. In order to seek the presidency in this day and age, you have to have something horribly, terribly wrong with you.

I don't simply mean the hoary old truism that politicians are largely corrupt, hypocritical, whore-mongering shitbags who are about as spiritual as a CIA plane stuffed with black-tar heroin (and let's face it, things become hoary old truisms because they contain some measure of truth).

Nor do I mean the freaky, frisky underbelly of righteously religious pols, who swarm like sexually stunted moths to the lurid light of men's-room trysts as soon as they've finished delivering their latest sanctimonious soundbites.

I mean that in order to seek the presidency in the 21st Century, you have to have a personality disorder. And let's be clear about which kind. You know those people who bottle up their rage and then one day snap and take out a fast-food joint with an assault rifle? Not that kind. More the kind who serves you a couple of scotches and then kills you in your sleep for the insurance money. The kind that can justify the most grievous misdeeds, the most shocking atrocities with a chilling sangfroid and some elevated language about the national interest.

A sociopath regards any obstruction to his/her desires as something to be annihilated. Unfortunately, this has also become the model for a U.S. president, as fed to us by the bloodthirsty bobbleheads of the punditocracy and a political process in which one's opponents are to be dispatched with a rhetorical bayonet. Indeed, a sociopathic personality is the very zenith of what our noxiously reactionary political culture would call "a thick skin."

And just look at those thick-skinned candidates go on and on and on and on and ON about their, ahem, faith. In fact, they're all in the midst of their Christmas messaging, perhaps the most puke-inducing phase of the piety wars so far. There was much ado, in particular, about Mike Huckabee's Christmas ad, a sickeningly effective "let's all put politics aside and love Jesus together" spot that was the folksy state of the art of American Theocracy.

Huckabee projects a self-deprecating charm and WWJD compassion that's political gold. He almost convinces me that he's genuine. So it's important to remember that grinding away beneath that smiley layer of aw-shucks is something akin to the servo-mechanism of The Terminator. I strongly believe that Mike Huckabee would tear a baby's heart out of its chest cavity and eat it like a fuckin' apple if he thought it would help him attain the presidency.

Even with his new diet.

To say that Huckabee is genuine because he seems so is the most lethal mistake of all. Sociopath George W. Bush as Mr. Born Again won two elections; he is a far less capable liar than is Huckabee, but the difference is entirely one of polish. You may laugh at the poor schmucks who are taken in by a crappy home-made commercial for a used-car dealership, but there is a Jaguar ad out there that has your number.

Perhaps you're enchanted by the oleaginous Willard "Mitt" Romney, who has brandished his personal relationship with JC in hopes of charming evangelical voters who might otherwise wish to exterminate him on the grounds that he's a Mormon. Romney is all "faith" all the time, and his recent, ballyhooed speech on the topic essentially said that if you weren't religious you had no role to play in America.

Oh, and fightin' the icky Muslims requires us to flush our values down the toilet; hence Mitt's declaration that he'd like to build multiple Gitmos. Meanwhile, ol' Huck says the prisoners at Guantanamo are being treated, if anything, too well.

Jesus Christ would be so fucking proud, right?

John McCain, who once criticized the religious right as "agents of intolerance," needed to curry favor with evangelicals for his presidential crusade. So he came crawling back to Jerry Falwell and all but fellated the good reverend at Liberty Baptist University. He also begged the odious James Dobson for forgiveness. Because beneath the Straight Talkin' Maverick's facade is the same grasping, clawing appetite for power at any cost.

(Fred Thompson, who returned from doing nothing of value in the Senate to read his lines off other actors' foreheads on Law and Order, made similar gestures; he'd be more germane to the conversation if he hadn't displayed all the political initiative of an Arizona State freshman with a Hefty bag full of weed.)

Hillary Clinton, with typically corporate aplomb, hired a "faith guru" to appeal to evangelicals, appeared on Fox News to talk about how faith saved her marriage (I'd rather hear Ladybird Johnson describe how Mint Juleps dulled the hellish sound of Lyndon's ecstatic cries while he was serviced by truckloads of hookers, but that's just me) and generally attempted to soften her image with the bigoted throngs of the right by talking about how much time she's spent in church. I believe Hillary Clinton would swim laps in an Olympic-sized pool filled with goat's blood to win the Presidency. Fortunately for her, that won't be required.

Barack Obama, to his credit, at least uses religion as a way into discussing his party's obligations to the less fortunate. But the man wants to be President, so who knows who or what will get thrown under his bus?

Wait again, Jew, you object. What's wrong with the compassionate example of Jesus, undeniably a VHJ (veritably historical Jew, and certainly hot if you think he resembled Ted Neeley), guiding our leaders?

Actually, nothing. In fact, even a gimlet-eyed nonbeliever like me can be moved, mesmerized and motivated by religious passion. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted scripture in a way that could wring tears and commitment from the most mulish rationalist.

But MLK wasn't running for high office. He sacrificed pretty much everything to lead the greatest American social movement of his century and a grateful nation repaid him with a bullet.

If you think any of the faith-espousing pols now slouching toward primary season would take that deal you're high on crack.

Am I cynical? Not in the least. In fact, I'm the veritable orchid of optimism, pushing out of this shit-covered ground. You know what's cynical? Airing clips of these candidates and asking without a scintilla of irony how their "faith" will factor into the election.

And lest you accuse me of picking on Christians – and really, heaven forfend – I give you our featured socio-politico-path: Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Joe makes a great spectacle of his Jewy piety, but he has demonstrated time and again that he will stab anyone and anything in the back, front or sides to perpetuate his ongoing project of self-empowerment, self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement. He has fucked his own party six ways from Sunday (ultimately endorsing McCain after promising to help elect a Dem in '08), lied through his teeth, agitated for preemptive war with Iran, and crawled joyously up the asses of Dubya, Cheney and the rest of their loathsome circle. The fact that he does it all while wrapped in the prayer shawl of righteousness only confirms his utter lack of principle.

And he 's not even running for President.

Like all of his buddies in "faith," Senator Joe regularly and lustily violates the First Commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." You cannot have this kind of political career without putting the exaltation of yourself above all other considerations.

That would be the "me" with the small "m."

Since we're supposed to be electing a President and not a High Priest, let's just make the rules a little more explicit. By voting I'm entering into a contractual relationship with a self-interested party. That party is not my friend. He or she does not embody my deepest hopes and ideals. I will join like-minded people to exert pressure to make that party do what I want.

But the idea of selecting a candidate based on his/her professions of cosmic belief is pathologically stupid. Even Jesus thought so, peeps – that's why he drove the moneychangers out of the Temple.

Letting It All Go.
(by Sera)

It's been a weird week.

I know, "weird" is a strangely non-descriptive word. It tells you nothing about the quality of the week. It could mean pretty much anything. Paranormal events are weird. Grey pubic hair is weird. Supermodels are weird. Okay, let me start over.

Maybe because it's the end of the year, people seem to be making a lot of amends this week. Some are working a 12-step; I just had breakfast with a friend who told me her ex-husband had written a classic amends letter. It was apologetic, non-blamey. I asked her if it made her feel better, and she said no, not at all. She cried and felt angry and disappointed. Amends letters are one of those things in life that remind us that no matter how optimistic we start out, we all fuck up and get fucked with. We're born into these smooth pink or caramel bodies, and no matter what, they're going to end up scarred.

Though I don't work any particular program, I wrote a similar letter this week. The end of my relationship with the person to whom I wrote was somewhat heinous. Kind of Richard III meets Heathers. It was hard to write the letter. I kept wanting to be right about stuff. I wanted to enumerate the many ways I've risen above, like a pale, frizzy-haired Al Gore with a Semitic butt. Instead, I sat still for a long time. It was kind of like meditating, except I try not to call it that because the word makes my nose itch and then I can't sit still. I repeated a phrase to myself, which is sort of like a mantra except I don't call it a mantra because that makes me want to drive down to Main Street, Santa Monica and pick a fight with the first dreadlocked white dude with a yoga mat slung over his shoulder. Considering how ill-at-ease I am with the terminology and trappings of the New Age, you will find it amusing that my Repeating Phrase was get over yourself, get over yourself, get over yourself.

So I did my best, and I wrote a letter to Let It All Go. Of course, unlike in that legend they tell you on High Holidays about some holy tome into which final conclusions about you are inscribed forevsies, there is no real "closing the book" in life. I got a long, amendsy letter back, which was mostly decent and thoughtful but had one or two things in it I'd love to have argued about. All in all, I felt less cleansed and more depleted. Who started that lie that closure feels awesome? To me, closure usually feels like the tail end of a bad flu.

Which is how I found myself at this breakfast with this Very Hot Jewess, comparing notes on Letting It Go. "It's so weird," she said. Which hopefully now you understand means queasy and ambivalent. We agreed: acting like a proper fucking grownup in difficult moments feels less like a party and more like taking a kickboxing class so hard you vomit in the trash can.

Cheery. Anyway. Here's where I'm going with this: life is hard sometimes. By my estimation, life is really ridiculously hard between three and five times a year - the kind of hard that could lead you to burn all your diaries or get jiggy with a crack pipe or bang a lot of skeezy chicks or something. Pick your poison.

Time was, the Jewish culture had its finger on the pulse of Really Ridiculously Hard. We were so on the ball about the toughness of getting through a calendar year that we constructed several holidays that mandated indulgence. Purim is a perfect example. In theory, the celebration of a ballsy Hot Jewess who married a king, then risked beheading when she revealed her true Hebraic ID and asked King Hubby to save her peeps from the Hitler of the day. Drink till you can't tell the hero's name from the Adolf's! We survived! Thanks in large part to the fact that Jewish chicks are so blindingly attractive they can actually save thousands of lives with their hotness! Woot!

I have another hypothesis about Purim. I don't think it's really about the story in the scroll, any more than Hannukah's really about a dram of oil and not Xmas envy. My theory: human beings living in a society that requires daily repression (i.e. any civilized society, or we'd all be fucking and murdering each other till the cows came home. And saw us and ran away again) need a certain kind of periodic release. That release can only be achieved by singing at the top of your lungs and dancing till your legs buckle. Since we repressed civilized types tend to be a wee bit shy, the catharsis is facilitated by getting shitfaced.

Jews knew this. We didn't just get our drank on, do the mashed potato and croon - we did it in synagogue. With friends and family. As a community. A community made stronger because that bitch you were mad at is now hora-ing sweatily at the bimah, that guy who was too shy to ask you out is earnest-jokey serenading you, the strictest of parents is handing their kids frigging noisemakers which were invented to make loud, irritating noise, your exhausted business partner has stopped stressing for long enough to throw his arm around you and sing till he finally does what he needed to do all along, which was have a good laugh or a good cry or both.

Do they still conduct Judaism like that anywhere? All I know is, I've attended schuls reform, conservative, and even on a few distinctly weird occasions orthodox... and I've never experienced that epic, as-one Letting It Go.

That is why Simon is a genius. I'm sure you've gathered by now that he's a man with a formidable brain, but I attribute his creation of The Classic Rock Singalong to his deeply Jewy, ferociously hot little soul. I went to the shindig last night. Sime was onstage with the Singalong's co-founder and amazing musical director, VHJ and bandleader extraordinaire Josh Pickering (who, it should be said, did the lion's share of the musical heavy-lifting) and other assorted Jewish and Jew-adjacent musicians, rocking the fuck out to the Beatles, Springsteen, Oasis, Bon Jovi, Pat Benatar - you know, all those songs that are really good to sing drunk and at the top of one's lungs. M Bar, where the festivities were held, was packed with happy, tipsy folk singing along with sexy gusto.

I sometimes get drunk. I sing at the top of my lungs frequently, alone in my car. But: the twain haven't met since a regrettable performance of Bye Bye Birdie in high school. (Actually, I totally just made that up, but if I really had been drunk I don't think the performance would have been any worse.)

Please enjoy the sight of Sime, age 14, as Hugo in Birdie.

But last night? Bitch, please. I was a rock star. We all were. All the serious adult crap of life - foiled relationships, difficult letters, amends that don't fix jack about the past; plus strikes, stress, your dog managing to shit all over not just your carpet but also your wall, that thing where you keep getting older and requiring more expensive face creams, the price of oil (not at the gas pump, but in human lives) and whatever else burns a hole in your duodenum at three in the morning - allllll that crap? Melted away like so much pinkberry. We all just Let It Go. I leaned against my dear pal Dinda; stretched my arms wide to serenade Sime's smokin' lifemate Julia, decked out in spiky Billy Idol hair and a bedazzled AC/DC shirt; tilted my head back, forgetting utterly that in life I am more self-conscious than anyone knows; and SANG.

I feel much better now.

So - all you guys who were there and are reading this, thank you for participating. Thanks for standing on tables and shrieking Don't, don't you want me. Thanks for banging drums. Thanks for putting on funny wigs. Thanks for laughing your asses off. You guys rock.

Here in LaLaBurg, when you go looking for a healing, you can easily throw down several hundred dollars an hour for a little touch or talk or bottle of pills. Last night, the healing could be had for a five-buck cover charge. If you were lucky enough to be me, you even had your own precious Dinda who bought you drinks as a gesture of solidarity with the Writer's Guild of America. The hoarseness and hangover were a negligible surcharge.

Back in the day, those genius old Jews had a name for it: temple. If the English translations are right, they even used the word awesome. I mean, what is "Don't Stop Believin'" but a modern psalm? Okay, and also the soundrack to that baffling Sopranos finale that stressed us all out. Modern life is complicated. My advice is to concentrate on the music. It'll help you let it go.

Eight Days a Week
a Chanukah ramble from Simon

Thanks to devoted VHJ reader Julietta Appleton for passing this pic along.

I suppose it's a measure of my feelings about Chanukah that it's taken me this long to do a post about it for our ostensibly Jewy blog. This is not the kind of holiday that inspires great passion in me, though I've softened a bit – there was a time, not long ago, when I bored the pants off my inner circle with my patented "Chanukah is bullshit!" rant.

It went something like this: What a lame holiday! We had more oil than we thought? Swell! What is this, some ancient fundamentalist-Jew military thing? Compare it to Christmas, which is so freakin' excellent, except for the Jesus part ... why try to compete? Why do we have to have a Jew-mass holiday just to have an excuse to give Jewish kids presents? The rest was incomprehensible, even to me, though it did involve some excellent foaming at the mouth, teeth-gnashing, my head spinning around 360 degrees and, occasionally, doing that Curly Howard running-while-lying-down routine.

I had a lot of anger, I guess. As I said, I don't feel that way now. Or at the very least, my reaction to the whole thing is less Linda Blair-ish. But I should say a few words about the goyische elephant in the room first.

I still think Christmas is a superior holiday. Except for the Jesus part. (And really, why ruin a brilliant gift-exchanging seasonal party with a religious bum-out?) I mean, maybe it's because we didn't have it as kids, but I love the Xmas vibe. The smell of spice and vanilla. The lights on the houses. The tinsel-strewn, ornament-studded tree, with all those parti-colored packages arrayed at its base. The mistletoe. The way people mellow out and drink eggnog and play games. Those insane cookies. That kind and charitable mien you see on people's faces. Even the goofy sweaters.

There's something about Christmas that kinda crystallizes (not to be confused with kristallnacht) the metaphysical essence of being a Jew, particularly in America. Because the reason for the season, if you will, is that Messiah has come and all is well. This is naturally not a view that we Chosen-ites can embrace, given our traditional view of the New Testament as a sort of unauthorized sequel. But here's the thing: Tons of gentiles get way into the Christmas spirit without an ounce of religious belief. Therefore, I feel, so can I.

Still, the spiritual component of the season is hard to resist, even to an old implacable heart such as mine.

Thought exercise for you non-believers: Imagine a messianic figure (doesn't have to be Jeebus) has waved a magic wand and made everything OK. No more atrocities in Darfur, no more racism, no more waterboarding or Alzheimer's or Elizabeth Hasselbeck. Everything glows. Everyone feels sparkly and loving and there's no guile in anyone's eyes. This is the ideal of the holiday, and it exists so far over the rainbow from the non-magical, social-Jew cosmology I live that it holds an exotic allure.

Since I'm apparently in full disclosure mode, you know how a lot of Jews bristle when someone says "Merry Christmas" to them? I can't lie, y'all. I like it. Maybe it's because I'll take whatever merriment I can find.

OK, moving on. In my secular upbringing, Chanukah was when we lit candles and ate chocolate coins and spun the occasional dreidel (not keeping score, though, since none of us kids could read Hebrew). We spoke vaguely about the tradition, but I don't remember much context. Unlike Pesach, which was filled with intense, largely bleak historical significance, Chanukah felt like holiday lite, the Xmas surrogate.

I've certainly never enjoyed the yearly barrage of lamely recycled Chanukah "humor" found in so many cards, e-cards, and novelty songs, with their cut-rate Yiddishkeit and ain't-Chasids-hilarious punchlines.

Antiochus, as pictured on his very unsuccessful line of Chanukah gelt.

It turns out, though, that what this holiday celebrates is an instance of Jews doing some ass-kicking, the asses in this case belonging to the ancient Zeus-worshipping fuckwads (led by the extremely douche-like Antiochus) who punished the practice of the Jewish faith with death. Said fuckwads happened to be Syrian, but history has supplied an international potpourri of sanctimonious asshats bent on extinguishing the Torah and its fan club.

Unfortunately, the secular Jews of the classical age frequently serve as secondary villains in the telling of this tale (plus ça change, right?). And a certain strident minority of contemporary Jews (who harbor certain draconian geopolitical views as well as exclusionist social beliefs) would like to tell us modern secular Hebes that we don't count. As far as I'm concerned, they too deserve a stomping.

So let's make a deal: Chanukah is worth celebrating as an example of our people defending our faith and traditions. But let's reserve at least a single candle on the menorah for those of us who are part of the tribe but not part of the temple. When the next Antiochus comes along, you won't win the battle without us.

'Nuff said. Merry Christmas, everybody!