ROI Summit: June 2008 The summit of Jewish innovators in their 20s and 30s is coming this June to Jerusalem. Stay tuned here and to ROI120.com for updates.
If you're a fan of both technology/blogging and Israel, you're going to love Traveling Geeks, which chronicles the journeys of a bunch of SF social media gurus and tech-heads as they journey through Israel and beyond. If you read Wired, Fast Company and other tech-savvy publications, the names--Robert Scoble (Naked Conversations), Craig Newmark (craigslist)--are nothing new. And I have friends there myself, most notably Blogmama Deborah Schultz and Susan Mernit. But what's new is the environment for the trip: a series of tech conferences and gatherings in Israel--Kinnernet, the Marker's .comvention, and various breakfast meetings (a la Pulver) and Garage Geeks parties.
I'm fascinated by the experience of those who are relative newbies to traveling in Israel, but I'll be more interested to see the after-effects: the partnerships that emerge, and of course, the posts that are put up after the bloggers have returned to their respective communities.
I believe my voyage to the geek side is now complete. Blog.
Any of you readers or lurkers huge fans of Will & Grace? Do you remember any specific moments wherein Grace proclaimed her Jewishness, or when it figured prominently in a storyline? I need help identifying moments like this for a project I'm working on.
So far I remember: -- Grace mentioning that she made an art project at Camp Ramah -- Some random stuff around the fact that husband Leo was a Jewish doctor -- A prop box of Wissotzky tea in her family country house -- In the elections episode, Will says his candidate is gay, and Grace says hers is Jewish and a woman, "two victims to [Will's candidate's] one."
"Toxic" is one of those songs that gets in your head, and there's just nothing to be done about it. And I'm not even a band. But if I were, I'd probably do a cover of it. But I'm American, and with the exception of my recently acquired obsession with Coolooloosh and Subliminal and the TACT Family, tend to mostly enjoy American music.
Then came the Israeli "Toxic" invasion. When I encountered Israeli band missFlag, they did a cover. Then I saw a Newsweek article that reported Yael Naim (she of the ethereal squeak in the MacAir commercials) also performs a cover of the song.
One quick trip to Wikipedia later, and I've got a whole list of bands that cover this tune, including missFlag, Naim, and Shiri Maimon, who covers it in Hebrew translation, which has been overlaid on the original Britney video here.
So to recap, three Israeli musical acts, and three different versions of one Britney Spears song.
missFlag (3 versions available, below is the one with the best sound):
Yael Naim, multiple versions available including this soulful version, and a more classical sounding clip, which is below):
Shiri Maimon (her vocals on Britney's video):
Which is your favorite? And why do you think "Toxic" is resonating in Israel? Is it because every Israeli is secretly in the Mossad? Or secretly fans of Britney no matter how big a train wreck she is? Is it a Kabbalah thing?
[re-posted: The show is Wednesday and I have yet to hear from people in NYC who'd like to come. Enter the contest and win!]
Who are you wearing? Can we talk? Do you want to go see Joan Rivers live on the opening night of her return to live theater, as she workshops new material at the Cutting Room in Chelsea? (More info here.) Well, you're in luck because tickets are now available, I'll be there, and I'm giving away a pair of tickets to the April 9 performance, too!
This is no April fool, people! So tell me, Urban Kvetch-readers...what's your favorite thing about Joan, and why should you go to see her show on Opening Night? You have until Tuesday night to submit your entries to me at myurbankvetch@gmail.com. Decision of my independent panel of judges is final and subject to many things, including whim, weather, and butterflies flapping their wings in China.
Legendary
comedian Joan Rivers returns to her weekly live comedy shows at The
Cutting Room in Chelsea. The outrageous workshop performances feature
new material, as Joan tries out her newest jokes in an intimate Chelsea
club. Performances begin Wednesday, April 9, at 8:00 PM, and take place
most Wednesdays at The Cutting Room, 19 West 24th Street (between
Broadway and Sixth Avenue). Tickets are $30, and may be ordered online now or by calling 212-352-3101.
[One spoiler within, but if you haven't read the book yet, you're probably not reading this anyway. "A computer? What's that?" But seriously, the spoilers are only in the first paragraph, so skip it and you'll be fine.]
I always thought that after the final Harry Potter movie left theaters and came out on DVD, that the HP-obsessed would revolt: "We need more Harry, Ron and Hermione!" And since by that time, many of those who started with HP back in the day will be of an age where they can ask, "What do you mean, 'Dumbledore is gay'?" And then, realizing what she wrought on the children of the world by outing a central adult character with no warning and basically ending the beloved series going the way the Jewish community wishes its singles would (everyone gets married and has babies!), J.K. Rowling would say, "Ok, one more book wouldn't hurt."
We're not quite there yet. But the filmmakers who are now filming the sixth book have acknowledged that book 7--Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--cannot be condensed into a 2+ hour film suitable for kidsumption, and therefore they are going to film it as two movies. So book the dates on your Gcal now, kiddies: the first film is due November 2010, and the second in May 2011. I was going to have my hair cut that month, but now, I'll make other arrangements.
And if sometime after, say, September 2011, JK announces that her new book is in process, you can say you read the prediction on Nostradamus My Urban Kvetch.
This is another piece of mine that originally appeared on the JTA blog, "Good for the Jews." (May it rest in peace.)
'Knocked Up' and the Jews By Esther D. Kustanowitz
So
you're sitting there in the darkened theater, excited to see "Knocked
Up," which has been hailed by pretty much everyone as one of the most
hilarious, edgy, envelope-pushing comedies of the year. And you're
enjoying it quite a bit when all of a sudden, there it is like a
thunderbolt – an overt conversation about Jewish identity in a completely secular context.
Those of you who are concerned that this might constitute a spoiler, turn off for the next paragraph. Or just watch the clip on YouTube. [clip has been removed, unfortunately]
So
what I've learned from watching this film is that when a group of
Jewish guys goes to a bar to drink and pick up women, it's bound to
become a discussion of how Jews are depicted on film. For those of you
who can't view YouTube video on your computers, get a new computer. But
for your benefit, here's a summary, with expletives deleted.
Ben
(Seth Rogen) is sitting around a bar with his friends, played by Jason
Segel, Jay Baruchel and Jonah Hill (and named Jason, Jay and Jonah,
respectively), talking about how awesome the movie "Munich" was. In
other movies, he notes animatedly, Jews are always getting killed, but
in "Munich," Eric Bana plays a Mossad agent who kicks major ass. Ben
says that if any of them get lucky that night it's because of Eric
Bana. Then they start making fun of the only non-Jew in the bunch, who
says "I'm glad I'm not Jewish." Ben counters, "So are we," adding
later, "You weren't chosen for a reason."
Throughout the film
there are additional such shout-outs to being Jewish, including one
random, facial hair-provoked reference to Matisyahu. But on the whole,
such references are cultural, and the main obstacle to the union
between the two characters is not religion but lifestyle – he's a
slacker, she's a career girl. One might be tempted to read several
things into the premise for the movie: that schlubby guys who are
really good-hearted people deserve tall, gorgeous blondes, or that
Jewish stoner guys can attain a previously unattainable ideal. Or we
could use the onscreen moments of Jewish identity discussion to provoke
a larger discussion.
Of course, there's yet another way to derive
something from "Knocked Up": Just sit back and enjoy one of the
funniest films of the year.
"When I was being Ali G and Borat I was in character sometimes 14
hours a day and I came to love them, so admitting I am never going to
play them again is quite a sad thing," the 36-year-old actor-comedian
says in the British newspaper's Friday edition.
"It is like saying goodbye to a loved one. It is hard, and the
problem with success, although it's fantastic, is that every new person
who sees the Borat movie is one less person I `get' with Borat again, so it's a kind of self-defeating form, really."
How amazing to be able to develop characters, live as them, and discard them when you're done. Talk about reinvention...
More analysis to come after the Sabbath. Shabbat shalom!
I know...in the fracas of Heroes and the chaos of the Writers' Strike (more on that tomorrow), we've almost forgotten about "Lost." (And "24", but since Jack Bauer's a drunk driver, we can likely wait for him to sober up before he sets up a perimeter.)
But they promised we'd get more episodes in 2008, and it's almost 2008. So we might have known that we'd get an incredibly cryptic trailer to stoke speculations and keep those freeze-framing hatchheads guessing to rebuild the rabid fan base. Enjoy. And if you understand what's going on, feel free to let me know. Hat tip to EW, the source of all knowledge.
I'm torn. When there's a TV show title, you should put the whole title in quotation marks. But when you're trying to make a sarcastic comment using quotation marks -- as in describing people as "celebrities" when they're not really celebrities but are so designated by someone else -- where do you put the quotation marks?
No "Office." No "Heroes." And now, in a separate instance, Broadway's on strike. It's like America, the locus of entertainment of many genres, is being shut down, like a giant Cat in a Hat has appeared and said, "there is no time for games, there is no time for fun." The work that needs to be done is to get the writers their residuals. And I've witnessed the writers striking at CBS in L.A., and listened as a writer friend told me about a man who ran over a writer who was blocking a driveway.
Even for a writer who's likely to be sympathetic to this predicament and who might be generally FOR writers making what they deserve, I'm primarily a consumer of entertainment. And it may seem irritating to those of us who are addicted to entertainment when our favorite shows go into reruns without reprieve, and we may think that writers for top-tier shows are paid enough. Some Hollywood writers make over $200,000. (In a related story, I will be moving to Hollywood shortly.) But most of the others "scrape by" (as one writer put it) on $18,000 a year. (In a related story, I'm canceling my move to Hollywood.)
But I found this first-person account that I wanted to share, in the hope that maybe it will help everyone understand what the strikers want. There are many issues involved in the negotiations, but the main one is over residuals for new media:
When a writer is hired to pen a script for a studio, we get a fee. The
studio then owns copyright on every word we scribble. They're
effectively purchasing our work as we create it. If a script goes into
production, when the movie or television show comes out on DVD, we get
what's called residuals. Every time a DVD is sold featuring material
based on our work, we get an additional payment of four cents. Not a
great deal of money. But it can add up.
Just as DVD supplanted VHS a decade ago, the Internet is now set to
supplant DVD. So instead of popping in that DVD of PIRATES OF THE
CARIBBEAN, you'll click your mouse and download it straight to your TV.
This delivery format is referred to as "New Media." And the studios
don't want to pay residuals on it.
I'm also reading the comments now, and instead of the regular inane comments, there are actually comments that discuss the "other side" of this issue, pointing out how "new" new media is; some commenters express solidarity, others question. But no matter what your position is, the post provides a sense of what writers are fighting for, how united they are--no matter what financial rung they're on--and how uncertain the future seems in a world when new technologies and websites are constantly making each yesterday obsolete.
As for me, I'm not in a union. I don't have the structure to object when I'm
mistreated, nor do I have the organized support of my peers, who also
want their due and have the courage to speak up for what they deserve. And right now, I'm jealous of the family/community that these writers have, and hope that there will be an agreement that will enable us to get back to the production and consumption of the programs that entertain and distract us from the heavy stuff of life. So here's to my friends Sheryl and Rob, picketing in two different cities, and to A.E. Vogler, the writer of the above-referenced post, and to all the writers. Here's to a speedy and equitable resolution of this disagreement.
And for those of you who are visual and audio learners, here's a video from my friend Rob explaining why the terms of the contract are important.
