MY URBAN KVETCH

Marzipan & Meaning: Jerusalem Reflections

Two things you should know before reading this blog post.

1) There are those who believe that in Jerusalem, the layer between dreams and reality are thinner, as if there's some cosmic connection between that place and a plane that we don't understand. In some people, this manifests as a belief in their own prophecy. Whether you're calling it supernatural, mystical, or collective unconscious, there's something special about the place.

2) My mother, Shulamit, was grandmother to four grandchildren: Gil, Dov, Julia and Ella. She loved them all equally, with all of her heart. But the first one, Gil, was the one who transformed her from "just" our mother into "Savta Shuly."

Now, the story.

While I was in Jerusalem, three weeks after the passing of my mother, these things kept happening to and around me that made me feel her presence: walking down the street in Jerusalem, at the daily minyanim I attended to say kaddish, in erev Shabbat breezes that seemed to blow air straight into my lungs in a way that made me gasp, in angels who appeared in human form to help me when I was crying during services, and in one particular case, in a carton of rugelach.

Mobster or Jersey Shore Cast Member?

Welcome to the first utterly pointless post I've put up in some time.

Several months ago, I went to a trivia night at a bar in Santa Monica - that night, the other teams all knew math and circumferences and astronomy references, while I managed to eke out two correct answers to pop culture items, but that was about it. Suffice it to say, that evening did not make me feel smart.

But in going through my receipts and papers in preparation for taxes last week, I found a piece of paper from Trivia Night, which challenged us to determine - from a list of Italian names - which names belong to members of the mob, and which are members of the Jersey Shore cast. I am sad to say / happy to report that I got them all right.

I have reproduced the list below for your entertainment: to test which group is actually more dangerous, and so I can finally throw away this piece of paper (because I wanted to blog about this months ago). Good guessing to you all.

Tell me whether this person is a member of the show Jersey Shore or may have buried someone there, i.e. a member of the mob. [Then there were two columns: you had to write "member" or "burier" in one column, and the person's nickname in the other.]

Sammi Giancola

Sammi Gravano

Vincent Gigante

Michael Sorrentino

John Gotti

Nicole Polozzi

Paul DelVecchio

Dominick Napolitano

Virgin Atlantic's Woes Continue - And I Have Only Begun to Blog....

As you may know, I was among those stranded at JFK Airport when a blizzard prompted the cancellation of hundreds of flights on December 26 of last year. My Virgin Atlantic flight  - which had been cancelled on the 19th due to a blizzard at Heathrow and rescheduled for the 26th at 6:05pm  - was cancelled after we sat on the plane for two hours because of a blizzard at JFK, and was rescheduled for 6:05pm the 27th, then delayed to 7:30, then to a boarding time of 8:15 that didn't happen, and eventually, after great protest from the passengers, finally took off after midnight on the 28th.

Virgin Atlantic still denies that passengers were due any compensation for the experience, even as JetBlue once again proves its menschier status by giving their stranded passengers 10,000 points, scoring customer satisfaction points among its inconvenienced passengers.

What's the problem? Why won't Virgin Atlantic make compensation to the 250 of us who were on VS 004? According to USA Today, Virgin Atlantic (via spokesperson Greg Dawson) claims that "monetary compensation is not due" to the people on our flight - who "had to sleep in the airport terminal because all hotels nearby were booked" - because the snowstorm was an 'extraordinary occurrence.'

Travel writer and the main Twitter voice of our Virgin Atlantic experience Jason Cochran hasn't given up on the idea of compensation, and continues to battle the customer relations and public relations departments via email.

But apparently, Virgin's petulant behavior extends far beyond our particular flight - according to Bnet's Brett Snyder, "Virgin Atlantic has decided it won’t pay Heathrow Airport’s owner BAA anything until an inquiry into last month’s days-long shutdown is completed. Virgin Atlantic is acting like an impatient child here, and runs the risk of making relations with its most important airport even worse."

This preposterous experience just doesn't seem to end. And least of all for writers. Because Jason is still on this situation - it's his job to be. And as for me, while I'm not spending every day fighting about it, I definitely have more to say. Because all the elements of this experience combined into something resembling a psychological experiment in how far people's patience can be stretched before someone cracks and goes postal.

Look for the first part of my recollections to appear later today.

Sleeping at JFK: Hot Tips for a Quick Nap

Stuck at JFK (or any major airport) overnight thanks to a Virgin Atlantic or other airline flight cancellation? Put off by a hard, dirty floor that's probably crawling with human germs and rodent feces? Well, get down off your high horse and embrace the inevitable - the human body can only take so much walking around an airport before you need to catch forty winks. Plus, if you ever get to that conference in the UK you're supposed to present at, you'll want to make sure you don't sleep through your own presentations! So here's how to get comfortable when there’s no comfort able to be found!

Step One: Scan & Select Your Space

As soon as it becomes clear that you'll need a place to sleep, the prime sleeping spaces will go quickly, so scan the terminal like you're the Terminator, assessing the potential spots for their potential comfort based on your internal programming: Are you seeking solitude? Heat? The company of others? Find a piece of floor that reflects your preferred sleeping sensibilities: if you stake out your own space, people may give you a wide berth, resulting in your own island of space in a crowded terminal. Or, if solitude is threatening to you (single females, you may wish to consider this) or is in a dark location away from the public eye, you may wish to seek out a trustworthy-looking group of similar-age individuals - this selection may be a bit rowdier or more brightly lit, but may appeal to your sense of safety and community.

Want to recharge as you recharge? Make sure to locate the "sleeping spaces" next to electrical outlets: if you have a power strip with you for some reason, now's the time to use it and become very popular.

Step Two: Sterilize Your Space

Make sure your chosen space is clear of obvious garbage that will muck up your sleeping experience - steer clear of sticky patches of spilled Coca-Cola or snowy wet boot tracks, for example. If you have 3 oz of Purell in your Ziploc bag of allowed liquids, now's the time to use it to sterilize the space. (Or save it, to clean yourself once you rise up from your nap.)

Step Three: Build Your Bed

Then spread out a blanket and – what’s that? You don’t have a blanket? Wrestle one away from one of the airline staff members (they claim they don’t have them, but they DO!). If your airline doesn't have blankets, you may go to another airline with a cancelled flight. They don't know who's on which cancelled flight, so the important thing is to get a blanket from someone before everyone runs out. You can then use it as a mattress (recommended for comfort and hygiene reasons) or as a first layer over your shivering body in contact with the near frozen floor.  and build a nest out of that and whatever you have on you: your coat, scarf, a hat pulled down over your face to block the light, an extra pair of pants stuffed into a laptop sleeve and used as a pillow: be inventive. It’s like Project Runway, only - let's face it - you are probably never going to get to the runway.

Step Four: Tweet Your Position

Obviously.

Step Five: Secure Your Stuff - To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Once you've built your bed, now's your chance to lie in it. But before you close your eyes to enjoy the wrenching back pain of sleeping on a rock-hard airport floor, make sure your valuables are secured to your person: this may entail things like using your computer bag as a pillow, threading a bag handle around your arms or legs so you'll feel it if someone tries to nick it, or trusting a virtual stranger who says he or she will watch your bags whilst you sleep. There may be a price for generosity like this - like your photo ending up on Twitter - but it's a small price to pay to greet the morning (or the later part of the morning) having had 20 minutes of sleep, isn't it? When you wake up, it will be time to battle with the rest of the hungry airport zombies for food at airport eateries with dwindling supplies, so you'll want to have had that 20 minutes to fuel your attack strategy. 

We at My Urban Kvetch hope that you've enjoyed this practical travel guide to sleeping at international airports. Stay tuned for other helpful guides about overnight airport bathroom survival and use of nearly useless food vouchers at eateries that don't accept them or have 200-person lines and minimal supplies.

Aba Kustanowitz Goes to Kosherfest - The Video

To recap, in the beginning, I started a blog. (Hint: You're reading it now.) Years later, my Aba started a blog. Several months ago, I started doing video. And now my Aba's doing video, live from the floor at Kosherfest.

That's right - from squeezable hummus, falafel filled with tehina and popcorn (in a box) to beverages like watermelon juice, tequila in painted skull bottles, and sangria (in a box), my father was there and covered it all.

So to go behind the scenes at Kosherfest (and perhaps also my childhood), view the video - and if you like it, share with a friend or leave him a comment. I happen to know that he enjoys both comments and traffic. 

Kol hakavod, Aba! (And don't you dare invade Twitter!)

How to Feed Jews Up to Age 40

Anyone trying to program for and engage Jews in their 20s and 30s understands some of the challenges: different levels of interest in Jewish content, different educational backgrounds, the fact that rarely do traditional structures or denominations hold the resonance we may be looking for in our connections to Jewish life and identity.

But did you know that Jews under 40 actually eat differently than those over 40? I did not, until reading a press release from Kosherfest, which invades the Meadowlands this week:

Most probably your mother’s kosher kitchen didn’t contain Chorizo Mexican style sausage, Sangria in a box or sriracha sauce……fast forward to 2010, where today’s kosher pantry reflects the gourmet tastes and health conscious diets of the under 40 set. There’s even a new Kosher iPhone app.

We can eat iPhone apps now? Rad. And as for sangria in a box, I think I speak for us all in saying, that's what every under 40-something's been clamoring for. I do prefer my sangria in a small box, like a juice box or perhaps in a Capri Sun-style pouch, as they freeze extremely well and are portable - perfect for my busy lifestyle.

According to Menachem Lubinsky, founder and co-producer of the largest and longest running kosher food trade show, Kosherfest, “With 60% of the market believed to be under the age of 40, the kosher food industry is producing gourmet and enhanced food products. At the same time, it is producing an unprecedented number of gluten-free, spelt, organic and natural foods, a reflection of a growing health consciousness by all classes of consumers.”

So another reason to look forward to 40? I imagine a ceremony, in which late 30-somethings trade in their organic, natural or gluten-free foods and the class of most-recently aged 40-somethings step forward and present the newbies with honorary knishes, pointing them toward a table of deli meats and potato salad, as well as a panel of doctors shaking their heads disapprovingly.

All kidding  aside, I'm sure that there are some really awesome products at Kosherfest this year. If anyone goes, please report on your favorites. I'm particularly curious about VEGETALI Vegetarian Hot Dog in a Blanket (at Booth 311), and as to whether it more resembles the franks-in-blankets of many an hors d'oeuvre cocktail hour, or more like the corn dog, kosher versions of which still somehow evade us. Send us your reports!

Sunday Gun-Day at Pico & Robertson

Rejected titles for this post include: Welcome to the Gun Show; Decaf Mocha Rifle Latte; No Foam, No Whip; and others...

If you ever watched 24, you know that Jack Bauer was always setting up perimeters. I personally loved it when he barked at the young CTU agents that they needed to set up a perimeter and wait for his orders. It was his way of cordoning off an area as a danger zone (cue the Kenny Loggins). But did you ever wonder what it felt like to be inside the perimeter? Well, welcome to the gun show.

All I wanted was a change of scenery and a latte on a Sunday morning. And I ended up inside the perimeter, as our friendly neighborhood Starbucks was nearly surrounded by "black-and-whites" (slang for police cars, if "Law & Order" and every other crime procedural on TV is to be believed). The cars pulled up to the curb on Robertson, just north of Pico, and I watched (along with about 25 other caffeinated customers) as the cops got out, dashed around the sides of the car to the trunk, pulled out rifles or shotguns or some other artillery, donned Kevlar vests and crouched, ready for their orders.

The two baristas, two Israeli students who had been sitting at the same table with me, and I ran to the back of the store, away from the windows that cover the entire corner arc of Pico to Robertson. Everyone else seemed to think it was a better idea to run TOWARD the windows. You know, to see what's happening, but also to potentially see how bulletproof the glass is. I tweeted at the back of the store and updated my Facebook status: 

Guns in pico robertson in daylight; am safe inside starbucks, but the cops keep pulling up and unloading shotguns. I am guessing zombies.

I give myself points for using a semi-colon and keeping my sense of humor, but deduct points for not capping "Starbucks" or "Pico-Robertson." Also, if I'd had time to self-edit, I would have gone with "My guess? Zombies." 

The baristas locked us in, as much to keep us safe from any potential gunfire as to keep out the hot-coffee-seeking people who were still steadily streaming into the store as if there weren't cops with guns drawn surrounding us. But there was something very claustrophobic about being locked inside a Starbucks. Eventually the baristas realized they couldn't lock us in - that it was a smarter idea to close the store entirely until the situation had subsided. So that's what they did - basically telling us to leave.  

I walked out the side door with about five other bewildered people. We squinted at the sunlight and tried to figure out where we could go, because we couldn't go home and we couldn't stay here. I was on foot, so I hoofed it north, quickly, as a helicopter hovered overhead like a giant mosquito that I wouldn't try to swat.

But as I left the corner, I tweeted, which became the central piece of information in a report on LAist, to date the only publication online to mention it (mostly because the editor follows me on Twitter). I walked fast in the opposite direction - stopping for frozen yogurt at Toppings and then continuing north and east to the Old Navy at Beverly and La Cienega. So much for journalistic instincts about getting the story and finding out what happened. Christiane Amanpour...your job is safe. I fled the scene - when the going got tough, the tough went shopping.

As I continued to check in via social media, I learned different pieces of information - unverified, of course. It might have been a break-in gone bad; the perp might have been heavily armed; there might have been a hostage situation. All "might," because no one had any real information - it was all hearsay.

Several days later, there's still no report of it in any official news medium. It's almost like the whole thing was a dream. Some of my friends are still convinced it was a film - I maintain that you can't do that to the population of a neighborhood on a Sunday unless you warn them: posting signs, specifically getting permission from local business owners, etc. Los Angeles must have rules about such things.

Another disturbing moment: apparently Entertainment Weekly writer Michael Ausiello (@michaelausiello on Twitter) was across the street from me and we didn't get a chance to schmooze about how jealous I am of his work for EW. 

But I found myself shaking my head in wonder - I lived in New York for a decade, and have been to Israel myriad times (I'm convinced that the US State Department has the warning against visiting Israel laminated and hanging on a wall). I've walked through some sketchy neighborhoods at night, worked on the edge of Harlem, and been on the NYC subways during hours when no one should be awake, let alone underground. But it turned out that the least safe place to be was at the busiest intersection in my largely Jewish neighborhood, around 12:15 pm on a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon. The words "who knew?" don't even begin to cover it.

But I guess that's the human variable at work - it's not really the neighborhood, and not inherently the night time that's dangerous. A felon can just as easily leave his or her "bad neighborhood" and perpetrate crimes elsewhere, during the day, in broad daylight. Or as one of our IT people used to say at MTV Networks, "there's only one problem with computers: they're made by humans."

You can read my briefly tweeted reports (yes, that means me as human, using smartphone as computer, and then being the sole source of information from the scene) here. Were you there? Do you know what happened? Feel free to share your reports.

The First Rule of Babka Club...

The first rule of Babka Club? You don't talk about Babka Club. 

And the second rule of Babka Club: Why shouldn't you talk about Babka Club? What are you, crazy? It's a club, about babka. Besides, "if you don't join Babka Club, you must be meshugga!"

If you're like me, you always found yourself never wondering, why is there a wine, or beer club, but no club devoted to the "sweet, spongey yeast cake that is rolled, twisted and baked in a round pan"? Well, now - thanks to the Continental Kosher Bakery - there is.

Let the world know how much you love Babka (who doesn't?). Join the Babka Club and receive one fresh baked Babka of your choice, one Babka Club T- Shirt, and a Babka Club Lifetime Membership Certificate (suitable for framing!) As an added bonus, every time you come to Continental Kosher Bakery wearing your Babka Club T-Shirt, we'll give you 10% off your entire purchase (because members don't pay retail!).

If you're a purist, try the chocolate. If you're convinced that "cinnamon takes a backseat to no babka," try that flavor and see. And if you're really out there on the fringes of babka-lovers, try cherry or apple.

Babka Club goes perfectly with Kiddush Club. That is, if it's not banned in your community. 

This Babka Club is more like a discount program - it requires you to show up in person wearing your shirt. But if you're a hardcore babkateer or want your cakes delivered, be a Babka Maven. This "Beer-of-the-Month" style club delivers a babka every month to the person you love or are trying to kill via baked goods, and includes two of each flavor over the course of the year, plus four "seasonal varieties." (Suggest seasonal varieties flavors here, like: Hanukkah's Latka Vodka Babka, Passover's Matzah Babka, Purim's Babkatashen. etc.)

Socalled Movie Premiers at SXSW and on YouTube

If you've never heard of Socalled, you're missing a unique and weird talent whose music blends klezmer, hip-hop, funk and other elements in a fusion like you've never heard before. And now he's the subject of a new documentary, which will be released Tuesday on YouTube and screened at a special event at the SXSW festival (Maggie Mae's, 323 E. 6th Street, Austin, TX on Tuesday, March 16, 9pm- 1am, with a Socalled live performance @ 10PM). You can also view the trailer below, and you can rent from YouTube for $.99. 

Klezmer-hip hop maestro Socalled is a musician, producer, composer, arranger, magician, filmmaker, photographer and visual artist based in Montreal. Born in Ottawa and raised just north of there, in Chelsea, Quebec, he grew up taking piano lessons and loving funk and hip hop. When Socalled first heard klezmer music on an old Yiddish record, he was fascinated by the cool sounds he could sample to make hip hop beats. Then he realized that integrating this Jewish music from the 1930s into his songs was a way of representing himself and his cultural heritage. It enabled him bring something of his own to funk and hip hop, giving him what he calls "a real reason to make music." (from his bio)

 

Obama Moves State of the Union to Appease "Lost" Fans

I really love that headline, because it's not me being clever - it's true.

If you follow Presidential speech schedules, then you'll know that the next state of the Union address was supposed to be on February 2. And if you follow "Lost" (which, if you're reading this blog, you probably do), then you'll know that February 2 is the long-awaited return of everyone's favorite Island saga since the days of Gilligan. But luckily, Obama will be avoiding the wrath of "Lost" fans by rescheduling his address.

As the Washington Post reported:

The president of the United States apparently feels he needs the "Lost" voting bloc and therefore will not schedule his State of the Union address the same night that ABC had planned to air the two-hour season debut of the second-most-convoluted drama series in the history of TV. 

[...]"Lost" fanatics had their undies in a bunch Wednesday over news that the White House might push back the president's SOTU address to Feb. 2 to enable Obama to use a freshly signed health-care reform law as an audiovisual aid.

Yes, the Post said "undies in a bunch" - where are Woodward and Bernstein when we need them?

Now's a good time to remind you that I've made some wild predictions about season 6 based solely on the episode titles. Check it out, leave your comments and predict your own storylines. Nothing's too crazy...someone has to be right!