Dave’s Gone By Interview (5/28/2016): AL DUCHARME, BERNADETTE PAULEY, & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Dave Lefkowitz and Rabbi Sol Solomon interview comedians Al Ducharme & Bernadette Pauley

Topics include: comedy, marriage
Segment aired May 28, 2016 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.

All content (c)2016 TotalTheater Productions.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com

Dave’s Gone By #559 (5/28/2016): CHARME SCHOOL

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Here is the 559th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, May 28, 2016. Info: davesgoneby.com.

Host: Dave Lefkowitz

Guests: comedians Al Ducharme & Bernadette Pauley, Dave’s wife Joyce.
Featuring: Dave and Rabbi Sol Solomon chat with married comedians Bernadette Pauley & Al Ducharme. Plus: Inside Broadway, Greeley Crimes & Old Times, Saturday Segues (Wesley & Allen, In the News).

00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (Big Dave, voice changer, mic trouble, Weiner)
00:28:00 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES
00:58:00 GUESTS: Dave & Rabbi Sol Solomon interview Al Ducharme & Bernadette Pauley
01:44:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Wesley & Allen
02:17:00 INSIDE BROADWAY
02:43:30 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later
03:04:00 Sponsors
03:10:00 Friends
03:17:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – In the News
03:41:30 Weather
03:45:30 DAVE GOES OUT

May 28, 2016 Playlist: “Banks and Credit” (01:13:00; Bernadette Pauley). “Annoying Kids” (01:40:00; Al Ducharme). “Hell Bus” (01:48:30), “I am a Rock, I am a Roll” (01:54:00) “Shoot Me in the Ass (02:12:30; Wesley Willis). “Love Forgiven” (01:51:30) & “Refrain” (01:57:00; Allen Ginsberg). “Everlasting” (Barrett Wilbert Weed; 02:41:00). “It Ain’t Me, Babe” (02:45:30; Kesha). “Arthur McBride” (02:50:00) & “That Old Black Magic” (02:57:00; Bob Dylan). “Low” (03:18:00; R.E.M.). “I Got Mail” (03:22:30; Crank Yankers). “I Had a Dream” (03:25:00; Loudon Wainwright III). “Hiroshima” (03:28:00; Ben Folds). “Lake Song” (03:49:00; The Decemberists).

Al Ducharme & Bernadette Pauley
Wesley Willis
Allen Ginsberg

Dave’s Gone By #558 (5/21/2016): BRODY TO THE MAX

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Here is the 558th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, May 21, 2016. Info: davesgoneby.com.

Host: Dave Lefkowitz

Guest: humorist Dylan Brody, Dave’s wife Joyce.

Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews humorist Dylan Brody. Plus: Inside Broadway, Greeley Crimes & Old Times, Saturday Segue (In the News), Bob Dylan – Sooner & Later (fallen angels).

00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (shiva TV, wasp nest, new Dylan, 120, fish vs. meat, Carvel)
00:45:00 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES
01:17:00 DAVE GOES FURTHER IN w/ Joyce (Smelterites)
01:23:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – In the News
01:50:00 Sponsors
01:52:30 INSIDE BROADWAY
02:14:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Dylan Brody
03:20:30 Sponsors
03:23:00 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (fallen angels)
03:41:30 Friends
03:52:00 Weather
03:53:30 DAVE GOES OUT

May 21, 2016 Playlist: “4th and Vine” (01:24:30; Sinead O’Connor). “Airport Security” (01:28:00; Lewis Black). “Sue Egypt” (01:33:30; Captain Beefheart). “Mr. Ed Theme” (01:36:30; Jay Livingston). “Elegance” (02:10:00; Hello, Dolly! 1964 Broadway cast). “Heisenberg” (02:13:00), “Revolution 1” (03:14:00) & “Waiting Here” (03:15:00; Dylan Brody). “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” (03:25:00), “All the Way” (03:29:30) & “It Had to Be You” (03:33:00; Bob Dylan). “We’re Gonna Get Married” (03:56:00; Randy Newman).

Dylan Brody
Bob Dylan’s Fallen Angels

Dave’s Gone By Interview (5/21/2016): DYLAN BRODY & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews humorist Dylan Brody

Topics include: comedy, Paul Provenza, depression, Judaism, religion, Steve Allen, George Carlin, Garry Shandling, Robin Williams.

Segment aired May 21, 2016 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.

All content (c)2016 TotalTheater Productions.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com

Dave’s Gone By #557 (5/14/2016): SOL ‘N ZAL

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Here is the 557th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, May 14, 2016. Info: davesgoneby.com.

Guests: musician Zalmen Mlotek, Dave’s wife Joyce

Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Yiddish music maven Zalmen Mlotek (National Yiddish Theater – Folksbiene). Plus: Greeley Crimes & Old Times, Inside Broadway, Saturday Segues (John n’ Joey, In the News), Bob Dylan – Sooner & Later (blonde on blonde).

00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (technical difficulties, lightning)
00:25:30 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES
01:17:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – John n’ Joey
01:35:00 INSIDE BROADWAY
01:52:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Zalmen Mlotek
02:35:30 DAVE GOES FURTHER IN w/ Joyce (furry friends)
02:45:30 Sponsors
02:47:30 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (blonde on blonde)
03:13:00 Sponsors
03:16:00 Friends
03:23:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – In the News
03:48:00 Weather
03:49:30 DAVE GOES OUT

May 14, 2016 Playlist: “Burnin’ & Lootin'” (01:11:00; Bob Marley). “I’m a Little Dinosaur” (01:18:30), “My Love for Her ain’t Sad” (01:23:30) & “Action Packed” (01:27:00; Jonathan Richman). “I Just Want to Have Something to Do” (01:21:00) & “I Won’t Let it Happen” (01:25:00; The Ramones). “Always Will” (01:56:00; Steve Martin & Edie Brickell). “To Life and Renewal” (02:34:00; Zalmen Mlotek). “Temporary Like Achilles” (02:52:00), “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again (take 13)” (02:57:30) & “Just Like a Woman” (03:01:00; Bob Dylan). “Meet Me in the Bathroom” (03:24:30; The Strokes). “Goodbye to Romance” (03:27:00; Ozzy Osbourne). “The Meeting Place” (03:33:00; XTC). “To the Lightning” (03:52:00; Wussy).

Zalmen Mlotek
Jonathan Richman
Joey Ramone
Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde

Dave’s Gone By Interview (5/14/2016): ZALMEN MLOTEK & Rabbi Sol Solomon

Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).

Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Yiddish music maven Zalmen Mlotek

Topics include: National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene, Yiddish, Jewish, Shlomo Carlebach, Mandy Patinkin, Leonard Bernstein.

Segment aired May 14, 2016 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast. All content (c)2016 TotalTheater Productions.

More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com

More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #139 (5/8/2016): Donald Trump

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #139 (5/8/16): Donald Trump

Aired May 7, 2016 on Dave’s Gone By.  Youtube clip: https://youtu.be/UcZDJBjwbW8

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of May 8, 2016.

Just over a year ago, I did a Rabbinical Reflection about the 2016 presidential candidates for the Republican Party. There were a dozen and a half of them—remember? Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Scott Walker—a veritable who’s who of who’s hooligans.

Almost as an aside, I included the candidacy of Donald Trump. I said, and I quote, “Donald Trump, who went bankrupt three times and yet brands himself as a financial genius.  Donald Trump, who has a magnificent knack for self-promotion but spends money he doesn’t have like it’s going out of style—why isn’t he running as a Democrat?”

The idea of Donald Drumpf actually getting traction as a viable candidate, and the thought that more than a few flakes would vote for this narcissistic, self-aggrandizing Oompa Loompa was downright comical. And even if he did ride the cult of celebrity for awhile, you had fifteen other G.O.P. hopefuls with their own deluded followers. But then America happened. And the people rejected Chris Christie and his highway robbery. They rejected Marco Rubio the wind-up doll.  They rejected Ben Carson, who didn’t need anaesthesia during heart surgery because he could put patients to sleep just by talking to them.

By the time the conservative muckymucks realized that Donald Trump was not just a fad but a movement—and I don’t just mean the kind of movement I have every other morning if I’m lucky and drink my prune juice—by the time the powers that be of the G.O.P. realized their conservative groundswell was getting dug up by a real-estate developer, it was too late to stop him.

My God, their best shot was Ted Cruz, a man who couldn’t find one person to like him—even when he was looking in the mirror. Ted Cruz was a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, vehemently pro-Israel (God bless him for that), and seemingly in line with everything the Republican party wanted to roll back from the last eight years. And yet, not a single soul in the House or Senate wanted to work with him.  Former speaker of the house John Boehner called Ted Cruz, quote, “Lucifer in the flesh!” and “the most miserable son of a bitch” he ever worked with, unquote.  This from Boehner, a man who always behaved like he had a stick so far up his tushie, you could see splinters on his uvula.

And yet, this loathed and despised senator, Ted Cruz, was the Republicans’ last hope of putting one of their boys into the White House. Oh, wait, I’m forgetting about John Kasich.  Because we all forgot about John Kasich. The past three months, he should have just changed his name to something Chinese, like: “Oh Him Too.” Especially since his name was on ballots like those restaurants in Chinatown that keep items like putrefied eggs and pig bladders on the menu even though no one in their right minds would order them.

To be fair, Kasich seemed like he had a brilliant strategy compared to go-for-broke losers like Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz. Why spend money? Why knock yourself out in races you can’t individually win?  Just keep treading water, don’t make waves, and when it’s time for the contested convention, make your perfect dive. What Kasich didn’t realize is that voters saw through his shabby chicanery with Cruz and voted straight up for the man who wasn’t endorsed by the party, wasn’t owned by the Koch brothers, and wasn’t a career politician.

So when the dust settled last week, and the delegate votes were counted, the only candidate with a clear mandate was the one with the cloudiest agenda: Donald Trump. The clown had become the clown prince. This despite—or maybe because of—his penchant for school-bully insults and his crazy, off-the-cuff statements about the Klan and Mexicans and ugly women and pretty women being punished for their abortions. They used to call Reagan the Teflon president because everything stupid slid off him. Well, Trump is Teflon sprayed with Pam, coated with goose grease, and dipped in K.Y. Jelly. Whatever he says, his followers counter with, “He really speaks his mind” or “well, he may say one thing, but we know what he really means.” Do we?

Look, I’m the first to admit—or, if not the first, maybe the 12,030th—to admit that Donald Trump’s wildcard, shoot-from-the-lip status has a visceral appeal. If the two parties running, and usually ruining, the country for the past 30 years don’t approve, he must be good, right?  And being a great persuader, he appeals to our emotions—unlike Hilary, who appeals to, well, not even her husband.

But let’s not forget that Donald Trump is a man who promises a robust job market, and yet he grew famous from a TV show on which he fired everyone! This is a man who used to be pro-choice, but when he becomes a Republican, hup!, he suddenly turns anti-abortion. This is a man who vows to fix the country’s troubles by collaborating with the best and brightest, but he couldn’t even find enough intelligent minds to teach in a bogus university. This is a man who wants to keep out immigrants, unless they’re six feet tall, anorexic, and look good on a bearskin rug. This is a man who wants to help the little guy, by building casinos to take their money and hotel rooms that only movie stars can afford.

In other words, the wizard behind the curtain has done very, very well for himself. For others?  Not so much. For better or worse, we’ve spent the last eight years led by a community organizer who, perhaps naively, thought he could bring everyone together to solve problems. Are we now ready, instead, for a semi-benevolent dictator who thinks he knows everything and whose answer for every crisis is, “It’ll be amazing. It’ll be beautiful. Believe me.”

We’d like to believe you, Donald. We’d like to believe in something. But 240 years of politics, not to mention the Bernie Sanders campaign, have taught us the futility of belief. And I’m a Rabbi saying this! So if the votes are counted on November 8th, and America chooses the bloviating, thoughtless TV star over the jilted, calumniating harridan, all we can do is what we always do every four years on January 20th: pray.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York.  

(c) 2016 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

Dave’s Gone By #556 (5/7/2016): THE MAYFLOWER

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Here is the 556th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired May 7, 2016. Info: davesgoneby.com.

Featuring: Inside Broadway (Tony nominations), Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Refection (Donald Trump), Saturday Segues (In the News, Robert Johnson), Bob Dylan – Sooner & Later (moms), Greeley Crimes & Old Times.

Guest: Dave’s wife Joyce

00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN (graduation day)
00:22:30 SATURDAY SEGUE (Robert Johnson)
00:42:30 Sponsors
00:50:00 INSIDE BROADWAY (Tony nominations)
01:51:30 Sponsors
01:54:30 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (moms)
02:16:00 Friends
02:31:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #139 (Donald Trump)
02:41:00 Weather
02:42:30 SATURDAY SEGUE (In the News)
03:09:30 GREELEY CRIMES & OLD TIMES
03:37:00 DAVE GOES OUT w/ Joyce

May 8, 2016 Playlist: “Terraplane Blues” (00:27:30; Canned Heat). “Stones in My Passway” (00:30:30) & “Love in Vain Blues (Alternate)” (00:35:30; Robert Johnson). “Malted Milk Blues” (00:33:00; Lucinda Williams). “If I were a Rich Man” (01:43:00; Fiddler on the Roof 2016 Broadway cast w/ Danny Burstein). “Lonesome Day Blues” (01:56:30), “Tough Mama” (02:04:00) & “Lord Protect My Child” (02:08:00; Bob Dylan). “Candidate” ({alternate version] 02:43:30; David Bowie). “Alberta” (02:48:30; The Kingston Trio). “My Mother’s Brisket” (02:51:00; Rick Moranis). “Dead Flowers” ({alternate version} 02:55:00; The Rolling Stones).

Robert Johnson
Donald Trump
2016 Tony Nominations