Rabbi Sol Solomon’s celebrity interviews, Rabbinical Reflections (sermons), songs, and other appearances on the show.
INDEX: http://davesgoneby.net/?p=25407
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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actress Molly Ringwald
Topics include: John Hughes, jazz, swing, Brat Pack. Segment scheduled to air April 30, 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
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 24, 2016.
Among the great inventions of mankind are the wheel, the lever, the polio vaccine, and the computer microchip. But let’s not leave out one of my favorite all-time creations. Something so simple yet so perfectly imperfect. Something both great and crummy — pun intended.
You take flour and water, mix them together, roll it flat flat flat—flatter than a ten-year-old’s training bra—poke the dough with tiny holes, and push it into a super-hot, dry oven. After a couple of agonizing minutes, shazam! Matzoh! Somehow, this flour-and-water combo doesn’t turn into pita bread, it doesn’t become olive loaf, it doesn’t blossom into a Pepperidge Farm cookie. It just stays matzoh, and that’s good enough for me. Almost.
See, you can get Streit’s or Horowitz-Margareten or Manischewitz and other commercial brands of matzoh, and they’ll get you through the Passover holiday just fine. You make matzoh brei, where you dip it in egg; you can crumble it and make matzoh-meal pancakes, which iHop would not be remiss in adding to their international breakfasts. Dear God, they make chocolate-covered matzoh, which sounds gross, but hey, if they can do it with crickets and bumble bees, why not the bread of affliction? (Chocolate-covered matzoh is not to be confused, by the way, with chocolate matzoh, which is just a giant chocolate bar made into the shape of a matzoh. In other words, a thousand times better. Chocolate-covered matzoh is to chocolate matzoh as a gold-plated watch is to a Rolex. If you promise your grandchildren chocolate matzoh, but you give them the chocolate covered, don’t expect them to visit you in the nursing home years later.)
But I digress. Matzoh is a tasty, non-nutritional but sustaining food meant to remind us of the bread our ancestors ate when they high-tailed it out of Egypt. `Cuz when you’re leavin’ hasty, you ain’t got time for pastry.
However, my reflection today is not just about matzoh; it’s about a special version of matzoh. The platinum standard, if you will. And I will. When I’m conducting a seder, or kicking back watchin’ baseball during chol hamoed, I want me some shmura matzoh! That’s the stuff! That’s the bread of affection! It’s the same flour and water, the same procedures. But with shmura matzoh, the harvested grain is guarded from the very first second it’s plucked to the moment the Rabbi slides it and its compadres out of the oven.
Shmura matzoh is the ultimate homemade bread. No machines, no slicer cutting the edges into right angles. No opening a box where every piece looks like a ceiling tile in a suburban office. Shmuras are individually mixed, rolled, and baked. And they don’t look beautiful or symmetrical. They’re lumpy, they’re brittle, often overcooked, and the burnt parts are all over the place. In fact, shmura matzohs are so ugly, they could replace Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.
But oy my God, are they delicious! There’s something so real and so pure about them. Everything else you get in the store is machine-pressed, dye-cut, flushed with preservatives, and so far away from actual food, you’re not even sure what the hell you’re eating. With shmura matzoh you taste three things: flour, water, and Rabbi sweat.
Now there’s all sorts of hoo-ha/doo-dah rules about using shmura matzohs. You’re supposed to eat them only at the seder and no other time — not even the rest of the holiday. I’m sorry, but at $17 a box with six pieces of bread in it, I’ll eat it on Christmas if I want to. Also, since the matzoh is utilized during the seder ceremony — including breaking it for the afikomen, the bread has to be complete, unbroken. You think it was tough for the Jews to cross the Nile out of Egypt? Try getting a one-millimeter cracker from a Brooklyn factory to a Staten Island dinner table without having a few oopsies.
Still, it’s worth it because shmura matzohs are the bomb. Yes, they’re impossible to butter, and they don’t actually break in half; they splinter — leaving shards of crumbs everywhere you look. But I don’t care; their deliciousness trumps all. I mean, on Passover, we have to eat raw horseradish, and then we have to take yummy charoset and ruin it by mixing it with horseradish, and then for eight days: no pizza, no pretzels, no ravioli, no danish, no muffins, no waffles, no wafers, no hoagies, no heroes, no oatmeal, no beer. So if I want a piece of homecooked unleavened bread that looks like a manhole cover but tastes like Judaism, I will seek no further than shmura matzohs. Mmm mmm flavorless — and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York. A zissen Pesach to ya.
Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews The Bronzing King, Bob Kaynes
Topics include: baby shoes, bronzing. Segment scheduled to air April 23, 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
Click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews singer-songwriter Tom Chapin
Topics include: Harry Chapin, Pete Seeger, children’s music, fracking. Segment scheduled to air April 2, 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
Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews musician Graham Parker
Topics include: rock, Mystery Glue, Stiff Records. Segment aired April 16, 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
Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actor-playwright Vincent Pastore
Topics include: Mama’s Chair, The Sopranos, Woody Allen, Bullets Over Broadway, Renegade Theater.
Segment aired March 26, 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
Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews comedian Alicia Dattner
Topics include: The Oy of Sex, sex, Judaism, Eugene Mirman.
Segment scheduled to air March 19, 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
Click above to listen to the interview (audio only).
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews musician Paddy Moloney
Topics include: The Chieftains, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Claddagh Records.
Segment aired March 12, 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
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 6th, 2016.
Lost in all the hoopla of the primaries and the caucuses and the polls and the insults—and Donald Trump having his pole insulted—is another news story: a happy one, one that should make America proud. No, I’m not talking about Cam Newton getting spanked in the Super Bowl. I’m referring to Scott Kelly, brave American astronaut, who returned to planet earth last week after spending 11 months in outer space.
Think about that. 340 days floating high up in the universe. I can’t spend an hour in TJ Maxx without wanting to bite my own face off, and this guy willingly survives a whole year living in what is essentially a schmekel-shaped motor home.
Why did he do it? Not for personal gain, not to make a million bucks, not to pick up chicks—although I’ve heard the women on Neptune are kinda slutty. No, he did it for science, for the sheer joy of exploration and education. After all, it’s not like Kelly was setting a record. The longest time orbiting away from earth was 438 days by Valeri Polyakov in 1994. And back then, spending a year and a half away from Russia was a plus! Why come home? To see Boris Yeltsin vomit on his shoes? To rejoice when the supermarket has two kinds of toilet paper?
Of course, it’s easy to make fun of the old Soviet Union. “What a country!” See? I just did Yakov Smirnov’s whole act. But we must ask similar questions about astronaut Scott Kelly. He’s been gone since March 27th of last year. What did he miss? Let’s see: The Mayweather/Pacquiao fight. An Amtrak derailment. Cops killing black people. A redneck killing a church full of black people. An Academy Awards full of token black people. San Bernadino. Planned Parenthood. Isis on the warpath, Jon Stewart and David Letterman off the TV, Mets lose the Series, Bowie goes bye-bye, Chipotle gives you diarrhea, mosquitoes give you babies with tiny heads, and Michigan water kills you. Welcome back to earth, Scott Kelly!
Remember that old song, “Eve of Destruction?” Fifty years ago, P.F. Sloan nailed it with his lyrics: “You may leave here for four days in space / But when you return, it’s the same old place.” (Although gas is a little cheaper.) The point is: after all that time in the stratosphere, Scott Kelly comes back to the same crumbling bridges, the same reality shows, the same divided country, the same big blue marble getting knocked away from the center of the universe.
And if you’re wondering just how prescient “Eve of Destruction” was, look at the other lyrics: “Hate your next-door neighbor” – No need to hate; just build a wall to keep them from becoming our dishwashers and fruitpickers. And “don’t forget to say grace”—because Evangelicals have done so much with their prayers to help and unite this country.
As for Scott Kelly, he still has to re-integrate into what we laughingly call “society.” In fact, before he goes home, NASA will study him to suss out the long-term effects of space travel on mental and physical health. The goal is to figure out what shape astronauts might have to be in to go all the way to Mars. Which again goes back to the good side of space travel. Yes, it costs bazillions of dollars that could go to boosting minimum wage. Yes, it sometimes seems the only thing NASA ever gave us was moon rocks and Tang . . . and that psycho-astrogirl who wore a diaper. But learning more about the universe is always good, even if it’s just to discover that Pluto’s been screwing with us and had no intention of being a planet in the first place. And don’t get me started on Uranus. At least not in public.
So baruch hashav, Scott Kelly! Your home state of New Jersey is giving you a ticker tape parade. No, wait, that’s Governor Christie shredding his career.
In his first interview since touching down on terra firma, Kelly said that without question, he would go back into space again. Who knows? He might stay a year, two years up there. And we still won’t have a new Supreme Court justice.
You know what, Scott? If you do go back, take me with you. I can’t cook, I don’t clean, I can’t fix equipment, and I know nothing about the galaxy. But I can count backwards from 10, I can dress as a banana—so if you’ve still got that gorilla suit, there’s tons of levity right there, and I keep shabbos, so you’d have a day of rest after all that scientific record-keeping stuff. And hey, maybe I can help you colonize Mars. After all, President Trump is gonna need somewhere to put all the refugees.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York.
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 28th, 2016.
Tyrant. Psychotic. Sociopath. Hypospadius sufferer. Yes, all these adjectives describe the single greatest villain of the previous century: Adolf Hitler. “What is hypospadius?”, I hear you say. Micropenis!
That’s right. The Austrian-born, German chancellor who wanted to rule the world had a teeny, tiny, itsby-bitsy, nearly microscopic shmeckel. Awwww. According to the new book, “Hitler’s Last Day: Minute by Minute”—which should be called “Inch by Inch!”—Der Fuhrer’s frankfurter was so small – “how small was it?” – it was so small, he had to pee sitting down because basically, there was no dick; there was just a hole near the base of his wang.
They call that Penile Hypospadius. Sounds like the name of a Greek lawyer but no, it’s a rare condition where the urethra—that little tube that sucks urine and spooge out of the bladder—the urethra opens on the underside of the winkie. In other words, if Adolf were to pish standing up, he’d just be making lemonade in his lederhosen.
And by the way, that longtime rumor has also been proven true: Hitler did have just one testicle. Well, one visible, working testicle. The other just never came down. It was up there, floating behind his belly button, kinda like a yo-yo caught in a tree.
So what does this all mean in terms of who Hitler was and the calamities he caused? I dunno, but if I got out of the shower every day, looked down and saw a knuckle on the end of my balls, I’d hate the universe, too. It is known that Hitler had strange relationships with women and took all kinds of drugs and treatments to boost his virility. They say he’d even get injections of bull semen. Go figure; with Nazis, the blood has to be pure, but the jizz? Anything goes.
What I don’t understand is: If Hitler had a chip on his shoulder – because he had no whip on his boulders – shouldn’t he have been mad at the schvartzes instead of the Jews? He’d be jealous of Italians and black men with Howitzers in their Hanes. Why pick on Jewish guys, who aren’t exactly known for hiding salamis in their pajamis? Yes, we do have the outliers like Milton Berle and David Duchovny . . . and myself . . . but for the most part, if a Jewish guy with a boner walks into a wall, he’s still gonna break his nose.
If Adolf Hitler, The Great Dicklesstator, had embraced the Jewish nation and commiserated with them on their puny putzes, what a different world this would have been! Instead of making Jews into lampshades, he would have rolled up lampshades to make prosthetic peckers. Instead of hard labor, he’d put in the labor to get hard. Instead of herding people into gas chambers, he’d join them in therapy sessions. They’d all hug and confess to stuffing kielbasas down their pants to impress waitresses at Oktoberfest. No World War II, no Holocaust, no Berlin Wall . . . we’d still have the accordion, but you take the victories you can.
Perhaps it’s too Freudian to suggest that Hitler compensated for his wee willie winkle by building phallic missiles and having the whole country salute him by holding their arms stiff and erect. But then again, maybe there’s something to it. Look who else attacked us in the Second World War: the Japanese. We all know they’ve got nothing between their legs but broken chopsticks.
Now, causality/shmausality; we’re not giving Hitler a pass for his actions because of his inadequacy. We can, however, tell some really tasteless jokes at his expense. For example:
What did they call Adolf Hitler’s last orgasm? The final so-lotion.
What did Hitler have in common with the Jews? They both looked awful coming out of the shower.
Why was Hitler so afraid of acne? One time he got a hard-on, and a dermatologist tried to pop it.
Why was Hitler better at basketball than Jesse Owens? Jesse could run, but Hitler dribbled.
Why was Hitler a bad shortstop? Because he always started with two foul balls, one of which was out of play.
What’s the difference between Poland and Eva Braun? Hitler could get into Poland.
Why was Hitler always borrowing Eva’s tweezers? To masturbate.
Why was Hitler banned from Eva Braun’s kitchen? He got his dick caught in the spaghetti strainer.
Did Hitler suffer from polio? No, he had smallcox.
Was Hitler brutal to his mistresses? No, he was a softie.
Why did Hitler use an IBM computer? Because he didn’t have a Wang.
Why was Hitler so stubborn? `Cause he couldn’t budge an inch.
Why did Hitler buy a goldfish? So he could finally get a decent blowjob. Think about it.
Why was Robin Williams better than Hitler? At least he was hung.
Well, I did warn you that they were tasteless. But, what? You’re gonna get offended because I made fun of Hitler? Remind me not to bust out my Son of Sam jokes; they’re quite disrespectful to the poor guy.
Seriously, though, the thought of Adolf Hitler, architect of the Third Reich, feeling freakish and ashamed, sexually useless, and driven to desperate and painful measures . . . kinda gives me a stiffy. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go surprise my dear wife, Miriam Libby, and give her my three magnificent inches of Hebrew National salami. I know it ain’t much, but when I use it right, she kicks up a fuhrer.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York. Heil me!
