Dave’s Gone By Interview (2/22/2014): JACK CASADY & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews musician Jack Casady

Topics include: Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, Woodstock, Jorma Kaukonen, bass.

Segment aired Feb. 22, 2014 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)2014 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 #93 (2/23/2014): RadioShack

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #93 (2/23/2014): RadioShack

(aired Feb. 22, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch on youtube: http://youtu.be/vwjERWIpR_8)

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 23rd, 2014.

I can understand why some people like to bash Justin Bieber or Kim Kardashian, because they’re famous for being famous, and their lifestyles are flaunted before us on every webpage, magazine cover and police blotter in America. And I can understand why some folks hammer Barack Obama, because all Democrats are evil communists who don’t like country music. What I don’t understand is why are so many pundits kicking RadioShack while it’s down?

RadioShack: a place to buy wires and couplers and splitters – if you’re into that sort of thing. A local store where you can grab what you need to hook up a TV, solder your speakers, snag a flashlight or a flash drive, or pick up batteries or a clock radio or a spare mouse – in case your cat is bored. And yet people are taking schadenfreudic glee at the problems RadioShack has been having in the marketplace.

With everyone listening to music on iPods and Bose boxes, the public demand for transistor AM radios in perforated leather cases has been admittedly waning. And with televisions all hooked up to one giant cable oligopoly or other, nobody’s using rabbit ears except…rabbits. RadioShack also sells higher-ticket items, like TV’s and cell phones, but there they have to compete with Target and Wal-Mart, which, at this stage, is like little David going up against not just Goliath, but his friends, the Green Goblin and Mothra.

Media types have been laughing at RadioShack, especially their Super Bowl TV commercial, which was a nostalgic throwback to the 1980s. “Brilliant,” the pundits said, “You’re a store that consumers think hasn’t had new merchandise since 1983…and you’re making them think of 1983!” The stock price of RadioShack is so low, Mexican day laborers could buy a thousand shares and have money left over for pizza. And the truly tragic thing: 500 RadioShack stores will be closing by the end of 2014. That’s a lot of geeks out of work, so if you’re walking down a dark alley next year and find yourself being mugged by a 60-year-old with bad asthma and a pocket protector, you know where he used to work.

I have to say, my recent experiences at RadioShack have been most pleasant. I didn’t buy anything, but the employees were very nice, and I liked looking at the mini-tape recorders, the plugs, the iPhone cases, the hand-cranked victrolas… I’m kidding, and honestly, 8-track tape players took up only two shelves way in the back.

But seriously, cheering the downfall of RadioShack is like a guppy in a fish tank going, “Yay, the bubble-making clam broke.” The fish may still have a pirate treasure chest and a coral tower, but there’ll be one less item providing oxygen in his aquasphere. If Radio Shack goes the way of Loehmann’s, Robert Hall, the dodo and the American middle class, we’ll be one step closer to Wallyworld owning the world. Sure, you can buy everything on the interwebs now, but are we really at the point where you buy a TV or an iPad or a smartphone without ever actually seeing it first? Instead you just watch some homemade instruction video on youtube and hope for the best. Who knew that American enterprise would ultimately follow the same business model as mail-order brides?

For all the people who are mocking radio shack and scolding them for not changing with the times – what do you suggest they do? Sell cars? Put in a coffee nook? Hold singles nights by the walky-talky aisle? What good is changing your marketing when you’re moribund? I mean, Blockbuster could give away all the free popcorn in the world, it wasn’t gonna bring VCRs back.

Scuttlebutt is: the only way RadioShack can save itself is by going – not bigger, but smaller. Cater to a niche market of hobby people, folks who tinker with robots, electronics and 3-D printing. They’re your best bet to compete with Best Buy. Even in this day and age, when everything’s been thought of, patented and plugged in an infomercial, crackpot inventors are still out there, touching the red wire to the blue circuit while the hydrogen compound bubbles on the stove. Yes, that’s also the way to make Hot Pockets, but mainly, it’s how we became the greatest, most ambitious country in the world. Eggheads with messy garages; they still exist. Radio Shack just needs to rope them in – or at least sell their older brothers airplane glue, `cause with heroin getting such a bad rap, you know that stuff’ll come back.

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

(c) 2014 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27800

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #92 (2/16/2014): Sochi

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #92 (2/16/2014): Sochi

aired Feb. 15, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch on youtube: http://youtu.be/gkJUPHw8uGY

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 16th, 2014.

Is there anything less interesting in the world than the Winter Olympics? I’m sorry, but everyone in this half of the hemisphere is sitting at home, running the oil burner, looking at the grim skies and just waiting for the first signs of spring. The last thing we wanna do is turn on the TV and see more snow. If I’m on the couch in my footy-pjs, sipping a cocoa and skimming the Talmud, and I wanna take a break, I’m gonna put on “Baywatch,” maybe the Golf Channel, the 80th re-run of “Point Break.” What I don’t want to see is athletes bundled up from head to tuchas, zhoozhing down mountains of snow, and then talking to reporters where you can see their breath coming out of their mouths and congealing in the air. If breath could spell, it would spell out, “Help! Hypothermia! Why didn’t I take up parasailing?”

Still, winter or otherwise, the Olympic idea is ideal: have countries from all over the world, even ones with political differences, put their very best amateur athletes on an international stage, and let’s all enjoy playing and watching. How can you beat it? Of course, the distance between the Olympics’ idealization and its ideation is like the distance between Democracy and Congress. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The Olympics were supposed to be an oasis from the world’s evils. But half the time it’s become a petri dish where the bad guys hog the microscope. In 1936, Hitler hosted the Olympics in Munich as a way of proving the superiority of the master race. Yes, it was wonderful that the American schvartze Jesse Owens ruined his day, but the fact that they held the Olympics at all was a decision so questionable, even the guys who designed the Titanic had to be shaking their heads going, “What the fick were they thinking?”

And then in 1972, it was back to Germany – because what better place to espouse peace and racial equality, right? And what a perfect worldwide stage for Arab terrorists to go kill all the Israeli athletes. Olympic officials were confronted with a decision: stop the games, do a big funereal tribute, and hunt down the animals responsible – or wear black for a day and keep the games going. Guess which one they chose?

And so, ever since then, the Olympics have proved a lightning rod for political disputes and threats from groups that put religion before human rights – which is pretty much the entire Muslim world. As of this writing (and speaking), the winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, have been on high-terrorism alert. The Islamists were kind enough to give us an early heads-up on the violence – by bombing a train station and a trolley in Volgograd back in December. So thoughtful of them. They murdered only 34 people – which for them is an appetizer – and a week later, the Russian police killed the guy responsible. But no question, this was a yellow stickie posted on the calendar of the Olympics reading, “Hello. We’re Jihad. We drank your orange juice and broke a lamp. We’ll be back soon with the destruction of the entire Western World. Your pal, Mohammed.”

So we want to commend the Russians and Vladimir Putin for taking a no-tolerance, “we will bury you” approach to security at the Sochi games. Unfortunately, the pat on Putin’s back has to stay above the waist, because he is also responsible for a recent Russian law that bans the promotion of non-traditional lifestyles. In other words, you can’t teach kids under 18 that it’s okay to be gay, or lesbian, or transsexual, or a furry. Russia’s deputy prime minister defended the law saying it’s a way to protect children. But then why not simply make a law that says, “Don’t touch children?” If you have trouble with the wording, ring up Dylan Farrow. But Putin’s law is more insidious, it’s branding the lifestyle of 10-to-15 percent of the population as abnormal, unhealthy and dangerous to you – unlike such healthy activities Russian teens are exposed to at a young age, like vodka shots, smoking and poverty.

After the glory years of Gorbachev, sadly, Russia has moved backwards towards its old police-state days, but so did we under Dubya Bush. The church’s last Pope was in the Hitler youth, but the new guy is preaching love and tolerance. Kind of like the four – er, five Olympic circles, the world turns and turns, so maybe the next dictator after Putin will keep his shirt on and his hands off.

Until that time, it is with mixed feelings that I wish the 2014 Winter Olympics well, with good sportsmanship, fair judging, no terrorism and lots and lots of curling – oh, I love curling. As far as homosexuality, well, the opening ceremonies featured thousands of toned athletes in tight costumes with bright rainbow colors, waving flags and parading around to loud thumpy music and confetti. What could be more gay than that?

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

(c) 2014 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

—> https://wp.me/pzvIo-289

Dave’s Gone By Interview (2/15/2014): TIPPI HEDREN and Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actress Tippi Hedren

Topics include: Alfred Hitchcock, The Birds, Marnie, Charlie Chaplin, animals, ROAR.

Segment aired Feb. 15, 2014 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)2014 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 #91 (2/9/2014): SodaStream and ScarJo

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #91 (2/9/2014): SodaStream and ScarJo

aired Feb. 8, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/rxtEvftNrTU 

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 8th, 2014.

So many times in my Rabbinical Reflections, I am forced to take celebrities over my metaphorical knee and spank them for their misdeeds and maladjustments. Justin Bieber, Charlie Sheen, Ryan Dunn, Lance Armstrong – the list is an embarrassment of Richie Riches. I am delighted, therefore, to offer something different this week: a Hollywood star with a good head on her shoulders. She also has good shoulders and a great rack. But I come to praise Scarlett Johansson – not for the bubbles on her chest, but for the bubbles in her glass. She is the spokesperson for SodaStream, a company that helps you carbonate your own water, so you can make your own soft drinks.

Half-Jewish on her mother’s side – which makes her all-Jewish to me – Scarlett Johannson is one of the most glamorous actresses in Hollywood. She’s so hot, Woody Allen actually looked away from a 10-year-old to make her his muse. And she’s so in-demand, she can pick and choose what she wishes to advertise or promote. Her latest choice? Seltzer. What could be more Jewish than that? Only, it isn’t called “seltzer” anymore. It’s called “sparkling water” or, if you’re a lower tax bracket, “soda.” Back in the day, we used to call it “two cents plain,” but now nothing’s plain when you’re trying to sell it, and the only thing you can buy for two cents these days is one penny.

Anyhoo, in 1991, Peter Wiseburgh, a nice Jewish boy from Israel, bought SodaStream from Cadbury-Schweppes and made it the biggest purveyor of shpritz in the world. You don’t want to pay two dollars for a liter of Coca Cola? You don’t want all the caffeine and sugar of Pepsi? Can’t bring yourself to try that Mexican pineapple soda because, well, it’s Mexican pineapple soda? You buy a machine that looks like a mixer, then you get these canisters of carbon dioxide. In goes the glass of water, in goes the syrup, mix it up and voila – in three minutes you have a glass of soda … that would have taken you ten seconds to pour from a Coke can, but nevertheless. With Sodastream, you can control the level of carbonation and the amount of goo. Plus, you’re not opening a giant cola bottle that in three days goes flatter than Debra Messing in a sports bra.

So there is much to recommend in the home-made soda idea and the Sodastream company, which has factories all over the world, including three in Israel. And ay, there’s the rub. Two of the factories are in parts of Israel that the Arabs don’t think belong to Israel. Granted, the Arabs don’t think any of Israel belongs to Israel, but in this case, they’re specifically talking about the so-called “occupied territories” – land that Israel won, fair and square, in wars fought decades ago. I know I sound like a broken record – and for you kids out there, a record is a round vinyl thing with a hole in it that your grandparents used to play music on. Look it up. Anyhoo, I’ve said time and again that the Palestinians have millions of other miles they can live on, so if they feel oppressed in a Jewish state, they can get themselves a two-hump U-haul and move.

Still, they bitch and moan about Israel occupying land – it’s not “occupied,” shitheads, it’s annexed. And if you want Israel to bulldoze homes and let go of it, you damn well better give us peace in return. And maybe a few of those 70 virgins you’re always talking about, just to sweeten the deal.

One organization taking up the misguided cause against Israel is something called Oxfam. No, that’s not Gabourey Sidibe’s parents, it’s a non-profit initially formed to fight the war against poverty all over the world. Somehow, alas, the honorable mandate to feed the hungry morphed into a more vague “human-rightsy” sort of a thing, which slid into a political agenda and has now warped into anti-Israel propaganda. Oxfam wants people to boycott Sodastream because the factories are making beverages on land where the Palestinians should rightfully be making bombs. Defenders of Sodastream say the hundreds of Arabs who work at the company are well-treated, make a decent wage and have a life they could never aspire to beforehand.

So where does Scarlet Johansson belong in all this? Well, in my bedroom, if life were fair – but no, the actress was caught up in the controversy because she was an ambassador for Oxfam. I say “was” because last week she handed in her resignation. Why? Because ScarJo is also the spokeswoman for Sodastream. She even did a sexy commercial for them that debuted during the Super Bowl! She’s wearing a bathrobe and sucking on a straw. You don’t have to be Freud to know what’s really going on…she’s thirsty! For soda!

When the Oxfammished begged her to drop the company, Scarlet Johansson dropped them, citing, quote, “a fundamental difference of opinion,” unquote. That’s legalspeak for: “I’m Jewish, you’re idiots, the West Bank is part of Israel, Israel is a Jewish homeland, Sodastream are the good guys, and in the interest of international peace, I really should tweet more homemade nude photos on the internet.” Okay, I added that last part, but you know what I’m saying.

Ironically, the Scarlett Johansson Sodastream ad was nearly censored from the Super Bowl. Not by Oxfam or for any political reason, but because she mentioned Coke and Pepsi, and CBS crapped itself worrying that those monster advertisers would pull out if they heard their product being disparaged by the actress who played Natasha in “The Avengers.” The ad stayed, but the line was cut. I guess we know who has the real political power in this country…

But Scarlett Johansson, for being a mensch and standing your ground – that ground being the holy sand of Eretz Yisroel — I toast you holding a glass brimming with Sodastream. Mmmmmm good. Actually, it’s Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray, don’t tell anybody.

Thank you ScarJo. This has been RebSolSol coming to you from TempSoBi, Great Neck, NeeYo.

(c) 2014 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27843

Dave’s Gone By Interview (2/8/2014): DEE WALLACE & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actress Dee Wallace

Topics include: E.T., healing, Cujo, Steven Spielberg, Wes Craven.

Segment aired Feb. 22, 2014 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)2014 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 Interview (2/1/2014): MIKE BALL & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews humor columnist Mike Ball

Topics include: newspapers, writing, Dr. Mike and the Sea Monkeys, water skiing.

Segment aired Feb. 1, 2014 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)2014 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 #90 (2/1/2014): Justin Bieber

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #90 (2/1/2014): Justin Bieber

aired Feb. 1, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/GFDVqqkxzg8

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 2nd, 2014.

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I am not a Belieber. Oh yes, I am a believer in God, in the Torah, in chicken soup when you’re sick – but I am not a Justin Bieber belieber. I don’t listen to his music, since I’m more of a Moishe Koussevitzky fan, and his exploits do not interest me.

If Justin Bieber gets a tattoo, or shtups a model, or posts a selfie from the hood of his Lambo, more power to him for living the high life. When I was 19 years old, I was in Yeshiva studying Talmud, I was suffering through clarinet lessons, I was in bed sleeping by 10pm…because I didn’t have a girlfriend.

If I had $20 million at that age, would I have done things differently? You’re damn right I would have! My God, I would have bought the Streits Matzoh factory and had chocolate-covered matzoh every day of the year. I’d have tricked out my Volvo with curtains and a practice bimah. I’d have bribed ushers for backstage passes to every Yaffa Yarkoni concert in the tri-State area. Would I have gotten tattoos? No, that’s a religious no-no. Plus, how would I really feel about a tramp stamp of Marvin Hamlisch when I’m 50?

But with that kind of money, sure, I might get a little meshiggeh. And having young girls clawing at me and screaming – and not screaming `rape!’ – of course that would go to my head, and I would sample the pleasures of the flesh and the fleshures of the plesh. I do not begrudge Justin Bieber any of these sybaritic activities that he has earned by making music that pushes teenage girls right past puberty into menopause.

However, this past week, little Justin crossed the line. He was arrested in Miami Beach for DUI, drag racing, driving without a license and mouthing off to cops. When he was yanked, bleary-eyed from his yellow Lamborghini, he said, “Why do you have to search me? What is this about?” And two seconds later he told the police, “Oh, by the way, I’m high, I’ve been drinking, and I’m on a couple of prescription medications.” Somewhere a prosecuting attorney is on his knees in shul saying, “Thank you, God. Sometimes you send them to us gift-wrapped.”

Now, much as I hate giving anyone who sings songs with titles like “Beauty and a Beat,” “Baby” and “Eenie Meenie” the benefit of the doubt, if Justin Bieber wasn’t impaired that night, then this is just another case of the media looking to crash the monster it created. Yes, Bieber was a putz for mouthing off at the cops. If he’d been poor and black, he’d still be searching for his teeth on the sidewalk. But if he wasn’t drunk or high and was just driving a little too fast, give the guy a ticket, get his autograph for your kids, and be done with it.

However, if Justin Bieber was driving under even a mild, chemically induced goofiness, then throw the book at him – not because he’s famous, but because he’s a danger to others. In one of my early Rabbinical Reflections, I took some heat for kicking Ryan Dunn’s corpse before it was even cold. Who was Ryan Dunn? He was one of the “Jackass” crew on TV – men who would do crazy, stupid, dangerous things to each other for poops and giggles. These were consenting friends under controlled circumstances; who am I to say, “what the hell is wrong with you?” Especially when they’re funny. But nobody was laughing when Ryan Dunn poured himself into his Porsche and zoomed into a tree. Not only he died, but the guy in the passenger seat died, too. As Roger Ebert tweeted at the time, “Friends don’t let jackasses drive drunk.”

I have no sympathy for Dunn, or Paul Walker, or Justin Bieber if he put himself in the same situation. When I’m tootling down the highway in my 1996 Ford Fiesta, I wanna know that every other person on the road is being as neurotically careful as I am. At 50 miles per hour, a car is just a gun with wheels; point it in the wrong direction, and you’ve committed suicide and/or murder and/or skyrocketing insurance premiums.

Figuratively speaking, many have said that Justin Bieber is on a crash course, speeding out of control towards a Lohanesque junk-heap. I wish him no harm so long as he does no harm to others. Remember, this is the boy who said that if Anne Frank were still alive, she would be a Belieber – meaning, in his obnoxious, self-absorbed way – that she’d be a typical teenage girl with posters on the wall, bubblegum music on her iPod, and, presumably, 200 stuffed animals on her bed. Of course, this is a ridiculous statement. First of all, if Anne Frank were truly alive today…she’d be kicking and pounding at the lid of her coffin. Also, she’d be 85 years old, which means her musical tastes would have settled somewhere between Glenn Miller and Chubby Checker. The only posters on her wall would be a reminder for her medications and a calendar from the nearest Jewish funeral home. As far as liking Justin Bieber’s music, for gosh sakes, this woman lost her mother and her sister in the Holocaust and coughed herself to death in a concentration camp at age 15. Didn’t she suffer enough?

People who hate Justin Bieber just for being Justin Bieber, are saying he should be deported. We should send him back to Canada. Why? So he can spend all his millions across the border and let Canadian strippers, casinos and car dealers reap the benefits? I say, give the teeny-botcher the benefit of a doubt; let him stay – unless they prove he was drunk or stoned in that car. If he was, handcuff him and put him in the first trolley heading to Quebec. Oh, and just for fun, make David Cassidy drive.

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

(c) 2014 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27848

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #89 (1/26/2014): Hiroo Onoda

click above to listen (audio file)

aired Jan. 26, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/U7eFyMWo1A8

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of January 26th, 2014.

Old soldiers never die, they just – well, no, old soldiers do die. They die all the time. Just try looking for World War I veterans.

Eisenhower died, Sherman died, Patton died, and two weeks ago, Israel’s Ariel Sharon died. And now, Japan’s Hiroo Onoda has died. He fought in World War II from 1941 through 1974. As Lewis Black would say: let me repeat that: Hiroo Onoda fought the Second World War for 33 years, approximately 29 years after World War II ended for everybody else.

Yes, this is the guy they made fun of on “Gilligan’s Island.” He’s the crazy loon living in the jungle so cut off from the world, no one’s told him about color TV, liquid paper, hula hoops or the end of armed military hostility between eastern and western civilization. Hey, it happens.

Ironically, Hiroo Onoda was an intelligence officer. Well, what was it George Carlin said about military intelligence? Anyhoo, at age 22, Onoda was stationed in the Philippines and told under no circumstances to surrender. Not even if they torture him with paddles and cigarette butts and Barbra Streisand movies. Being a good little soldier, Onoda followed his orders to the letter. And since Japanese letters are weird symbolic shapey things, I guess he never figured out that the Emperor surrendered.

Onoda didn’t even give up when the allies scattered leaflets over the Philippines reading, “Come out, come out wherever you are. There’s free barbecue. Or, as we like to call it, Hiroshima.” This loyal-to-a-fault yutz didn’t believe the authenticity of the leaflets, so he and his band of stragglers kept on fighting and killing and living off coconuts.

In 1974, a Japanese hippie – who apparently didn’t realize that hippies were over in 1971 – this hippie tourist visits the island, finds Onoda and gives him the bad news that the land of the rising sun sank in 1945. Onoda sort-of believed him but still wouldn’t surrender until he got official notification from higher up. His old Major had to fly to the island and officially relieve him of duty. Heh heh…I said “duty.”

Even though he murdered people in the jungle, Onoda was pardoned by Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos – I guess he didn’t want to be the pot calling the kettle – and Mr. What-Year-Is-This actually came home to Japan something of a national hero. After all, that level of devotion and honor is pretty rare in people. Granted, that’s because most people are sane, but still…

Hiroo Onoda actually didn’t like all the attention – even the adulation – possibly because the more people inquired into his activities during his three decades on Lubang Island, the more skeletons were dug up – literal ones. Onoda started spending half the year in Brazil, presumably because he liked to be surrounded by sexy women, Jacaranda trees and fellow war criminals.

On January 16th of this year, at age 91, Hiroo Onoda succumbed to pneumonia – the first time he surrendered to anything. Well, that’s arguable; he was married, after all. And while there is something to admire about his willingness to sacrifice everything for his country, including common sense, let’s not make too much of this loser. He was part of the army and the nation that attacked us for no reason in 1941. He fought against American soldiers and may have killed a couple before he went off to pineappleville. Try asking anyone who survived Okinawa or Iwo Jima how amusing they find Hiroo Onoda or the Nipponese mindset that made him. Ask them to think of anything nice to say, and they might ponder for a moment and then say, “I give up. Too bad Hiroo Onoda didn’t.”

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

(c) 2014 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27852

—> https://wp.me/pzvIo-28p

Dave’s Gone By Interview (1/25/2014): JERRY BLAVAT & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews radio legend Jerry Blavat

Topics include: rock and roll, Frank Sinatra, Mob, Mafia, Sammy Davis Jr., radio.

Segment aired Jan. 25, 2014 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)2014 TotalTheater Productions.

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