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Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #12 (4/10/2011): Killer Whale

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #12 (4/10/2011): Killer Whale

Aired April 9, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube: Rabbinical Reflection #12 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StApRbPeamA

Shalom Dammit, this is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 10th, 2011.

If I go to a pet store and bring home a poisonous rattlesnake, at some point, if I make one little boo-boo, I’m dead.

I could feed it a thousand times with no problem. But there’s gonna be one time that I’m dangling a tasty mouse in front of the snake. The mouse wriggles away, I instinctively grab for it, and my hand goes in the terrarium. Before you can say Moishe Rabenu, a pair of venomous fangs will sink into my knuckles. At which point, my hand will swell up bigger than J-Woww’s boobies, and my blood would be so contaminated, you’d think I’d gotten a plasma transfusion from Rip Torn.

Is there a moral to this story? Yes. This is why we don’t bring home poisonous snakes.

But tell that to the yutzes who keep snakes and lizards and tarantulas and have no problem until the day they have to evacuate the whole apartment complex because a cobra’s on the loose.

Much as I sympathize with the agony Roy Horn must have felt when they were re-attaching his face, I still would have shouted into his reconstructed ear: “IT’S A TIGER! That thing with stripes on it and razor-sharp claws? It’s not a goldfish. It’s not a puppy, you moron, it’s a tiger. It’s a man-eating tiger. Now I know you’ve been eaten by men before, but this is different!”

And so we come to the story of Dawn Brancheau, a pretty, athletic young girl who was a trainer at Sea World in Florida. In February 2010, she was doing her usual act with Tilikum the Whale. You know: roll over, jump for the fish, ride on your back, thrash me underwater until my lungs explode. That kinda thing.

As you may recall, Dawn Brancheau slipped in the water, and Tilikum went into a frenzy. By the time he was done, Dawn was dead.

Shocking and horrifying for the spectators; public-relations nightmare for Sea World. After all, if it weren’t for putting wild things in captivity and making them perform like Dumbo, Sea World would just be a fish-tank with a gift shop. So what did they do?

Despite the fact that Tilikum drowned one trainer, and was involved in the deaths of two previous trainers, they not only put the whale back in public view, but onstage! As of last week, Tilikum was once again flipping, rolling, dancing, doing magic tricks and reciting passages from Othello.

Oh sure, new safety measures have been put in place. Like trainers can’t wear ponytails anymore – which I know makes all the difference. But how many people does this demon dolphin have to murder before Sea World thinks, “Ya know… Maybe we should have a laser show instead?”

I mean, the name of this mammal is Orca – killer whale. This stupid fish has a reputation so violent, they put “killer” in its name. Nobody says, “The depressed and vaguely poetic whale.” Or, “come see the mathematically gifted and hilariously flatulent whale!” No, it’s a killer whale. It kills! It kills trainers. If it had a rifle with a telescoping lens, it would kill presidents.

And you can say, “Oh, they’ve worked with Tilikum. He’s had a year’s hiatus from performing, he’s been in confinement, he’s been punished.” Let me tell you what he’s been doing for a year – that fish has been lifting weights, making weapons out of mackerel bones, he probably joined the marlin brotherhood… We should not be trusting this animal no matter what precautions they think they’re taking.

Look at Jaws. Scary, wonderful movie, but there’s one piece of logic that you have to check at the door when you see it: If you don’t go in the water, you’re fine. You could dance a jig ten feet from the shoreline; all the shark can do is growl at you and give you the middle fin. Now granted, the shark had to be dealt with because fishermen, cruises, coast-guard patrols need to be in the water. But nobody needs to see a fish twirl a basketball. It is a non-essential activity.

And so here’s my recommendation if we really want Tilikum to be a productive member of society: take him to Japan and let the whalers have at `im. It’ll be a fair fight, and if he loses, you get to feed a million homeless earthquake victims on blubber.

As for Sea World, well, you take a frog, you put him in a dress and you make him jump through a hoop. Hours of entertainment, and nobody gets hurt.

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

—> https://youtu.be/StApRbPeamA

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=30802

Dave’s Gone By Interview (4/9/2011): PAT COOPER

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click above to listen (audio only)

Dave Lefkowitz interviews comedian Pat Cooper

Topics include: comedy, families, growing up Italian.

Segment originally aired April 9, 2011 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

Farewell to our Friend of the Daverhood, Pat Cooper, who passed June 6, 2023 at age 93.

Please Note: Interview 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: Full Episode

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

Dave’s Gone By Interview (4/9/2011): GABRIELLE LOUISE

Dave Lefkowitz interviews singer Gabrielle Louise

Topics include: folk music.

Segment originally aired April 9, 2011 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

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

Dave’s Gone By #350 (4/9/2011): STANDING PAT

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Here is the 350th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, April 9, 2011. Info: davesgoneby.com.

Host: Dave Lefkowitz

Guests: comedian Pat Cooper & singer-songwriter Gabrielle Louise.

Featuring: Dave chats with legendary comedian Pat Cooper and ecology-minded singer-songwriter Gabrielle Louise. Plus: Inside Broadway (naughty words), Dave Says Bye to Sidney Lumet, Saturday Segue birthday tribute to Tom Lehrer, and Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection on killer whales.

00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN
00:09:30 GUEST: Gabrielle Louise
00:53:00 DAVE – Sponors & Weather
01:01:00 INSIDE BROADWAY – News & Naughty Words
01:24:30 GUEST: Pat Cooper
01:58:30 DAVE – Coming Up
02:02:00 DAVE SAYS BYE – Sidney Lumet
02:09:30 DAVE – More Sponsors
02:18:30 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later – Master pieces
02:48:00 Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection – Killer Whale
02:53:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Tom Lehrer 83rd birthday tribute
03:02:00 DAVE GOES OUT

April 9, 2011 Playlist: (part one) “Save the Arkansas” (00:09:30), “Make You Remember” (00:13:00) & “Journey” (00:49:00; Gabrielle Louise); Many Ways (01:21:30; Baxter Holvoe); “Friar’s Roast for Drew Carey” (excerpt, 01:23:00) & “On Italians” (youtube clip, 01:55:30, Pat Cooper); “When I Paint My Masterpiece” (02:19:00), “Lone Pilgrim” (02:22:00), “Masters of War” (demo version; 01:02:00), “Positively 4th Street” (02:29:00), “Slow Train” (live w/ Grateful Dead, 02:33:00) & “Every Grain of Sand” (02:38:00; Bob Dylan); “Bright College Days” (live; 02:53:30), “Who’s Next” (02:58:30) & “We Will All Go Together When We Go” (03:07:00; Tom Lehrer).

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #11 (4/3/2011): Circumcisions

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Shalom Dammit, this is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 3, 2011.

Japan, Libya, Syria, Gaza – all this going on, so what makes headlines? A guy in San Francisco who wants to ban circumcisions. Lloyd Schofield is trying to collect seven thousand signatures to put the issue up for a vote in November. If it passes, people will have to drive all the way to Orange County to get their bananas peeled.

Mr. Schofield claims he opposes circumcision on human-rights grounds, and that cutting off the foreskin is a cruel and pointless mutilation – especially when you’re doing it to babies who have no say in the matter.

I do not disagree with any of this. If I woke up one day to find a Rabbi hoisting me in his arms and giving me two drops of wine while his pen-knife does a rotato on my shmeckel, I’d be screaming, too.

Both sides of the issue claim health benefits. The anti-bris contingent says it’s traumatizing and causes nerve damage, and that at best, it’s cosmetic, elective surgery. And let’s face it – Jewish men are not black men; we need all the inches we can get. If I were a talking baby, I’d say, “Leave the penis, take the nose!”

The pro-circumcision group say that doing a cockwork orange is more sanitary, more aesthetically appealing, and has a lower risk of HIV, Chlamydia and penile cancer. Those findings are in dispute, but I have to say the idea of standing in the shower doing a smegma check every week is not my idea of a good time. Of course, if it’s a 22-year-old blonde doing the checking, I could be persuaded.

But if we take health off the table, we’re left with a brief but painful process that is done in the name of tradition. Like having relatives over on the holidays.

Can we replace the circumcision, a covenant stretching back millennia, with a new, harmless ceremony? After all, so much of what we do in Judaism is metaphorical. When we spill wine on Passover, this represents the ten plagues and the blood that was spilled when we vamoosed from Egypt. It’s not like we have to go out every Pesach and kill an Arab. Although with the missiles coming from Gaza right now, sometimes I’m tempted…

On Chanukah we light the menorah to symbolize the drop of oil that burned for eight days in the great temple. So why can’t we take a baby, have him wear a little condom, and then the mohel yanks off the Trojan and says, “Ut! This is to commemorate what we used to do to baloney ponies for 5,000 years.”

As you can see, I sympathize with Lloyd Schofield’s argument. When we hear about African tribes slicing their women’s privates like mango chunks, we react with horror. And I’ll be honest, if a grown man came to me and said, “Rabbi, I wanna convert. I’ll do the Bar Mitzvah, and I’m willing to skin the flute,” my first response would be, “Are you suuuuuure? I mean really sure? `Cause if you think peeling an onion makes you cry…”

And yet, for all the reasonable challenges to circumcision, I can’t throw the baby out with the pee-water. Maybe there was something our forefathers knew that we don’t; maybe there is a real covenant between us and God that has to be symbolized by a painful whack to the wang; maybe we have no business messing with a tradition that someone found valuable because hospitals do it automatically no matter what religion you are?

I say, until you can categorically prove that circumcisions are unhealthy, leave `em alone. Give parents the right to choose as they wish for their children, and for their children’s yogurt hoses. Or, as Dooley Wilson would sing:

You must remember this:
A bris is still a bris
A baby’s gonna cry
So what if there’s some blood upon his thigh?
We don’t ask why.

And though some skin he’ll miss
He still can take a piss
And let the semen fly
So take a tip…from this Rabbi
And just comply.

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

So if you have a boy
And if he’s not a goy
Then kiss his flap goodbye
At least he keeps his pink whale eye
And stays a guy.

Aaaaaand…cut.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=30807

Dave’s Gone By Interview (4/2/2011): MELANIE

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Dave Lefkowitz interviews singer-songwriter Melanie

Topics include: Woodstock, music, mourning.

Note: Farewell to our Friend of the Daverhood, Melanie, who passed Jan. 23, 2024 at age 76.

Segment originally aired April 2, 2011 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

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

Dave’s Gone By Interview (4/2/2011): ALAN SCHERSTUHL

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Dave Lefkowitz interviews columnist Alan Scherstuhl

Topics include: Studies in Crap, journalism.

Segment originally aired April 2, 2011 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

All content (c)2011 TotalTheater Productions.

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

Dave’s Gone By #349 (4/2/2011): STUHL SAMPLE

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

Here is the 349th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, April 2, 2011. Info: davesgoneby.com.

Host: Dave Lefkowitz

Guests: singer-songwriter Melanie & syndicated columnist Alan Scherstuhl.

Featuring: Dave chats with syndicated columnist Alan Scherstuhl (“Studies in Crap”) and with singer-songwriter Melanie (“Brand New Key”). Plus: Inside Broadway (theater news) and Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection on circumcisions.

00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN
00:13:30 SATURDAY SEGUE: Melanie
00:23:00 DAVE – Baseball’s Back
00:32:30 GUEST: Alan Scherstuhl
01:27:00 DAVE – Sponsors
00:00:01 INSIDE BROADWAY: Theater News
02:01:00 Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #11: circumcisions
00:21:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – More Melanie
02:18:00 GUEST: Melanie
01:22:00 Dave – Friends
03:07:30 DAVE GOES OUT

April 2, 2011 Playlist: (part one) “The Good Book” (00:13:30), “Carolina in My Mind” (00:16:00) & “Deep Down Low” (Melanie; 00:20:00); “Piece of Crap” (00:29:00; Neil Young); “San Francisco” (01:22:30; Jill Sobule); “The Baseball Game” (01:40:30; Falsettoland off-Bway cast); “Friendship” (01:55:30; Anything Goes 1962 off-Bway cast); “Look What They Done to My Song, Ma” (02:07:00), “Brand New Key” (02:11:00), “Beautiful People” (02:13:00), “Lay Lady Lay” (02:16:30, excerpt), “Leftover Wine” (03:05:00, excerpt) & “Lay Down” (03:16:00; Melanie).

(pictured: Alan Scherstuhl, Melanie, a little off the top.)

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #10 (3/27/2011): Tsunami Tweet

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #10 (3/27/2011): Tsunami Tweet

click above to listen (audio file)

aired March 26, 2011 on Dave’s Gone By. https://wp.me/pzvIo-2rN. youtube: https://youtu.be/XxqV1jT8YD8

Shalom Dammit, this is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 27th, 2011.

My congregation has been asking, “Rabbi, when are you gonna talk about Japan? It’s such a huge calamity, when will we hear your thoughts about the earthquake, the tsunami, the nuclear plant – where are your words of wisdom?

My dear friends, what can I say? A tragedy is a tragedy. What can a human being say about an event that is beyond the scope of human understanding? Granted, I’ll bet some World War II veterans are thinking, “At last! Pearl Harbor payback!” But if the world truly worked like that, the tsunami would have hit Berlin. Followed by a tornado, locusts, a polio epidemic and a fast-moving iceberg.

No, sometimes, as in Japan, these things just happen, and we can only guess at the motivations of HaShem and the universe. As the Yiddish phrase goes: men tracht, und gott lacht – man makes plans, God laughs.

And speaking of laughter, what I really wish to discuss in this Rabbinical Reflection is the overreactions to reactions to the disaster. People make a few bad jokes, and the wrath of political correctness is upon them.

I speak specifically of Gilbert Gottfried, beloved voice of the Aflac duck. He’s fired from that job because of his Twitter tweets or, in his case, quacks. He makes a joke about breaking up with his girlfriend – but it’s okay because, as they say in Japan, another one will be floating by any minute.”

This is funny. It amuses me. But even if it didn’t, Gilbert Gottfried is not a psychologist; he’s not a scientist; he’s not a schoolteacher. He’s a comedian. And he’s a comedian best known for making another funny joke that bombed – about September 11th – and then saving the evening by telling yet another joke: “The Aristocrats” – the most vile, crude, sexually explicit, violent, vulgar, perverted, disgusting joke ever written. And if you want to hear it, give me a call on my cell `cause I have my own version, and it kills. Not to give it away, but in mine, the father brings in two camels and an enema bag. Priceless.

But getting back to Aflac: the insurance company does a lot of business in Japan, so when Mr. Gottfried let his fingers move a little faster than his brain, they gave his career a karate chop. Do I think this was justified? No, their judgment was just as poor as his. They may be contractually in the legal right, but can you imagine hiring anyone else to do the same quack? In fact, if it’s the same quack, Mr. Gottfried can sue for imitation. So it would have to be a different but similar quack.

I could do it: “Aflac.” “Aflac dammit!” It’s just not the same.

Nobody likes actor switcheroos. The only time it ever worked was when “Bewitched” got another Darrin, and that was only because Dick York was crippled by a bad back. I only hope, if they do hire another actor, Aflac’s campaign is crippled by a bad hack.

I’m all for sensitivity. To quote Mel Brooks, “I’ve got sensitivity coming out the blow-hole.” But I’m tired of political correctness running amok. From NPR to Charlie Sheen to that anti-Semite French designer. You can’t have a personal conversation anymore without somebody spitting it back to the media to make you look like a schmuck.

And jokes? To fire a comedian because he makes jokes? A comic understands better than anyone the natural tendency of humans to mix schadenfreude with “thank God it wasn’t me.”

I hope no one at my temple is so humorless as to target me if I make a joke or two. Even a shameful, tasteless joke. Such as: what is the only meal you can get in Japan? A big shake, then tuna melt.

That’s terrible! Or asking, why is a Japanese supermarket like a Taco Bell burrito? Neither has any actual food in it.

How dare I find humor in this! Or in a joke like – What do Japanese power-plant workers have in common with court-martialed U.S. Marines? They both got burned by the corps.

Or what’s the difference between a nuclear meltdown and cancer? Ehhh..about 15, 20 years.

Such dark, unfeeling jokes! Like: did you hear about all the Japanese went through a massive religious conversion. They were Buddhists; now they’re quakers.

Shame! Shame! How dare I ask: how many Japanese does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. They don’t need light; they’re all glowing.

What a sick, heartless, joke that is. Or even worse: Why are they nicknaming the tsunami victims New Kids on the Block? Because they’re washed up overnight.

My friends, I do not tell these jokes to be funny. Thank goodness because, well, you’ve heard the jokes. I tell them in solidarity with Gilbert Gottfried and 50 Cent, and anyone else who saw yet another catastrophe in the world and went, “what can you do but laugh?”

Well, you can give to charity, you can write sympathy cards, you can help mobilize relief efforts; but still, you should be able to have a giggle. Because, like it or not, life is a cycle, and one day the joke will be on you.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, NY. Domo arigato.

—> https://shalomdammit.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/rabbinical-reflection-japan-32711/

—> https://wp.me/pzvIo-2rN

Dave’s Gone By Interview (3/26/2011): RUSTY WARREN & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews musical comedienne Rusty Warren

Topics include: comedy, music, party records.

Segment originally aired March 26, 2011 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.

All content (c)2011 TotalTheater Productions.

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