click above to watch the interviewclick above to listen (audio only)
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with actor DAVID DEAN BOTTRELL
Topics include: William Shatner, John Heard, The Working Actor, Overnight Sensation, Christianity, acting
Segment airs July 19, 2025 as part of the 991st episode of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/video podcast 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)2025 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
click above to watch episode #990click above to listen (audio only)
Here is the 990th episode of the long-running radio show/video podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired live on Facebook, Saturday morning, July 12, 2025.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actor Ned Van Zandt and offers his Rabbinical Reflection on airport shoes; Colorado Limerick of the Damned (Burns); Greeley Times; Dave’s song “Thumb in My Bum”; StoryTime (“So You Want to be President?”).
Guest: actor-playwright Ned Van Zandt; spiritual leader Rabbi Sol Solomon
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce: happy show, summer’s over, Fiddle Faddle, bees, The Filling Station 01:04:00 GREELEY TIMES 01:35:30 STORYTIME: So You Want to be President? (Judith St. George & David Small) 02:00:00 GUEST Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Ned Van Zandt 02:49:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #197: Airport Shoes 02:59:30 Friends of the Daverhood 03:14:30 COLORADO LIMERICK OF THE DAMNED: Burns, CO 03:20:00 DAVE GOES OUT 03:24:30 SONG: “Thumb in My Bum”
July 12, 2025 Playlist: “Thumb in My Bum” (Dave; 03:24:30)
click above to watch the interviewclick above to listen (audio only)
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with actor NED VAN ZANDT
Topics include: Del Valle, Chelsea Hotel, Doris Roberts, Kevin Spacey, Townes Van Zandt
Segment airs July 12, 2025 as part of the 990th episode of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/video podcast 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)2025 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for mid-July 2025.
Rarely do I enjoy going barefoot. It’s nice in the shower, lying in bed, giving my bunions a soak in a shissel of epsom salts. Otherwise, I prefer my feet covered. Even on a beach. On a blistering summer day, didja you ever try to run from a blanket to the ocean on hot sand? When you finally get your burning tootsies in the water, you step on a clam shard and a jellyfish stings your big toe. This is not enjoyable.
So, okay: wear socks. I LOVE SOCKS! Around the house, creeping on the porch to grab a newspaper, visiting friends without getting shoe-shmutz on the carpet. Socks enable you to go shoeless yet still perambulate safely, liberated from the tyranny of heavy footwear. You’re home? Unlace those Florsheims and relax. Taking off your shoes means freedom.
Except, for the last 19 years at airports, when Uncle Sam ordered you to ditch your shoes at the worst possible time. You’ve been waiting in a massive line while carrying half a ton of luggage and trying to inch forward. Then you pull your shoes off, toss them in a bin, walk on filthy carpeting, pass through a metal detector (that somehow detects weapons between your head and your ankles but no lower), show your I.D., grab your belongings, and at long last wrench your shoes back on while a dozen angry people behind you give you side-eye for taking so long.”
At the time, the government’s reasoning seemed reasonable: fear of Arab terrorism. In the late 1990s, an English putz named Richard Reid got Islamicized and traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan to learn all sorts of ways to destroy the western world. By 2001, he was ready. Three months after 9/11, Dickie Reid boarded American Airlines Flight 63, and, rather than watch the in-flight movie or grapple with one of those neck-pillow things, he tried to blow the plane up. An attendant noticed him lighting a match and warned him it was a non-smoking flight. (I guess she didn’t think to warn him it was also a non-mass-murder flight.) Passengers saw Reid light another match and discovered he had a fuse connected to his shoe. They wrestled him to the floor and prevented him from detonating the explosives he’d stuffed into his Aspen workboots. Hilariously, the main reason Reid didn’t go kaboom was his nervous foot sweat dampening the fuse. It reminds me of the time, at our temple’s Purimspiel, when, as a gag, one of my parishioners lit his fart . . . except it was more than a fart and he had to pay $3,000 to clean the Torah. And Mrs. Feinberg’s blouse.
But the point is Richard Reid, an incompetent moron, was just one of a gazillion airline passengers since the Wright Brothers achieved liftoff. Leave it to the American government under George W. Bush to take this anomalous episode and make it another reason why we can’t have nice things. The Transportation Security Administration, citing aviation safety, ordered all flyers henceforth to remove their shoes before boarding an aircraft. This was such an urgent matter after the December 2001 shoe-bomb attempt, that the TSA rule took effect immediately…in August 2006.
You can’t make this shit up. Actually, they did make this shit up, because, obviously, the shoe mandate had nothing to do with safety and everything to do with the government testing just how much control they could exert over the American sheeple. Turns out, quite a lot. And it came in handy when they forced small stores to close during COVID, and now, when they’re sending ICE to randomly check if brown people are American citizens.
The ballsiest hypocrisy of all is that for years, you could pay for a TSA PreCheck. Eighty dollars meant skip the line, and keep your computer zipped, your belt buckled, and your shoes tied. Bounce onto the Boeing while all your fellow travelers glare and mutter, “Who does he know, and who did he blow?”
Truth is, money talks, always. Either that, or Homeland Security somehow believed that jihadists would spend months planning a hijacking but then balk at spending an extra 80 bucks. Jews would haggle, but Arabs? Arabs have so much oil money, they use 80 dollar bills to clean their 10 dollar bills.
The shoe rule was one big sham and scam, security theater creating the illusion of protection. Like putting an unopened condom on your nightstand before having sex. It looks reassuring, but if it’s not on your hoo-ha, it ain’t doin’ doo-dah.
Anyhoo, this is all by way of sharing some actual good news for once: 19 years after instituting the sandal scandal, the TSA is finally discontinuing its shoes-off nonsense. They’re trying it at selected airports and then expected to roll it out cross country, even Newark. Will this speed up airport check-ins? Will this make the boarding process less pointlessly anxious? Will air travel stop feeling like sitting between Lizzo and Shrek on a crosstown bus?
As a practical pessimist, I’m guessing none of the above. But at a time when everything feels worse—even if it isn’t, and the government, albeit with good intentions, brazenly threatens Constitutional free speech and free assembly, at least let us shower kudos on whoever in power put one ridiculous regulation in reverse: you can do as you choose with your Jimmy Choos. It’s a win for de-feet. Now, is it too much to ask for four ounces of shampoo in a carry-on?
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. One, two, buckle my shoe—and keep it buckled!
Segment airs July 5, 2025 as part of the 989th episode of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/video podcast 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)2025 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for Independence Weekend 2025.
Hatred to the right of us, hatred to the left of us—especially to the left of us these days—Jews can’t look at the news without nitwits giving us grief, and bigger nitwitslauding and defending them.
The latest example comes to us from Detroit, Michigan, a city with so much Muslim integration, they might as well call it “Baby Beirut.” However, these people are not illegal terrorists; they are citizens and immigrants working, striving, paying taxes, and sending their kids to school.
One such kid is 14-year-old Danielle Khalaf. Of Palestinian origin, she does not like Israel very much. She also presumably watched one too many NFL games and noticed some athletes taking a knee rather than standing for the “Star Spangled Banner.” Well, little Danielle thought, “This is my chance to change the world!” . . . because who doesn’t take their political cues from a precocious, pubescent adolescent at East Middle School?
Instead of rising and saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, as millions of children have dutifully done since 1892, kooky Khalaf stayed seated and silent. That is her right as an American citizen: the prerogative to criticize the government, to wave the flag/wear the flag/or burn the flag, to buck peer pressure and march to your own drummer, even if the drummer plays like Lars Ulrich.
I’m sure Danielle, a stubby potato of a girl, who you can tell will be a middle-aged cat lady by the time she’s 22, dreams of being “courageous” like Greta “Look at Me” Thunberg. But Khalaf is far from the first person to pass on the Pledge. Atheists have long bristled at the “under God” part, and people with harelips can’t pronounce “indivisible.”
So Khalaf is entitled to her narcissistic snit over America’s military support of Israel. But her teacher, Carissa Soranno, was not happy about it and called the girl out over her Gaza grandstanding. Maybe Soranno’s pro-Israel. Maybe she’s just appalled by the girl’s refusal to pledge allegiance to this nation and no other. Soranno told her, quote, “Since you live in this country and enjoy its freedom, if you don’t like it, you should go back to your country.” When the girl repeated her sit-down protest the next day, Soranno called her “disrespectful” and said she should be ashamed of herself.
This hurt Danielle’s feewings. She was “traumatized,” she said. Awww. So traumatized she tattled to the American Civil Liberties Union. Ughhh. They filed a lawsuit against the school district and the teacher for violating Khalaf’s rights and for making her suffer, quote, “extensive emotional and social injuries.” (gasp) If a snowflake melts in a cafeteria, does it make a whine?
Nabih Ayad, a spokesperson for the Arab-American Civil Rights League, rebuked the teacher in the press, calling her insensitive for picking on a student who was merely exercising her constitutional right. The school district then said it had taken “appropriate action” against Soranno.
And maybe that’s reasonable. A teacher should display more maturity than a 14-year-old over whom she has power, and the woman’s response to Khalif was harsh, disparaging, maybe even inappropriate. Soranno acted in the heat of a moment that she might have finessed or counted to ten and avoided. But she also spoke her truth: this teenager thumbing her nose at America hurt the teacher’sfeelings.
So why isn’t the ACLU defending her? Why does Princess Jasmine get to snub the stars and stripes—a slap in the face to everyone who ever fought and died for this country, by the way—why is her free speechlessness protected, but the teacher’s isn’t? Soranno didn’t smack the kid. She didn’t dock her grade. She didn’t put baby in the corner and make her wear a dunce hijab. She didn’t glue her eyes open and force her to watch Schindler’s List. She merely called Khalaf shameful and disrespectful, and asked her, insultingly but fairly, if this country’s military choices are so hateful to her, why doesn’t she snag a one-way ticket to any country in the Arabsphere, where, of course, young women are free to do whatever they please?
Before she becomes another brainlessly woke college student blocking traffic and sleeping in a green tent, maybe this 14-year-old should learn that just because your actions are legal doesn’t mean you’re not responsible. If you give me the finger, and I call you an asshole, why does the ACLU protect your finger but attack my asshole? That didn’t come out right, but you know what I mean: freedom of speech works both ways. If Khalaf can make her stupid statement, Soranno should be able to denounce her. The school district then has the right to chastise Soranno, while patriotic parents have the right to berate the school.
Nothing is more American than a free exchange of anger, mistrust, and derision, all of it protected, as it should be, by the founding fathers. Danielle Khalaf is getting all sorts of sympathy for sitting, but I stand with Soranno. And when it comes to the ACLU’s lamebrain lawsuit, I paraphrase the Pledge and hope the teacher receives the justice meant for all.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Yankee Doodle dammit.
click above to watch episode #988click above to listen (audio only)
Here is the 988th episode of the long-running radio show/video podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired live on Facebook, Saturday morning, June 28, 2025.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews comedian Pablo Lewin and offers his Rabbinical Reflection on Zohran Mamdani; Greeley Times; Colorado Limerick of the Damned (Bunyan); Bunion Watch; StoryTime (Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva)
Guests: comedian Pablo Lewin; spiritual leader Rabbi Sol Solomon
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce: flying sloths, exercise, dentistry, hummingbirds, frog refuse, Riverside Tower 01:18:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Pablo Lewin 01:58:00 GREELEY TIMES 02:24:30 STORYTIME: “Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva” 02:53:00 Friends of the Daverhood 03:08:30 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #195: Zohran Mamdani 03:20:00 COLORADO LIMERICK OF THE DAMNED: Bunyan & BUNION WATCH (03:21:30) 03:25:00 DAVE GOES OUT
Pablo Lewin
Rabbi Sol Solomon
Bunyan, CO
your host and his Froggo friendPotato takes in the view from the Riverside Tower Hotel
click above to watch the interviewclick above to listen (audio only)
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with comedian PABLO LEWIN
Topics include: stand-up comedy, aviation, ham radio, Israel.
Segment airs June 28, 2025 as part of the 987th episode of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio/video podcast 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)2025 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #195 (6/28/2025): ZOHRAN MAMDANI
This Rabbinical Reflection first aired June 28, 2025 on the Dave’s Gone By video podcast.
Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections are heard on the long-running Dave’s Gone By radio/video podcast program (davesgoneby.com) and then archived as text and audio on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com, where a transcript of this Reflection may be read.
Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage show, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon,” which played in NYC in Nov. 2011 and Aug. 2012.
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #195 (6/25/2025): Zohran Mamdani
airs June 28, 2025 on Dave’s Gone By. Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_8PqbgcvwE
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for late June 2025.
Well, congratulations, progressive Democrats. Your efforts to transform once-magnificent New York City into a terrifying shithole are going splendidly. On June 24th, Primary Day in NYC, voters rejected Andrew Cuomo—whose only sin was hubris and killing a bunch of old people during COVID (ask yourself: were they missed?). Instead, these lefty losers pulled the trigger – er, lever – for Zohran Mamdani.
Who is Zohran Mamdani? Or, more precisely, who the fuck is Zohran Mamdani? He’s the son of a Columbia Professor of Colonialism (that should tell you something right there) and of a filmmaker mom who’s spent a decade boycotting Israel. Little Zohran got his start stumping for a Palestinian pastor and joining the anti-Zionist Democratic Socialists of America. Bolstered by these unassailable credentials, in 2020 Mamdani was elected Assemblyman for Astoria and Long Island City, Queens.
Like so many liberal Democrats, Mamdani has ideas that sound good on paper: raising minimum wage, free busing, government-run free grocery stores for the poor (can you say, Russia 1970s?), prison reform. But like so many socialists, he has no idea where to get the money to pay for this Marxist utopia. But that’s okay; all politicians promise pie in the sky but deliver olive loaf in the gutter. The disaster of Mamdani is not inexperience and economic naivete. His worthlessness boils down to one issue: virulent hatred of Israel. When you elect someone whose rallying cry is “globalize the Intifada,” who calls Israel’s revenge against Hamas “genocide,” and who refused to co-sponsor Holocaust Remembrance Day, you’re putting power in the hands of a dangerous, evil radical.
The very fact that Mamdani was backed by AOC and by Bernie Sanders, a self-hating Communist kike if there ever was one, tells you everything you need to know—except that this guy isn’t even Arab! Mamdani is Ugandan—the country that gave us Idi Amin, child soldiers, and anti-gay legislation that makes Yemen look like Rainbow Station on Christopher Street.
So, New Yorkers, when November rolls around, you have a choice. You can reelect Mayor Adams—who may not be Giuliani but he certainly moved the city past the DeBlasio debacle. You can go Republican with Curtis Sliwa, who’s run so many times, he should campaign in jogging shorts. (Actually, I think he does.) And, by the way, the platform of pro-police, anti-crime, anti-illegals, conservative Sliwa also includes pilot testing universal basic income. Put that in your progressive pipe and smoke it!
Oh, and there’s also an independent candidate: Jim Walden, a high-powered attorney who has as much chance of winning as I have of growing my foreskin back. Then again, the impossible and unthinkable have happened so many times the past couple years, I keep Ripley’s Believe it or Not on speed dial.
What I do believe is that Big Apple Democrats now have their own Trump – a scary wildcard they chose mainly to signal their exasperation with the status quo. Or at least I hope that was the motivation. The other option is that pro-Muslim anti-Semitism has become so ingrained in the left—even the Jewish left—that they’d vote for Bin Laden if he used the right pronouns.
Me? I fear for New York and America, not because Zohran Mamdani will build concentration camps or start pogroms, or close all the delis. I dread a culture that turns a blind eye to hateful ideology and a deaf ear to common sense. Too often, socialist policies meant to provide a safety net instead ignite lawlessness. But look on the bright side: there’s always sharia law.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, (you should pardon the expression), New York.
Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #194 (6/14/2025): SLY & BRI
This Rabbinical Reflection first aired June 14, 2025 on the Dave’s Gone By video podcast.
Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical Reflections are heard on the long-running Dave’s Gone By radio/video podcast program (davesgoneby.com) and then archived as text and audio on the Rebbe’s blog, Shalomdammit.com, where a transcript of this Reflection may be read.
Rabbi Sol is also the creator of the stage show, “Shalom Dammit! An Evening with Rabbi Sol Solomon,” which played in NYC in Nov. 2011 and Aug. 2012.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for mid-June 2025.
Oy, what a sad week for music-loving Boomers like yours jewly. On Monday June 9th, Sylvester Stewart, aka Sly Stone, passed away at the surprisingly old age of 82. Just two days later, Brian Wilson, wunderkind of the Beach Boys, left this world at the very same age.
Talk about influential! Not only are rap and hip hop children of Sly’s beats, but any music group with a big sound and a desire to be inclusive and idealistic owes a debt to the Family Stone. After all, the band comprised white guys, black guys, an Italian dude, and women, including their keyboardist Rose and beloved trumpet player, Cynthia. If she had done nothing else but scream “All the squares go home” and “all together now!” her place in music history would be secure. And the person who gave her that place was Sly Stone, whose songs like “Everyday People,” “Stand,” “If You Want Me to Stay,” and “Everybody is a Star” reached for the stars and grabbed them. At their peak, Sly and the Family Stone were like the 4th of July, a 1960s peace march, and a Diddy party all rolled into one.
Meanwhile, the Beach Boys began as a whiter, mellower party: California kids catchin’ a wave, cruisin’ in cool cars, and already feeling nostalgic about their youth and good times slipping away. And, as Brian Wilson deepened his themes, he simultaneously morphed into one of the greatest arrangers in pop history. If Phil Spector built a wall of sound, Wilson constructed a Legosphere of harmony, eccentricity, and fun. When the album Pet Sounds came out, the Beatles heard it and said, “We’ve gotta do better.” They did. And when “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was released, Brian Wilson said, “I’ve gotta do better.” He didn’t. And laboring on Smile, or Smiley Smile, or “Smiling the Smiles of Guy Smiley” broke Wilson’s brain. Still, for a short time, Sly Stone and Brian Wilson had the Mozart thing: God was comin’ through them, touching everything they did.
Now, is it because they were both crazy? Did they each self-destruct because that level of genius has to flame out after burning so bright? Maybe. They also did a mountain of drugs. Brian, already a schizophrenic, used coke and LSD to enhance his creativity; Sly, wanting to take himself higher, used PCP and crack because back then, that was a rock star. Both of these idiots mashed their cerebrums into oatmeal. Sly turned paranoid, canceled gigs, ran through his fortune, and squandered every opportunity for a comeback owing to his aberrant behavior. Brian was a little luckier. He found a therapist, who was both a shyster and a miracle worker. Depressed, bedbound, and obese, Wilson nonetheless kept coming back to music, and by the 1990s was again recording, producing, and even touring. They say the last two years he was struggling with dementia but…when wasn’t he?
So, kids, here’s a cautionary tale: to quote South Park’s Mr. Mackey, “Drugs are bad, m’kay?” Say all you want about personal freedom, state law versus federal, edible versus smokeable—if you’re gonna put your mind on a rollercoaster, the seatbelt is not guaranteed.
Which brings us back again to the consolation prize that both Sly Stone and Brian Wilson lived a lot longer than their lifestyles promised. Both men saw themselves appreciated and sampled by new generations, and revered for their contributions to culture. Sly taught us to accept that different folks have different strokes. Brian looked at our burdensome world, and, rather than complain, sought the silver lining saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice?” God only knows what music would have been without the two of them.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York. Boom Shaka laka laka boom.
