The 27th Wretched Pun of Destiny segment aired Feb. 28, 2015 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)2015 TotalTheater Productions. More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
* 27. Shalom, Dammit! this is Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches. Since it is Purim time, I am proud once again to be an honorary guest reader for The Wretched Pun of Destiny:
A terrible hurricane strikes the east coast, doing untold damage to the farmlands. Hearing about this, the first Jewish President cuts short her vacation to come survey the destruction.
First, she visits a sugarcane field in Louisiana, where the crop has been depleted by the storm.
“Oy,” she says. Then the she flies up to New York to see a cabbage farm that has been torn to shreds. “Oy,” says the President.
Finally, they drive her to Massachusetts to see the twisted remains of what had been a thriving vineyard. “Oy,” says the president once more.
The next morning at her press conference, a reporter asks, “Madame President, what were your thoughts on seeing what happened to the sugar and the cabbage and the grapes?”
“Well,” comes the reply. “Oy Cane, Oy Slaw, Oy Concord.”
click above for episode #499 (audio only)click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Here is the 498th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Feb. 28, 2015. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Dave chats with actor-director Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Plus: Inside Broadway, The Wretched Pun of Destiny (hurricane), Bob Dylan – Sooner & Later (march), Greeley Crime Beat, Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection (New Purim Jokes), Saturday Segues (Hudson, 500).
Host: Dave Lefkowitz
Guests: actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Dave’s wife Joyce
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (the early years, affect/effect) 00:23:00 GREELEY CRIME BEAT 00:45:00 DAVE’S GONE BY 500th EPISODE PROMO 00:50:30 SATURDAY SEGUE (Hudson) 01:09:00 Sponsors 01:17:30 INSIDE BROADWAY 01:39:30 GUEST: Ruben Santiago-Hudson 02:11:30 THE WRETCHED PUN OF DESTINY #27 (Hurricane) 02:14:00 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (march) 02:32:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #119 (New Purim Jokes) 02:44:00 Friends 02:55:00 SATURDAY SEGUE (#500).
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of February 22nd, 2015.
Problems in the Middle East got you down? Sick of the fighting over healthcare and immigration between the left and the right? Constipated by last night’s meal? (I know I am.) We’re still in the ass-end of winter, the Super Bowl has come and gone, and Purim is mainly for kids, so hurray for the Academy Awards, here to give grownups a shpritz of glitz and a glimpse of glamour, if only for a night. It’s a chance to forget our woes and wallow in Hollywood worship. Three-and-a-half hours of people who make more money in a week than you will in a lifetime, patting each other on the back over just how hard their jobs are.
I’m being sarcastic but, you know, you can take 80 million dollars and make a piece of drek, or you can take that same amount of money and create something memorable and touching and fun. Or best of all, you can take 80 million dollars, give me two million, and I don’t give a crap what you do with the rest.
Anyhoo, this year’s Oscar roster is an eclectic bunch. It seems they always are now that they allow something like 37 movies up for Best Picture. There’s been controversy this season over how white all the acting nominees are. Not one best or featured actor is a person of color – unless you count Robert Duvall, who’s grey, or Benedict Cumberbatch, who, if he were a paint, would be eggshell.
This could be pushback from last year, when “12 Years a Slave” won for best picture, and you had African actors up for other prizes. Considering what John Travolta did to that nice Jewish girl Idina Menzel, maybe the Academy is just terrified of what he’d do to “Selma” actors like David Oyelowo and Carmen Ejogo.
Up for Best Picture is “Selma” – so I feel bad for her sister, Patti – as is “American Sniper,” which is also controversial because in one scene, Bradley Cooper is holding a baby, but it’s obviously a plastic doll. The screenwriter later tweeted that the first infant got sick and the second didn’t show up, so they had to go with a fake. Still, viewers are crying foul, saying how dare Clint Eastwood ask us to use our imaginations and suspend disbelief. That’s what Fox News is for.
Vying with “Selma” and “American Sniper” for Oscar honors are “Birdman,” “Whiplash,” “Boyhood,” The Grand Budapest Hotel,” The Imitation Game,” and “The Theory of Everything.” “Birdman” is about a washed-up actor who keeps trying to make a comeback on Broadway. Or, as I like to call it, the Tony Danza Story. “Whiplash” stars J.K. Simmons as a music teacher so obnoxious and abusive, he missed his calling and should have become a New York City cop.
Then you’ve got “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” a Wes Anderson confection about an old man who can’t give up the one thing that keeps him young. Or, as I call it, The Bill Cosby Story.
We also have “The Imitation Game,” which tells the tale of Alan Turing, a genius who cracked the Nazi code in World War II, only to be hounded to suicide because he was a faigeleh. The tragedy of Alan Turing is that he voluntarily underwent chemical castration, when all he had to do was find the right woman, marry her, and she’d castrate him every day of his life.
Also up for the big prize is “Boyhood,” a story of adolescence that has the critics kvelling because Richard Linklater shot it over the course of 12 years. That’s not inspiration, that’s laziness. Instead of using makeup and padding to make Patricia Arquette look old and fat, he let God do it.
And finally we come to “The Theory of Everything,” a bio-pic about astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. You know, the guy who wrote “A Brief History of Time,” which everyone bought but no one could understand. Kind of like Reaganomics. The point of the movie is that Hawking didn’t let Lou Gehrig’s disease cramp his mojo, especially since it didn’t affect his brain. Well, not until 2013, when that homely hobbit chose to boycott Israel over its supposed mistreatment of the Palestinians. The only black holes Stephen Hawking should be concerned with are the ones in Muslims’ hearts.
So there you have it: the nominees for the 87th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles. I would be remiss, however, not to mention one of the nominees for best Foreign Film: “Ida,” about a Polish woman who’s about to become a Catholic nun when she learns that her parents, murdered during the Holocaust, were actually Jewish. You can tell that the movie is Polish because it’s set in 1872. Just kidding. You might also check out the Animated Feature Film nominee called “The Boxtrolls,” just because that’s what they really should rename the remaining women on “The View.”
So everyone get your popcorn, your ballot sheets, your No-Doz for Sunday night, February 22nd, when the Oscars arrive and all’s right with America. I’ll miss Joan Rivers on the Red Carpet. Though she was more fun on the kitchen table. Again, just kidding. In closing, I’d like to thank the Academy, my parents and the Lord. And I’m not even schvartz.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
click above for episode #498 (audio only)click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Here is the 498th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Feb. 21, 2015. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Dave chats with theatrical designer Lloyd Burlingame. Plus: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection on the Oscars, Saturday Segue (Lesley Gore), The Wretched Pun of Destiny (autopsy), Greeley Crime Beat, Dylan – Sooner & Later (fathers)
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (UNC Radio, promoting #500) 00:20:30 Sponsors 00:29:00 DAVE GOES FURTHER IN (truth in journalism) 41:00:00 GREELEY CRIME BEAT 01:18:30 SATURDAY SEGUE (Lesley Gore) 01:41:30 More Sponsors 01:45:00 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #117 (Oscars 2015) 01:51:00 INSIDE BROADWAY 02:19:00 GUEST: Lloyd Burlingame 03:20:30 The Archives 03:26:30 THE WRETCHED PUN OF DESTINY #26 (autopsy) 03:28:30 Weather 03:32:00 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (fathers) 03:54:00 Friends 04:04:00 DAVE GOES OUT
Feb. 21, 2015 Playlist: “Just Let Me Cry” (01:26:30), “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows” (01:28:30), “My Body” (01:30:00), “It’s My Party” (01:33:30), “The Old Crowd” (01:36:00) & “Off and Running” (04:13:00; Lesley Gore). “Where Do I Begin? (Love Story)” (02:16:00; Andy Williams). “If You Can’t See My Mirrors” (03:16:30; The New Pornographers). “Precious Memories” (03:38:00), “Please, Mrs. Henry” (03:44:30) & “Bye and Bye” (03:47:00; Bob Dylan). “Silver Dagger” (03:41:00; Joan Baez & Bob Dylan). “R.I.P. Jon Stewart” (03:57:30; Sean Altman).
click above for episode #497 (audio only)Click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Here is the 497th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Feb. 14, 2015. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with theatrical producer Stewart F. Lane and Dave chats with UNC Radio’s Sam Wood and Matthew Davis. Plus: Inside Broadway, Greeley Crime Beat, The Wretched Pun of Destiny (disco), Saturday Segue (romance).
Host: Dave Lefkowitz
Guests: producer & author Stewart F. Lane, Former UNC program director Sam Wood, UNC program director Matthew Davis, Dave’s wife Joyce
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (#500, endorsements, bundling, call-letter blues, sriracha ketchup, producers) 00:53:30 GREELEY CRIME BEAT 01:17:00 DAVE GOES FURTHER IN (Dave’s phone, V-Day options) 01:36:30 SATURDAY SEGUE (Romance) 01:57:00 GUESTS: Sam Wood & Matthew Davis 02:26:30 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Stewart F. Lane 03:11:00 INSIDE BROADWAY 03:35:00 Sponsors 03:43:30 THE WRETCHED PUN OF DESTINY #25 (Disco) 03:45:30 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (the speech) 04:21:00 Weather & Thanks 04:26:00 Friends 04:33:00 DAVE GOES OUT
Feb. 14, 2015 Playlist: “Weird Romance” (00:49:30; Weird Romance; 1992 off-Broadway cast). “Romance” (01:36:30; Wild Flag), “My Romance” (01:40:30; Doris Day). “Romance” (01:43:00; The Jacobites w/ Nikki Sudden). “A Fine Romance” (01:45:30; Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers). “Groucho Romances Margaret Dumont” (01:48:30; “The Cocoanuts” soundtrack w/ Groucho Marx & Margaret Dumont). “This Romance Will Be Different for Me” (01:51:30; Jonathan Richman). “Final Bows” (03:09:00; Thoroughly Modern Millie Bway cast). “I Know About Love” (03:32:00; Do Re Mi 1961 Bway cast w/ John Reardon). “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” (03:55:00; Nina Simone). “Farewell Angelina” (04:03:00; Joan Baez). “It Ain’t Me, Babe” (04:09:30; Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash). “Red Hot” (04:17:00; Billy Lee Riley). “Marry Me Again” (04:35:30; Tom Paxton).
Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews theatrical producer Stewart F. Lane
Topics include: A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Black Broadway, The Will Rogers Follies. theater, Broadway, Jews.
Segment aired Feb. 14, 2015 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)2015 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 February 8th, 2015.
What is the purpose of education? In an idealistic sense, it is to broaden the mind, to open young people to a world greater than themselves that they have to wade into in order to become productive members of society. Or, more simply put: live and learn. But one can also say the purpose of education is to take a bunch of kids who are too stupid to be left alone during post-adolescence, and corral them all in one place before we inflict them willy-nilly upon the planet.
Well, you don’t get kids much dumber – or potentially dangerous – than the yutzes at UC Davis, the University of California, Davis. Pro-Palestinian, liberal wackjob teenagers, who comprise the rotting corpse that is the student body, voted to boycott Israel over the country’s treatment of the poor, poor Palis. In a vote that passed 8 to 2, these bleeding-heart buttheads recommended that the University divest itself of all business dealings with the land of milk and honey. The SJP, whose letters stand for Students for Justice in Palestine (though they could just as easily stand for Suck my Jewish Penis), the SJP cheered and waved Palestinian flags as the vote went down in their favor. Best of all, as Jewish and pro-Israel students shuffled out of the meeting hall, the Arab-sympathizers began chanting, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.”
Now, where have we heard that poem before? Oh yeah, every time a Muslim with a grudge and an AK-47 decides to vent his spleen on a bunch of innocent civilians, those are the words: “Allahu Akbar.” It may sound like a religious prayer, but it’s more like a death yell. We heard it from Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people in Fort Hood a few years ago, and we heard it last month, with a French accent, when the Koran Krazies lit into Charlie Hebdo for drawing cartoons.
I don’t need to tell you how I feel about the Israeli-Palestinian situation. But I will anyway. As I’ve said fifteen quadrillion times, Israel is a country — the size of a postage stamp — created after the Holocaust for Jewish people to finally have their own homeland. Anyone else on it either has to live by Israel’s rules or get the Allah out. And if you live in a country bordering Israel, or on land Israel gave back in the vain hope of trading acreage for peace, you better not be hostile, or we’re gonna stomp you like a wine glass at a wedding. But alas, up until that time, it’s the Arabs and their misguided sympathizers that do the violence, over and over again.
After the UC Davis vote – that the SJP won – the anti-Semites weren’t even satisfied with that! Two days later, someone painted swastikas on the walls of the Jewish fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi. (Actually, they should call it Aleph Epsom-Saltz Chai, but that’s for another time.)
It’s unclear whether this act was perpetrated by Arabs or just white kids goaded by all the latent Hebrewphobia stirred up by the vote. Either way, UC Davis has a nasty hurricane coming. I don’t mean a riot. I mean the whooshing sound of Jewish students exiting a place of higher learning that has sunk to a valley of lower squirming. It’s the sound of Jewish alumni divesting their donations and bequests from UCD and sending them to the UJA. It’s the whooshing sound of freshman applications – and application fees – being turned into paper kites because little Missy Horowitz and her 1500 SAT score now chooses to attend USC or UC Berkeley instead.
People at the University say the graffiti and the protests and threats are coming from outside sources and not the college kids themselves. How convenient. You light a torch and you wonder why someone behind you screams fire. Well, I’m screaming, too. Screaming at the retarded students of UC Davis who buy into this wahh-wahh, right-of-return, push-Israel-off-the-map garbage. And all this time, what’s been happening in the Arab world? More beheadings, hostages being burned alive, kidnapping and attacks – business as usual in the radical Muslim cyclone everywhere they are. And yet Israel is the bad guy.
Students of UC Davis, in my gradebook, you get an F for Flunk and a U for Uninformed. I realize you probably can’t spell, so I’ll put them together for ya: F. U.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
click above for episode #496 (audio only)Click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Here is the 496th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, Feb. 7, 2015. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with singer-songwriter Lloyd Cole. Plus: Inside Broadway, Rabbi Sol’s Rabbinical reflection on UC Davis, The Wretched Pun of Destiny (screenwriter), Saturday Segue (Dan Bern), Greeley Crime Beat, Dylan – Sooner & Later (the dead)
Segment scheduled for March 21, 2015 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: Full Episode
All content (c)2015 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 February 1st, 2015.
(sings) Letters, I get letters. Actually, I don’t get letters. I get emails and tweets and instant messages and the occasional bomb threat. And while it’s true that people only write to you for two reasons: to complain–or it’s your birthday—either way, I am happy to be acknowledged and on the radar, so to speak. It’s like an actor: you can get great scripts or you can get Vin Diesel scripts; it’s all good . . . until the phone stops ringing.
Well, my proverbial phone has been ringing off the proverbial hook, so I thought I would share some of these messages with you, my proverbial congregation. Now, I was terribly broken up last week by the death of Joe Franklin. Legendary talk-show host, magnificent New York character, and more than a passing acquaintance of my good friend Dave, who hosts the Dave’s Gone By radio program, of which I assume you are familiar. Joe came to my stage show, “Shalom Dammit!”, when it was at the Roy Arias Theater in Times Square a couple of years ago. Joe stayed through both acts, he applauded, I think he was eating a tomato—but he did not throw it—and he said very nice things about me and my performance.
But even if he hadn’t, there will never be another like Joe Franklin, who carved out his niche—which sounds both erotic and painful—and made a life in show business for seven decades. I should only be so lucky. I’m already so short.
So in the spirit of Joe’s eccentricity and sly obliviousness, I took to Twitter and wrote this message: quote, Joe Franklin was a legend, and I’m proud that he came to my stage show, “Shalom Dammit!”. Then, after the show, we both raped Sarah Silverman.” Unquote.
I know, shocking. How could I possibly fit all that information into 140 characters on Twitter? But more to the point, how could I make a joke about sexually assaulting the best-looking Jewish comedienne since Totie Fields still walked on twos? So a lady wrote to my Facebook page to opine that, quote, “Rape is not a joke punchline.” I guess she never met Bill Cosby. “I love your posts,” the woman said, “but this one is VERY OFFENSIVE!” She put that in capital letters, I guess because she knows my eyesight tends to fail right in the middle of messages. Very thoughtful. She also worried about, quote, a backlash against me and this radio program. Thank you, ma’am, but in order to have a backlash, I first have to have a lash. I don’t have enough followers for an eyelash!
But seriously, for those of you, like this worried woman, who thought my joke was off the grid, you do have to keep in mind that it was Sarah Silverman who started the ball rolling in the first place. She was in that movie, “The Aristocrats,” where all these comedians tell different versions of a long, scatological joke about a showbiz family and their disgusting, depraved, sick and kinky exploits . . . basically the Palins. So Sarah Silverman is in there, and she does her own twist on this twisted joke, one that implicates Joe Franklin by name, accusing him of sexual molestation. Cue the giggles.
To be fair, Joe didn’t find it funny, and he contemplated suing her for defamation of character. Joe’s friends and colleagues reminded him that she was just kidding, and he should lighten up, and that, really, he had no character. But seriously, the rape joke was hers, she put it out there, making it fair game for my tweetmaking.
Which does point to a larger issue: the idea that rape is never funny and can never be funny under any circumstance. Same with the Holocaust, 9/11, retarded people and Nelson Mandela. If you’re like this woman who wrote to me, you can’t possibly find anything amusing, ever, about any of those four things: Holocaust, 9/11, retards, Mandela. If you’re like me, you’re already picturing a retarded Nelson Mandela trying to fly a plane into the World Trade Center, but he’s brain damaged so he crashes into Elie Wiesel’s house by accident.
Anything and everything is fair game depending on time, context, delivery and audience. When Michael Richards used the “n” word at that comedy club years ago, he wasn’t wrong for trying; he simply misjudged the material and the crowd. I use the “n” word in my sermons all the time, and everyone laughs and laughs. Except the janitor.
But moving on to my next letter, this one comes from Marie, an elderly lady in South Florida, or, as I like to call it, Israel East. Marie is responding to my Rabbinical Reflection about the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo magazine. Says Marie, quote, “I couldn’t agree with your comments on Islam more. The Paris thing makes me sick. I don’t like Charlie Hebdo, but I don’t think one should kill someone for cartooning.” Unquote. One time I came close with “Ren and Stimpy,” but I got over it.
Marie goes on to say that “People don’t know history! They act,” she says, “as if Israel went to battle to take over the West Bank instead of being attacked. The problem goes all the way back to the Middle Ages, when the Muslims tried to take over the world. They made it all the way up to France until they were stopped in the Battle of Tours in 732.” Personally, I thought the Battle of Tours was 1965 when the Rolling Stones were trying to out-sell the Beatles, but I digress.
“Why is it,” writes Marie, “that in Paris, the Jewish Museum has to have antechambers and all sorts of protection, but the huge Arab Institute needs no protection?” Maybe it can’t fit the condom over the dome. “Why are we not hearing in the news,” continues Marie, “about Muslims from North Africa trafficking humans and, if caught on the seas, killing them?” I dunno, Marie, maybe because they’re not inadequately trained police officers.
And finally, says Marie, “If the Western World is so bad, why are all these Muslims here, or coming here? And why are we not hearing about the consistent, casual rapes by Palestinians in North England?”
Good point, Marie, although I’m not sure what a casual rape is. It’s like, “Hey, baby, I kinda wanna rape you, but, you know, no strings, and I don’t want you to wake up in the morning and feel weird about it. And for god sakes, don’t tell my friends because they think I’m still raping my ex.”
Oh no, oh no! I made a rape joke. Which, for some people, renders me worse than those who are out there actually committing such crimes. Sorry, but no comparison. And besides, if unwanted sexual advances are never funny, how come when I pull down my pants at night, my wife starts laughing?
Thank you, by the way, for your letters and comments, which you can send to shalomdammit@aol.com, that’s shalomdammit@aol.com, or find me on Facebook at Sol Solomon, or twitter me at RabbiSolSolomon or, best of all, leave me alone; I have a deadline for a fan fiction piece I’m writing about Mayim Bialik being violated by Prince Andrew. It’s hot . . . and funny.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
