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Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #131 (8/22/2015): Jimmy Carter

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #131: Jimmy Carter

aired Aug. 22, 2015 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://youtu.be/ref1EipPIz8

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of August 23, 2015.

Two weeks ago, 90-year-old former president Jimmy Carter announced that he was battling an advanced stage of cancer—or, as Jewish people call it (whispers) cancer. Snipped from his liver was a tumor, but they also found badness elsewhere, which is not surprising since both of Carter’s parents, his two sisters, and his brother all died of pancreatic you-know-what.

Jimmy still has his 87-year-old wife, Rosalynn, who says she will be “right there with him” throughout his treatment. So will the town of Plains, Georgia, and a lot of Americans who remember Carter as one of the smartest, most honest, and most decent of men to occupy the oval office.

My feelings are a mite more mixed, however. Just because Carter was a mensch doesn’t mean he was a good President. In fact, up until George W. Bush, he was the worst Commander in Chief in a hundred years. And considering that crop included Richard Nixon and Warren G. Harding, that’s saying something.

In case you weren’t around from 1977 to 1981, what you missed was the recession, the oil crisis, the hostage crisis, the Cold War, and the confidence crisis. You know your President is a bona fide schlemiel when he has to go on television to tell everyone, “It’s not me, it’s you. Have a little faith.” Faith is hard to come by when you’re idling at the gas station for two hours on odd and even days, or when you can’t find a job to pay what gasoline costs, or you’re turning your thermostat to 50 because the Mullahs at OPEC want you to.

And speaking of the Arabs, the Carter years were also, of course, the years of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Fifty-two American hostages were taken prisoner as part of the Iranian Revolution. I suppose we should be grateful all the hostages survived. If they were captured now, Isis would cut their limbs off and rape the stumps. Still, these Americans remained in captivity for a year and a half, until Ronald Reagan made backroom deals to have them released on the first day of his presidency.

Until then, Jimmy Carter had three responses to the Iranian hostage crisis: He barricaded himself in his office for a hundred days, because as any eight-year-old knows, if you hide in the closet, nobody knows you’re there, and all the bad stuff goes away. His second tactic was to wear sweaters, because that’ll show those big bad oil sheiks we can live without heat. And finally, he sent helicopters to try a rescue mission—and they all crashed in the desert.

It was right about then America stopped laughing at Billy Carter and turned her woeful eyes on his older brother. If Watergate was a cancer on the Presidency, Jimmy Carter was a herpes all over it.

Still, lousy as Carter’s term was, I would still want to respect the man. After all, he brokered an impossible deal between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat to create a small piece of peace in the Middle East. It truly was and remains an unbelievable, wonderful, and, alas, one-of-a-kind event in that region. And yet, can peanut boy leave well enough alone?

No, he spends the last few years bleeding through his sleeve for the poor, poor Palestinians. He writes a damn book with the inflammatory title, “Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid,” equating Israel with racist South Africa—even though the Palestinians are demanding land that belongs to Israel, land Israel annexed after being attacked, land that should be for Jews and Israeli citizens because the Arabs have a zillion other places to live.

Carter tries to play both sides of the fence. He sometimes makes nice-nice to Israel, saying he doesn’t support a boycott of the country over its policies. But then he turns around and chastises Eretz Yisroel for the way she conducts a war against an enemy that’s lobbing rockets in her backyard.

Like so many liberals and misinformed do-gooders, Jimmy Carter loves to invent a moral equivalency when there isn’t one. “Both Israel and Hamas are equally wrong and share equal blame,” which is not true; and let’s harp on Israel but be really gentle with the Arabs because we don’t want to make them mad. After all, Islam, the religion of peace, blows a ton of shit up, peacefully.

My main point is: considering his failure at almost every aspect of domestic and foreign leadership, and how he was humiliated by the Ayatollah—a guy who looked like Sean Connery wearing a microwavable heat wrap on his head—Jimmy Carter has as much business telling Israel what to do about the Muslims, as Michelle Duggar has telling the Pritzkers how to raise children. Of all people, Jimmy Carter should be the last one to believe you can reason with radicals, bargain with bullies, and mollify murderers.

After all, as we speak, Jimmy Carter’s body is being invaded by cancer cells that mean him only harm. Should the president’s doctor say, “Well, it’s not right to kill these invaders; it’s your fault for having a desirable host they want to live in. But tell you what. Why don’t you sacrifice so you can live in harmony with your cancer. Let them take your pancreas, your liver, your balls and your bones, and you can live side by side. And they promise never ever ever to move into your blood. Or least not for a week or two. Whaddya say?”

I say, “Jimmy Carter, you’ve done some good in this world, so I don’t wish you prolonged suffering. Still, if you had to get the big C, couldn’t you have gotten it in your mouth?”

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

NON-FICTION – ESSAY – HUMOROUS: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #131 (8/22/2015): JIMMY CARTER

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #130 (8/2/2015): Cecil the Lion

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #130 (8/2/2015): Cecil the Lion

aired Aug. 1, 2015 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/44sQ6T8v98w

Shalom, Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of August 2, 2015.

As if there weren’t already enough reasons to hate dentists, last week brought us Walter Palmer. Wally, who obviously makes a good living from his crowns and extractions, paid $50,000 to go on a hunting expedition. More specifically, he wanted to take his little bow and arrow and bring down a mighty king of the jungle. Which he did.

In early July, Palmer trekked to a nature preserve in Zimbabwe and lured a mighty lion to a spot where he could shoot him in the ass and kill him. Palmer only wounded the beast, which then had to be tracked down and shot in the head. Isn’t hunting a fair and noble sport?

The sad part isn’t just that African lions are endangered, but this was Cecil, a beloved 13-year-old jungle cat who brought in millions of tourists dollars to the preserve. Nobody wanted to slaughter him; they just wanted to drive by slowly, be frightened a little, and get the hell out of there and buy a stuffed panda at the gift shop. And yet, poor Cecil the lion spent much of his adult life in captivity only to die by assassination. Hell, even JFK left the White House to shtup Marilyn once in awhile.

Now this sadistic dentist—which Little Shop of Horrors reminded us is a redundant phrase—this Walter Palmer was not some lunatic running around like Cupid with a bow and arrow and a “George of the Jungle” fixation. This trophy hoarder is a life-long big-game blaster who used legal permits and guides for his latest expedition. Which means there were people who allowed this man to lure a fish out of a barrel . . . and give it both barrels.

What’s funny and marvelously ironic is that in the days after this yutz posted his victory spoils on social media, public outrage has been so vituperative that Palmer has gone into hiding. Faced with death threats, protests, cancelled cavities, Walter Palmer is crouching behind the high grass until the public cools off or gets bored or find another Bill Cosby victim to wonder about.

I say, what we need to do about Palmer in hiding is find the motel he’s staying at, and have two guys knock on the door and say they’re from Publisher’s Clearing House, and he’s won a million dollars. Then, when you’ve coaxed him to the parking lot – BAM! – turns out the guys are really Jehovah’s Witnesses, and boy, is he in for a miserable afternoon!

Seriously, though, I am not against hunting per se. I love steak and duck and venison and the occasional kosher muskrat. And if you are using the inside for beef and the outside for clothing, I believe you are abiding by the natural order of things. I’m not some Birkenstock-wearing vegan shouting “meat is murder” and making believe tofu actually tastes like something edible. Also, there are legitimate times when you need to thin the herd and stop a breed from over-multiplying. I wish we could do with the Kardashians.

But when you are killing just for sport, and you take the sport out of it, what’s left is bloodlust and murder. Walter Palmer may not have broken the law, but his ethics are lower than a Republican’s IQ. Remember, this is not about gun control; it’s not about the NRA; it’s not about ditching the second amendment. It’s about the rich getting away with murder. In this case, it’s literal, but you could say the same about some company that pays hush money to dump chemicals in a lake, or oil companies that bribe politicians for fracking rights, it’s about paid-off scientists who’ll fudge numbers that show Antarctica isn’t melting, it’s about the teenager next door who’ll show you her boobs for $20. All right, not all of these are bad, we can’t keep allowing millionaires to stick pricetags on everything they want, or, in other words, money must never dictate morality.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon. And, if you would like me to come speak at your next corporate event, my fee is $30,000. $50,000 if you want me to endorse Palestinian statehood. Hey, I’m only human. And you can find me at Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=26454 <--

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #127 (6/21/2015): Jenna Jameson

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #127 (6/21/2015): Jenna Jameson

(aired June 21, 2015 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: https://davesgoneby.net/?p=26942 )

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of June 21, 2015.

After World War II, the nation of Israel was so depleted that Hitler’s final solution felt most of the way there. But we survived, and at least the way the Orthodox are being fruitful and multiplying, we’re on the right track, and on the welfare track, but still. . . We also must be grateful for converts: people from other religions who are crazy enough to switch from Benson and Hedges to Bernstein and Hedgowitz. Sammy Davis Jr., Elizabeth Taylor, Tom Arnold, Joan Lunden, Helen Reddy, the late Anne Meara–they all put down the rosaries and picked up the rugelach.

Most of them did this for marriage. The nice Jewish boys these women hijacked from their mothers, the boyfriends said, “Look, I’d like to marry you, but the idea of a Christmas tree in the living room, or our baby, Herod, taking communion–it’s just too much. It’s like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof tolerating every obstacle except intermarriage. Jewish boys will date a debutante, they’ll shtup a shikseh (if they’re lucky), and they’ll even co-habitate with a Catholic. But when you bring marriage into it and the continuation of the Jewish race, well, it’s easier for you to give up Jesus than me to swear off Purim.

Now, the issue of who is a Jew–convert or otherwise–has been plaguing the various sects of Judaism for decades. For some, if your mother’s Jewish but your daddy’s not, fine, have a brisket. If your daddy’s Jewish and your mommy’s not, goodbye, get a ham sandwich. If they’re both Jewish, but they like mayonnaise and sailboats, that’s confusing. Talmudists wrangle with all sorts of permutations to ensure the so-called purity of Jewish lineage. I understand the impulse, but from where I stand–which is usually three inches away from the refrigerator–I say we must welcome those who wish to join our people. It’s not as if we have such a surplus of Jews that we can afford to turn away a few hundred. So if converts are willing to abide by the rules–and I don’t even mean kashrut, daily prayers, and the holidays–I just mean no New Testament and, at 68, you have to move to Florida. If you’re willing to be part of our misunderstood, maligned but magnificent people, by all means welcome. Bring pastry.

I mention all this because news broke last week that Jenna Jameson—oh, don’t make believe you never heard of her—Jenna Jameson, the former pornographic actress, will be converting to Judaism. She’s marrying an Israeli Jew, a diamond merchant noch besser, and to make him happy–though I’m sure she makes him happy in other ways–Jenna has begun keeping shabbos, cooking Jewish foods, and doing all the things a Jewish wife does, like . . . bitching and nagging.

Some Jewish feminists are not happy about adding Jenna Jew-ison to the fold. They ask, “How can this woman who’s had so much sex on camera become Jewish, since Jewish women never want sex anywhere?” These ladies find Jameson’s behavior degrading to women, not to mention that her husband to be is a typical Jewish man: instead of going out with dumpy J-Dates, he has the hots for a skinny blonde shikseh.

I object to this objection to Jenna Jameson’s years as a sex object. Who among us, Jewish or not, is without blemish or has no kinky fetishes? Me, I like to dip my testicles in warm borscht while I’m being spanked with a yad. As did Rashi, by the way. Let he who is without sin throw the first stone. The rest of us will enjoy her skin and grow the worst boners.

For even if Jenna Jameson had not retired from the intercourse industry, what’s so terrible and anti-Jewish about her past? She showed off her beauty? She gave men a thrill? She proved that a tuchas could be used for more than constipation and proctology?

I just hope that if she ever goes back into the porn business, she’ll bring some Jewishness into her films and even her film titles. Instead of her famous, “Where the Boys Aren’t,” she could do, “Where the Goys Aren’t.” Instead of “Jenna’s Built for Speed,” she’ll do “Jenna’s Built for Shopping.” Instead of “I Love Lesbians” she could do . . . well, she can still do “I Love Lesbians”; that totally works for me.

So if Jenna Jameson Judaifies, God bless her, literally. If some frummie wummies resent her intrusion into our culture, maybe that isn’t prudishness at all. Maybe they just feel threatened by a woman who made it rich on her own, can whip up a gourmet meal, can boink like a buffalo and is used to faking it, and doesn’t mind putting something in her mouth bigger than a Midol once in awhile. So welcome, Jenna Jameson, and baruch habah, which literally means “blessed is the comer.” You may find it hard at first, and sometimes you’ll blow it, but I hope you can feel me deeply behind you.

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

—> https://wp.me/pzvIo-1UA

Dave’s Gone By Wretched Pun of Destiny #037 (5/23/2015): WANG CHOW

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The 37th Wretched Pun of Destiny segment aired May 23, 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

*
37.
College student Wang Chow is starting to see his grades slip and his GPA threatened because of his terrible problem with sex addiction. The more he promises to study, the more he finds himself compulsively chasing women, watching porn and giving himself over to pleasures of the flesh.

Ashamed, he confesses to his academic advisor, who suggests that religion might be a solution. Wang Chow tries Buddhism, but that doesn’t work. He then studies to be a Catholic, but no luck there, either. He goes through a half-dozen different religions before turning to Orthodox Judaism. For weeks, Wang Chow concentrates on keeping Kosher, studying Torah, going to synagogue—leaving him no time to sink back into addiction.

However, whenever he gets a few minutes free, Wang Chow still feels urges, so he finds the nearest private place and starts masturbating, several times a day. At first, he keeps his weakness a secret, but he feels so guilty that one day he visits the Rabbi in his study and says, “Rabbi, I no good. I do bad thing.”

“What do you mean?” says the Rebbe. “You’ve so sincere on the road to conversion. What’s wrong?”

Wang Chow whispers his dirty secret. “And you can’t control it?” says the Rabbi. The young man shakes his head.

“Wait,” says the Rebbe. “In the main office I have the book, `Kosher Sex,’ and there’s sure to be a chapter in there that’ll help.”

So the Rabbi excuses himself and heads to the office. After a minute, Wang Chow starts getting antsy. After two minutes, he’s breathing heavily and his heart is pounding. By the third minute, his pants are down around his ankles, and he’s rubbing one out to a poster of Jerusalem.

The Rabbi comes back just in time to see this and says, “Oy! I know you warned me, but this is too much. Even though you follow all our customs, you’re not ready to convert if you’re always doing this!”

“I know,” sobs Wang Chow, “I sorry! I Beat Off More than I Good Jew.”

Dave’s Gone By Interview (4/4/2015): GREG MARCUS & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews life coach & author Greg Marcus

Topics include: Mussar, Judaism, Passover, workaholics, genetics

Segment aired April 4, 2015 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 (3/28/2015): LISA LOEB & Rabbi Sol Solomon

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Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews musician Lisa Loeb

Topics include: camp, Judaism, music, Ethan Hawke, Camp Kappawanna.

Segment aired March 28, 2015 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

More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #118 (3/1/2015): New Purim Jokes

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #118 (3/1/2015): New Purim Jokes

(aired Feb. 28, 2015 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/UAS7Oif5pBA)

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 1, 2015.

(sings) Shout hallelujah, come on, get happy!
It’s the Purim holiday
Though the rest of the year is crappy
We can drink all our blues away.”

Yes, my friends, this Wednesday night, the Purim holiday arrives, bringing with it the chance to celebrate our Jewishness, to dress up in funny costumes, and to recall a time in our history when, like the Crusades and the Holocaust, we were almost wiped out but saved at the last minute. Actually, no Jews died on Purim, so as happy holidays go, this one’s like hitting Lotto on the day your baby’s born.

On Purim, we read the Book of Esther — returning it to her after we’re done — and we rejoice in a holiday that is truly about fun. F – U – N. I spell it out, not because I’m worried the FCC thought I said something else, but because “fun” is not a word we often associate with my tribe, so we grab it when we can get it. And I get it on these Rabbinical Reflections by sometimes sharing jokes with a Jew-y theme and a Purim-packed punchline.

Our first joke is about my cousin Irving, who lives in Brooklyn and gets on a bus. He’s carrying this big duffel bag, and he asks the driver if he can get a senior discount. The driver looks at him funny and says, “You don’t look a day over 40. Show me some ID.”
“I left my wallet at home,” says Irving. “All I have is change for the bus. But I still I demand a senior discount.”

“You’re not old enough!” yells the driver. “What are you trying to pull?”

“How dare you!” screams Irving. “I demand my rights!”

The two start arguing and going back and forth and screaming. Finally, the bus driver gets fed up. He pulls to the curb, opens the doors, grabs the duffel bag and hurls it from the bus onto the sidewalk.

“You bastard!” says Irving. “Just because I wouldn’t pay full fare, you try to kill my son?”

Now, this joke trades upon two of the worst stereotypes you can foist upon the Jewish people: we’re cheap and conniving. We would do anything to save a penny, including lying and cheating. How this became a quote-unquote “Jewish” characteristic is beyond me. Ask a Scotsman. And it’s a hard stereotype to fight because I am stingy and proud of it! I’ll clip every coupon, I’ll visit museums only on free nights, I’ll bring a doggy bag to restaurants – not just for my leftovers, but from anyone else who wants to donate. In a world where one percent of the population keeps 90 percent of the money, who am I to play the big shot?

However, to intimate that the Jewish race is so miserly as to commit knowing and brazen fraud is an ugly over-generalization. For every Bernard Madoff, you’ll find a dozen philanthropists. For every Yid who doesn’t tip a waitress, there are two dozen who overpay just so they don’t look cheap. So please, bear that in mind when you see me in the hallway at the multiplex next week, sneaking from “American Sniper” to the SpongeBob movie. I’m already in the building; I should pay twice to go in a different room?

Anyhoo, let’s move on to our next verbal amusement. Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin are sitting in a Berlin bar in the late 1920s. They’re planning and plotting and dreaming and scheming when an American tourist takes the stool next to them. “Hiya,” says the stranger. “I’m Chris from Ohio.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Hitler. “I’m Adolf, and this is my friend, Josef from Russia. We’re in politics, and we’re strategizing a great social undertaking. We’re going to murder six million Jews and a bicycle repairman.”

“Wow,” says the stranger. “Why a bicycle repairman?”

“See?” Hitler whispers to Stalin. “I told you nobody cares about the Jews.”

This joke has a dark underpinning because had these lunatics stayed friendly and non-aggressive, they truly would have succeeded in exterminating the Jewish population. Mercifully, this did not occur because HaShem hardened Hitler’s ego and made him fight on two fronts. Why God waited until 1945 to stop Der Fuhrer is a question that even the wisest Talmudic spin doctors lose sleep over, but since this is Purim, I’m not going to. I’m just going to tell one more joke.

An Italian mafioso and his Jewish lawyer are walking down the streets of Rome when they see a curvaceous lady bend over to fix her shoe. “Mamma mia!” says the mafioso. “I would love to screw her.”

“Really?” says the lawyer. “Out of what?”

Ahh, lawyers. Where would humor be without them? Actually, on the scale of evil, Wall Street tycoons have leapfrogged over attorneys in the annals of disdain — maybe because we need lawyers to put all these stockbrokers in prison. Still, with litigation the second-most popular American pastime after football, it’s hard to stick up for lawyers, since they’ve been sticking up taxpayers for years.

And before women complain that the joke has a sexist component because just the sight of an attractive lady bending over turns grown men into wolverines, please remember that just the sight of an attractive lady bending over turns grown men into wolverines. It’s funny because it’s true. So…

(sings) Hallelujah, come on, get happy
We’re gonna laugh at offensive yoks
So if hot women get you fappy
Grab some baby oil and two old socks

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

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27414

Dave’s Gone By Wretched Pun of Destiny #027 (2/28/2015): HURRICANE

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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.

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.”

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #117 (2/22/2015): Oscars 2015

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RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #117 (2/22/2015): Oscars 2015

(aired Feb. 22, 2015 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/Qx2atxKOxbQ)

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.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27419

Dave’s Gone By Skit: RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #115 (2/1/2015): Letters, I Get Letters

click above to listen (audio file)

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #115 (2/1/2015): Letters, I Get Letters

aired Jan. 31, 2015 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/9h85v4ZV3lY

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.

–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27462