Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews actress Swoosie Kurtz
Topics include: Joshua White, Sisters, Mike & Molly, Michael Caine, Lillian Hellman, Tony Randall.
Segment aired May 24, 2014 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
All content (c)2014 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information about Rabbi Sol Solomon: http://www.shalomdammit.com
Here is the 468th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, May 10, 2014. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with actor Frank Ferrante. Plus: Inside Broadway, Bob Dylan – Sooner & Later (Bobby Gregg), Dave on “Coffee with Cudmore,” Saturday Segues (Donovan, moms)
Guests: actor Frank Ferrante, radio host Bob Cudmore, Dave’s wife Joyce
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (commencement, self-branding, comps, fish puns) 01:02:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – Donovan 01:33:00 INSIDE BROADWAY – part 1: news (01:33:30) 01:54:30 Dave on Coffee with Cudmore (w/ Bob Cudmore) 02:11:00 INSIDE BROADWAY – part 2: review (The Cripple of Inishmaan) 02:25:00 GUEST: Rabbi Sol Solomon interviews Frank Ferrante 03:15:30 Sponsors 03:18:00 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (Bobby Gregg) 03:44:30 Sponsors 03:47:00 Friends 03:52:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – Moms 04:12:30 Weather 04:15:00 Upcoming 04:18:00 DAVE GOES OUT
May 10, 2014 Playlist: “Wet Dream” (00:48:00; Kip Adotta). “Sunshine Superman” (01:07:00), “The Trip” (01:10:30), “Donna Donna” (01:15:00) & “To Susan on the West Coast Waiting” (01:21:30; Donovan). “Happiness Runs” (01:18:00; Christine Lavin). “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” (Sarah McLachlan; 01:24:30). “Greenfinch and Linnet Bird” (02:19:30; Sweeney Todd 2005 Broadway cast). Excerpts from “An Evening with Groucho” (02:21:30; Frank Ferrante). “Everyone Says I Love You” (03:12:00; Groucho Marx). “Like a Rolling Stone” (03:22:00), “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” (03:28:30), “Tombstone Blues” (03:31:00) & “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later”) (03:37:00; Bob Dylan). “Mommy Daddy You and I” (03:52:30; Talking Heads). “Mom Song” (03:56:30; Passing Strange 2005 Broadway cast w/ Stew & Eisa Davis). “Mom & Pop” (03:59:00; Lewis Black). “Lawdy Mama” (04:00:30; Edgar Blanchard). “Mama’s Talkin’ Soft” (04:02:30; Gypsy 1959 Broadway cast w/ Laura Leslie). “Octomom” (04:05:30; Capitol Steps w/ Janet Davidson Gordon). “You’ve Got to See Mamma Ev’ry Night” (04:07:30; Carol Channing). “Dear Mama” (04:21:00; Eric Andersen).
Rabbi Sol Solomon chats with producer Joe Corcoran
Topics include: Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, Late Nite Catechism, lung cancer, Dr. Zhivago.
Segment aired April 26, 2014 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
All content (c)2014 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com More information on Rabbi Sol Solomon: www.shalomdammit.com
RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #99 (4/20/2014): Utz vs. Butler
aired April 20, 2014 on Dave’s Gone By. Youtube clip: http://youtu.be/S8bUHv8TNa0
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of April 20th, 2014.
Last Monday, Michael Utz, of Culpepper, Virginia, was awarded $5,000 in punitive damages from a former fellow employee. That coworker, James Carroll Butler, also spent a month in prison back in 1999 for a little prank he pulled on Utz at the office.
Butler was mad at Utz – in a way that only people who have to work next to each other 40 hours a week, week after week after week, can get angry at each other – so Mr. Butler grabbed the office coffee pot and took it with him to the toilet. No, don’t get ahead of me; he did not pee in the coffee pot. He peed in the toilet. But then he took the coffee pot and filled it from the toilet. He then waited – tee hee, tee hee – for Michael Utz to use the pot for coffee.
Luckily for Utz, he smelled something unpleasant in the pot before he went to use it. So instead of brewing a pot of Chock Full o’ Nuts – or, more accurately, chock full of pee from his coworker’s nuts, Mr. Utz brought the coffee pot to his superior who sent it to a lab. Tests came back positive for fecal matter, and Butler was arrested, charged with a misdemeanor and given a one-year sentence with 11 months suspended. As far as his job was concerned, he was, of course…relieved. Oh, and just for the sake of irony, did I mention they both worked at a waste-treatment facility?
As anyone who has labored day-in, day-out in a cubicle, offices can be fraught with tension, jealousies, grudges and disappointments. Surrounded by strangers you’d never bother with otherwise, you’re forced to put up with the aggravations of office politics. Either that or you quit, or you get yourself fired if you want unemployment, or you whip out a semi-automatic rifle and shoot anyone who jams up the copy machine. Which is pretty much everyone.
That, of course, is going too far, but let’s face it: revenge is a dish best served piping hot. Or in this case, fresh brewed. We’ve all seen the movie “9-to-5” where they tie up Dabney Coleman and improve the workplace in his absence. And who didn’t enjoy the pranks Jim and Pam played on Dwight in “The Office?” Well, Dwight didn’t, but he deserved them.
So I’m not about to delve into the moral equivalencies of crime versus prank punishment. I’m not here to ask: What would a co-worker have to do that would make you justified for crazy-gluing their telephone receiver to the hook? Or to their ear? What would a boss have to put you through so you’d get to the point of saying, “Yes, I deleted her hard drive and replaced it with a grilled-cheese sandwich, but in fairness, that was a good sandwich”? How badly would a superior have to piss you off before you offer them piss? We all have our breaking points and our tit-for-tat total tallies.
What I do not understand is why it took five years for this incident to be resolved – to the tune of $5,000. How many man hours, how many lawyer hours, how many other cases were pushed aside in order for this to come to trial? Were there clerks of the court sitting in front of their calendars going, “Okay, we have a guy who shot three people in a hold-up, and there’s this other fella accused of planting a terrorist bomb at the graves of Afghan vets at Arlington . . . But wait, no, stop everything! James Carroll Butler took a whiz in his co-worker’s Café Bustelo. Clear the dockets! Clear the schedule! And somebody sniff the coffee maker; I don’t like the looks of that intern.”
Half a decade of legal wrangling to find out that Butler did it. Why the delay? It should have been easy to find a jury of his peers. After all, being a pee-er is what got him in trouble in the first place. Couldn’t this have been settled out of court? Maybe Utz could have crapped in a bucket and made brownies. “You eat mine; I drank yours – we’re even! Let’s shake hands. Or maybe not.”
There should be a way to resolve small disputes – or, in this case, piddling ones – without tying up tax dollars and the justice system. I’m not saying discharging in the Dunkin Donuts is acceptable behavior. It’s just that you don’t need to turn it into the next O.J. trial. Unless someone pees in your o.j..
So I suppose the moral of this story is, well, don’t urinate in the Yuban. But, also, if someone hands you a cup of joe, and you can taste Joe, report it – but also don’t expect to hit the lottery. And if worse comes to worst, and you do take a sip, even then just remember: it will still taste better than Starbucks.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
(c) 2014 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.
–> https://davesgoneby.net/?p=27692
Gay icon Peter Fitzgerald chats with playwright Daniel Curzon
Topics include: theater, Joyce Carol Oates, gay etiquette, Christopher Isherwood.
Segment aired April 19, 2014 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
All content (c)2014 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Here is the 466th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio, April 19, 2014. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Peter Fitzgerald chats with novelist & playwright Daniel Curzon. Plus: Inside Broadway, Bob Dylan – Sooner & Later (Plagues, pt. 2), Saturday Segues (Iggy Pop, Fender benders), Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection (Utz. vs. Butler).
Guests: playwright Daniel Curzon, Joyce Weil
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce Weil (marmots, publicity conference, My Unknown Son, dementia, Subways are for Sleeping, See or Skip, Visa Black Card, Muppet Christ Superstar) 01:18:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – Iggy Pop 01:45:30 Sponsors 01:48:30 INSIDE BROADWAY (news (01:49:00); review (A Raisin in the Sun; 02:19:00)) 02:34:00 GUEST: Peter Fitzgerald interviews Daniel Curzon 03:25:00 Sponsors 03:28:30 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (Plagues, pt. 2) 04:02:00 Friends 04:12:30 RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #99 – Utz vs. Butler 04:18:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – Fender Benders 04:37:30 Weather 04:39:00 Upcoming 04:42:00 DAVE GOES OUT
April 19, 2014 Playlist: “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” (01:08:00) & “Superstar” (01:09:00; Christo Graham’s Muppet Christ Superstar). “Green Eggs and Ham” (01:13:00; Kevin Ryan). “Run Like a Villain” (01:23:30), “Some Weird Sin” (01:26:30), “Sell Your Love” (01:30:00; w/ James Williamson) & “Dum Dum Boys” (01:37:00; Iggy Pop). “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (01:34:00; The Stooges). “Let it Sing” (02:30:30; Violet 1997 off-Broadway cast w/ Michael McElroy). “Tiny Montgomery” (03:31:30), “Idiot Wind” ({live Hard Rain version} 03:34:30), “Chimes of Freedom” (03:44:30) & “Father of Night” (03:51:30; Bob Dylan). “Highway 61 Revisited” (3:53:00; Karen O & The Million Dollar Bash). “Steady Rollin’ Man” (04:18:00; Eric Clapton). “Little Wing” (04:24:00; Jimi Hendrix). “Peggy Sue” (04:26:30; Buddy Holly). “Barabajagal” (04:29:00; Donovan). “Southbound Again” (04:32:30; Dire Straits). “Rice Pudding” (04:44:00; Jeff Beck Group).
click above to listen to the episode (audio only).
Here is the 465th episode of the long-running radio show/podcast, Dave’s Gone By, which aired on UNC Radio April 12, 2014. Info: davesgoneby.com.
Featuring: Dave chats with theater journalist Joel Markowitz. Plus: Inside Broadway, Bob Dylan – Sooner & Later (Plagues, pt. 1), Saturday Segues (Tiny Tim, John Pinette).
Guest: theater journalist Joel Markowitz, Dave’s wife Joyce.
Note: Joel Markowitz passed in November 2017 at age 60.
00:00:01 DAVE GOES IN w/ Joyce (theater season, bum knee, Holocaust Week, drug-sniffing bunny, Joyce’s center book, fire and ice, El Touchy) 01:05:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Tiny Tim 01:21:30 SATURDAY SEGUE – Jesse Winchester 01:38:00 Sponsors 01:43:00 INSIDE BROADWAY (news (01:43:30); review (Don’t Wake Me; 01:59:00) 02:08:30 DAVE SAYS BYE – Mickey Rooney 02:21:30 GUEST: Joel Markowitz 03:19:00 Sponsors 03:22:00 BOB DYLAN – Sooner & Later (Plagues, pt. 1) 03:52:00 Friends 03:57:00 SATURDAY SEGUE – John Pinette 04:17:30 Thanks 04:22:00 Weather 04:23:30 Upcoming 04:25:00 DAVE GOES OUT
April 12, 2014 Playlist: “Touch of the Pharaohs” (01:01:00; Luie Luie). “The Name Song” (01:09:00), “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” (01:10:30), “Fill Your Heart” (01:12:30), “Just a Gigolo” (01:15:30) & “Aren’t You Glad You’re You” (01:18:00; Tiny Tim). “The Brand New Tennessee Waltz” (01:25:00), “I Wave Bye Bye” (01:28:00) & “Snow” (04:26:00). “Biloxi” (01:31:30; Ted Hawkins). “Judy” (02:17:30) & “Nothing Can Stop Me Now ” (02:19:30). “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking” ({live} 03:24:30), “On the Road Again” (03:30:00), “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum” (03:32:30), “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” ({live}, 03:37:30) & “Day of the Locusts” (03:43:00; Bob Dylan). “Musical Theater” (03:59:30), “Extreme Sports” (04:03:00), “The Toaster” (04:09:00), “A Gas Problem” (04:12:00) & “Toilet Paper” (04:14:30; John Pinette).
Dave chats with D.C.-area theater critic Joel Markowitz
Topics include: theater, If/Then, Rocky, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, Bullets Over Broadway.
Segment aired April 12, 2014 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
Please Note: Segments extracted from “Dave’s Gone By” may have music and other elements removed for timing and media re-posting considerations. For the full interview with all elements, please visit the audio of the complete original broadcast.
All content (c)2014 TotalTheater Productions.
More information on Dave’s Gone By: http://www.davesgoneby.com
Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 30th, 2014.
The most hated man in America – well, besides me – is dead. Fred Phelps, the founding pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, passed away of natural causes on March 19th. Somehow, he made it to 84 years old without enemies taking a bat to his head or sprinkling anthrax in his undershorts.
Now, we can’t expect right-wing Christians to be forward-thinking or even moderate about such issues as abortion, gay rights and Lady Gaga. Bible thumpers aren’t wired like that, and if they wanna tie a straitjacket around the Old Testament and interpret it the way Muslim extremists bungle the Koran, that’s their business. The reason Freddy Phelps was so loathed is that he went out of his way to spread hatred, and he targeted people who were guilty of nothing more than living their lives differently from what he thought the bible recommended. Fred Phelps was not a live-and-let-live kinda guy. He was more a “hurt and disrupt” sort of person.
He didn’t start out that way. In 1954, on the day Brown beat the Board of Education, Phelps, who had a law degree, took it upon himself to fight civil-rights cases. I mean, on the black side – really! Really! Of course, a few years later, he was disbarred for corruption, but there was something righteous in the guy before he turned self-righteous. Back in the early `90s, he ran for governor, senator and mayor – on the democratic ticket. He lost and lost and lost, and maybe that’s what set him off on the path of bitterness and bile.
Whatever goodie points Phelps racked up defending schvartzes in Kansas have long been pissed away in his tirades and protests against homosexuals. To preach in a sermon against the sin of being a buttmuncher is one thing. To send your followers out in public on streetcorners with signs that read “God Hates Fags” is another thing. But to bus your parishioners to funerals… that takes balls the size of planets. These Westboro wackos would send – or threaten to send – protesters to everything from the Boston Marathon bombing funerals to school-shooting victim burials, warning everyone that God Hates America, which is why He kills people so randomly.
On the web, these Baptist boneheads post gleeful messages anytime an American soldier gets killed overseas. “You see?” they say. “That’s God showing how much he hates gays and lesbians.” This has about as much logic as a guy tripping over a curb and thinking, “Hmm, I know why this happened. Somewhere in the south of France, a farmer is raising too many geese.”
Here’s the truth, Fred Phelps, wherever you are down there. God does not hate fags. Well, maybe Perez Hilton, but otherwise, no. If he’s mean to them, it’s because he’s mean to everyone because he’s the Old Testament fire-and-brimstone rageaholic we all know and love. And as far as God hating lesbians, well, if man is made God’s image, that means God is a lot like man. And let me tell you: men love lesbians. Case closed.
Do I have a personal vendetta against the WBC? Well, it’s not enough they hate gays; they hate Jews, too, saying we stole Israel and killed their favorite Jew – the one on the cross with the big mouth and the death wish. Westboro put up videos calling us filthy Jews and Christ killers and fag enablers. All the way back in 1996, Phelps led a protest against the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC – possibly the only decent institution in Washington DC – writing, and I quote, “American taxpayers are financing this unholy monument to Jewish mendacity and greed and to filthy fag lust. Jews, thus perverted, out of all proportion to their numbers energize the militant sodomite agenda… Jews are the real Nazis.” And that was just his warm-up joke.
But seriously, now that Fred Phelps is becoming fertilizer instead of spewing it, the question is, how do we react? I ask this because Passover is coming in a couple of weeks, and during the Seder, we spill ten drops of wine when talking about the Egyptians, because we’re not supposed to be a hundred percent happy when our enemy is vanquished. Even though the Egyptians enslaved us, treated us like cattle, turned us into fifth-class citizens in a country where we’d been welcomed just a few Pharaohs earlier. Even though we were overjoyed to escape and watch the slave owners get what was coming to them…still, death of the first born is a heavy price, and they are God’s creatures, too, so…hold off on the noisemakers a bissel. Fireworks and disco dancing – no problem, but in moderation.
That can be a hard principle to accept, however, in modern times. On May 8th, 1945, don’t tell me every surviving Jew in the world didn’t want to drown every last German in the Danube. When bin Laden bought it, I danced a hora in the living room and flushed a Koran down the toilet. I admit it: I was flooded with emotion, and then just flooded – it’s a thick book in a very old toilet. But the point is, I understand the desire to rejoice at the finish of Phelps. He’s not having a funeral, but if he were, what release and elation to show up where they’re shoving him in the ground and jeer at his inbred followers. Curse at them, mock them, drown them out with glam rock, have gays and lesbians kiss and roll around – especially the lesbians…yeah – find the triggers for these ludicrous people and pull those triggers till they go off.
A bigger man than I would say we must take the high road, lead by example, and don’t sink to the Westboro level by stooping to their tactics. But that would be a bigger man than I. I’m a small, angry Jew, and I hate these fucking people. If you find where they’re burying Phelps, or holding one of their protests, go with a rainbow banner in one hand and a spray can of piss in the other. But most of all – and I wish I had written this so I could take credit, but blessed be the man or woman who wrote: “Live your life in such a way that the Wetsboro Baptist Church will want to picket your funeral.” Isn’t that great? And then, during shiva, bend them all over and show them exactly what you can do with a yahrtzeit candle.
This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.
