Lady Carpaccio vs. The Queen of Mackie

What's truly shocking about this picture is not Lady Gaga going carpaccio, but that Cher, 20 years later is still working the "If I Could Turn Back Time" outfit.

I disconnect from technology for a week and this is what happens.

Me and Menachem Begin

Three days later and three thousand miles away, I'm still thinking about this damn dream I had about Menachem Begin. Unless you know your Israel Prime Ministers of yore, this name means nothing. That's fine. I hadn't a clue or care until I visited the Begin museum in Jerusalem.

Actually when I think about it, my first introduction to him was in the Amos Oz book, "In the Land of Israel." When I asked who Begin was, my question was met with a semi eye roll and a correction, "It's BAY-GIN."

Enough back story. If you really want to hear about Begin, and he is really an interesting and complex figure, do it here.

I came to in the dream and I was sitting across from Begin. We were on low benches on opposing walls. My hands were on my knees and he was in the same position. We were in a bunker of some sort, which was small, a little too warm and completely silent. The air felt thick and the fact that we weren't talking made it really uncomfortable. There wasn't a war outside, I don't think, and I didn't feel as if we were in danger.

I was trying to read Begin's face. I wasn't sure, since I entered the dream mid-conversation, if it was my turn to speak. The inscrutable expression on his face wasn't helping. He was wearing those big clunky black rimmed glasses and it was impossible to see his eyes.

And then somehow I realized that in fact, he was dead. I was sitting in a bunker with a ghost. For whatever reason this didn't scare me. I didn't ask myself if I too was a ghost. I was just trying to think of the right thing to say to the former Prime Minister. He'd had a hard life and complex political legacy. He'd screwed up the war in Lebanon. He never really recovered from the loss of his beloved wife.

And that's when I saw that tears were streaming down his face. He didn't make a sound, his face completely still. He was just so incredibly, deeply sad. That was it. I tried to absorb some of his grief. I had no idea what to say.

It was then that it occurred to me in this silent exchange that he'd come to me because I too was lost in my own sadness. Just me and Begin.

How weird is that?

Double Rainbow

I find the strangest things touching these days.

The latest is this youtube video titled, "Yosemitebear Giant Double Rainbow." I came across it first while perusing my number one news source, Facebook (a friend had posted it via a friend who had posted via a friend etc) and despite it's length, a whopping 3 minutes and 30 seconds, I watched the whole thing, somewhat in awe. Then I watched it again. And yet a third time.

I won't rob you the experience of seeing it. Just watch. Please.

My ten second google research reveals I'm not the only one who has been moved. Not only does it have upwards of 2 million hits, but it has even inspired a couple musical remixes. Then Jimmy Kimmel featured it. I guess it has "gone viral" as it were.

It is a funny video, this guy having a borderline orgasmic/euphoric/manic reaction to witnessing a double rainbow. But it's more than youtube dumbness. This guy, Yosemitebear, covers the entire gamut of human emotion, from the thrill of discovery, to radical amazement found in natural beauty, to almost disbelief of his reality followed by a kind of existential grief. In short, he laughs, he cries, he records it all.

What's so touching to me is that I, too, go through these mini emotional revolutions/epic psychic journeys every day. That's an inner life, I guess. And to see Yosemitebear's makes me feel somehow less lonely. It's always good to remember looniness is relative.

One F*#ked Up Baby: Toy Story 3

I thought the 1980's had the monopoly on terrifying children, but after seeing Toy Story 3 in 3D and then spending a night dramatically tossing and turning, my dreams riddled with haunted giant possessed baby nightmares, I will stand corrected.

Perhaps you think it's my own fault for throwing money at the Pixar machine and a just punishment for doing so. You're right actually. But since I did, now I'm going to talk about it.

A number of things, in no particular order.

This movie, completely drenched in irony and proudly flexing its immense powers of self referentiality, reads like one long animated pop culture footnote. It made me wonder what kind of children this produces. Eye rolling toddlers, who knew Tickle Me Elmo before he got big? Or will these kids rebel by being earnest?

And then, who is this movie for? It's too dumb to be for adults really. It's too scary and sardonic to be for kids. Maybe these movies are grooming all of us for perpetual tweendom. Convinced of our intelligence like only a seventh grader could be.

The sitcoms of the 80's scared the shit out of me, to be sure. But at least they were trying to scare me into saying NO! to drugs, to not getting in cars with candy offering, child molesting strangers and to not make fun of those who were disabled because they were just like us.

Toy Story seems to relish being terrifying. A possessed giant baby doll, with one permanently lazy eye isn't horrible enough, so let's put it swinging in moonlight and make it's head spin exorcist style. What's the lesson in that? Don't trust your favorite toy, lest it turn on you Pet Semetary style?

I understand the story of Toy Story is supposed to teach us that at some point we must grow up. That a cartoon illuminates that lesson? Irony unavoidable.

Punky Brewster, The Challenger Space Shuttle and 1980's child scare tactics

It all began innocently. An overheated friend, who will go by her B-Girl name Tastic, mid-schvitz and still acclimating to New York City summer, commented offhandedly, " I want to climb into my freezer."

And for whatever reason, it flashed me back to an episode of the short lived and hugely important '80's sitcom, "Punky Brewster." The premise of the show- and by the way every 7 year old girl's fantasy- was that Punky was abandoned in a shopping mall by her mother, had no father in the picture to save her and so she is orphaned. I can't explain why the desertion fantasy is so attractive but there's enough examples- Annie, the girls from Facts of Life, the boys from Different Strokes and if you really want to get obscure about it, remember, "Rags to Riches"? to prove it. Developmentally, maybe that's when kids just want to be their own people and think that's only possible with dead parents.

But anyway, Punky gets adopted by a carmudgeonly old guy, with a soft spot for Punky and her equally orphaned dog, Brandon. She makes friends with the kids in her building- a sweet, slightly derelict bunch of neighborhood 8 years olds. Her best friend is Cherie, a gal who's all sass and if I remember correctly had a tough talking city judge for a mother upstairs. Enough back story, I know, but as I recall it, all these stupid details that have been locked in a fault in my brain since 1985 come rushing back.

The story of the episode that sent me back to a panicked, cold sweat kind of flashback was when Cherie got stuck and locked into a refrigerator put out in the trash. No one knew she was trapped. Her air supply was running short. WOULD THEY FIND CHERIE IN TIME?

Of course, they did. A cute little girl with corn rose suffocating in a kitchen appliance surely would have ended the Punky craze.

But this whole memory got me thinking about all a whole series of these cautionary/scare tactic episodes of sitcoms and experiences from my youth.

Remember when on, "Webster" Ma'am was pregnant and fairly graphically lost the baby ? I'll never forget it, the image of her crawling across the floor in agony, in her signature silky pink robe, calling out for George and Webster.

How about when Arnold was molested on, "Different Strokes"?

Or when Tootie almost got sold into prostitution on that very special trip to NYC episode of, "Facts of Life"?

I'm pretty sure somebody got molested on, "Silver Spoons" too, but don't quote me on that.

I really could go on and on here.

The point is the 1980's was Code Orange for kids.

And let's not forget the ultimate scare your children senseless moment, when we all were rounded up by our elementary school teachers to watch the Challenger Space Shuttle take off on TV.

I remember the excitement, "Look kids, this teacher is from New Hampshire! She's the first elementary teacher to go to space!" said Mrs. Simpson, my third grade teacher. I can see still her perfectly feathered, frosted and sprayed bangs, moving in one monolithic piece.

"Let's count down together!"

And all of us, the Punky Brewsters, The Annie's, The Arnolds counted down.

"Three, Two, One. Blast off!" We cheered! So exciting! New England teachers in space!

And then of course, not even after 10 seconds, the whole shuttle blew into a million little bits in front of our 8 year old eyes. No one cried, I think, except the teachers and we were shuffled quickly out of the classroom.

I think, in a way, that was the JFK moment of my childhood.

Anyway, I wonder if other folks went through this. Perhaps I'll start a support group or a book club. More to follow.

Three Rabbis and an Adult Jewish Baby

It's been awhile since I've had a convert nightmare. I had a series of these germares, or Jewish night terrors, in the lead up to my date with the mikveh.

Conversion was stressful. First, there were the "J-SATS", a series of mostly unanswerable essay questions given to me by my rabbi given beforehand about taking on the yoke of the mitvoth, my relationship to Israel and why I wanted to be Jewish in the first place. I say unanswerable because the only truthful answers led to more questions. Luckily, my questions-with-questions approach passed.

It's not that you can fail really, short of professing Jesus Christ is your saviour, while simultaneously eating bacon wrapped shrimp and denying the Holocaust.

The talk had with my Beit Din (a court of rabbis assembled), the day of my big dip was, much to my relief, fine. No one was there to grill me on whether Kangaroo was kosher or whether I recite the Pirkei Avot while jumping rope.

The actual dip, supervised by a mikveh lady named Gita, was, if nothing else, surreal. If you had told me in the year 2000 I would someday be speaking Hebrew naked whilst dunking in a ritual bath with three rabbis on the other side of the door listening to make sure it's kosher, I would have, well, I don't know what I would have done.

But back to the germare I had two nights ago. The first one since I took the name Elisheva and began my life as a Jewish lady.

The dream began quite innocently, as many horrible dreams do. It was Shabbat. My husband I were hosting 3 very important and pious rabbis and their sheitled wives. Everyone was gathered around the table and I was busy in the kitchen, nervously preparing to bring out the meal. In the other room, I could hear the rabbis deliberating, handing down religious rulings of some kind.

"That can't be right," I thought. "You can't do that on Shabbat." Then my heart began to race. "Can you?"

At this point it's important to mention that I, for some reason, had made a Mexican themed meal, which as I brought it out to the table seemed even to me a weird choice. As I approached with a gigantic steaming bowl of beans, rice and corn, I realized, "Omigod, these rabbis are so pious, they don't eat Kitniyot, even when it's not Passover."

For those, who just got lost on that last paragraph, Kitniyot is a special group of foods (including beans and rice and yes, corn) that are deemed not-kosher-for-Passover for Ashkenzi Jews.

At this point in the dream, I was so horrified, I just shook myself awake. It was just too unbearable, my Kitniyot humiliation.

I have theories on this one but I'll save it for later.

no sleep til midwood

 

Highly influential

Happy Birthday Sesame Street

Ger-mare

A brand new series of nightmares have been added to my fall psychic prime time schedule. And to be honest, since bad dreams are par for the course, having some fresh things to prevent restful sleep, is better than syndication.

Last night in a dream, I found myself in the kitchen on Shabbat morning. I hadn't made challah bread, which in waking life, is not my habit so who cares. But in the dream, making the braided eggy double manna was my weekly routine. Somehow I had forgotten. The horror.

I was that amazing combination of panicked and paralyzed. Again, awake, I think, who cares? That's what the Zomick's fairy is for.

For what felt like hours and hours, I sat looking at the stove, pondering if I should make it. Weighing the decision. No one was home to witness me break the prohibition and use the oven. Only I would know. But everyone coming to lunch would surely notice if we were sans challah. You can't do shabbat with challah and you can't do challah without heat.

Was it more important, I obsessed, to make the challah or keep the Sabbath.

I don't know if this a specially convertcentric dream or not, but I will file it under ger-mare. Undoubtedly more to follow.

The Way Life Should Be?

Upon entering the state of Maine, there is a sign on the side of the turnpike, which has befuddled me pretty much all my life.

WELCOME TO MAINE

The way life should be

Huh?

I challenge you to find a more loaded sign. It implies some sort of utopian blueberry picking cross country skiing ideal. A world of tanned Thoreauish utilitarian pragmatists, L.L. Bean boot wearing types, who can preserves for the winter and dine on lobster in the brief summer.

Or you can play the Method actor game with it:

The WAY life should be

The way LIFE should be

The way life SHOULD be

The reality of course is quite different. Not that there aren't truly charming parts of Maine. Eventually, I will write about a childhood that can be best described as growing up inside a Norman Rockwell painting, but not today.

This morning I'm embarrassed. My home state had a chance to make history for marriage equality, but will go down as just another example of what happens when the majority votes on the minority.

I understand that change, the real, lasting kind takes time. But this country didn't desegregate because we voted it so. So this morning, I understand the sign with sadness.

Civil rights is the way life should be, but even in the 21st century, not the way it is.

Sexy Anna Rexia

No, you're not hallucinating.

Introducing this year's most offensive Halloween costume, "Sexy Anna Rexia."

Certainly no explanation is needed on this one. It's obnoxious. It makes light (pun unavoidable) of a disease that kills people. It's not even clever word play. This costume is akin in tastelessness to sporting a "Mental Lee Retarded" get up.

I was reminded, as I stood slack jawed in the disposable Halloween costume section of my local drug store perusing the sexy pirate/cop/wench/nurse collection, how very little people really get this disorder. Anorexia, while a very different kind of illness, is what schizophrenia was in the 1950's.

Even on this, the High Holiday of inappropriate, Anna Rexia is too much. And this coming from a girl who has gone as a topless Gyro girl.

Moammar Khadafy and David A Paterson: Same Man?

You decide.

My smartest thought of 2009

About a week ago, maybe two, I woke up and had my smartest thought of 2009. So smart, in fact, I'm still somewhat trying to decode it.

Usually I rise with a jolt, prompted by my own personal psychic starter pistol and I'm off to the races mentally. A sped up scroll of the things to be done, what's left to do from yesterday's scroll, the things I'm dreading, maybe something good is on the roster, something embarrassing I did or fear I'll do, all the while digesting the series of bizarro dreams I just had. It would be a panic attack except I'm too tired. Waking up has always been traumatic.

Back to my smartest thought. I was waking, but there was no starting pistol. It was calm; a sedate swimming through honey, surfacing from sleep feeling, my beau's unbelievable snoring in the distance was even soothing. And eyes still closed, a massive mental supertitle appeared:

WITHOUT MEMORY, THERE CAN BE NO CONSCIENCE.

Weird, right? Who thinks that at 6am?

I rolled over and pretended to wake my beau with a kick by accident.

"I just had my smartest thought of 2009."

I repeated the phrase slowly to him like some kind of loony tune soothsayer.

His response, that kind of half snore/choke men do.

"Who said that?" Surely I was regurgitating.

"Jonathan Sacks?" He offered, probably praying I'd shut up.

"No, me I think."

The true irony is, of course, I meant to get up straight up and I write about it, but forgot. Or I fell back asleep. Or I got lost in the more mundane less super supertitles. I honestly can't recall.

Anyway, I remembered about an hour ago and it still seemed smart. If nothing else, an esoterically perfect sentiment for High Holidays.

Now that I'm Jewish

Now that I'm Jewish (at least as far as the Conservative movement is concerned) I feel the same kind of disorientation I had when I first returned from studying in Prague at the turn of the century(Yikes, but I had to say it. You understand.). I had fallen out of the regular lock step hipster rhythm of New York City, after striking dramatic poses and giving serious cheekbone across snowy Central Europe.

In Praha, I was mostly cut off from pop culture, unless you count the steady and relentless thump of that one fucking Cher song popular in 1999. I was attempting to learn Czech, not that this Americhanka ever got beyond the absolute survival basics like, Beer please, Another please. Marlboros Please. (Marlboros in Czech is still Marlboros, though drastically cheaper) I actually spoke more French than anything, since the African Hash dealers tended to be comfortable en francais. Et moi aussi.

I was more concerned with the plays of Havel and golems than Stella Adler and Patricia Fields. I didn't watch t.v. really. I went to the opera instead, mostly alone, because it was cheap, made me feel European and tragic, dressed up in my single box at the Statni Opera House, watching Nabucco.

I've spent most of the last year and half in another kind of single box; reading Jewish books, studying Jewish thought, beginning to observe Shabbat and holidays and learning Hebrew(which rivals Czech in bitchiness). I've been basically immersing myself in all things Judaica until the final immersion in the Mikveh. I've done less reality television watching, I've spent less time searching out obscure music that is about to be hip, hell, I can't remember the last time I broke out my leg warmers.

It's not that these things are no longer me or that they aren't important (The Wendy Williams Show, is a perfect example of new important ironic likes) but they had taken a temporary back burner.

But now that the JSATS are behind me and my dunk done, I'm recollecting myself, if that makes sense. I wonder how I integrate the Liz of before with the Liz of now. I'm thinking about how I marry the somewhat observant me with the historically iconclastic me. Constantly trying to catch up with myself seems to be an ongoing project.

I'll keep you posted.

Are you there GdashD, it's me Elisheva

Two weeks ago today, I became Jewish.

At approximately 10:25 am on the 22nd of Tammuz in the year 5769 on west 72nd street between Broadway and West End Avenue, I dipped three times in the Upper West side mikveh (my local Jewish ritual bath) and entered into the covenant. Naked, chin deep in warm, slightly chemically, totally religious water, my friend Dvora at the mikveh's tiled edge cheering me on as I wept through prayers in Hebrew, a mikveh lady named Gita proclaimed after a final successful immersion,

"KOSHER!"

Ritual dipping, by the way, is harder than it looks. One must submerge completely whilst not allowing feet or hands to touch the side of the small pool. Never mind that the impossible Hebrew language must be recited between dips and somewhere in the back of one's mind, one knows that a block away people are shopping at Fairway.

As I emerged from the sacred waters newly Elisheva, blubbering, "Baruch atta...." New Yorkers outside were boarding city buses, hailing cabs, chewing gum, pushing baby strollers. being normalish, having an ordinary day.

Pulling me back into semi reality, Gita took my newly Jewish baby cheeks in her hands, peered into my face as if I were a crystal ball and she was reading me:

"YOU ARE NOW A BEAUTIFUL JEWISH GIRL!"

And then of course, "BE GOOD!"

I've done some fairly radical things in my life, but this is definitely in the top three. Much more on this to follow.

My worst fantasy

I would like to share some of my worst fantasies. Daydreams really, except they're disturbing. Daymares, if you will.

I do this somewhat hesitantly, offer a ringside seat to my psyche that is, because though I know they are telling of something about me, I'm not exactly sure what. I offer a window in anyway because at worst, no one cares about my reoccuring terror montages and at best, you have some too.

Everyone has a certain sort set of morbid disaster scenarios, I'm convinced. And by everyone, I mean New Yorkers. And by New Yorkers I mean those on the west side. There are the sprawlingly cinematic big budget global apocalyptic kind, usually experienced on the subway, going over a suspension bridge or on a transatlantic flight. These often involve fireballs whipping through tunnels, odorless poison gases and wildly infectious flesh eating diseases. And then there are more loca-horrors, small scale home grown nightmares, the insidious little imagined machinations that can happen anywhere.

Let me explain. Or better yet, let me just tell you one.

Like all other fledgling starry eyed, painfully earnest and perpetually stoned actors in New York City who study The Method, I've spent a great deal of time in acting studios. You know the kind, floor to ceiling mirrors, nondescript splintery black wooden boxes, ballet bars. The landscape speckled with borderline suicidal thespians, usually found in some sort of a stretch and waxing socialist about The Group Theater.

Actors are constantly stretching. Actors adore being relevant. I don't why this is.

Anyone who has ever gone to a Method acting school also knows that 98% of the student body teeters perpetually on the verge of suicide. Not that any of them will or do in a straightforward way. Drugs, drink and keeping your weight just this side of organ failure are the scenic route to self destruction. But anyway.

It's the resigned state of a future without stability, I guess, and with a krabillionth of a fraction chance at The Big Time.

I was one these types- a stretching socialist lunatic. Deep down I still am I suppose in some ways, with my energies redirected more to page than stage. But back in the day, I had this one recurring worst fantasy.

Usually it would happen just after yoga warmup and before a long day spent in the studio. It was not uncommon in those days (I say this like the late nineties were ancient times) to spend ten hours a day rehearsing in dance pants, memorizing Shakespeare and decoding Chekhov, perfecting my breathing and sneaking out to the fire escape for cigs. It was in some ways ideal, going to acting school. I was like an adult baby; learning to walk and talk all over again. Being told that Ibsen mattered, that the work mattered.

In other respects it was heinous. Having to witness fellow students regurgitate their most painful childhood molestation memories in the form of an acting exercise, being graded on pretending to be a tree, wincing through acting teachers berating ingenues on questionable talent and small tits, these are things I miss less.

Okay. The worst fantasy. I would walk into the bathroom post-yoga warm up and for a flash of a second I would expect to see a fellow actor hung from the ceiling. Not like by invisible Peter Pan Sandy Duncan hanging wires, but by a rope. A noose. Two leg warmed legs swinging as I would open the door. My heart would skip every time, expecting to discover the scene.

This obviously never happened in reality, praise Adler. And I still don't know why I had this daymare. It's much funnier when I tell it aloud, I swear.

derekh shiksa: part one

To kvetch or not to kvetch

That will never be my option

I admit to being one of those ethnically Christian gals who professed a love of matza.  And while I'm being honest here, I'll also confess to being so excited for Pesach that I couldn't even wait until Passover to open the Kosher for Passover Cheerios.  I've since learned the dread, not exuberance, is a more common sentiment among those observant. 

The night before the holiday began, a time when you're supposed to be rooting out those last morsels of chametz with a feather and a candle, I was watching the Daily Show and happily chomping on my first bowl of kosher cereal.  So what if it had the texture of corrugated cardboard and flavor of a manilla folder, my kitchen was already sterile enough for surgery, let holidays begin!

But after 8 days of chametzlessness, I realize I should have been more specific.

I love matza when it's 3am, I've 2 or 3 too many scotches and only after I've eating everything else not nailed down in my beau's kitchen.   

But before you pleasejudge yourself away, remember it was my first attempt to go unleavened.  This was my first Passover.  I may be, at least physically and legally an adult, but in all things Jewish, I am like an adult kindegartener.  There is a joy in starting from scratch, make no mistake.  Reading, writing, and speaking a new language, especially such a bitchy one like Hebrew, is full of small triumphs.  A holiday is still exciting for me.

One last goyish admission, I tried to make a matza bread house, or tenement I called it.  I learned, something everyone else figured out pre- bat mitzvah, matza is not a structurally sound building material.

In the end, I was successful in my matzaness, but now slightly bloated and not quite as psyched for the next 15th of Nissan, a few miscellaneous thoughts.

1. I understand the symbolism of eating matza.  It's a very tactile way of connecting with history.  It's the tradition, so who I am to argue with 2,000 plus years of it.  However, and I know this from many many years of expensive Upper East therapy, a traumatic event in childhood is often repeated throughout the course of one's life.  As a gentleman pointed out at my first night seder, one who has an especially strong disdain for the holiday, "We made the bread correctly.  We were waiting for it to rise!!!"  Again, I understand Passover won't change but aren't we retraumatizing ourselves?

2. I will never be able to genuinely kvetch.  This is the derekh shiksa, or way of the ethnic Christian, one who chooses a Jewish life.  Choosing is a powerful and empowering thing, but it doesn't leave much room for complaining.  But I think I've found a loophole: to kvetch about not being able to kvetch.

3. The most important realization: The seder I attended this year was hosted by an obviously brilliant, genuinely funny and hugely gracious gay couple in New Haven.  It may be the first positive thing that has ever happened to me in Connecticut.  I was nervous, mostly because of my ineptitude even after 1 1/2 of study, but also because the feast was to be vegan.  What would we eat?  With no meat, dairy, eggs or fish, I imagined noshing on tinfoil, parsley and charoset.  

The meal turned out to be excellent- the traditional lamb shank bone on the seder plate replaced by a flower, a special kiddie Haggadah for me and showtunes that marvelously accommodated the word, Halachic.  It was like no other seder I had ever attended. I was thrilled to be included at the "big kids" table.   

But more, as I sat, laughing, reclining, retelling the story of Exodus with all these folks; one, a molecular biologist, atheist and Sondheim lover, his polyglot gourmet chef partner, who let me light the special holiday candlesticks, the Rav Tastic, a writer, bgirl, my Hebrew teacher and friend, who stood up on her chair to deliver part of the four questions and the very drunk woman sat across from me, who confided with a wink in her voice, "I just don't get on with non-Jewish women, do you know what I mean?"

that there are a lot of ways to be Jewish.  

And that I will find my own way.

PEEP SHOW

Because I know you love a little interfaith humor

Shkhin

Plague 6: boils

Ever wondered what happens when you type in PEEPS and PESACH into google?   Well, I did.  

The search results exceeded all expectations.   For the many manifestations of marshmallow stricken with the 10 plagues of Egypt, click here.

Chag Pesach Sameach!