Those Who Know, Chuckle.
How and why it goes from event to fishwrap.
…IS THAT HIS COMPOUND WAS built in the shape of what some would call “Greater Palestine,” with his house corresponding to the location of Jerusalem. (This comes to me from to the French website JSSNews, by way of YNet, by way of The Tablet, which latter is recommended daily fare.)
“I’VE NEVER WISHED A MAN dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
Whether or not Mr. Twain actually Why Clarence Darrow said these words I do not know. But for those having difficulty cheering one more death, yet no compulsion to weep for the decedent, it seems to capture the moment nicely. (Although Ann‘s “Osama Been Gotten” is nice too.)
— Neal, whose Facebook page today reads “…Having a surreal experience. Fortunately, so is everyone else.”
RUTHLESSNESS ONLY LOWERS THE CONVERSATION for everyone.
IN 2008, A LOCAL CITY councilmember proposed changing our urban appellation from “City of Sonoma” to “Town of Sonoma” — reflecting the bucolic values to which we cling with blue-jean-and-Stetson stubbornness. That task proved a quixotic one, but good for a fortnight of local wag-stoking.
And now, this from the travel section of this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, page P6: a nice piece about Sonoma Valley’s Glen Ellen touts the hamlet/burg/village as “an alternative to the bustle of modern Sonoma.” (Italics added.)
There it is, in black and white. Our little Anatevka-among-the-vines has gone from “Slownoma” to “Gonoma.” Next: Public WiFi, traffic jams and sunglasses.
SAW THIS WHERE I FIRST interned as “Neal Ross.” I was naive enough then to think it merely humorous.
Cub reporter: “If it’s news, I report it.”
Old journalist: “If I report it, it’s news.”
Newsman Emeritus: When I report it, it’s history.”
March 14, 2011 (JTA) — An Alaska Airlines flight crew issued a security alert after three Mexican Orthodox Jews began praying with tefillin.
The flight attendants, who were concerned by the prayers being said aloud in Hebrew and the unfamiliar boxes with leather straps hanging from them, locked down the cockpit and radioed a security alert ahead to Los Angeles International Airport. (See: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/03/14/3086391/alaska-airlines-detains-passengers-over-tefillin.)
(This sort of thing Nearly Happened To Me, in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport in early 2002: the onlookers were a couple of antsy early-morning passengers watching me “wrap up” in a terminal alcove. “It’s a Jewish prayer thing,” I said, and left it at that. They were mollified, I met my obligations, and the world survived another day.)
A SHORT LIST OF WORDS which, through overuse, have been consigned to the meaning-deficient self-parody heap:
Blatant
Flagrant
Offen(sive/ded)
Rabid
Sexist
Racist
Controversy
Security
Freedom
Democracy
Republican
Terrorism
Diva
(There are others, but these are what I found in this morning’s newspaper. Additions and substitutions welcome.)
PAY ATTENTION, CLASS: TODAY WE learn from David Feldman, American, how to correctly structure a portable visual joke (in this case, a bumpersticker) for maximum satiric and comic effect.
First point: Understand the medium. The English-speaking American eye travels a line of text, or what the brain immediately assesses as same, from left to right.
Second point: Camouflage. On a black background, the eye first registers a patriotic symbol — an American flag overlaying a proud bald eagle’s profile — followed by a line of white text. Continue reading “David Feldman, Post-Modern Comic Genius”
HE SAID HE WOULD FIGHT Wall Street, but it wasn’t long before he was brought down by a perplexed SWAT team.
DOESN’T ALL THAT JERKING MAKE the knees hurt?
“WE ALL NEED LESS VITRIOL from those other guys.”
IN THE WAKE OF SINGER and prolific synagogue-music innovator Debbie Friedman, I find myself mourning her death but ambivalent about her legacy.
The mourning: If you worship at most “progressive” (i.e., non-Orthodox) North American synagogues, you’re familiar with her work (particularly the Mishebeirach, a prayer for healing which was recently (some say “at last”) canonized in the new Reform prayerbook). But if you ever saw Ms. Friedman in concert, you really saw her. The woman fairly glowed. Not literally, but in the eyes of the mind: huge radiating love-and-wonder vibes not really all that different from a Grateful Dead show, and from which people depart laughing, woohooing, and singing to themselves for days afterward. She was a great and phenomenal talent who brought a lot of joy to this end of the universe and, as is so often the case, the world seems a bit darker for her absence.
The ambivalence: While introducing folk music to the service makes the service, or rather the joy inherent, more accessible, it can also turn the service into a sing-along. And, even as a happily compulsive singer-along, that’s not why I attend services. At one time or another it has been my pleasure to attend Grateful Dead concerts, coven circles, Mass, church, a Buddhist shrine and various other experiential constructs. I found each of them beautiful and, in a sense, useful. But none of them move me in the way of a book-and-dream-fragrant silence, woven through with wordless murmurings and solemn chanting of the ancient heart-known Hebrew. It is, to me, authentic, which is to say familiar and challenging in a way that singing along not quite is.
“One man’s meat” is a proverb in many tongues and times. But when someone like a Debbie Friedman passes out of the world, it makes many other things feel small. Thank you, Ms. Friedman, for making Earth a bit bigger for a while.
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