(M53) max

young hitler has so much potential but uses it for politics and not for art.

C minus.

(m51 and m52) swimming with sharks and indian jones and the last crusade

both mediocre flicks. kevin spacey has to show almost no range of emotions, except for 30 seconds of mourning and the plot was mediocre and the message was mediocre. C minus.
i liked both other indiana jones movies better. raiders is an important movie. important is going too far, but nonetheless a very good movie. and the second one i liked as well. the fourth one was also just so-so. i give this a C minus.

(m50) cache

excellent french film by the maker of white ribbon. a sophisticated frenchman age 42 married to juliet binoche with a 13 year old son, a star of pbs intellectual show receives "hate mail". it is not hate mail exactly- it is a videotape of the front of his house, to show that he is being watched accompanied by a drawing of a child coughing up blood. the police do not respond. the tapes continue to arrive, ultimately including a tape showing a building and a door to an apartment in a building. the frenchman goes to the building and finds the man he expects to find. when frenchy was young and living on a farm, his parents had two loyal algerian workers who apparently died in a police riot and they were ready to adopt their son. but frenchy didn't like it and he lied about the little algerian saying that he was coughing up blood. he also told the kid to kill a rooster and told his parents that algerian was destructive and wanted to kill frenchy. so the thoughts of adoption went out the window and in its stead they sent algeria to an orphanage. and this is the man who was taping his house and sending him the drawings. frenchy lies to his wife and says that algeria wasn't home when he went there but algeria sends a tape of the confrontation (including frenchy threatening, don't continue or else) to frenchy's wife. frenchy's 13 year old son doesn't come home one night and algeria and algeria's son are arrested, but in fact frenchy's son was at a friend's house. algeria sends a tape to frenchy's workplace and is threatening frenchy's livelihood and then algeria calls up and says "come on over" and frenchy comes over and algeria implies that it is the son who sent the tapes and then with frenchy watching he says, "i wanted you to see this" and he slits his own throat." frenchy wanders around dazed, eventually returns home and his wife says tell the police. (unseen: he tells the police and they believe him.) algeria's son shows up at frenchy's work and confronts him and says you ruined my father's life. frenchy says, you made the tapes; algeria could never have done it. algeria's son denies it, believe what you want. the confrontation ends and algeria's son is satisfied with the confrontation and the movie ends with a flashback of algeria being sent away to the orphanage and then a shot of a school dismissal. (school is out- the lesson is over. but the past is prologue.) A minus.

(m48 and m49) anne of thousand days and bridge

anne of the thousand days was based on a play written by maxwell anderson, imitating shakespeare and quite good with richard burton at the top of his form. genevieve bujold is not much of an actress and this obviously weakens it. but i now have some idea of the first two wives of henry the 8th and the things that drove him to establish the church of england- a desire for a woman and a desire for a son is what this movie says.
bridge at remarge was mediocre and i watched it with one eye. inspired by a true story and the bridge over the river kwai. george segal and ben gazarra are fun to watch, but it was not much of a movie. B for anne and C- for bridge.

breaking bad

i really got into breaking bad after seeing it on a top ten list last december. but recently it has really gone downhill. all the tension has been dissipated. the people sent to kill walter and injured hank have been killed. the threat of revelation from jesse has been assuaged and even if the marriage between walter and his wife is not heavenly, there is no real threat involved. so the last two episodes have been tension free and weak. i will not break this habit (prediction rather than vow) but i am let down by the current lack of tension and therefore interesting episodes.

hymie, wife and kids and the death penalty

hymie showed up on the telephone a few days ago and after a lull of a couple days a call came from chatzkal this morning. (after an earlier call from a telemarketer to whom i gave aviva's teudat zehut number, but they needed gil's number. they are ruthless.) he said the time is set for six and told me to call gassel. i called gassel, who answers the phone "aryeh" and i say lorin. and he was busy but i told him the info pretty quick and such it went. got very little sleep, but awoke early enough (discovered an inefficient closing of my inner door! upon my return home) and went to the library and switched my books, one by paul auster and one by judy blume. (never got to read her kids' books, so a chick book will have to do) and then called mich (dust storm today) and resnick (close the windows). then walked and was there way early for hymie but right on time for rocky and son. (reminiscing: yakov turner. "is this the gartel?!) finally hymie and family arrived. (i was by the window and saw him come into the wrong house next door) and he looked older, but the same. hung out on the mirpeset and it took me a bit to recall that his kids were adopted (his wife had been very sick at some point.) it turns out that he testifies in capital death punishment cases quite often and i just got a boost thinking in that direction because of that good comic actor on lost (not as perfect as chris farley, but still better than seymour philip hoffman for the role) and i told hymie the idea and he repeated the title "fat man walking" to me and told me the story of tiny who didn't fit in the electric chair. the right wingism of chatzkal and the others was a drag. gassel showed up just as rocky was leaving and his business goes from crisis to crisis but he's very glad to be here because his kids are staying jewish and rafi is engaged to be married after his art student wife gets her final project finished and checked off. being near hymie reminded me of his playing pool polo when he spoke of his pool in florida and there was a big israeli whose hand hymie's disappeared in and rocky reminded me that hymie was always late for class in eighth grade. the orange peel and the whereabouts of itri in beit safafa. arno rotbart was mentioned. many skokie guys who i never knew were mentioned. midrash with rocky was mentioned at the start but not when rocky left. gassel said he'd invite me for shabbos. i got hymie's e mail address written on invite to clara's graduation. his wife's name is esther and she comes from boro park so some memories of brooklyn were stirred. one kid was outside playing most of the time and the other one knew about the fat guy with the long hair. i was at a real low point in 80 when i last saw hymie, so those memories were stirred as well. resnick wasn't home for a post chatzkal get together. walked via the valley of the ghosts. got a nice nap soon after getting home.

(m46 and m47)kick ass and pusher

kick ass was a middling movie that referenced tarantino. pusher was a good movie about a pusher who owes money and is in real trouble with some very bad people. kick ass was a C. pusher was a B.

(m 44 and m 45) Guadalcanal Diary and the Bridge

One propaganda film shot in 43 and one German anti war film shot in 59. Guadalcanal is interesting to see Anthony Quinn and Richard Conte and Jaeckel as a kid and William Bendix and Lloyd Nolan. but other than that it revealed very little. The German film was quite good until the final scene. 16 year olds drafted from their adolescent lives in Germany right before the end of the war and thrust into the army. A kind commanding officer tries to keep them away from the front and assigns them to guard a bridge in their town. But when the captain assigned to them gets shot as a deserter because the idea of guarding the bridge is ridiculous to those who have been assigned the job of destroying it, the kids are left on their own and in fact they do go to battle against an american tank column that comes to attack. the battle is just another battle, and the kids are not discernible one from the other at least to me once the shooting starts and so the battle was a bit overheated and seemed like it didn't belong with the film which was semi comical until that point. absurdist or whatever. but until the battle it was quite a good movie. B or B plus for the Bridge and C or C minus for Guadalcanal.

juan cole on ahmadinejad the holocaust denier

sept 19, 2009

http://www.juancole.com/2009/09/ahmadinejad-spews-raving-lunatic-anti.html

Assessment may 22 2010

Since at one time I had "promised" myself an exit after Leora's bat mitzvah, which took place last night, it has come time to assess where I stand vis a vis my aliya. Firstly if I had unlimited cash I would still stay at the present moment to work on liberty maze and to get a filipino for mich and norm. I would travel to the states to get some reefer or maybe for vacation, but right now there are two priorities even after cash: 1. liberty maze and 2. filipino. thus 3. cash and 4. reefer. as far as pussy goes, it is unclear.

highlights of stay: bat mitzvahs of maya, eliana, hila and leora. wedding of moshe.
micha's party. visit to pardes chana.
klitsner fuck up. gassel fuck up.
resnick visits.
kenny's son's wedding. steve fredman's son's wedding. jon neuman's sons' bar mitzvahs.
buchman's daughter's illness.
tamar/tzaki weddings. gassel wedding.
micha kicks me out.
zohar and reefer. money for yaakov. intro to menachem. menachem kissoff.
rena's son's bar mitzvah.
zev visits.
arabic. english tutoring lessons.
political rallies.
visit to america. prague.
broken wrist.
movies on the net. books.
aviva's apartment. this apartment.
news of freyda's illness.
war in gaza. barakat election. obama election. netanyahu election.
sander shnorring.
gila day.
bmp, santa, liberty maze.
schrader fridays.
raanana visits. shluchot visits. beit shemesh visits.
scrabble on line, but not in person.
walks to beit safafa. havruta books. shari date. prozac. aus prozac. viepax. jeff friedman.
change banks. fake hundred dollar bill. tooth chipped, pain, dentists. rhodine encounters.

koestler quote

in this war we are fighting against a total lie in the name of a half truth

(M 43) School for Scoundrels

British fifties comedy (1960) A loser goes to a school of lifemanship to become a winner. Unable to win the girl, outmaneuver an underling at work, outmaneuver a competitor at a restaurant or on the tennis court, a salesman at a used car garage, he goes to a school of ploys and tricks to learn how to win. he succeeds at work against his competitor on the tennis court, reselling his car and gets the girl to come home with him. but when his tricks are too successful he is about to send the school home. the teacher of the school and his competitor break in on him and discover a new ploy, but it is not- it is sincerity, something the teacher truly hates.

B-

pre independence quotes mondoweiss

The British commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb admitted:

“Early in January, the first detachments of the Arab Liberation Army began to infiltrate into Palestine from Syria. Some came through Jordan and even through Amman . . . They were in reality to strike the first blow in the ruin of the Arabs of Palestine.”

The two forces fighting for the Palestinians during the war of 47 through 49 were the AHC, the Palestinian army and the ALA, the forces from outside Palestine.

The representatives of the Palestinians was the AHC, and thus this “one quote” is the quote of the official representative of the Palestinians making his case in front of the UN Security Council.

More quotes:UNSCOP was prevented by Arab and British forces from doing a full investigation in Palestine. They reported to the Security Council on 16 February 1948:

“Organized efforts are being made by strong Arab elements inside and outside Palestine to prevent the implementation of the Assembly’s plan of partition and to thwart its objectives by threats and acts of violence, including armed incursions into Palestinian territory… This Commission now finds itself confronted with an attempt to defeat its purposes, and to nullify the resolution of the General Assembly.”

So far: three quotes.

Cycle of events:

1. UN approves partition plan. Zionists rejoice. Arabs promise violence.

2. Violence- Including Palestinian Arab versus Jewish violence and Jewish violence against Arabs, plus the invasion of Arab Liberation Army forces into Palestine. Casualties in December and January came to 1000 killed and by the end of March 2000 killed.

3. Assessment by the Zionists that the situation of defense was untenable: With Arab forces controlling the roads throughout the country and particularly the road to Jerusalem, the decision was made to go on the offensive.

4. Launching Plan Dalet. he defeat of Gush Etzion, a Jewish enclave in the area allocated to the Palestinian state which was never born:

For five months the bloc was besieged, first by Arab irregulars, and then by the Jordanian Arab Legion. Throughout the winter hostilities intensified and several relief convoys from the Haganah in Jerusalem were destroyed in ambushes. For 47 days the armed conflict was intense.

But according to you there was no Jordanian Arab Legion in Palestine and would not be one until after May 15th, even though the Jewish forces in Gush Etzion were defeated on May 14th.

Jamal husseini April 16, 1948 AHC

On Apr. 16, 1948 Jamal Husseini, the Arab Higher Committee’s spokesman told the Security Council, “The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight.”

(m42) Who'll stop the rain

nick nolte and michael moriarty. vietnam. michael moriarty disillusioned scores two keys of heroin and gives it to sailor nolte to bring to the states. sailor nolte brings it to the states and discovers los angeles very changed. he goes to moriarty's wife and she does not have the money she promised and the nolte has been followed by thugs. nolte outwits the thugs, and escapes with moriarty's wife. moriarty arrives and is tortured by the thugs, but they figure out where nolte is headed and find him holed up in a cabin on an old abandoned hippie retreat. they shoot it out. nolte is killed. moriarty pours the heroin out to the wind and moriarty and his wife escape with their lives and sanity. The post vietnam generation overtaken by drugs and greed.

(M 41) pretty baby

susan sarandon works in a new orleans whore house circa WWI. the house is remarkable in its madam who is plain talking (there are two things one can do when it's raining outside and i never liked playing cards) and antonio fargas as the piano player. sarandon is an irresponsible mom to brooke shields who is 11 or 12. sarandon gives birth. keith carradine, a photographer shows up and wants to take pictures, but he doesn't touch the whores. finally brooke is placed on auction to lose her cherry and gets 400 dollars bid on her. the man is rough, but brooke is tough. sarandon is proposed to by some guy and she leaves brooke at the house. keith is in love with brooke and when brooke is punished for some offense she runs away from the whore house and finds keith and moves in. she misbehaves one day and he kicks her out. she goes back to the whore house, but times have changed and the whore house is about to be closed down. keith comes around and marries brooke. he is living with her when sarandon and hubby show up and take her away, putting their past behind them and leaving keith alone.

message to karmen

hey karmen, sorry i didn't get back to you sooner. tonight is shavuot and i went to my uncle kenny's with my friend richard, who is in from out of town (he's from chicago). only kenny's youngest child (eight years old) was there. this week i had my brother (ultra orthodox) son got married in bnei brak. and later in the week my sister (modern orthodox) her daughter's bat mitzvah in beit shemesh. meanwhile my dad's parkinson's has worsened in the last few weeks and he's finding it very difficult to walk at all. shavuot people stay up and learn all night and i guess it's a time to socialize, but i just don't feel like dealing with people, although writing to you, is easier than dealing with people in the present tense. i'm writing a screenplay these days called "liberty maze". you read all of bar mitzvah prophecy, didn't you? i'm rather depressed these days, i'm not sure why. certainly my father's disease is part of it. in any case, i hope you're doing well.

yonah

(M 40) the house on telegraph hill

a polish woman takes another woman's identity in concentration camp. she writes to tell relatives that she is alive, but is informed that her aunt is dead. she gets sent to america and pursues the issue and meets richard basehart who falls in love with her, marries her and takes her home to san francisco, where she meets the housekeeper who is jealous of her. she meets a friend/enemy of richard basehart's and he helps her. she befriends her son and discovers that the playhouse has experienced a bombing (blamed on a chemistry set). she gets into a car accident when the brakes fail. no proof of tampering exists, but she is suspicious. the telegram that she received in the dp camp telling her that her aunt was dead raises questions and the research reveals that richard basehart sent it himself and not the lawyers. but before the woman can find this out, richard basehart tries to poison her, but the woman has switched the orange juice and richard has been poisoned. the housekeeper who loves the child suspects that richard will try to kill the child and so she lets him die from the poisoning. the friend and the woman live happily ever after.

C+

hour of the wolf (M39)

Ingmar Bergman. An unstable artist, max von sydow, and his fearful simple lover live alone on an island. at times he is loving, but at other times he is very harsh. during the summer there is no night and this means he cannot sleep, which does not help his sanity. she becames infected by his insanity and informed by a spirit she finds his diary and reads it. he sometimes tortures her with his tortured sketches. she is also troubled by the reports of his previous love. there are other people on the island and if his sanity is tenuous when he is alone, it is positively fragile when he is in society. the island society, "cannibals" are very harsh, hedonistic, over the hill, getting their kicks from the artist and his mousy tortured wife. in the winter it is dark all the time and max explains the "hour of the wolf" as the time of night when people have nightmares when they sleep or are filled with fear if they stay awake. he tells her of one occasion when he is punished by his father, locked into a closet and told that a tiny animal will eat his feet. this causes him to panic. he then tells the story of meeting a ten year old (or so) boy on the island. he and the boy struggle and he kills the boy with a rock and drowns him. (does the boy represent the boy in himself that he has struggled with and killed?). the cannibals on the island give him a gun and he shoots liv and then goes to the castle to find his ex mistress there, but the cannibals are watching and laughing at him when they start to make love. (he finds her stretched out naked on a slab as if dead. when he touches her "dead" body lovingly she awakens and laughs, a laughter that he does not mind, but when the audience of cannibals laughs in the same tone, he very much minds and becomes filled with hate.
the artist flees the cabin where he lives with liv and is never heard from again. liv wonders whether she loved him too much and thus became infected with his insanity and thus was unable to help him like he needed. or whether she didn't love him enough and thus became susceptible to jealousy and couldn't help him as he needed.

Englander's short story (mondoweiss)

Englander or Gezer does not say that the Holocaust legacy gives Israel or Tendler a pass to do anything. In fact it labels Tendler as both murderer and "misken" (damaged goods). I suppose to those who wish to label Tendler or Israel a 100% murderer, to see the misken side can be considered giving Israel a pass, but to an Israel supporter or sympathizer once you call Israel 50% murderer it is not really a pass. I suppose the same thing can be said for Blankfort's assertion that Englander is telling the New Yorker reader who objects to Israel policy to "shut up". Gezer does not tell his son to shut up, when Etgar calls Tendler a murderer, he merely suggests that his son recognize context and see the "misken" side of the Tendler personality. But to those who see only the 100% murderer, such a suggestion might seem like a demand to "shut up".

In fact, in my view, much of Israel's sins are not when it acts (rationally or irrationally) in its attempts to secure itself, but rather when it acts to take land in a way that lacks any security rationale whatsoever. The nakba, or the exiling of the Palestinians in 48, was an act that for the most part had a security rationale, but the building of the settlements, for the most part has no security rationale.

As to the appropriateness of someone of Englander's age writing a story with the Holocaust playing such a major role, I see nothing wrong with that. A question could be raised as to what role the Holocaust would have played in Jewish thinking if the disaster had not been followed so quickly by the establishment of Israel with its needs for wars and rationales. Yet to those who are artists or even sensitive nationalists or co religionists, a disaster of that magnitude casts a shadow over the existence of their nation and even of their self and to expect the genocide in Europe to only play a part in the dreams or unconscious or the art of those born before 1939 is arbitrary and insensitive. Religious Jews mourn the destruction of the temple thousands of years after the fact and although individualism may be the modern creed, mourning the genocide or the damage the genocide has done to the body and soul of the Jewish people a mere 65 years after the fact seems to be human rather than abnormal and certainly no outrage.

moshe's wedding

the charedi were burning garbage in the streets thus making my trip to mom and dad longer and unpleasant. (my shoes don't fit, which is okay with shoes that have laces but not okay with shoes that have no laces.) the busdriver would not let me out early, and i walked down bnai brith and then to mom and dad's. dad could hardly stand and thus it was difficult moving him around. the wheelchair mobile was driven by a sour and moody charedi. we arrived before anybody and discovered that the wedding was on the second floor and there was no elevator. dad stayed downstairs for the chupa. shloimie was very helpful. i shot some video. there are a lot of grandchildren and most are good looking. remarkably so for ruchi. i gave ruchi's hubby the money i didn't give him on bris day. i didn't give moshe money because i'm in a sour mood. no pre chupa food only soda to drink. those people are unfriendly, especially women to men. tova came late and i spoke to neither her nor talia nor hila. spoke to jon a little. taking dad to the bathroom was a long and terrible process, which esther wanted to interrupt with saying hello. esther and sons were there. carmelit and hubby. rochel as well. kenny came late. was surprised by my resnick invite. berel didn't have much to say to me, except commenting on the motorcycle in the area of the chupa, also chairs were there and a throw out couch. left before any real food. stayed for a yotze zine dancing. they were an hour in the yichud and thus early wheelchair mobile plus long yichud equals no food and lousy mood. were late for the wheelchair mobile guy and he shouted at us. which meant that mom had to put her own seat belt on and dad went the whole way with his feet up instead of on the ground. chaya was friendly. mostly a tircha. glad i went, but no great joy involved. was really a small crowd. on the way home the charedi were still burning garbage which meant a walk up a hill with painful shoes past the burning garbage and saying "assholes" about the burning of garbage in the streets. (they are moving bones to make way for a hospital, how terrible! but i've seen poltergeist so i know what this means.) spoke to resnick by cell phone in the bus. (very rare to initiate contact by cell phone on a bus.)

christmas carol (M38)

1939 version. leo g. caroll plays marley's ghost and gene lockhart plays cratchet. scrooge the tightwad who reacts with bah, humbug to christmas cheer fires his clerk on xmas eve because he gets hit in the head by a snowball thrown by the clerk. but he repents at night after he sees marley's ghost (his ex partner, also a tightwad, dead seven years) and then the ghosts of xmas past (when he was a happy child) xmas present, the cratchets making the most of xmas despite the firing and the misfortune of their son tiny tim's handicap. and christmas future where ebenezer scrooge himself is dead and unmourned and tiny tim is dead and very mourned. he repents and learns to spend money and love xmas.

immobile father

the idea of drawing an analogy between my father's lack of flexibility and israel's lack of flexibility occurs to me sometimes, but the second intifadeh is the real cause for israel's lack of flexibility- that and demographic changes, so "ad kan" (until here) with the analogy.

yesterday i went for my weekly supper visit to my parents and i found my father's legs had become almost useless. theories abound for this sudden setback- the accumulation of B6 and a bladder infection. i hope some theory that will show this setback to be temporary comes true. Next week is chock full of events: a wedding, a bat mitzvah and a visit to kenny's for shavuot. also tomorrow night is a leftist rally in zion square.

my bad mood post the bris contributed to skipping arabic class wednesday night. my left arm is sore. i assume because of the moving of the wheelchair 100 hours ago, but there could be other causes. my progress on liberty maze is slower than usual. no progress on social needs/physical needs. resnick is a drain, but i try to avoid letting him know, but he knows.

Editor: too much diary in this one.

the philadelphia experiment (M37)

time travel. a navy ship in 1943 is part of an experiment trying to cloak it from radar, by using large amounts of electricity. unfortunately the experiment goes awry and the entire ship disappears. two of the sailors (who worked in the electricity room) are thrust forward in time to 1984, when the same scientist who was responsible for the first experiment is again experimenting with large amounts of electricity. the sailors land on an army base that is top secret and thus they are being sought by the army. the second experiment has created a vortex that is swallowing things up into its space time hole and part of the town in nevada has disappeared. one of the sailors is molecularly unstable and he causes damage to the video games at the truck stop where they visit. the owner of the truck stop wants payment for the damages and pulls out a gun. david, the second sailor, grabs the gun away and holds it on nancy allen who drives the two sailors away with her. the electricity from the vacuum is attracted to sailor number two and their car is often hit by lightning. they take sailor number two to the hospital where he raises curiosity and questions. finally he disappears in an electric flourish. nancy allen and david head to california, david's hometown back in 43. (they stop at a motel, where they are chaste and he watches a lot of television.) they visit his father's gas station and nancy sees his photos from 43 and for the first time she believes him. they go to the ranch of sailor number two, but sailor number two was treaty as loony when he returned to 43, so the appearance of his friend from that period is something he wishes to ignore. david decides to return to nevada where he expects to find answers. he meets the scientist responsible for the experiments and he is informed that he has to return to the ship to turn of the electricity in order to close the vortex. he says goodbye to nancy allen and returns to the vortex. (the scientists had sent a camera into the vortex and thus established the fact that the navy ship and the nevada town were up in the vortex.) he goes to his ship, turns off the electricity and jumps off the ship. the ship returns to 43, the nevada town returns to 84 and david returns to 84 and nancy and david live happily ever after.

B-

dreamscape (M36)

dennis quaid is a psychic, who left the psychic rat maze to bet on the horses is picked up to get back into the psychic game again, this time to enter people's dreams. he is introduced to the game and enters a construction worker's dream and then a little kid's dream, where he encounters a snake man who scares him, but the little kid kills the snake man and thus the kid is freed from his nightmares. there is a pretty woman who is part of the lab and he enters her dream on a train where he makes love to her. she is upset that he entered his dream. there is another dream psychic who kills a woman and dennis steals the files on him and reveals that he killed his father and thus was chosen for his antisocial tendencies. the president is having nightmares and is invited to the dream lab by christopher plummer (villain) and though plummer's men tried to kill dennis, dennis escaped and returns to help save the president. the president's nightmares consist of a post nuclear landscape (and they have convinced him to go negotiate a peace deal with the russkies, which chris plummer opposes and that's why chris wants to kill the president. the president dreams and dennis gets into his dream and tries to tell the president to wake up, but they've given him a sedative. the assassin shows up and dennis and the president must take on the assassin. president and dennis start off on a train through a post nuclear landscape and then they are on a subway of post nuclear zombies and the assassin tries to tell the other zombies to attack the president. dennis and the president escape. the assassin knows that dennis was scared of the snakeman from the kid's dream and he uses that image to scare dennis, but dennis knows that the assassin killed his father and so he appears as the assassin's father and this infantalizes the assassin and the president kills the assassin and in real life the assassin dies and the president is saved and knows that chris plummer sux. dennis gets into a dream of chris and kills chris. dennis gets on a train with the girl who he wants to bang.

B-

post bris mondoweiss

It is a shame that Israel's liberalism is "limited" to its gender policies (not only homosexual rights, but women's rights as well), while many general rights of the Palestinian minority and the rule of law are indeed under attack or backsliding rather than progressing. Insofar as this advantage over the Palestinian culture is used in the propaganda wars to prove that Israel is western, it is certainly insufficient to make up for other more important lacks and erosion of rights in Israel and the occupied territories. But certainly the "backwardness" of Palestinian society in regards to homosexual rights and women's rights is apt to raise the question of what kind of society would result from the one state that some antiZionists advocate. To pretend that the resultant one state will be some sort of utopia is either blindness, willful or otherwise, and certainly not an honest assessment of what the dangers of such a one state truly will contain.

Meanwhile back on the ranch, as Dickerson points out, the demographics of Jewish society in Israel are tilting the future in the direction of the Haredi, whose unmodern views towards women and homosexuality cannot be ignored. Such antimodern views threaten secular Israelis by present tense acts of violence and neighborhood coercion and the threat to Israel's future both social and economic.

A personal note: my brother, though raised modern Orthodox left the path of modernity and opted for the antimodern ultra Orthodox community and yesterday celebrated the foreskin removal from another of his grandsons. I attended and had occasion to converse with one of my Haredi nephews.

He is nonZionist, asserting that the declaration of a state by the Zionists in 48 was unnecessary and a British mandate here would have been better than the current dangerous situation. After getting him to admit that the pressure for a state before World War II was "necessary" insofar as a Jewish state before the genocide in Europe might have saved millions of lives, I conceded that the declaration of a state was not "necessary" but was an act by those who wanted a state. (Although now in retrospect, one could not have known in 1948 that the post war world would be friendly to its Jews.)

But back to my nephew. Despite his nonZionist stance his distrust of the Palestinian or to be more accurate his trust of their intentions to toss the Jews out of Palestine once they gain control is rather complete and thus (if he represents his community) he is both nonZionist and distrustful of the Palestinians and thus unwilling to view the peace process as anything but a trick, for neither a two state or a one state solution takes into account the inimical attitudes of the Palestinians.

(My point: the inability of the pro Palestinian movement to convince even the nonZionist Haredi community of their peaceful intentions proves that the antiZionists have not accomplished much in terms of proving that the future they envision will be friendly to Jews, no matter what the attitude of those Jews towards Zionism.)

merry christmas mr. lawrence (M35)

japanese pow camps. tim conti is a father (type) (he does say the prayer for a dead prisoner, but it is mostly his combination of pride, compassion, understanding and fear of physical pain that gives the impression of priesthood. he speaks japanese and is brought to witness the killing of a korean guard who has "abused" a dutch prisoner. the japanese beat the korean and try to get him to commit hari kari, but he has a fear of commitment. later on conti tries to get protection for the dutch prisoner who now is at danger of getting buggered because of his reputation. (the japanese commandant wonders if indeed all brits are queer. after all they surrendered rather than commit hari kari. conti explains that they would prefer not to be prisoners and instead to be fighters, but that there is no intrinsic shame in their culture.) the commander of the brits is a type who evinces no understanding for the japanese frame of mind or culture. david bowie is brought in as a prisoner, who is sick from being beaten and the japanese commander wishes to make him the officer in charge (he doesn't like the current brit officer and he has taken a shining to david bowie.) they line up a firing squad to shoot at bowie, but they are just faking. they make the prisoners witness the execution of the korean, which causes a brit to have an epileptic fit and to die. the japs condemn them to a 48 hour to fast, to overcome their spiritual laziness and david bowie brings them food and flowers. food for the men and flowers to commemorate the death of their fellow prisoner. the japs arrive and are pissed. (bowie eats the flower, claiming it tastes better than the jap food.) lawrence who said the singing was not a funeral but a christmas practice and bowie get put in the cell. bowie recalls how he was not a good older brother to his singing little brother whom he allowed to get hazed when he arrived at school. (reminded me of berger stories). the captain releases bowie and lawrence when he is drunk on christmas and doing his imitation of father christmas. (another time a man tried to kill bowie and bowie outwitted him and then cut lawrence down who was being hung wizard of id style. the jap committed hari kari, but explained that he thought that bowie was a devil who was trying to bedevil the captain.) the captain gathers the troops to torture them with fear of a machine gun. when the sick men were not also brought out, the jap insists that the sick men be brought out. one of the sick men dies and the brit officer gets upset. because he acts with lack of honor towards the japs, the japs are about to kill him. bowie leapfrogs the execution and kisses the captain on his cheek to shame him. bowie is buried up to his neck in sand. the captain cuts off a lock of bowie's hair (which he sends to be planted in his village to be a shrine). after the war, the sub captain is in prison about to be executed. tim conti pays him a visit. the jap tells conti about the lock of hair and the shrine thing and then says, merry christmas mr. lawrence.

B-

regrets (a poem i sent to danny)

regrets
i have a few
but then again
too many to mention

i regret the years i spent smoking
instead of reading
i regret the months i spent reading
instead of fucking
i regret the minutes i spent fucking

big wednesday (M34)

gary busey and two others play the protagonists, california surfers. the movie is not really plot driven but surf driven. the title refers to the day when the waves were gigantic. in fact by that day the protagonists are too old to ride the waves successfully, they watch the new hero (lopez?) ride the waves and watch in awe. (jan michael vincent attempts to ride the wave and gets "wiped out" but the blond and busey dive in and save him and he merely has an injured foot) jan is probably the primary star- his drunken state opens the movie, and only a ride on a surf board can cure his drunkenness for it forces him to stand and ride the wave. there is a party with crashers and thus fighting. they go down to mexico and into a strip joint, where there is a fight (serious, with cops and gunshot and knives.) jan's girlfriend announces her pregnancy. the free style is put to an end by the installment of life guards. (jan is drunk and persecuted by blond after he plays toro with the traffic and causes an accident, and jan and the blond only make up at the wedding of a friend, when blond who doesn't want to drink takes a drink because friends are more important than anything.) they receive draft notices and go down to the induction center. blond goes into the army, busey feigns madness and jan feigns an injury. one of their number dies and they drink a toast to him in the cemetery. they attend a wedding, use words like boss and radical. fight alcoholism. have to deal with the new regime of "brother" and "karma" that has taken over california. jan attends a movie about surfers with his wife and daughter. various types of waves and surfing are described. then comes big wednesday.

B-

me and orson welles (M33)

a high school senior goes to manhattan and comes upon orson welles and his troupe in front of the mercury. orson- can't someone give me a drum roll. kid- here's your drum roll. orson- can you sing. kid sings a commercial and he is hired. he falls in love with the secretary claire danes. she takes him to orson's apartment and she beds him. the next night orson beds her and this pisses the kid off, so when they emerge from orson's apartment, he insults orson and orson fires him. orson hires him back for opening night, but after the show, the kid is informed that he is in fact fired. the kid had met a writer at a music store and she showed him something she wrote and he gave it to claire danes to submit it to the new yorker and the new yorker agrees to publish it and with the kid and the writer exiting a museum their whole lives in front of them, the movie ends. some short parts in class and with the kid's mom. the kid uses matches to search the ceilings for people's names written there and starts a sprinkler shower. orson acts imperious. the crowd loves the play. the kid wins the bet for bedding claire (a bet with norman lloyd and joseph cotten).

bris/piss

jakes' dad died and i have to take my dad to a bris, carry his urinal around and be treated like a drek. azoy. all of aryeh's kids are ga'ava'niks. spoke to shmuel who is opposed to giving territory back and opposed to having declared a state in 48. he also knows about the american economy. he is a know it all who cannot talk out loud so another person can hear him. the father of the cut dick is an idiot. i will give him a hundred and moishe a two hundred next sunday night if all goes well. named after that snake josh levinson. in the mazes of 100 gates. cement not put down so that a wheelchair can be pushed. i am out of here (on some level) after next thursday.

mister berger

most kids stopped going to junior congregation after the fourth grade. mister berger who taught the fourth grade ran junior congregation and thus there was some logic to considering oneself to have graduated junior congregation once one had finished mister berger's class. my brother never had to deal with this dilemma as his good voice had gotten him accepted into the choir and thus he had another place to go on saturday mornings, and although i recall he did not last long in the choir, cantor brownstone was known as a tyrant of sorts, his association with the choir, however brief, sundered his association with junior congregation. but my voice was not good enough to qualify me for the choir and thus i continued to attend J.C.

i recall heading there early, the first kid present, in fact interviewing other kids about the death of jfk. one kid told me that he didn't care about the death of the us president and wouldn't care even if diefenbaker had been shot (even though by that time pearson was the prime minister of canada) i think the same kid was also the one who told me that his father rooted for the ussr in the olympics, for they had come from russia and they still rooted for russia. i also recall the near rape of karen dana, lifting her dress and being dared to pull down her pink panites, but knowing when to stop and apologizing afterward for the offense.

mister berger and i had a history of sorts. in his class if you misbehaved you were told in hebrew "take a sheet of paper!" which meant taking the sheet home and filling it both sides with the hebrew for "it is forbidden to disturb during the class" on each and every line, a punishment that i hid from my parents. this was the first time that any teacher had ever punished me for misbehavior and there was a type of combat that existed between the male students and our first male teacher (since the first grade, when norman stern wished to keep me in the first grade for an additional year because i still spoke like a little kid, with r's confused with w's and y's confused with l's.)

berger had chosen me to play the part of the mordecai in the school play. there were three main male parts: mordecai, haman and Ahasuerus and norman isenstein and joey greenholtz divvied up the two "villain" roles and i got to play the hero. one day berger told me to prepare my lines at home and since they were the avinu malkeinu, i assumed they were to be sung, whereas in fact they were meant to be pleaded (before a merciful god), so when he called on me to read my lines in class the next day he thought me poorly prepared when i read the lines as if reading a conversation between friends. norman isenstein burst into laughter and i was infected by his laughter and laughed as well and berger kicked us into the hall and we were both terrified that mrs. wiseman would see us and give us the strap and though we saw her in the hall, she must have noticed it was two goody-goodies in the hallway for whom mere hall banishment and fear were sufficient punishment and she did not gather us into her wicked witch grasp and punish us.

the avinu malkeinu act was in fact something of a problem for mister berger, because after i walked forward toward the audience pleading each avinu malkeinu, the about face and exit were awkward. he tried to do it with me walking across stage, but that lacked the dramatic wallop that walking forward towards the audience contained, so he eventually returned to the walk toward the audience and the awkward walk off stage allowed the audience a moment of introspection. (in fact this was 1965 just a hop, skip and jump after the war and who knows what the fear of extermination meant to middle class parents of winnipeg in those years..)

Gilda (M32)

George macready saves glenn ford's life on the dock of buenos aires. glenn shows up at george's casino and tries to rip off money at blackjack. when george tries to kick him out, glenn says, hire me instead. he does and they do well together. but then george leaves town and comes back married to rita hayworth, an old flame of glenn's. george senses their past and their hatred. rita starts fooling around and glenn tries to cover up her ways. george also is in trouble. he controls a tungsten cartel and some germans feel they are being mistreated. on the night of carnival, george kills them. glenn picks up rita from her latest tryst and takes her home. in the quiet of george's home they kiss. george sees them and then flees. he gets on a plane and crashes, faking his death. he is picked up from the waters nearby, but is thought dead. glenn marries gilda who now owns everything george owned. but glenn means the marriage to imprison gilda. (a painting of george dominates the living room which he has designed to cage her.) glenn insures that all her dates get roughed up. she escapes to montivideo, but her divorce there will not be relevant in buenos aires, so she returns to buenos aires with a lawyer would be husband, but this man is just a worker of glenn's. she puts on an exhibition "put the blame on mame, boys". the cop finally convinces glenn to give him the tungsten contracts so that he can prosecute the cartel for monopoly antitrust violations. gilda is ready to head home to america and glenn meets her at the casino and wants to head home with her. george shows up. the epigram spouting bathroom attendant kills george. glenn and gilda leave.

phil weiss likes a giant jew

Phil Weiss betrays his assimilationist tendencies in his quote from Kafka and his preference for big Jews.

Kafka said that going to a Zionist meeting made him feel like a wooden clothes rack, "pushed into the middle of the room."

The apparent quote re:Kafka was available on Google in "Kafka- The Decisive Years" by Reiner Stach. In a passage regarding the Eastern Jews who came as refugees to Prague at the beginning of WWI and the incomprehension of the Western Jews (Prague Jews) towards the poor Eastern Jews:

"But the best one is the little fellow, who has nothing but book knowledge, with a sharp voice incapable of amplification, one hand in his pocket, the other incessantly stabbing toward the audience and instantly proving what he intends to prove. Voice of a canary. Fills out labyrinthian grooves etched to the point of torment with the filigree of his discourse. Tossing of his head. I, as if made of wood, a clothes rack pushed into the middle of the room. And yet hope."

Seems to me that the "I" is a bad translation of what Kafka wrote, since nowhere else in the passage is there a reference to Kafka himself and he is in fact referring to the little fellow and not to himself, that he looked like a clothes rack pushed into the middle of the room. And yet filled with hope.

Kafka had feeling for these little Jews from Eastern Europe.

Maybe indeed the little Jews from Galicia that Kafka encountered in Prague deserved a degree of respect that the little Jews represented on the panel that Phil Weiss observed did not deserve respect. But what we see here is the preference for big and not small, which are external virtues and not essential virtues. As Phil continues:

"Charney Bromberg was next. Just to stay on the shmegegge theme, I'd note that he was the only big guy on the panel. I like a big Jew. I like a big redheaded bearded squarejawed barrelchested Jew, which is Charney Bromberg. He's a giant."

Phil likes a big Jew. Not the Jews who looks like shmegegges, deserving the mockery of himself and Max. Not the tiny little Jews, but a big Jew. Since the external virtue of bigness is matched by the essential virtue of openness to the suffering of the Palestinians, it is inferred that it is the scrawny Jews who oppress the Palestinians and the big Jews who have no need to oppress.

But this inference may not be the point. The point is that Phil and Max sit in back and mock the small Jews and he likes a big Jew, who goes against the stereotype of the small Jew. This is the Phil who married out, who paid no attention to Zionism until a few years ago, who would have preferred never to have been awakened from his comfortable assimilated life and has now been bothered to pay attention to the Jews. And for this fact of dragging him away from his comfortable life he has the minor compensation of laughter at the little shmegegge's and the wish that all Jews were giants.

Zionism as a Shabtai type delusion (mondo)

There are currently five million plus Jews living in I/P. The Zionists among them (and even the nonZionists- the Haredi who have no allegiance to the secular Jewish statehood, but feel safer under Jewish sovereignty) feel that turning I/P into a binational state (a la Tony Judt) would result in violence against them. I assume that Shmuel and Tony Judt and Phil Weiss feel that sufficient safeguards can be put into place to protect them or that the damage done by Israel is sufficient to justify the risks that the Jewish population might take by putting themselves at the mercy of the binational project that would take Israel’s place. But I don’t see those who wish to maintain Jewish sovereignty as suffering a delusion and certainly nothing comparable to the Shabtai Zevi delusion.

(The only possibly delusional factor are those who foresee a near term danger to Jews in America as justifying the Zionist project. It seems to me that the present tense dangers to Israel or created by Israel’s existence seem to outweigh the prospect for a Spanish expulsion or Inquisition, Czarist pogroms or Nazi type genocide taking place in America. This type of cool headed assessment rather than the “what if it happens here” assessment could term the “we American Jews need somewhere to flee” as delusional. But such a fear thought pattern still does not deserve to be equated to the Shabtai Zevi delusion which was a hope delusion rather than a fear delusion. I think the analogy is extremely poor.)

(On the other hand those who term the establishment of the Jewish state as the beginning of the planting of redemption could be accused of delusion, so those who view statehood as a religious event might be considered deluded. But if the fear factor rather than the religious factor is the predominant factor I don’t consider the analogy appropriate.)