And so, for this episode of Oy Mendele!, we'll focus on politics and drama. On this episode you'll hear:
- Abby Levine, Bay Area Regional Director of Progressive Jewish Alliance. PJA just opened a local office in the Bay Area and Abby was kind of to tell us what they're up to and why.
- Amy Tobin, whose cabaret rock opera The Esther Show will be retelling the Purim story at Cafe Du Nord on March 18th. (She'll also be performing in in NYC and Boston). Amy's got a great voice, and this is a prime opportunity to listen to a taste of some distinctly adult oriented megillah mining.
- The Golem, direct from Prague, in a radio play by the students of East Bay Midrasha. This very special production was facilitated by Jewlia Eisenberg, who teaches Radical Jewish Culture at Midrasha.
- And speaking of Golems, the band Golem is at Cafe Du Nord on Sunday (6:30 and 9:30 shows, with 'Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad'). Their album 'Homesick Blues' is all about being nostalgic for places you've never been, and it's some of the funnest, loudest, sometimes sloppiest newish Klezmer I've heard in a while. I spoke with Annette Ezekiel, Golem's co-lead-singer/accordionist.
]]>For today (5:30 PM PST, 90.7 FM KALX-Berkeley) we have on tap:
Have a great 2005/5765!
]]>This month we bring to you:
Plus local Chanukah events and a dose of holiday birthday angst.
]]>Turning out for this episode:
--> Sexologist (don't you want that job?) Isadora Alman
--> Fashion Magnate and Professional Dater Sarah Lefton
--> Sha'anan Street of Israeli Rap Group Hadag Nachash
--> Our new advice column, Ask Osama!
--> The plain old Oy Mendele crew: Eric Fixler, Michelle Davis, Rebekah Kouy-Ghadosh
AUDIO
Isadora Alman interviewed by Eric
Hadag Nachash segment feat. Sha'anan Street
[This is not the whole show! Full audio to follow!]
Next Month: Matthue Roth, Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish and DEATH itself
check us out on 11/7 with Oy Mendele ..
]]>This week we had Karoline Hatch from SF Liberation Radio
and a review of Team America.
The text of the review follows. Audio will be here soon.
Team America review .. read on KALX Sunday night 10/17/04.
Last night I had the pleasure of attending the new movie by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker with a couple of friends of mine who happened to be 13 and 14 years old. The movie “Team America” help a lot of promise in my mind, but failed miserably in delivering.
Before the movie started my 13 year old friend Gary leaned over with a devlish grin and reminded me to make sure my cell phone was turned off. I pulled the cell phone out of my pocket and found that not only had I left my phone on, but I had just received a text message. It wasn’t long until I had opened the phone and read Gary’s message to me. One word … “F-a-r-t-o-p-I-a” Fartopia. The keynote for the evening was set.
As funny as it might have been just then to hear me describe that moment, let’s put it into context. For the last few months… whenever Gary gets a notion to, he sends me a one word text message. Choice messages read “boogers” , “crap”, “craptacular”, “poop”, and “fart”. Fartopia was definitely expanding on an established theme, but I wouldn’t have called it insightful or even really all that amusing .. at the time.
“Team America” does not even reach the level of innovation and inventiveness that Gary did when he thought to use the word Fartopia instead of the shorter and more succinct “fart”.
In fact, I debated with myself as to whether I wanted to bother addressing my experience of the movie. In the course of the 2 hours that we sat in the movie I felt myself begin to doze off no less than twice ……
That hasn’t happened to me in a theater since I was in college and had to sit through 5 hour avant garde epics after any number of over -indulgences the night before.
The problem with “Team America: World Police” Is that it never seems to have much of a point of view….. and when it does have a point of view, it’s offensive. Not offensive in a way that would inspire me to call for a boycott, though. “Team America” is offensive in a boring and predictable way that makes me want to take a nap instead of watching the movie.
In their previous effort “South Park : Bigger. Longer, Uncut”, Stone and Parker had moments of insightful commentary: like the portrayal of the all black unit in the Army deployed to undertake “Operation: Human Shield”, or shooting Bill Gates in the head multiple times for his expressions of technological colonialism. These brief moments took a point of view that was crucial to being able to appreciate these movies.
In “Team America” the few places where a point of view is clear are in it’s homophobia. It’s mockery of the musical “Rent” and AIDS politics in general would lack humor even if it were more deserving subject matter. The fascination that Parker and Stone have for referring to all Actors and actresses that come out against the war as FAGs (an abbreviation for Film Actor’s Guild) leaves one to wonder what Trey Parker and Matt Stone might be trying to hide about their own close collaboration.
Beyond these attacks, everything else is quite surface. Team America is clumsy when it destroys the Eifel Tower and the Arc d’Triumph hunting down terrorists in France, but in the end it just one of those things, because the real vitriol is saved for those who would block Team America in it’s attempts at World policing. The UN is ineffectual because they aren’t violent enough. Michael Moore is mocked more for being overweight and against the war than because of any of his arguments against the war. In fact, the directors have him blow himself up as a suicide bomber before there would be any chance of developing a suitable parody of his ideas. These guys seem to have missed the nature of Michael Moore’s primary conceit. That he is much too convinced of his own importance to ever consider sacrificing himself for the greater good.
Thinking about it now, the movie might have been funnier if Parker and Stone had chosen to make Michael Moore the evil villain for their movie instead of the caricature of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that they did eventually use. Using Kim Jong Il, their criticism leans heavily on jokes around asian accents, an incredibly easy target, like Michael Moore’s weight.
And that is why Michael Moore could never be the evil villain here, because this movie was clearly about the most shallow observations that could be made, largely in defense of, U.S. Imperialism. Giving Michael Moore enough screen time to be the villain would have required “Team America” s directors to be a little more direct about their right wing leanings than it seems they are prepared to do. Stone and Parker would have had to listen enough to Moore’s arguments to be able to parody them and then they would have had to give an ideological response. However funny that could still be, they’re either not quite ready to give up completely on their liberal demographic or not quite smart enough to counter even Michael Moore’s arguments. Instead, they just call Moore and all his Hollywood friends fags and flesh out the remaining hour and 45 minutes with fart jokes.
My 13 year old friend Gary still doesn't seem to understand why I didn't like it.
]]>Reise Tanner and Michelle Davis gave us some musical show and tell (it was just tell, really) on the Ugandan Jewish Music of the Abayudaya, and, not content to stop there, they interviewed Basya Schechter of Pharaoh's Daughter, who just dropped a new slab o' wax CD called Queen's Dominion, which, if you're a Torah nerd yeshiva student, refers to the dominion of King Achashvairosh as described at the beginning of Megillat Esther. Whatever.
Basya Schechter's playing at the SF JCC at the end of October. That new building is a travesty, but the show should be fun.
We're providing the audio from this week's episode a la carte. IOW, you get just the stories, not the news or the witty interstitial banter.
Here's the goods, all mp3 files, 96kbps...
Yehudit and Reuven Goldfarb on Rosh Hashanah
]]>Thanks for your continued support. We look forward to a new season with the dawn of the Republican National Convention in NY.
]]>Also: The latest issue of Heeb, 'The Guilt Issue', just hit the stands. Joshua Neuman, editor-in-chief, talks about it with Rebekah Kouy-Ghadosh.
Plus News, SFJFF roundup, Democrats and the Jews. Guilt-free.
[Audio: lo-bandwidth hi-bandwidth]
You have a better name for the show? Let us know, leave a comment, below.
Next month: Music. No reggae, at all.
]]>Starve also discussed other inappropriate arrests during the reign of Bush in his own inimitable way.
Enemy Combatant Radio profiles queer feminist spoken word artist Alix Olsen.
ECR audio here.
]]>And present an archived interview with Bev Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org.
audio here.
Also a commentary on Bush's decision to be the first President since Herbert Hoover to NOT speak to the NAACP during his first term in office.
audio here.
actual text of commentary after the jump.
]]> Bush and the NAACPIt began with Ronald Reagan. A certain reverence for presidents of the past who were previously reviled. Particularly …. one Herbert Hoover. Reagan’s death was cause for many to visit the Hoover library. Reagan was an honorary fellow of the Hoover institution.
We know from the aftermath of Reagan’s death that our current president George W. Bush at the very least wanted to associate himself closely with Ronald Reagan and he has certainly done this, exceeding his mentor in many ways if we consider pre-emptive global strikes and assaults on civil liberties.
However, it seems more likely that Bush is looking further back into history when he searches for his mentors. It would seem that Reagan and Bush share a mentor, and in this effort to emulate his mentor Bush has once again exceeded Reagan.
Hoover was president on Tuesday October 29th, 1929. Black Tuesday. More simply put, Hoover was president during the most infamous stock market crash in history. The crash that preceeded the dust bowl 30’s. Junior Highschoolers all over the country are taught about the Hoovervilles that sprung up after the market crash. Shanty towns inhabited by people who could no longer pay their mortgages.
While our current president has not yet presided over a sudden stock market crash like Black Tuesday, he does have some other economic history that he’s developing in common with Hoover. Short of some dramatic and unexpected employment news, Bush will be the first president since Hoover to preside over an economy that loses jobs. Let me repeat that, Bush without the excuse of a major stock market crash has presided over the country during a time where there are less jobs available than there were when he started. This has not happened since the late 20’s and the presidency of Herbert Hoover.
That is a shame. And surely Bush would pointed to the tragedy of 9/11 as an extenuating factor in the economie’s shrinkage. However Bushes mimicry of Hoover does not stop with economic indicators for the nation.
As we discovered this week…. Bush is about to become the first president…..since Hoover … to not speak to the NAACP in his first term. That’s right….. Reagan did it….. And you can check in at undemocratic.us/amandla to read my previous commentary about Reagan’s racism…… Nixon even went to speak to the largest and oldest civil rights group in the United States. Bush’s own daddy even found it in his heart to speak in front of the NAACP at some point during his first term. Bush had no problem speaking to the NAACP when he was campaigning for the presidency as a compassionate conservative. But now that he’s been elected….what’s changed.
Initially when invited, the NAACP was contacted by a White House scheduler and told that because of a scheduling conflict Bush would not be able to attend the group’s conference which began yesterday.
The best bush could come up with was a spokesman’s statement that the president has, in the past, spoken about “equal opportunity and equal righths for all Americans” in many public places.
The groups President Kweise Mfume countered saying” When you are president, you are elected to be president of all the people. You won’t do that if you refuse to talk.”
More recently Bush has made his inability to address the group a little more clear by reffering top his relationship with the groups leadership as “basically non-existant”. He also mentioned that he had been called “names” by members of the organization.
One assumes he was referring to comments last month from NAACP chairman Julian Bond that reffered to Bush and his supporters as part of a “dark underside of American culture”.
I have no doubt that Bush’s relationship with the leadership of the NAACP is “basically non-existant”. I also have no doubt that there are some worse names that many in leadership would like to call George W Bush. I do wonder why Bush feels that that is an adequate response when he asked why he is dismissing the oldest and largest civil right s group in the United States.
If you visit george w bush dot com and cycle through the various pages, you will find very few faces of people of color….except on one page…the title of that page….. COMPASSION. George W. Bush seems to define compassion as being nice to black folks.
If that’s really how he feels….. why is his relationship with groups that advocate for people of color “basically non-existant”.
Israeli Refusenik Ofer Cohen discusses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his own actions in response to it with Rebekah Kouy-Ghadosh and Michelle Davis.
[audio: The whole kugel, 56k Matisyahu only, 128k].
Plus news, the Fast of Tammuz, and that haymishe feeling...
]]>Audio coming soon.
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