Jew Eat Yet?

The Bounty of Thanksgiving 2010

It’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving and I’ve just downed my fourth turkey sandwich, surpassing my usual two-day rule for leftovers. Our 20 lb. free-range bird was yummy, if I say so myself, and that was without any brining or fuss except for some butter, sage, and a bit of apple cider.

Leah made the delicious stuffing, a wickedly decadent potato gratin, and her first pie ever: carmelized apple pecan. Amazing.

I’m a horrible holiday archivist because I didn’t get any decent group shots of our 14 guests, but we had a truly wonderful time with family and friends. I did manage to get a few photos of the grub—here’s the table just before we sat down followed by some other shots of our bountiful meal. To all my orthodox relatives reading this: how the hell did that honeybaked ham get on my table? Someone must have Photoshopped it in…

Charlie enjoyed the turkey and fixins immensely and soon fell into a tryptophan-based coma (although some of our friends claimed that the whole turkey-tryptophan thing is a myth).

It’s still a mystery to me why our holiday season has to include such gluttony but I enjoyed every one of the 4,000 calories I probably ingested that night. And what a success—only one of our dinner guests ended up at the Cedars emergency room. Oy. At first I worried that I had poisoned everyone but it turns out it was her gall bladder.

Unlike last year, Charlie is now too big to take a dip in our turkey roaster. But like last year, there’s no mystery about all the people in my life for whom I am eternally thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving and Holidays to all of you.

Busy November

It’s rare that I’ve gone this long with no blog post so I just wanted to check in and say that I’m still alive (how sad is that if no one even noticed I’ve been gone!) but just in one of those busy fall periods full of deadlines and events. For any of you locals who want to visit the International Headquarters of the Jew Eat Yet empire, our hundred-year-old abode is one of the houses on this year’s West Adams Holiday Tour and Progressive Dinner. The event takes place on December 4th and 5th  and is dubbed “To the Manor Reborn.” It features a delicious six-course dinner enjoyed in a bunch of fabulous homes right on our block. We are the soup house and I’m just beginning to panic about the idea of hundreds of people traipsing through our rooms. Our “house captain” told me yesterday that our house needs to be “spectacularly clean,” a condition I don’t think it has held since just after the sinking of the Titanic. Gulp. But it should be a fun time—and maybe some of our ghosts will show up. All of the houses on the tour doll themselves up for the holidays and my Jewish convert wife is thrilled to have a legitimate excuse to whip out an endless of array of decorations to welcome the birth of the Christ child. I expect the photos of my Chasidic great-grandparents, soon to be covered with holly, will fall off the wall in protest. The tour takes place during Hanukkah (very early this year) so I will try to sneak in a few menorahs and dreidels.

This photo of Charlie was taken this week by our friend Amy Turner. For all my Chicago family and friends, the brilliant Amy and her partner Kathryn Lounsbery will be bringing their fantastic lesbian revue, “That’s What She Said,” to Davenport’s on Milwaukee Avenue on January 7th and 8th. Book your tickets now or you will regret it! Amy and Kathryn are not to be missed. Remember a while back when our house made its lesbian film debut in a music video of their "U-Haul" song? Well, Charlie has a featured role in their next video, "The Lesbian Cliché Song," soon to be released, so stay tuned. Charlie has seen the show twice and loves it. Maybe he's a "political lesbian." Oy, remember that ridiculous term? I haven't heard it since the 80s and hope I don't anytime soon. Except I just looked it up and apparently we always used it incorrectly. 

Here is a photo of Leah taken right after a performance of “The Boyfriend” last weekend. I've seen the show three times and am going to the final performance this afternoon. I love the play which is a spoof of British musicals of the 1920s. It’s the show that marked Julie Andrews’ Broadway debut and how she was discovered for her career-changing role as Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady.” Leah plays a French boy named Marcel. She's got some big changes going on in her life which I will write about soon.

To continue this rambling update, we're having 12 people over for Thanksgiving and I haven't done a thing to prepare except order a free-range bird. I can't decide whether to brine or not. What do you think? I can't believe that it's November 21st already. Happy Birthday to Voltaire, Eleanor Powell,  Sid Luckman, Marilyn French, Marlo Thomas, Juliet Mills, Goldie Hawn, Lorna Luft, and Bjork. And farewell to an amazing man, Jacques Sandulescu, who I first saw as an actor in the Barbra Streisand film “The Owl and the Pussycat” and who is the husband of blogger extraordinaire, Annie Gottlieb. Jacques died Friday night at his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. At the age of 16, he was imprisoned in one of Joseph Stalin’s slave-labor camps in the Donbas coal mining region of what is now eastern Ukraine. He survived that horror for two and a half years before his miraculous and death-defying escape during the frigid Russian winter. His incredible story can be found in the inspiring book “Donbas: A True Story of an Escape Through Russia.” Charlie and I were fortunate to visit Annie and Jacques a few months ago in North Carolina. The two survivors, Charlie and Jacques, were fascinated by each other as the pictures below show. 

An Unmarried Woman

I was 18 when I saw Jill Clayburgh in “An Unmarried Woman.” I loved her and I loved the film. I haven’t seen it in decades and I have a sneaking suspicion that it may not have weathered the years as well as I would have hoped, but certain iconic moments of Clayburgh’s excellent performance have stayed with me for over 30 years. When I mentioned the actress’s sad death at the age of 66 to a friend this weekend, her first thought was the same as mine: the scene in “An Unmarried Woman” where Clayburgh defiantly walks out of a lunch after her husband has just confessed that he is having an affair and wants out of the marriage. Clayburgh gets about half a city block, and then doubles over, vomiting while holding onto a mailbox. What made the scene so powerful was not just the actual (prop) vomit seen coming out of Jill’s mouth (a rarity in itself) but the intense emotional resonance of this act. Rarely has so much been conveyed by a cinematic puke. I’d put Clayburgh’s mailbox scene and Linda Blair’s projectile pea-soup a few years earlier in “The Exorcist” at the top of the list of Most Effective Body Fluid Expulsions on Film.

In its time, “An Unmarried Woman” became a pop culture watermark of the women’s liberation movement. Clayburgh wasn’t the first screen wife to be dumped by her husband for a younger model, but she was one of the first to tell said husband to go take a flying leap when he decided he wanted to come back to her. I think of Norma Shearer’s perfect Mary Haines in “The Women” whose husband Steven drops her for sexy and manipulative alley cat Crystal Allen played by Joan Crawford. As much as I love “The Women,” it’s always the other woman’s fault for any problems in the marriages of the female leads, the hapless husbands are never held responsible for their philandering ways. The final scene in “The Women” is of Mary opening up her loving arms to her idiot of a husband. Cue the cheers and applause. Not so in Jill Clayburgh’s more evolved world. I'm certainly not saying that couples can’t and shouldn’t get past such infidelities if possible, but Clayburgh’s evolution is that she comes to realize that there was a lot more wrong with her marriage than her husband's affair, and that she is truly better off on her own. Shocking! She can be happy…without…a…man? Yikes!

Another of my favorite scenes involves a fight Clayburgh has with her weak-willed stockbroker ex played by Michael Murphy. Raising her voice in his office, Murphy tries to shush her and says, “Do you want to have a discussion or an argument?”  “I WANT TO HAVE AN ARGUMENT,” Clayburgh shouts on the top of her lungs. Love it. Another groundbreaking feature of this film is the warm, supportive group of non-backstabbing female friends that Clayburgh has.

I also loved the relationship between Clayburgh and her teenaged daughter, played by the wonderful actress Lisa Lucas (whatever happened to her?). I can never hear any version of Paul McCartney's “Maybe I’m Amazed” without thinking of the poignant scene between Clayburgh and Lucas where they sing this song at the piano and begin their gradual healing from the huge disruption in their family. Director Paul Mazursky (who Charlie and I still see almost every morning at his Farmers Market coffee klatch) was truly gifted at showing, not telling. At the end of the film, when Clayburgh thankfully does NOT end up with her new “sensitive” painter boyfriend played by Alan Bates, she takes the gigantic painting he made for her and carries it home through the streets of Manhattan, struggling with the huge, awkward painting while slowly making her way back to her apartment. Brilliant. Still, “An Unmarried Woman” could have been deadly cloying if not for Clayburgh’s pitch-perfect performance. What a wonderful, real actress.

Kendall was very sad to hear of Clayburgh’s death. At the height of Clayburgh’s fame, she came to Kendall’s family's hotel room in New York because she was interested in playing the title character in a big screen version of Kendall’s mom’s book, “A Woman of Independent Means.” Unfortunately, the film never happened (years later it was made into a mini-series starring Sally Field), but the Haileys loved Clayburgh. Kendall’s strongest memory was of her fascination at watching Jill Clayburgh breastfeed her daughter right in front of them. (That daughter grew up to be the lovely actress Lily Rabe.) Clayburgh’s marriage to playwright David Rabe lasted more than 30 years. She died at home this weekend after dealing with chronic lymphocyctic leukemia for two decades.

I’ve seen Jill Clayburgh on the stage and on TV, as well as in a range of film roles including her turn as Kendall’s favorite Carole Lombard in the weird “Gable and Lombard” and her role in the creepy but fascinating “La Luna” which includes a scene of her masturbating her son (oy) to help with his heroin withdrawal. But I know she’ll forever be remembered as Erica Benton in “An Unmarried Woman.” I’m thinking of the wonderful scene in which Clayburgh dances around her Manhattan apartment in her underwear and, in a ballet of independence, eventually gathers all of her husband’s stuff into a pile to be discarded. The final shot in that scene is of Clayburgh removing her wedding ring and hurling it onto a table. I can still hear the women in that 1978 movie theatre cheering this revolutionary gesture. 

 

Pumpkins, Justin Bieber, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Halloween was two days ago but we haven’t taken down our decorations yet or even carved our pumpkins. We received a record number of trick-or-treaters, partly because of our child-centric inner city neighborhood and partly because, thanks to Kendall, we’ve become legendary as the house that gives away full-sized candy bars. Our dining room looked like Willy Wonka’s warehouse at the beginning of the night but by 9 pm it was littered with empty boxes. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Kendall was single-handedly responsible for a spike in the tooth decay statistics among Los Angeles children.

Charlie lorded over our Halloween porch party in his cowboy outfit, an homage to his cowboy-obsessed great Uncle Thomas. I thought the costumes, as a whole, were better this year than last, my favorite being, I’m a little embarrassed to admit, a tween neighbor who was dressed as Lady Gaga in a “Hello, Kitty” dress—a dress covered with hundreds of actual Hello, Kitty stuffed animals.

Speaking of tweens, I was at the Grove next to Farmers Market earlier in the day and ran into a massive crowd of young girls pressing up against police lines set up in front of the Barnes & Noble. The entrance to the store was covered with black curtains and every time a girl exited clutching a large coffee-table sized book, the pre-pubescent hordes would scream and rush the girl, asking her questions about what HE was like. Turns out Justin Bieber, the 16-year-old YouTube sensation, was making a Halloween appearance, signing his new book for his ravenous, glassy-eyed fans. I looked at the salivating girls and shuddered at what fame has become in this country. I wanted to yell at all of their mothers for encouraging such worship. Oh, and I hereby declare that the recession is OVER. If you’d seen all these people from all walks of life buying multiple copies of Bieber’s expensive book, you’d have to agree. I also declare the publishing industry dead as a doornail with most advances these days going to people like Bieber, various Real Housewives, Snooki, and the Situation. Help. I have no idea if Justin Bieber has an ounce of talent, but if I were his father I’d urge him to chuck the newfound fame and head back to the Canadian hills where he belongs. I’d also make him to set a razor on that Helen Reddy/Dorothy Hamill haircut. Oy.

The day before Halloween, my sister and brother-in-law were at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington where Jeff sang with Mavis Staples and also performed with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as they sang a very funny song about their different takes on America.

My sister took a lot of pictures but the one that really floored me was this photo of Mavis and basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Um…she’s not sitting down…and he’s not standing on anything! Wow.

In honor of Election Day, here are the lyrics to Stewart and Colbert’s “No One is More American Than Me.”

Stephen: You know, Jon, I may not win any awards from your liberal audience for saying this, but I love America. You know why?

Jon: Why?

Stephen: 'Cause on my calendar each day’s the fourth of July

If you cut me open, I bleed apple pie

Lady Liberty’s the hottest girl that I’ve ever seen

I would totally hit that, if I were tall and green

America is perfect, and there’s nothing to fix

My pin code is 1776 (don’t tell!)

Plus, Americans will deep-fry anything

And that is why I sing…

That it’s the greatest, strongest country in the world

It’s the greatest, strongest country in the world

From north to south to east to west, and diagonally

There’s no one more American than me!

Jon: I’ve got just as much right to wear this sweater

I’m a tolerant American and that’s why I’m better

I embody the spirit of the Founders, I know

‘Cause I watched “John Adams” on HBO

You can tax all my cash to help out a stranger

But I’ll sue City Hall if they put up a manger

I know forty inoffensive terms for “Eskimos”

And here’s how the chorus goes…

It’s the greatest, strongest, country in the world

It’s the greatest, strongest country in the world

All the men and the women and the genders in-between

There’s no one more American than me

You like to lump people together if they’re wearing veils

Stephen: You only criticize Christian, straight white males

Jon: I’m just telling it like it is to the powers that be

Stephen: And isn’t it convenient they all look like me?

Jon: I love America and everyone in her

I’d so invite Sidney Poitier to dinner

And I’ll defend anything any person says

Stephen: Unless it’s Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez!

Jon: You don’t care about the gays

Stephen: That’s mostly true

Jon: You’re terrified of Muslims

Stephen: Well, they scare you, too!

Jon: But I would never talk about it, folks would get annoyed

Stephen: You’re a coward

Jon: Yes, but I’m still employed!

Stephen: I love the real America, and she loves me

All the way from Idaho to Kentucky

Jon: Yes, from New York to L.A.

And all that filler in between

Jon & Stephen: On this we both agree…

That it’s the greatest, strongest country in the world

It’s the greatest, strongest country in the world

Stephen: I love America from U-S-A to U-S-Z

Jon: I’d marry Uncle Sam if I could do it legally

Stephen: I lull myself to sleep at night by counting detainees

Jon: I like to use French words like “je ne sais quoi” and “bourgeoisie”

Stephen: Keep your atheist hands off my precious Christmas tree

Jon: My hybrid electric scooter gets a hundred MPG

Stephen: I love NASCAR halftime shows with tons of TNT

Jon: In hindsight it’s clear I couldn’t pull off that goatee

Stephen: I’d be out in the first round of any spelling bee

Jon: I changed my name so it would sound a whole lot more WASP-y

Jon & Stephen: From gay men who like football

To straight men who like “Glee”…

There’s no one more American

More Stewart or Colbert-ican

There’s no one more American than ME!