@kalenski I'm guessing also because @magicjewball is among the tip 5 nom de twits EVER.

September 10, 2011 9:45 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@quinncy

quinn cummings

I think she meant “top,” but whatever! I’m too high on life to care. Quinn Cummings likes my name! (Thanks to Kay, one of my favorite people in the world, for bringing me to her attention.)

I also got answered by one of my tech education heroes, whose works I read all through grad school and is in the bibliography of my thesis. What a night.

Twitter: bringing famous people and their crazy stalkers admirers together since 2006.

I have long wanted to write about this woman’s blog because I can’t figure out what to make of it and the way I sometimes do that is to write about those kinds of things here. If it was merely a cooking blog, I doubt I’d subscribe. I mean, I do have lots of baking blogs on my feed reader and maybe a couple of food ones, as well, but the recipes on this one, I think, wouldn’t be enough to draw me. Each post, though, begins with some photos of her past and description of some wonderful time with the band in Ibiza or modeling for a fancee fashion house or being painted by a famous artist. And I wonder why she does that. Is it because the past was so much better than the present for her? If I had been a stunning model married to a glamorous rockstar and was now cooking for a living, I too would miss the past. But somehow I don’t think so. I think she is savvy. I think she knows people like me (and there were a lot then and a surprising number who still exist today) want to hear tidbits about what it was like to live that life and see pictures of it. Sometimes she repeats the pictures but I don’t mind. Sometimes there are pictures of their child who is now an adult, but I don’t think that’s a calculated gesture.

I thought about her as I made the salmon and I wondered if it would be better or worse to start out living a fabulous life and then end up as someone living an ordinary one. And I wondered if I were her if I would make my blog a repository of old memories. Every time I read her posts, I think, “I can’t believe you’re showing another picture from 25 years ago!” while simultaneously devouring it and knowing I wouldn’t be reading if she hadn’t. And so, maybe, it’s really me who shouldn’t be wallowing in the past. Too bad it’s so addictive.

By the way, she still looks great, and much more naturally beautiful than she was then. He has not aged as well.

Title comes from a song by a band I saw on that vacation in New Orleans.
Echo & The Bunnymen – Back of Love

Unrelatedly, I did just want to tell this story. When I was a freshman in high school, someone in my high school had a party and I wanted to go but felt like I didn’t have the right thing to wear. So on the night of, I told my mother that I changed my mind and wouldn’t go. She told me that when she was in high school, the same thing had happened, she didn’t go, and the next day everyone told her how great it was. She still remembered and wished she had gone. So I went. And had a great time. I remember very well dancing to this song. RIP Nick Ashford.
Ashford and Simpson – Solid

Now, I’ll get a couple of things out of the way here. While I reeeeally loathe those “Lord, I pray you take Obama in all caps” status messages on Facebook, the ones from my “friends” were all by Jews. Statistically, that’s about right since two thirds or more of my Facebook friends are Jewish. So I didn’t think of that as a particularly Christian thing. And OK, I’ll flat out admit it, as a Yid, people saying they are God-fearing Christians and yet not acting Jesusy has never been a particular concern of mine. I guess I’m just self-policing. I’ll let the Goyim handle that one, because I really couldn’t tell you what’s Jesusy or not.

No, in actuality, the thing that inflamed me most about the post was not hypocritical Christians at all but the fact that Jaron is Jewish. So the stuff about his church and his preacher and his Jesus, well, he doesn’t really have any of those. Or he’s not supposed to, one would think. For me, the issue wasn’t that a Christian wrote a hateful song; it was that he wasn’t a Christian at all! So why should I care that one Jewish guy wrote a song from a Christian point of view? Why was the central question in my mind, “what happened to Jaron????” This is the background.

A long time ago, Jaron and his twin brother had a band called, creatively, Evan and Jaron. If you are a religious Jew, that’s really the end of the explanation. For the rest of the world, they had a hit called “Crazy For This Girl.” But even before they had that hit, they were our band. When I was little, like most music-crazed kids, I wanted to be a rock star. Or marry a rock star. But it never occurred to me that that could ever happen because I was an Orthodox Jew and rock stars played shows on Friday nights and had TV appearances on Saturdays and traveled around to places with no Kosher food. More importantly, there just weren’t any, so you knew it wasn’t possible. Then we had Evan and Jaron who were Kosher and didn’t play shows on Shabbat. And I knew this earlier than most people because I worked at their first label (the one before the hit… but we did try hard).

And here’s the part where I take it really personally. When we were working Evan and Jaron, I think the person most excited about them in the whole entire world was my mother. Although not really a t-shirt person, she loved the “got shabbos?” tee we made to market them. She adored the list I showed her of Kosher restaurants staffers were given so they could take E&J out in any town. She was thrilled that the kids had a role model. I’m sort of glad she never got to hear Pray For You. I don’t think if she were alive I’d even tell her.

So I really, really wanted to know what happened to Jaron. Wikipedia has just a sentence about the new band (which is just Jaron, I think) and skips right from Evan and Jaron to that. I felt like there was a yawning gap there that needed to be addressed. The person who is always in the know about these things is Pious B, so I wrote her. She wasn’t sure but thought it was doubtful that he was no longer Jewish and that it was all just a reinvention. But it still bothered me so I called someone I know at his new label and this person said, “are you sure it’s the same guy?” I guess the Evan & Jaron backstory is not a huge piece of the marketing plan. Intriguing. I reported back to Pi to tell her I was still investigating, and she said, “I will be checking for a Jaron post. He may be a Jewish traitor but he’s still a hot bitch.” Indeed.

Later that day, I received this cryptic message:

From: Pious B
Subject: Add to Twitter

JaronATLRTL

Yee haw!
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

But I did not want to follow Jaron on Twitter. And yet… so I answered, “Oh, I don’t think so. But I’ll ask him if he’s still a yid.” Pi said, “I think he’s a MOT in name only. I always got the impression that the Evan portion of the duo was the religiously committed one, but you would know better than I.”

So I sent my own letter to Jaron, via Twitter. I asked him if he was still a practicing Jew. Now, I don’t for one minute think that account is actually Jaron. I assume it’s one of Jaron’s marketing people as it’s mostly retweets of people saying they like the song. And, in fact, after waiting a day and remarking that I still had no answer to my question, I finally got, “what question? Thanks for loving the song.” Well, I never said I loved the song and in fact I’ve never actually heard the song and don’t expect to. But I asked again. I said, “what’s a nice Jewish guy doing singing about church & preachers? Are you still a practicing Jew?” That was about as deep as I could get in 140 characters.

Finally, he answered.

I’d like to state, first and foremost, that Pi nailed it, as usual. Also, that whatever I think about Jaron’s decision to reinvent himself for the Country market, I respect this answer and the fact that he even answered at all. I’m not as religious as I was in 1998 either and would find it hard to respond to that in public, in fewer than 140 characters, and with a sense of humor. With regards to that reinvention, when I worked in the record store, for seven Christmases I had to listen to weeks of holiday music and a good portion of it was Jews singing Christmas songs. A Jew, as we all know, wrote White Christmas. I used to joke that I was going to put together a collection of these numbers and call it, “Shalom, it’s Christmas!” Let’s face it, it’s hard to make a living just marketing to MOT’s. But as I told Pi, I just wanted to know whether Jaron was doing a “Barbara Streisand sings Silent Night” thing or if it was a “Bob Dylan plays for Jesus’ team now” deal. Because it deeply matters to me and, I suspect, to a lot of girls who used to go to Evan and Jaron concerts in modest outfits.

The interesting thing, though, is that, as I said, I couldn’t tell you whether “Pray For You” is in the spirit of Jesus or not; that’s not my department. What I can say is that it’s actually a Jewish theme to wish these sorts of things on your enemies. Things like, “may you grow like an onion with your head in the ground.” Here it is on a cross stitch on Etsy. And here’s a list of some other traditional Yiddish curses. So it’s actually sort of a Mosesey thing. I once saw a documentary where someone said, “Christians never dreamed of white Christmases until Irving Berlin told them they should.” I’m truly happy to hear that Jaron still identifies as a Jew but maybe the Yiddish curses don’t translate as well. Still, I wish him well and much success on the new venture. And don’t forget, shuls rhymes with lulz. You can keep that one.

For those on Jesus’ team, MOT = member of the tribe = Jewish

Evan And Jaron – Crazy For This Girl

The first famous person I met who impressed me was Margot Kidder. She bought something at my store and that was the first appearance of my MO when I see a famous person to this day. I raise my eyebrow as if to say, “I know who you are!” and they smile back slyly as if to say, “yes, I am that person!” No words are exchanged other than the business ones. “That’ll be $12,95, Lois Lane.” It’s true that I’m shy of famous people but it’s really more that I have this feeling that they’d like to walk this earth unhounded by people like me. That is, strangers. Even when I was ten or eleven, I was pretty sure Sting didn’t have the same relationship to me as I did to him.

But this is not to say that seeing a famous person isn’t endlessly exciting. If I had to analyze it (and, well, I do, I have a blog!) I’d say that there is something almost awesome about seeing someone who seems fictional, who is always seen in a totally constructed way, living life as a real person right in front of you. David Bowie getting into a cab. Chris Noth crossing the street. Jerry Seinfeld on jury duty. Even when I went to work with famous people and got used to seeing them and having them be real human beings, there was still some excitement.

Lately, though, famous people and regular joes get to talk to each other a lot more through things like Twitter. I’ve actually written back and forth with a few tennis players, musicians, and newspeople and that’s been fun. Because I wonder, if I were famous, would I spend my day talking to my fans? But some people do and that’s very cool. But it never occurred to me that Facebook could rise to this level. You see, I have this friend. My friend is a publicist with whom I used to work (twice! we both got laid off and then ended up at the same place) and aside from her work, she just is a ridiculously great person who moves in circles with lots of cool music people. So while my feed usually contains things like “Liz Jones is now friends with Joe Blow,” items about her are more of this stripe: “Mary Music-Publicist is now friends with Your Childhood Idol” or “Mary Music-Publicist is now friends with That Guy in Your Poster and 5 Others” where the five others also appeared in concerts you attended and videos on 120 Minutes. I know I’ve discussed my favorite DJ’s of my youth and what they still mean to me and they’re her friends too. Sometimes when one of them posts on her wall, I have to bite my own hand to not post below, just for the sake of being in that conversation. Because that wouldn’t really be fair to her, would it?

Now, some of the famous people profiles on Facebook are just kept up by their management and will accept friend requests from anyone. But I wouldn’t friend them anyway. It feels somehow demeaning to friend Martin Gore. Sure, he was a great friend to me for someone whom I’ve never met, but not really in the normal sense we understand the word. Or even the Facebook sense. But there is a famous person with whom I once worked, the idol of my early twenties, and he’s on Facebook. I found him accidentally while looking for someone with whom I worked at my first label. I didn’t need to friend this workmate, I just wanted to know what happened to her. But then I saw she was friends with this artist and so were a couple of other people with whom I worked. Now, his profile is also maintained partially by management and says so. He probably accepts anyone who friends him, or his management does. But I think my former co-workers’ friendship with him is like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Friendship Approval. So I went for it, friended him, and added a note reminding him of who I was (it did not say “remember that time in ’94 where I made you stay an hour to sign autographs at Jones Beach? Good times!”).

But even if we don’t end up Facebook friends, I’ll still relish being the friend of a friend of so many people I admire from afar. And not even Mary Music-Publicist will know how surreal it feels for the fan that lives eternally inside me to see them in my feed.

Yeah, some of you won’t know who those people are, but for those who do.
Love and Rockets – Mirror People

I know, you are utterly exhausted by the glut of Michael Jackson “news” on TV and the Interweb and wish we could get back to serious coverage of Iran and Jon & Kate. You wonder to yourself, what sort of backwards, brainless yokel is still sopping this stuff up to such an extent that they have to concentrate on this one story? Who are these idiots they cater to?

The answer dear reader, is the person in that photo on the right in the striped pants, or, more precisely, who she grew up to be. Because I, personally, cannot look away. When they get past the Michael news, I pretty much turn the station unless they’ve teased a later story. It’s not so much that I am interested in the stuff that’s coming out (oooh, he couldn’t sleep! The ex “wife” might want the kids!), it’s simply that that keeps him in the news. Because I’m not done yet. There’s a Hebrew expression, “l’havdil” which literally means, “to differentiate” but when used in the beginning of a sentence means “I am totally not comparing these two things, please don’t think I am, but this example is so useful so indulge me.” I wish there were an expression like it in English but there isn’t so here we are. So I say here, l’havdil! But what this reminds me of is shiva, the Jewish mourning period where you sit for seven solid days receiving guests and all you really do is talk about the dead person. If that’s what you want to do; it’s up to the mourner, but if you’ve sat shiva, you know, that’s kind of all what you want to talk about. You’re in a sort of shock and you’re trying to process and if maybe we keep talking about it, something will get clarified and you can move on. You want to sort through all the facts and details of the person’s life and how you related to it so you can decide what it all meant to you. Maybe some new fact that you forgot or never knew will turn up. I don’t care what they say, I just want to talk about Michael Jackson. Please?

I can only speak for myself, but I don’t think I actually miss Michael Jackson, because, you know, I didn’t know him and hell, I couldn’t name you one song he put out in the last ten years. But back to the girl in the striped pants. It’s hard to get a handle on her, she lives way in the past. I guess she liked to play in mud puddles and not so much with the hair brushing. But this week, when I heard lots of songs she used to listen to, for just a few moments I was inside her head, sitting on the floor in her parents’ bedroom (the only room in her house with a TV) with the lights off watching variety shows. And I realized that when they replayed all those interviews of Michael saying he’d had no childhood that suddenly, I could remember mine, like some sort of time-travel serum. And I knew why he missed it, because it was really happy and carefree and sweet like nothing feels like when you’re an adult. That feeling. That’s what I can never seem to access. Being an adult is pretty kickass but when you can feel for a minute what it felt like as a child, you realize what’s changed and what you’ll never feel again. And it’s nothing I could possibly put into words but the music, well, the music… it transports you.

When I was growing up we didn’t have air-conditioning. My parents worked at a Summer camp so we were away during the hottest time of the year. And if it got hot before or after that, we’d turn on the attic fan and open all the windows and the breeze would come on in. Sometimes, if it’s hot and I just have the window fan on, I can feel it. But not as much as when I hear music like this (and title comes from).

Jackson 5 – The Love You Save

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve watched and read a lot about Michael Jackson this week; I think his story is really fascinating, the fantastically-talented kid who was forced to become an adult at eight and then never grew up and never wanted (literally) to be in his own skin. But if there’s one piece that really nailed why I want to remember him the way I do, it’s this one from Josh Tyrangiel at Time Magazine. They won’t let me embed it but here’s the link if you are something like me and want to see it.

Edited to add the video. I remember seeing this on TV pre-MTV, I wish I could remember where. But it’s useful just to say that the joy you see in Michael’s face in the video is pretty much the same expression I have when I hear the song. I think this is the way I’ll remember him.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But outside the Time Warner Center where the WF is housed, there was a giant crowd, even though it was like 9pm (I work and shop late) and huge lights, one of them in the shape of a tootsie roll, I kid you not, that was being raised and lowered from some sort of tractor-ish truck. If you have worked till 8:30 and are then going grocery shopping before going home to bake a cake, the last thing you want is to be caught in a crowd of tourists gawking at a movie set where apparently nothing is happening.

So I went down and got my orange and a few other things and came back up to leave and go home. As I was walking out, I did stop to look and try to see if at least there was someone famous so I could say I had seen someone famous. As if on cue, someone from behind the cordoned off area, many rows of crowd in front of me said authoritatively, “nothing to see here! No one famous!” Well that was a relief. Phew! Nothing to miss, and I went on home and made my cake. And then another cake the next day, but you knew that.

Then, the next day, I happened to be reading Gawker when I saw this picture and I knew knew knew that this was the set in front of the Time Warner Center, lit by a giant tubular light. Nobody famous! Why, this was the exactly the same famous person I blogged about in my first “I passed a movie set” post! Hugh Grant! That was from Music & Lyrics and actually, my block was cut out of that one, alas. This one is called Did You Hear About the Morgans? and has Sarah Jessica Parker (also pictured on Gawker) but I doubt I’ll be seeing it. They lied to me, sheesh.

***SPOILER ALERT***
By the way, I finally saw the Sex & the City movie and was relieved they rectified that whole “Samantha ends up with a man just like everybody else, completely going against her whole personality” plotline. Phew. But Stanford and Anthony was just not believable. Sorry!

Rollins Band – Liar

a. it does a disservice to my regular readers.
b. it will take a while to get indexed by Google and by then people will have moved on.

But I can’t help myself!

The Hebrew on Boy George’s shirt in early videos says, transliterated, “Tarbut Agudah,” which means Culture Club. But backwards, since in Hebrew the noun comes first. So it kind of says, “Club Culture,” but actually really means nothing. But it was a good try! I have been getting a lot of Boy George queries lately because he’s recently gone to jail for some kinky sex crime or something. I was too busy being fixated on how he’s let himself go to really read the article. Ouch! Could anyone have been more fastidious regarding his appearance than George? How the mighty have fallen! It also means he’ll probably never tour here again because he’s a felon and won’t be admitted. But I’ve already seen Culture Club play and once was enough, so I’m not disturbed personally.

And while we’re chatting, Googler, I should also reiterate that David Nalbandian is not Jewish. Those questions are once again becoming prevalent because he won the opening tournament of the year, the Medibank Open! Woo! The Australian Open is going on now but since only two of you are concerned about that (although I’m sure countless lurkers care very much), I’ll try not to go on and on about it.

But hey, my interaction with you could have been like this gem I unexpectedly found while I was searching out lyrics for that “That’s Not My Name” song by the Ting Tings. You see, I had to know if her name was really Jaleesa.

Meaningful, right?

Is it wrong that I keep ending Culture Club song titles with, “….in jail?” Do you really want to hurt me… in jail? I’ll tumble 4 ya….in jail. Boy Boy, I’m the boy…in jail.

Luckily, this one doesn’t work.
Culture Club – Church Of The Poison Mind

But then she disappeared off of MNN and ever since then I’ve been trying to find out where she went, albeit in a half-assed way. I’ve missed her long extemporaneous diatribes couched in the most earnest and sincere manner. “I’m a mystic!” she would say. “I am a healer.” And I miss the way she would go from tangent to tangent and never make it back to her original point. But that was OK because she never really had one or at least it wasn’t one that you or I could understand. All that mattered is that she lulled me into blissful sleep. She has a website but it hasn’t been updated in forever. I kind of gave up and turned to the real Ambien. Which you wouldn’t know from the time my posts tend to appear but whatever.

Anyway, I was at a local shop, a big shop, with an information desk, and I went to ask where the item I needed might be. And there she was, the MNN Wackadoo Lady. I felt like I was in a dream, the kind you have when you actually sleep at night. But she was real. Right in front of me. In the most mundane job in the universe. I did what I always do when I’m face-to-face with a famous person (yeah, yeah, she’s not Angelina Jolie, but she’s famous to me): I give them a little “I know who you are” eyebrow waggle and see if they return it with a “yep, I’m ____ !” look. She kind of did. And then I decided to just go for it and say, “Linda?” She was surprisingly unfazed that I knew who she was (I mean, did I mention? She’s not Angelina Jolie) but seemed pleased that I remembered her and that I told her I wished she were back on the air. She had a lot of reasons, “I lost my producer, these things take money, I lost my web designer, blah blah blah.”

If you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned her name it’s because I told her a lot of nice, uh, less than truthful things about herself, like that she had significant things to say and added meaning to people’s lives. I don’t want her to Google herself and find that the chick who said those things actually just thought she was a nutjob with a smooth, smooth voice. But of course, if you watched MNN at a certain point in time, you may know who I’m talking about. And the truth is, she did mean a lot to me. I searched for her for years! Sometimes you just have to go to the shop down the street and ask at the information desk.

The Jesus and Mary Chain – Just Like Honey

Obviously, we are in the same position as Courtney Love, as well as the Estates of the others depicted. We were never consulted about this ad. We were never asked for permission to use Joey’s image, or paid for the use of it. As Executor of my brother’s estate I never would have approved this ad as Joey never wore these shoes. And, not that my brother was terribly religious, but the fact that he was Jewish, and this ad is not exactly Kosher, makes it that much more inappropriate, inconsiderate and contemptible.

(via Gothamist)

Huh? Let’s parse this. Kosher in the strict sense means permissible according to Jewish law. The common form mostly relates to food, as you’d know if you were a regular reader of this blog or resided in the Kosher food nexus of New York City. Neither of these explanations seems to make sense. If you work on the basis that Mickey Leigh (Joey’s brother; the real kind, not the fake Ramone kind) meant Kosher in the sense of “correct” and “permissible” then it doesn’t really have much to do with Judaism and then his whole “but he’s Jewish so how could you do this to him?” argument kind of falls apart. If you stretch to understand his meaning as “OK by Jewish law,” I’m afraid that there’s nothing more verboten about stealing someone’s image by Jewish law than in the more secular, American kind, so that doesn’t work either. The food idea is completely off the chart.

Is it because Joey’s kind of dressed like an angel in the ad (you can see it yourself in the Gothamist link above)? We have angels in Judaism too. Or maybe Mickey thinks the figure is kind of Jesus-like? I’m not really seeing that either, especially because I’m told that Jesus wore sandals. Everything in the ad itself, aside from the shoes, could totally be from Judaism (heaven, light shining through hole in the clouds, etc.). So what’s he on about?

So basically, Joey Ramone was Jewish, everyone. And that means you can’t dress him like an angel in heaven and have him shill your shoes. Oh yeah, and he didn’t even wear Doc Martens, so there.

This is the only Ramones song I could ever stand.

The Ramones – We Want The Airwaves