January 2008 Archives

I suppose that to posit that a  person of the Jewish faith had made a deal with a studio run by another person of the Jewish faith, and imply that their both being Jewish had anything to do with the deal being made, would sound Anti-Semitic.

So perhaps it would be wrong of me to point out that Haggis, a Scientologist, has made a non-exclusive first look deal at United Artists, the Studio affiliated with noted Scientologist Tom Cruise, and wrong to suggest that their affinity for one and another had anything to do with shared convictions, and was not solely based on Haggis' ability and commercial viability. So let's give them the benefit of doubt, and say that like anything else, they may have known each other, or known of each other not only through their works which everyone is familiar with, but also through their shared interest in Scientology which it is reasonable to assume they both knew about, and that each knew that they could contact each other, and were happy to find a way to be working together. There, I said it It was a happy coincidence.

Why is it that I'm afraid to even post this? Consider this a non-story, or perhaps better yet, a non-post.

I'm not sure how Thursday came to be tech day, but the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other papers across the country have all designated Thursday tech/ gadget / website day.

So in that spirit, I would like to direct you the the website of the Newseum which has a feature allowing you to look at the front page of Newspapers all around the world. Check it out: http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/default.asp

This week's Jewish Journal has a good interview by Amy Klein with Nick Goldberg, editor of the LA Times Op-Ed page. The interview focuses, as the op-ed page does frequently, on coverage of the Middle East. Goldberg sees his role as hosting the airing of diverging opinions no matter how much they might anger one side or other (and sidesteps the question of what his own opinions might be)  By the way, Goldberg is married to writer Amy Wilentz who has written extensively on Haiti, covered the Middle East for The New Yorker, and recently wrote a book about California.

In what must surely be one of the strangest and most convoluted arguments made in this primary season, the New York Post endorses Obama because he is not Hillary and then goes on to trash Hillary and Bill Clinton, separately, together, and trash the Clinton presidency -- and then say they don't think so much of Obama either. WOW!

This morning's Nextbook has an essay by Anderson Tepper on Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector.

Her work called to mind a tropical, female Kafka with sensory overload. As the French literary critic and philosopher Hélène Cixous put it: “I discovered an immense writer, the equivalent for me of Kafka, with something more: This was a woman, writing as a woman. I discovered Kafka and it was a woman.” Unlike Kafka’s however, Lispector’s work—though obsessed with Brazilianness and a sense of belonging—had little to say about its own Jewishness. As Grace Paley writes in the introduction to Lispector’s book of stories, Soulstorm: “I thought at one point in my reading that there was some longing for Europe, the Old World; but decided I was wrong. It was simply longing.” And according to Moacyr Scliar, Brazil’s foremost Jewish writer, Lispector “didn’t deny her Jewishness, but she didn’t push it. The reason why this happened is still the subject of discussion here in Brazil.”

Tony Perri, who I don't know made this video about Art Levitt, who I do know -- about a trip he took several years ago to Russia as a Disney employee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsx6cE9amck

I can't seem to figure out yet how to load this as a video straight from you tube, so just click on it.

Today brings several announcements regarding the WSJ:

First off, the offices will move to mid-town Manhattan, away from the street from whence it derives its name. Does it matter ?-- of course there is something to covering a beat and having the paper there -- but the financial world and the worlds that the WSJ cover are decentralized -- globalized -- so so one can argue that it matters little, if at all.

I think it signals a shift --  consciously or subconsciously it will affect reporters. My long-time criticism of the journal has always been that they remain cheerleaders on the way up and critics on the way down, and don't really break as many stories on their financial beat as they might or should.

Of course for Murdoch, it will mean savings on real estate cost -- and that is one way to improve the bottom line.

The Journal will also introduce a Sports page (Fox has a large investment in sports) and in the fall will launch a lifetyle magazine to be called Pursuits (the name of the weekend feature section) edited by Tina Gaudoin a London Times editor,

Thank goodness Murdoch promised he wouldn't be interfering with editorial.....

One of the wittiest reviewers out there is the NY Times' Alessandra Stanley on Television. Here's how she began her review of HBO's "In Treatment":

Some things sound simply awful: a family reunion holiday cruise, an all-you-can-eat haggis buffet, a television series set entirely in a psychotherapist’s office.

Stanley goes on to praise the show -- but her quips continue. I seem to recall meeting her at a party a decade or two ago when she was covering the wars in Central America for Time. She told a hilarious story about the scene in the lobby of the Nicaragua Hilton. Anyhow, applying her intelligence to covering TV continues to yield inspired results. I'm still laughing about the "all-you-can-eat haggis buffet."

At The Sunday New York Times --  seems like late January is NEW NOVELIST MONTH at the NYT, (and at publishing houses for that matter) what with the recent feature on Jim Collins' "Beginner's Greek", and this Sunday's Book review of  Tod Wodlicka's "All Shall Be Well," and the Charles McGrath article in the Sunday Magazine about Charles Bock's novel, "Beautiful Children."

The Arts & Leisure also had a great feature on Robert Capa's lost suitcase of negatives which has been recently turned over to the International Center of Photography (which, in turn, was run for many years by Capa's brother Cornell Capa). Need I mention that the Robert Capa was born in Budapest, Hungary as Endre Erno Friedmann. Cornell was also born Friedmann, but kept his first name. And although you might not think Cornell a Jewish first name, it was quite popular at the beginning of the 20th Century in Budapest -- it was also my grandfather's name.

Medicine & Its Alternatives.
An interesting review by Jerome Groopman on "The Cure Within: A history of Mind- Body Medicine" By Anne Harrington. Harrington is the editor of a book on "The Placebo Effect."  How alternative medicine came to be preferred to a visit to an M.D, and became a $40 billion business is worth pondering. An article I read recently made the point that many alternative medicines work because of the placebo effect -- that is the belief that they do work is so great, that when the person feels better and eventually is better, they attribute it to the alternative treatment.Everyone knows an alternative treatment that works, and everyone has a "miracle" healing story. The question is to how to set those in context.

Speaking of Groopman, his article on business-like approaches to cancer-cures in The New Yorker, "Buying a Cure," (Jan 28th issue) was fascinating -- and presents a different front of attack on current medical/scientific research practice -- one that while not yeilding "cures" certainly seems to be keeping some cancer patients alive a lot longer -- for which we may all be grateful.

The Sunday LA Times had an interesting feature on "Gossip Girl" and its failure to attract a large audience, despite all its buzz and success on other "platforms" (i.e. the internet). I confess that "Gossip Girl" is my guilty pleasure but the article does beg the looming question --- if everything migrates to the internet, can any of it succeed -- and if so, how?

This week's  sign and sight newsletter features an article about the controversy in Poland over the Polish publication of Princeton historian Jan Tomas Grosz's book "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz." As Polish professor Jakub Kloc-Konkolowicz explains, Grosz book makes the point that:

The Holocaust victims were confronted with more or less open hostility on the part of the Polish population, which ultimately ended in pogroms. Gross' book examines three of these in detail, in Rzeszow (1945), Krakow (1945) and the most notorious pogrom in Kielce (1946) in which 37 Jews were murdered.

For Gross, neither the allegedly widespread participation of Polish Jews in the slowly consolidating Communist regime nor the horror stories circulating about the ritual murder of Christian children were the real reasons for these occurrences. Ultimately, economic interests were behind the events. Many Poles had taken possession of Jewish property after the German occupiers fled, and the Holocaust survivors' return was perceived as a real threat. Regardless of the pretexts for the pogroms, Gross writes, their real purpose was to get rid of the inconvenient victims.

Although many Poles had heroically come to the aid of their fellow Jewish citizens by providing them with shelter at their own peril, most had looked on with indifference – sometimes even approval – at the crimes committed by the German occupiers on the Jews. Pangs of conscience can be very effective, destructive even, especially when they veil a clear interest.

Polish officials are outraged, Lech Walesa said the book may "awake dangerous demons." To understand more of Polish reaction to the book, and the controversy it has engendered, read on here.

The 1980s are officially back.

Peter Brant has bought out ex-wife Sandy's interest in Brant Publications including Interview Magazine (Brant is now married to 1980s supermodel Stephanie Seymour). Interview was for the last two decades under the operational control of Sandy Brant and Ingrid Sischy was the editor. Following Sandy's departure, Sischy has resigned. Peter Brant has appointed Glenn O'Brien editorial director and Fabian Baron creative director.
   
    O'Brien harks back to the Andy Warhol Interview days, and my era there. A very, smart, entertaining fellow -- and I'm not sucking up (OK, I am -- but it's true). Recently I attended a party where a kid on the sidewalk was hawking DVDs of O'Brien 1978-1982 cable access talk show "TV Party."
  
 Back in the late 1980s Fabian Baron was the designer for New York Woman (a publication of which my wife, Amy, became publisher).

I may have to start reading Interview again.

    Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is one of the stars of "The Jewish Americans," the six hour documentary that is currently airing on PBS. On the first show she tells a joke apropos herself and her heritage as a Jewish American, that is both wise and true, the very definition of a Jewish Joke.
    She asks: what's the difference between a bookkeeper in the garment district and a Supreme Court Justice?
    The answer: One generation.

Mel Brooks appeared last night at the Aero Theater to introduce a double feature of "The Producers" and "The Twelve Chairs."

    Appearing before a sold-out room, Mel took the microphone and explained that we were getting a real treat because he used to get $100 a week to perform in the Catskills. He regaled the audience with stories of how "The Producers" got made, explaining that almost every studio in town turned it down. Lew Wasserman loved the script but asked if Brooks wouldn't consider changing Hitler to Mussolini.

    Brooks said he was first encouraged to write a screenplay by the late Mel Tolkin (who just passed away recently), who said "You can do it." However when Brooks showed him the completed screenplay then called "Springtime for Hitler," Tolkin thought it would be a tough sell.

    When Brooks appeared on the TCM Dick Cavett special he told another story involving Tolkin who ran the writer's room on the Sid Ceasar "Your show of Shows"  that bears repeating (although I do so from memory).

    As Brooks recalled when he  was first working  on the  show, he was making $250  a week , more money than anyone in his family had ever made, and he felt tremendous pressure and anxiety about it. So much so that he used to get sick, vomiting between parked cars on the way to work. Finally he went to Tolkin and asked his advice.

    Tolkin was impressed. he told Brooks, "250? I started throwing up at $200."

    Then Tolkin suggested that Brooks start seeing an psychoanalyst and gave him a referral.

    At which point, Cavett asked: "And did it help?"
   
To which Brooks replied, "Not only did it help. I asked for a raise."

    Back to "The Producers." It was a great experience to watch the film on a large screen with an audience. Honestly I don't think there is any actor today who can convey the range of emotion on his face that Zero Mostel could. Yes, Nathan Lane was great. But did you ever believe he would seduce little old ladies? Mostel made you believe. And Gene Wilder.....What great performances, what great fun.
    Speaking personally, too often it's easier to get a DVD, or ask for a screener or advance copy and watch something at home (or at someone else's home). But nothing compares to the experience of a whole room of people laughing together in the dark.

Chantootsie incomparable Jill Sobule is trying an experiment:
She is turning to the internet to raise the funds for her next album. On her website jillsnextalbumcom she posts this:

MESSAGE FROM JILL on her website

I have always had trouble asking for help, so I have asked... my mother to do it:

Hi, I'm Elaine, Jill's mother. As you all know, my daughter is a real talent. She has put out 6 great CDs (which never leave my stereo), and has been on 4 labels -- two of which went bankrupt; the other two were also farkakte.

This time she wants to do it on her own. She has some wonderful new songs (although she has not sent them to me, like I asked). She also has lined up some wonderful musicians and guest artists.

So help and be a part of her new album, in exchange for some wonderful gifts and services.

Much love,
Elaine

Thanks, mom. So, last November I sent out a letter toying with the idea of recording a fan-funded CD. It would be a sort of patronage thing, where you guys are the Medici family, except I give you prizes for donations of certain amounts. Here's what I've come up with:

• $25 - Polished Rock Level: An advance copy of the CD. Weeks before the masses.
• $50 - Pewter Level: An advance copy and a "Thank You" on the CD.
• $100 - Copper Level: All the above, plus a T-shirt saying you're a junior executive producer on the album.
• $200 - Bronze Level: Free admission to my shows for 2008.
• $250 - Silver Level: All the above, plus a membership to the "Secret Society Producer's Club," which means you'll get a secret password to a website where I'll post some rough tracks, or... something worthwhile.
• $500 - Gold Level: This is where it gets good! At the end of my CD, I'll do a fun instrumental track where I'll mention your name and maybe rhyme with it. And if you don't want your name used, you can give me a loved one's instead. What a great gift!
• $750 - Gold Doubloons Level: Exactly like the gold level, but you give me more money.
• $1,000 - Platinum Level: How would you like to have a theme song written for you? I'll have a song you can put on your answering machine and show off. Again, this could be a gift.
• $2,500 - Emerald Level: Mentioned as an executive producer of the album -- whoop-di-doo!
• $5,000 — Diamond Level: I will come and do a house concert for you. Invite your friends, serve some drinks, bring me out and I sing. Actually, this level is a smart choice economically. I've played many house concerts where the host has charged his guests and made his money back. I'd go for this if I were you.
• $10,000 - Weapons-Grade Plutonium Level: You get to come and sing on my CD. Don't worry if you can't sing - we can fix that on our end. Also, you can always play the cowbell.

I basically want to come up with $75,000 for recording and other related costs. I'll keep up you up to date on the tally (like the Jerry Lewis Telethon) and once I arrive at my goal, I'll show you where the money is going... Atlantic City! No, I promise to make you all a great record, with your help.

[Donate now]

This is exactly what the internet was supposed to be about: letting artists find a more direct route to their audience. So check it out . Jill's already more than a third of the way there. Tell her Tommywood sent you.....

Mel Brooks will be appearing at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica tonight -- and I am intending to go.
  
Last year Turner Classic Movies (TCM) aired "The Dick Cavett Show with Mel Brooks" (a re-staged revived for this episode edition of the Dick Cavett Show directed by Robert Trachtenberg). I was lucky enough to be in the audience.  My favorite moment occurred when Dick Cavett flubbed a joke, and Mel Brooks said (this is from memory, not an exact quote) "You want funny, you come to me." Brooks self-confidence in his own comic skills was intoxicating -- you could just imagine how in a room of funny people he was not intimidated -- he would hit the ball back harder -- which explains the genius of "The 2000 year old man" and the chutzpah-like blind spot of Agent 86 in "Get Smart."

Jeff Zucker announced that NBC will no longer follow standard pilot development practice. (See NY Times). At the same time the LA Times lost yet another editor over the question of editorial budgets (LA Times).

    I do not dispute that the current TV development season is an inefficient process and that newspapers have grave financial issues facing them, but here's what bothers me: in both cases, management is looking to improve their bottom line by cutting what is surely one of the smallest items in their budget: editorial and creative. I do not see Jeff Zucker awarding himself a pay cut -- traditionally the argument is that at the highest corporate levels you need to pay salaries that seem exorbitant in relation to the pay of creatives to keep the best people. I wonder if there aren't talented executives who would leap to do the job, and do it better, at less pay, and not at the expense of writers.

Here's a provocative idea: What if Google offered to buy the New York Times?
Here's the story as it appeared on Poynter yesterday (from RealClearMarkets):

Poynteronline

Romenesko

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2008

Will Google eventually own the New York Times?

Oichi mean delicious in Japanese and that's my review of Robata Bar, 1401 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica, 310- 458-4771) the new Japanese tapas bar next to Sushi Roku in Santa Monica (the entrance is actually on Santa Monica Blvd).  The decor is Dodd Mitchell cool, with a dark wood bar and the feel of a Japanese pub with fixtures hanging from the ceiling that look like the end of Japanese brooms.

We went early with kids and the staff could not be more accommodating. There were great handrolls, special sushi on crunchy rice, a trio of handrolls (lobster, spicy tuna and a third that seems to have slipped my mind). And that was all before the grilled skewers -- standouts include the shitake mushroom, the chicken meatballs, and cherry tomatoes wrapped in bacon.

Can't wait to go back and try more. A definite great addition to the Santa Monica dining scene. 

Last June, I wrote a column about my father that was published as a cover story in the Jewish Journal, and that I posted to the Tommywood website called "My father who said he was not a hero."

    About four months later, I got an email from a woman in Melbourne, Australia, who had been my father's assistant and translator in Vienna at the Rothschild Spital from 1946-1951.

    We corresponded by email, and she sent me photos of my father during that era. I then called her and interviewed her by phone for about two hours.

    For me, it was not so much that there were great revelations -- she was discrete and I certainly wasn't armed with enough facts to push any deeper than I did-- but what impressed me was the consistency of my father's personality -- in all the anecdotes she told, I could perfectly see my father completely in character.

    She has a wonderful personality and through our conversations we became friends. I shared with her information I had about other people she knew of that era. We exchanged holiday cards and now stay in touch.

    Around the same time, also through an email exchange with a childhood friend who also found me on the internet and whose parents were close friends of my father I found out about a memoir written in Hungarian by a man who had worked briefly at the Rothschild Spital as a cook -- and who I remembered meeting several times with my parents. He had become a very successful businessman, first in Australia, then in England where he now lived.

    I found the website for his company and sent them an email. I received a reply from one of his sons -- his father was vacationing in Thailand at the time -- and he sent me the book.

    Although I really don't know Hungarian, I had no problem finding the chapter on the Rothschild Hospital and then saw my father and my mother's name in it.

    I then scanned those pages and emailed them to a friend's mother in New York who translated them for me.

    Then, just this morning, I received a phone call from England from the man in question. We talked for 45 minutes or so -- about my parents (he knew my mother in Hungary), about his children, his business, about my life. I promised to email him some info he was interested in, and we promised to stay in touch.

  Maybe all this could have happened without the internet. But it didn't. And because of the internet it was possible -- before time ran out, AMAZING, isn't it?

If you need to be reminded of why this holiday is so important, check out the sections on the fight for civil rights in America in  the Audio version of “The People’s History of The United States: Highlights from The 20^th Century (Abridged) by Howard Zinn and read by Matt Damon (Why Damon? Remember the speech Damon gives in “Good Will Hunting” in the bar where he references Howard Zinn? Plus -- he does a great job.) Even of you are old enough to remember the civil rights struggle and Dr. King and those who marched with him --  that does not mean you fully realize what went on.

We are only talking about 50 years ago that racism was not only rampant, but was the law in many States. African-Americans were discriminated against socially, economically, professionally, and legally -- African-Americans had to use separate entrances, washrooms, schools, restaurants, clubs (the list goes on and on) -- and were murdered by lynchings, bombings, and by gun fire, and had dogs set upon them --in our country, in the United States of America!!! just for standing up for the right to vote, wanting to sit at a lunch counter and ride  on the public bus and other fundamental rights most of us take for granted. Listening to this Audio book will rock your world!

So let us remember what occurred, and by the same token for this holiday, let me also give a shout-out to Stevie Wonder, who was one of the main movers in making Dr. King’s birthday a national holiday.

The Sunday New York Times Art & Leisure had a nice piece on Jimmy Breslin, who increasingly seems the last link to a generation of columnists such as Murray Kempton, and others who predated him such as Joe Mitchell and A.J. Liebling and Damon Runyon.

 

David Denby goes to great length in The New Yorker to explore Otto Preminger’s famous “lack of style” – his lack of a signature style or of passion in the exploration of various adult dramas, but never attributes it to Preminger’s Viennese or Polish Jewish émigré background. I take Preminger’s style to be the kind of facility for self-invention and fluency with genres that one could also attribute to producer Alexander Korda, or director Michael Curtiz or Billy Wilder for that matter.

 

Searching for Bobby Fischer

What was missing from the numerous obits of Chess phenom Bobby Fischer was both an acknowledgment of the great pride Jews took in his Jewish heritage at the time of his championship in 1972, and any insight into his anti-Semitic ravings in recent years which could be seen as the self-loathing flip side of his grandiosity.

 

HERE COMES the "NIGHT"

Rachel Donadio’s NYT Book Review essay on Wiesel’s "Night" was interesting in tracking down the actual sales history of the novel. Donadio finds Wiesel’s protest of President Reagan’s visit to Bitburg as the tipping point. In some ways it was a tipping in my life as well. I traveled to Bergen-Belsen with a group of survivors and children of survivors as a protest to show where Reagan might have a laid a wreath instead. I had met my future wife a few weeks before and the fact that I went on this trip seemed to impress her in ways that changed my life. And the following year I came across a story that became my first book. More recently, I made note of the reissue of Wiesel’s night in a column about how my own thinking about the Holocaust has changed over the years.

Genius comes in many forms. Richard Knerr, is the man who brought to the world (he didn't invent, he marketed) such products as the Hula Hoop, the Frisbee, SuperBall, the Slip 'N Slide, and Silly String. Simply put: Are these not essential artifacts of our times? Doesn't the mere mention of them trigger happy memories, childhood associations -- don't they automatically bring a smile to your face? Knerr was a California native -- which makes perfect sense given that California is the state of self-invention, endless summer, and perpetual childhood where people make industries of their childhood dreams -- Knerr with a childhood friend, nicknamed "Spud" resisted their father's entreaties to go into family businesses and instead started by manufacturing Slingshots -- the sound of which they described as "Wham-O."

For the NYTimes obit click here. 

Sign and Sight is a website that provides a roundup of European cultural journalism. In this week's magazine roundup there was this item:

Le Nouvel Observateur 10.01.2008 (France)

"What he says is scary." With these words the magazine introduces its interview with Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, whose new novel "Le Village de l'Allemand ou le journal des freres Schiller" (Gallimard) relates how two Algerians living in the Parisian banlieues discover that their father, a hero of the Algerian liberation movement FLN, had formerly been an SS officer. For the Nouvel Obs, the novel "strikes at the heart of our illusions." Sansal has this to say about the situation in his country: "We live under a national-Islamic regime, in an environment heavily influenced by terrorism, and it's patently clear that only a very thin line separates Islamism from Nazism. For Algerian youths, their country is an 'open-air prison.' And for those gradually perishing in the cities, it's a 'concentration camp.' They feel imprisoned not only by walls and impenetrable borders, but also by a dark and violent regime that doesn't even leave them room to dream."

Under the old rule of two times, it's a pattern, three times it's a trend -- I've noticed that French literature seems to be tackling the subject of Nazis and its own complicity -- sometimes from the point of the view of the Nazi officers.
Last year's award winning "Les Bienveillants" by Jonathan Littell , which has yet to come out in English (but should soon), Another novel -- whose name escapes me right now (I promise to track it down later) about the infamous Velo D'hiver roundup in France, as well as Marc Levy's novel, "Les Enfants de la Liberte" and now Boualem's Algerian prism on the events.

Ron Rosenbaum, who has thought deeply and written lengthily about his obsessions and insights regarding the work of Vladmir Nabokov has a piece in Slate where he weighs in on the dilemma facing Nabokov's son Dmitri as to whether he should follow his father's wishes and destroy the notes made for a never finished novel called "The Original of Laura" OR leave them for posterity. After revealing his own mixed feelings on the subject, and Dmitry Nabokov's own inclination to destroy them, Rosenbaum opens it up to the audience to make their own choice, here.

My own vote is to preserve the mansucript -- if Nabokov had wanted to destroy the manuscript he should have done so. Too late now. Will it in any way diminish the master's oeuvre? I doubt it. Will, as Dmitry fears, give fodder for a bunch of Nabokov parasites to declaim about the work -- no doubt. So what?

Kafka wanted Max Brod to burn his manuscripts. Thank goodness he didn't.

This is no longer Vladmir Nabokov's decision. I would argue that it isn't even Dmitry's anymore (although I know, legally, it is) -- the manuscript exists. Let it go.

Rolling Stone reports that Amy Winehouse, fresh out of rehab is considering recording some Hanukkah songs, such as "Kosher Kisses" -- see below

Grammy-nominated DJ and super-producer Mark Ronson tells Rolling Stone’s Nicole Frehsee that he’s seen his most famous collaborator (other than Bob Dylan), Amy Winehouse, recently, and they discussed new music. “She’s writing songs, and we talked about getting a studio,” says Ronson. “I have to finish a few other things first, but I imagine we’ll go into the studio this year.”

Ronson also said there may be another, more unusual project in the works. “We’re talking about making a holiday record, with Christmas songs on one side and Hanukkah songs on the other,” Ronson explained. “She’s got songs called, like, ‘Kosher Kisses’ and ‘Alone Under the Mistletoe.’ She was kind of fucking around, but I was like, ‘You have all these amazing records to play for Christmas, like Motown and Carla Thomas and the Charlie Brown Christmas, and unfortunately, us Jews have nothing that cool to listen to. So we should do something.”

Mark Ronson, the DJ turned recording Artist, who most recently did a Bob Dylan remix, is from a family of talented, creative and charming folks, including sister Charlotte, a designer, uncle Gerald (British tycoon), stepfather Mick Jones (of Foreigner) and mother Anne (a whirlwind of charm) --  you can read more about him and his family in a recent story in the UK Guardian here. But if you want to see a great video, see his recording of "Valerie" with Winehouse on vocals.

The January 14, 2008 issue of the New Yorker was a particularly strong issue (I'm still catching up on my  New Yorkers), with interesting articles by Dana Goodyear on the Scientology Celebrity Center, Ken Auletta on Google and John Seabrook on the scrap metal business (not available in full on line --it is a long article).

Dana Goodyear has found a novel way in to Scientology --through architectural preservation. Her piece uses the Celebrity Center its; restoration, even its restaurant as well as their acquisition and restoration of many other Hollywood properties as a way to discuss the history of Scientology and the importance it places on their relationships with celebrities. Goodyear takes a fairly disinterested and benign view of Scientology as if she was a visitor to a cultural site of a foreign land.

People are always asking what Scientology is, and although Goodyear does not get to what the spiritual element is, or what makes it a religion, she does do a good job of giving a sense of what goes on -- and what "auditing" is.

"Auditing" is, in Goodyear's explanation, "a talking cure" in which one talks about certain traumatic or negative incidents while holding on to a device called an "E - meter" which, the claims is, measures your emotional response to this incident -- repeated uses of which "cleans" one of the negative feelings and allows you to be clear, happy, etc....

Now a confession: I've used an e-meter.
For a while, a few years back, I was seeing someone who was a business coach but was also a therapist. It turned out that she was a former Scientolgist and had risen high enough in the ranks to be a teacher. She had her own e-meter and for a few sessions she brought it out. Did it work? I suppose the Jewish answer is: It didn't hurt.

My personal feeling was that the e-meter itself was ridiculous. But that there was value in repeating the details of negative events until they no longer were taboo.

This seems not unlike a form of Albert Ellis'  Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). Ellis was the father of behavioral psychology -- famous for saying that he got over his shyness with women when he forced himself to speak to 100 women at the Bronx botanical Garden -- after which he was no longer so shy. Ellis was no fan of Freud --- he thought the past was bunk -- you just needed to reprogram yourself with new behavioral patterns.  Hmmmm.... Ellis was probably conceiving of his theories around the time L. Ron Hubbard was coming up with his. I wonder if they ever read each other's works?

It is interesting that Scientology which appears to be virulently opposed to psychiatry uses a "talking cure" -- "The Talking Cure" being another name for Freud's psychoanalysis.  I've never had the impression that Scientology (or Tom Cruise in his Matt Lauer interview) distinguished between psychiatry and psychology, between psychoanalysis, psychopharmacology and behavioral psychology.

Dana Goodyear writes a blog for the New Yorker, Postcard from LA, and she has been blogging several follow-ups to the article. including today's on the TOM CRUISE SCIENTOLOGY VIDEO (which you can see on Gawker -- it was on youtube but was pulled from there)

First the cause

Over the weekend, entertainment attorney and media strategy consultant par excellence Ken Hertz  (or my friend Kenny, as I usually call him) hosted an informational salon at his home for FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums), an organization whose mission is, in their own words:

“To shine a light on the human face of sentencing, advocate for state and federal sentencing reform and mobilize thousands of individuals and families whose lives are adversely affected by unjust sentences.”

I could tell you about the heartbreaking personal stories of non-violent offenders we heard – such as Michael Riggs, a man who shoplifted a $23 bottle of vitamins, and who the State spent almost $400,000 keeping in prison for more than a decade, before FAMM working with the law firm Mayer Brown (who worked on the case pro bono) was able to file a habeas corpus claim to free him. (see http://tinyurl.com/2ca8dm).

Now, the entertainment: organized and MC'd by JILL SOBULE

But I am here to tell you about the music Jill Sobule organized for the event. First of all there was Jill, who performed her beautiful heart-breaking ballad “Mexican Wrestler”. She also performed with Julia Sweeney – doing a bit from their “Jill & Julia” show coming to a theater very soon – Jill sings a song and then Julia tells a story on a related theme – and it works! (I actually hope they start recording some of their bits and posting them on you tube – that’s my suggestion for what it’s worth).

 

Also performing was Wayne Kramer. WAYNE KRAMER!!!! It’s possible you might say, Who is Wayne Kramer? Or be surprised that it’s that Wayne Kramer, the legendary icon of the Detroit Rock scene, founding member of the MC5, (who knows a thing or two about serving time for drugs) and played with Johnny Thunders in the band Gang War. Fellow Detroit musical genius DON WAS produced his album, “The Hard Stuff.”

Wayne Kramer performed an amazing song about "The Promised Land" so-called.

 
Don Was, at one point was talking to me about doing a documentary about the history, the meaning, the importance of Detroit Rock. Somewhere along the research I found out that a documentary was being done on the MC5 and that Wayne Kramer was working on it and that seemed to cover the territory. On Sunday, I asked Kramer what became of that documentary and he told me that he parted ways with those filmmakers but, with a sly grin, he said he hoped that he would find another way to get the film made. I hope so – the importance of Detroit in American Rock and Roll has never got its due (beyond Motown – which also deserves a more prominent place in the history books). I have never been to Detroit, but when I go, one stop I must make is to the Motown museum.

 As well as the great Jude --

Next up was Jude --- one of the great voices and great singer-songwriters around. His last album “Redemption” was released in France on the naïve label (which is also home to Carla Bruni). Jude was part of “The Low Stars” a CSN&Y type supergroup which you might have seen next to cash register at Starbucks.

Last and certainly not least, was Lissie, a new artist whose voice filled the room – remember you heard it here first -- Jewel is the poor man’s Lissey. She’s opening this Thursday for Lenny Kravitz at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium – and I’m eager to see if she blows away the crowd (and the critics) as she did at Ken’s home.

Not quite as great as part one. Not sure how long the show can go forward with its complex matrix of people from the present and the future, some of whom may have died or are going to die unless changes occur. If it sounds confusing, it is. But will it stay confusing, or will it be so action packed we don’t care (kind of like Alias)? That’s the question.

Viewership was way, way down. Perhaps Jeff Zucker will get another promotion.

 NBC has always led the way in blurring the lines between entertainment and news. For years, the Today show was under the imprimatur of the Entertainment division rather than news, so why shouldn’t the Globes be hosted by Matt Lauer? Maybe that was the network’s thinking (actually their thinking was – we’ve gotta come up with something, anything). Turns up they came up with nothing.

This morning’s New York Times carries a review of David Ives’ play, “New Jerusalem: the Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation, Amsterdam, July 27 1656,” capping a veritable trifecta of publicity for the 17^th Century Philosopher who was excommunicated by Amsterdam’s Jewish community (interestingly, his grandparents were conversos who fled the Spanish inquisition, and were expelled from France. It was only his father Miguel who returned to the Jewish faith upon arriving in Amsterdam).

First there was Matthew Stewart’s well reviewed tome, “The Courtier and the Heretic” (Norton); then Rebecca Goldstein’s “Betraying Spinoza” from Nextbook/Schocken –where it’s been one of their best selling titles. And now (off) Broadway!

What next: Spinoza, the musical? Or “Search for Substance: the Bento Spinoza story” ?

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Zagat family have hired Goldman Sachs to advise them on a possible sale.

     Way before the internet, before the Huffington Post, the Zagats found a way to profit from what today is called “user generated content” – creating a publishing empire without actually having to pay writers.  For that alone, they should be overpaid.

 

The New York Times also carried an article about the possible sale, and had this to say about the company’s value:

“It is unclear how large a price Zagat will attract. While the company is a worldwide brand, its actual business is much smaller. People briefed on the company’s finances suggest the company could be valued at more than $200 million, which would still be a drop in the bucket for an Internet company or a wealthy executive.”

Those are some drops!

But the Times explains, and offers some interesting tidbits about other humanitarians likely to benefit:

“In 2000, Zagat was valued at more than $100 million when the family sold a third of the business to an investment group led by General Atlantic Partners, a private investment firm based in Greenwich, Conn. The other institutional investors were Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley’s best-known venture capital operations, and Allen & Company, the media investor and adviser.

Nathan Myhrvold, a former chief technology officer of Microsoft, also invested, as did Nicholas Negroponte, director of the media laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the founder of One Laptop Per Child, and Nancy Peretsman, an Allen & Company investment banker.”

I did not watch the globes last night – Instead I was riveted by the first installment of “Terminator: The Sarah Connors Chronicles” – If I were THE GAP I would get that T-shirt Lena Headley was wearing into the store window TODAY – I’m sure Trey Laird is signing up Lena Headey for some ads right now. (some of you may recall Ms. Headey from high minded films like Possession – I would add "the Brothers Grimm," but no one saw that – or more likely, as Queen Gorgo in "the 300."

            As for the Globes, although we all know that the Hollywood Foreign Press association is actually less than 100 journalists – I always bought into the big party idea – Actors from film and TV in the same room, getting looped on cocktails and saying things they might not say at other awards show – that is until that was seized upon by the forces of marketing – a forced/fake ploy ”Watch out – anything can happen!"

            But the reason for my soft spot for the Globes is that the night my daughter was born, the waiting area outside the delivery room featured a TV that was playing the Globes. There was a very disparate group assembled there (there’s a whole other story there, but I’ll save that for another time) but the Globes provided us with fodder for conversation – a common ground – to discuss and relate to. Everyone, including the nurses at the desk, embraced the show as a distraction, as a celebration at a time of celebration… and so the very notion of The Golden Globes brings a smile to my face.

            This year, however, I will miss my favorite part of the Globes – seeing how fast the fashion worn by the (female) winners makes into the window of ABS, the clothing store famous for knocking off – I mean creating fashions “inspired by…..”

 

BY THE WAY – WHY IS IT…. British and Australian actors and actresses have no trouble ditching their accents to play Americans (the afore-mentioned Ms. Headey, as well as Hugh Laurie, Rachel Griffiths, Frances O’Connor) but Americans….can only seem to adopt a British accent as an affectation (Madonna).