"A Two-Sentence Christmas Greeting"

PEACE ON EARTH.

Can we just give it a try?

"How The Jews Lost The Lead"

For Jews, Christmas is the birthday party you were not invited to.  That's okay - meaning you learn to live with it.  But being excluded from the minority cannot help but remind me, at least, of a time in history when things were different.  Which introduces the reprise of one of my favorite posts on the subject, as well as my only one.  Merry Christmas.  And I mean it.

Once upon a time, there were twelve Christians.  Well, not “Once upon a time”– this isn’t “The Three Bears” with Christians, it’s real.  There was a time when there were twelve Christians.  Thirteen, if you count Jesus, who came and went, and then came back.  Twelve, thirteen, maybe some girls who hung around, not a large crowd, especially for a religion.  Tell your boss you’re in a religion with twelve people in it, and you’re unlikely to get the day off for one of their holidays.

Of course, if you follow religion at all, you know that Christianity, whose followers once numbered in the teens, grew bigger, and now, well, they’re huge.  Not that I’m saying that’s surprising, or undeserved.  Christianity’s a fine religion, with lots of comforting and inspiring things in it.  People seem to like it.  And I say more power to them.  They’re a big success and that’s great.  And I mean that.

It’s just…

Okay, I’ll admit it.  There is this tiny tinge of envy.  But be fair, can you blame me?  Christianity grew out of Judaism.  We came first.  Though it’s hard to believe today, there was actually a time when there were a lot of Jews and no Christians whatsoever.  Not one.  There were restricted golf courses and nobody was playing on them.  Now they’re this enormous, superstar religion and, well, we’re still around, but really small.  And to be honest, it’s tough to take.  The sturdy, older brother watching his quietly charismatic sibling zoom past him.  You’re standing there wondering what happened?

I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being a minority religion.  We’re on the map, people have heard of us.  When they say Judeo-Christian, we’re Judeo.  It’s just that once in a while, you can’t help imagining what it would be like to be the majority, and have the President – a Jewish president, because we’re the majority – come out on the first night of Chanukah and light a huge menorah on the White House lawn.  

            But maybe I’m being ungrateful.  When you think about it, it’s a miracle we’re around at all, considering the more than occasional efforts to wipe us out.  Jews log in at a perfectly acceptable thirteen million worldwide, which, though not hundreds of millions like you know who, is better than nothing.  Ask the Hittites or the Ishmaelites if they’d like to have thirteen million descendants walking around, instead of nobody.   When’s the last time you took in a Canaanite movie, or picked up some Philistine take-out?  Everyone’s gone, except us.  And I’m certain, way back, betting was very heavy in the other direction.

Still, one can’t help hearkening back wistfully to the era – a short era I’ll admit, but an era nonetheless – when there were more Jews than Christians.  In that brief period during the B.C.’s, if you leaned theologically in the direction of one God that nobody can see, Jew was the only game in town.  Everyone else was sacrificing virgins and praying to cats.

Then, came the A.D.’s.  The A.D.’s meant more than counting the years up rather than counting them down.  The A.D.’s brought Judaism a new baby brother, a brother who would one day leave them, at least religious popularity-wise, in the dust. 

Change was in the air.  Trouble in the Holy Land, the Romans pushing everybody around.  In times like these, Jewish tradition calls for a messiah to show up and straighten things out.  And, to be sure, there was no lack of applicants for the job.   Messiah candidates, usually badly dressed, with wild eyes and crazy hair, would stand on some high place where everybody could see them, and proclaim, “I’m him!” or, more loftily, “I’m Him!”   (Of course, the grammatically correct version is “I’m He”, but people rarely warm to a messiah who’s smarter than they are.)

They were all fakes, every one of them.  They’d draw some early heat, earning a free meal or a place to stay, possibly a complimentary pair of sandals, but sooner or later, reality did them in.  They’d prophesy things and they wouldn’t come to pass.  Or some sick person would cry, “Heal me!” and they’d just look at them.  Game over.  After that, they were just irritating pests, who eventually had to go out and find a job. 

But then, someone came along who, to this day, is viewed as the genuine article.  We’re told of an ability to heal with a touch, walk on water, and make a small amount of food go a really long way.  Jewish onlookers, desperate for a messiah, couldn’t help but take notice.  The right guy at the right time.

He got twelve followers.  Not too impressive considering the things he was pulling off, but Jews, even desperate ones, are a highly skeptical people.  When you tell Jews there’s this guy out there doing miracles, the standard response is, “Go away, I’m busy.”  Or, if they’re funny, “Let him try selling flannel in the desert.  Now that would be a miracle.”

Of course, you can’t blame early Jews for not viewing with awe a religion that had twelve people in it.  For a religion, twelve is a precariously puny number.  Romans sweep through in a bad mood – goodbye, Christians.  A plague wipes them out in twenty minutes.  Followers get jobs out of town, they start families and can’t make the meetings, another messiah shows up giving away camels, these guys were hanging by a thread.  Borrowing a desert metaphor, when you’re in a twelve-man religion, your membership card’s written in sand.

A larger membership was urgently needed.  It was grow or go.  And growing wouldn’t be easy.  The problem?  To convince Jews, stubborn people to begin with, to abandon a religion of thousands of years, and throw in with twelve zealots proclaiming that theirs is the one true way.  Oh, and one more thing.  If the Romans caught you being one, they nailed you to a cross. 

I imagine – and since I wasn’t there, imagination’s all I can go on – that there had to have been some sort of committee.  A marketing team, devising strategies for attracting Jews to the fledgling faith.  Maybe later, they’d present their suggestions to the whole congregation, but to hammer out the basics, I see a smaller contingent.  Maybe two people, say, Matthew (formerly Murray) and Simon (formerly Sol).

If this meeting had been recorded, we’d know what it was that saved Christianity from extinction, and paved the way to the great success it enjoys today.  Since it wasn’t recorded, I’ll have to make it up.  We open on an early A.D. gavel pounding on a table, or just a hand hitting an indoor rock.

“I call this meeting to order.”

“Murray, it’s just you and…”

“Excuse me.  It’s Matthew.”

“What?”

“When I was Jewish, I was Murray.  Now I’m Matthew.  With two ‘t’s’”.

“Sorry.  Matthew.  What I was saying is it’s just you and me.  There’s no need for protocol.”

“You’re right, Sol.”

“Simon.”

“Sorry.”

“Okay.  Now, what we’re here to do is to come up with appealing ideas to win converts and swell our ranks.  Because if our ranks don’t swell…”

“…we’re headed for oblivion.”

“That’s a depressing way to put it.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“It might be.  But I’d prefer a sunnier attitude.

“May I be candid?  I never wanted to be on this committee.  My strength is picnics and outings.  I don’t even know where to start.”

”It’s a tough assignment, no question.  Why don’t we start by looking at the things that make us different.”

“We’re certainly qualified to do that.  We used to be Jews, and now, we’re this.  By the way, what is this?

“What is what?”

“What we are.  You know, like our name.  Jews are Jews.  Who are we?”

“There’s another committee working on that.”

“Good.  ‘Cause it’s embarrassing when someone asks, ‘What do you call yourselves?’ and I say ‘I don’t know.’  It shows a lack of imagination.  Maybe we should have a temporary name.  Like we wear these fish emblems, maybe we should call ourselves Fishtians.”

“I think we’re wandering here.”

“Sorry.  What’s our job again?”

“To convert the Jews.”

“Right.”

“And to do that, we need to consider what is it that makes us different?”

“I know a difference.”

“What’s that?”

“Their Sabbath is on a Saturday, and ours is on Sunday.”

“I don’t think you’re getting the concept.”

“You wanted different.  I gave you different.”

“Think about it.  Do you really think the opportunity to pray on Sunday instead of Saturday will send Jews flocking to our midst?”

 “Oh, I see.  It’s not just different.  It’s different and better.”

“Exactly.  Maybe we should draw from experience.  What was it about us that made you want to switch?”

“That’s easy.  Pork.”

“You switched for pork?”

“Never underestimate the power of forbidden foods.   A lot of Jews eat it already.  They chew peppermint leaves, so you won’t smell it on their breath.”

“I may be wrong, but I don’t see a huge cross-over from pork.”

“How about ‘Sunday’ and pork?”

“Will you stop with ‘Sunday?’  ’Sunday’s’ nothing.  I mean, when it comes to days of rest, Saturday’s the better choice.  It’s a day sooner.”

“I always thought it was too soon.  I wasn’t tired yet.”

“Look, we’re talking about frills.”

“Frills are important.”

“We’re bigger than frills.  We’ve got a great religion.  Something so meaningful, people risk death to be part of it.”

“I wouldn’t bring that up at the recruitment sessions.”

“But that says something.  It says it’s worth it.  Now, think.  Go to the essence.  What is it about us you really like?”

            “I like Jesus.”

            “Good.  Why?”

            “He’s nice.”

            “Lots of people are nice.”

            “Not as nice as Jesus.”

            “But isn’t there something more than his niceness?”

            “Well, he says if you believe in him you won’t die.  Which, to be honest, I find a little confusing.”

            “Why?”

            “I thought if you believe in him, you do die.”

            “Not always.  And even if you do…wait a minute.  I think you’ve hit on something.”

“Forget the whole thing?”

“You just said it.  Dying isn’t bad for us, because we’ve got…”

“…what?”

“You know this.  We’ve got…”

“I have no idea.”

“Think.  Something we’ve got that they don’t.  And that thing is…?”

“Look, just tell me, okay?”

“Heaven!  We’ve got Heaven!”

“Jews have heaven.”

“Very hazy.  I asked my Dad about it.  He was barely coherent.”

“Any he’s a rabbi.  Wait, I get it.  If we’ve got Heaven, and they don’t…”

“…we don’t really die....”

“…and they do!  That’s perfect!  Heaven.  Heaven’s great!”

“Better than lying in the ground.”

”Way better.”

“You know, when you think about it, our whole religion’s more people-friendly.  With them, it’s ‘The wrath of the Lord…’, and smiting, and ‘…Cast a pestilence upon the land.’  We’re not like that.”

“I was kind of sensing we weren’t.  But I was wondering if it wasn’t just, you know, like a come-on, and the wrath came later.”

“I don’t think so.  Our religion is wrath-free.”

“Wait. Didn’t Jesus yell at some moneychangers…?”

“Okay, so we’re not wrath-free.  But we’re definitely reduced-wrath.”

 “Then, that’s it.  That’s what we sell.  A reduced-wrath religion, Heaven at the end, and pork – and Sunday, for those who prefer it – as a bonus.”

“I like it.”

“It’s good, isn’t it?”

“It’s very good.  But we need one more thing.  A deal clincher.”

“No circumcisions?”

“Simon, I think we’re there.”

"Thoughts About Seeing 'This Is Forty'"

There is no shame in being shallow.

If that’s what you are.

I mean, some deep thinker pretends to be shallow so they can fit in? – that’s questionable, that’s “You can do better.”  Adding, if you’re feeling avuncular – or whatever the female equivalent of avuncular is – aunt-ular – “…Young Man!”, or “Young Woman!”

Pressure ‘em to live up to their potential.  Kids love that.

You use what you’ve got.  “What you’ve got” being a specific amalgam of genetic and cultural components.  You are born with certain tools and capacities, your culture shapes them in accordance with its priorities – “We like it when you’re funny”; “We are indifferent to your ability to throw a harpoon” – and off you go.

Say, in our culture today, you want to write and direct movies, but you are, not at the lowest end of the ladder, actually considerably more near the top, but still demonstrably and disputably…

Shallow.

Is there any law against doing that?  None that I know of.  Our culture has no problem allowing people to write and direct movies when they’re shallow, no designated official with a clipboard standing authoritarially at the studio gate, saying, “Judging from you previous efforts, which we accepted because we had lower standards back then…and because we were desperate for ‘Youth Market’ product, we have determined that you are lacking the suffici0ent depth and understanding necessary to make a movie.  Come back when you know something worth telling people, and we’ll give you a camera.” 

Such prejudicial proscriptions are nowhere to be seen, and I shall briefly explain why.

Will I get an argument if I assert that we live in a shallow cultural environment?  Can we label this assertion, as they say in Law & Order, “stipulated”?, meaning mutually agreed upon, precluding the necessity for further litigation?

Thank you.

Moving on then to the logical consequence of this agreement, which is the following:  When people – our example in this case being moviemakers – offer up shallow insights in a shallow culture, is the next thing to say not immediately

“Duh!”?

What the heck do you expect!?!

“I come from a time where people are too impatient to type out entire words when they text each other.  But when I communicate, I miraculously escape my historical context and express myself with the wisdom and understanding of Charles Dickens!”

That is not going to happen!

Okay, so Judd Apatow, superficial to the degree that he is unmistakably “A Man Of His Time”, makes This Is 40, and it’s messy – a loose-limbed recipe of post-embarrassment sex jokes, psychobabble, spontaneous improvisations of sibling warfare, struggles to connect with aging parents, a couple that continually alternates between fighting and making up – committing, not for me but for others, the unpardonable sin of delivering a movie that is arbitrary, inconclusive and relatively – because there are considerably more egregious examples –

Shallow.

There are no startling insights into character and motivation, no reverberating resolutions.  I’m not talking about cathartic “Aha!” moments.  Veteran therapists admit they almost never get any in their business.  And they’re trying for them. 

I am talking about those rare instances where you’re watching the people on the screen, and their exposed humanity rings a resonating bell.

“It’s all behavior!” some might complain, and actually do, within earshot.  “Apatow’s confusing people ‘doing things’ with penetrating understanding.”

That’s right.  The people on the screen are just “doing things.”  And they don’t understand them.  They try.  At one point near the end, the couple turning forty locked in a fitfully happy marriage, concludes that the whole thing is their parents’– specifically, their fathers’ – fault.    

To their monumental relief, they agree that they have finally found the elusive “Source of the  Nile” – the generating principle of their corrosive bickering:

“We don’t hate each other.  We hate them!”

Sorry, not even close.

And, to me at least, it’s hilarious that they hug and make up because they actually believer they have found “The Answer.”

Closer to the heart of the matter – we learn from a “Q & A” after the screening that we went to – is a line in a scene that was deleted from the movie, where they’re at couple’s therapy, and one of them says, “Sometimes, I think we are ‘this close’ to saying the thing we could say so we’d never fight again, but we never get there.”  Apatow edited that scene out, he explained, because that, to him was the subtext of the movie, and he did not need it spelled out. 

I worked with Judd Apatow on The Larry Sanders Show.  When he rose to prominence, I imagined offering my services as an experienced “story structure”, as I generally found his movies to be deficient in “narrative momentum”, and I believed I could help.

After watching This Is 40, I realized that what I know how to do would be of little value to him.  Judd Apatow has his own way.  It’s sloppier, but, in its hodgepodge assembly of seemingly random comedy bits and accumulated behaviors, satisfying.  And even – if you define the term differently than it is generally defined – cohesive. 

A mosaic, rather than a portrait.

Let these observations not be confused with me letting a guy off the hook – “If it’s funny, nothing else matters.”  It is not that at all.  Judd Apatow tells his story utilizing an idiosyncratic structure, and, though it is not my “Structure of Choice” – it’s free-form arrangement contrasting the classic storytelling format I grew up with – he gets there. 

Proof that it works?  An audience in great numbers, their sensory apparatus in sync with his true-to-life-feeling “M.O.” lining up for tickets.

It may, in fact, be shallow.  But if you deliver your project as truthfully as you can, your shallowness uninhibtedly resonating with “the times”, and you get laughs along the way…

Sorry, folks.

But that’s a good movie.

And by the way, apparently not that deep myself…

I liked it too. 

"I Saw Lewis Black"

In Los Angeles, the magnitude of your enthusiasm to see someone perform live is reflected by how far you are willing to travel to get to the show.  Comedian Lewis Black was appearing at a concert hall more than forty miles away in Long Beach, an entirely...buh-buh-buh-buh…different city!  (I have apparently slipped into apoplectic Lewis Black “Bluster Mode.”) 

That’s how much we wanted to see Lewis Black.  “Come on, Honey.  Let’s get in the car…drive on four separate highways…during Rush Hour…to see a comedian at a performing venue that is more than forty miles from our house.  

For reasons left unexplained, Mr. Black has eschewed the opportunity to perform in Los Angeles – the “Entertainment Capital of the World.”  Instead, he would rather make us, his devoted audience, endure the not insubstantial inconvenience, to attend his little show…in the glittering city of Long Beach. 

The place where the crewse ships depart.  Thinking, perhaps, that, having enjoyed the show so much, we would be in such an effusive mood, that we would decide on the spur of the moment to put everything on “Hold”…and take a little cruise.

The good news is our phone’s GPS system – that helps you get places – has been substantially upgraded since the last time we relied on it.  On that memorable occasion, we tried to return from Gettysburg, which is in Pennsylvania to our nation’s capital in Washington D.C. and, following the instructions from our old GPS system, wound up in Maryland. 

That’s right.  Adhering to the step-by-step directions, delivered over the telephone by a disembodied but otherwise pleasant female voice, we found ourselves driving around blindly in the wrong…buh-buh-buh-buh…frickin’ state!

Okay, I’m out of “Bluster Mode” now.  (I find it too exhausting to keep that up.)  My mind now goes to Lewis Black’s opening act, a comedian, whose purpose is to warm up the audience for the “Main Event”, but his, perhaps, unconscious purpose is to demonstrate, by contrast, how much less talented and accomplished a comedian he is than Lewis Black.  I see no other reason for his being chosen.

LEWIS BLACK:  Here’s what I need you to do.  I need you to go on before me, and do twenty minutes of cheap and cheesy material, hitting the most predictable targets with the most obvious jokes, so that when I come onstage after you, I will look like a frickin’ genius.”

And so he did.  Spraying a disjointed series of uninspired jokes, interrupted only by extended pauses where he was trying to remember what came next.  My outrage at his aggravating performance was matched only by the fact that the audience seemed to really enjoy him.  This kind of encouragement means he is only going to do it again.  Offending, by the audacity of his daring to participate in the same field, the revered fraternity of every stand-up comedian who ever lived.  Shecky Greene is undoubtedly rolling in his grave.  And doing it funnier than this guy is alive!

Then, to my mind, entirely defeating the “loosening-up” strategy of the warm-up act, there was a twenty-minute break before Lewis Black came onstage.  The only compensation being that, during the extended intermission, a number of audience members procured alcohol, which more or less achieves the same purpose.  Finally, however, the “Featured Attraction” was introduced, coming onstage to rapturous applause.

Lewis Black wore a pearl gray suit, white dress shirt and a slightly loosened tie, in contrast to the opening comedian’s – matching his material – noticeably down-market jeans and a sport shirt.  Black immediately proved himself the superior practitioner by asserting, off the top, his defining thesis for the evening. 

Mentioning that a presidential election had recently taken place, Black wanted us to know that, in his opinion – and the opinion of anyone with a brain in their heads –

“Nothing is going to change.”

This is Black’s trumpeted position , the comedic turf he has uniquely staked out for himself:

“Nothing is going to change.”

Unlike Mort Sahl, a political satirist toiling most conspicuously in the sixties who humorously dissected the political specifics of the day, for Lewis Black, the “funny” comes from anyone taking those political specifics…buh-buh-buh-buh…seriously!

Black’s “perspective of choice” is that it’s all crap, and they’re all crazy.  Including us, for believing there’s hope, because there most assuredly isn’t any.

I happen to a large degree identify with that perspective.  Consequently, Lewis Black makes me laugh.  However, I have to admit that, when I do not herein reproduce samples of the material he delivered, it is less because I am unwilling to give away Black’s jokes than that, though I was satisfactorily entertained, the majority of Lewis Black’s ninety-minute performance did not stay with me.  Black was funny, but to me at least, not memorable. 

To my query concerning this matter, Dr. M, an astute observer even before she became a psychologist, noted that none of Lewis Black’s material was personal.  (As, at its most tears-in-your-eyes-inducing is Bill Cosby’s, or Richard Pryor’s.)  Black focuses exclusively on life as we currently live it, a life in which the monumental technological opportunity that is the Internet can be shockingly misused, drawing virally high viewership to a website featuring the adorable antics of a calico cat. 

(PLACE STANDARD DISCLAIMER HERE:  An artist cannot be criticized for not doing what they never intended to do.  Lewis Black is apparently more comfortable doing “other-directed” comedy than the “self-directed” kind.  So what?  The question is, “How funny is he being “other-directed?’”  And the answer to that question is “Quite.”)

There was one high point in the evening that earned my delighted appreciation for its insight and clarity.  Black reported that some people criticize him for not being as equally hard on the Democrats as he is on the Republicans.  His defense was that Democrats are not funny, and he went on to explain why. 

Democrats, Black asserted, are dumb.  While Republicans are stupid.  What’s the difference?

A Democrat tells you something, and when they’re done, your response is, “I have no idea what you just said.”  A Republican says something and you say, “I cannot believe you just said that.” 

Conclusion:  “Dumb” is not funny.  “Stupid” is…buh-buh-buh-buh…hilarious!

The most telling impression concerning Lewis Black appeared in a earlier-in-the-week newspaper article promoting the concert, in which he exposed the nature of being an actual comedian onstage, as opposed to the imaginary “comedian-in-my-head”, at which I excel.

How about I tell you about that tomorrow?

(Did you notice something?  Even when I stopped doing Lewis Black, I was still substantially doing Lewis Black?  I think I learned something there.)