Apt Search

the perks of finding a job means I'm getting the hell out of overpriced Isla Vista, where I've spent roughly three years competing with racoons and skunks for more space and a better smelling environment. But now I got to find a place to live, and have decided to make the move to Downtown.

I'd prefer to live somewhere near State Street. Being able to walk to the very American "commercial" zone reminds me of Italy and Europe (not that europe is better than america. wait, no, IT IS). I found a few places and wrote a short, honest bio about myself. I hinted I like cooking mediterranean food but excluded the whole super jew thing. The goyim don't need to know right away.

Any comments or revisions would be, as always, deserving a big hug and foray the daily kick in your kishkes.

I’m a 22 year old professional graduating this June from UCSB looking for housing for this up coming year. Although I prefer to meet in person, here’s my attempt to write an honest, quick bio about myself, and then hopefully we can meet up.

I’m graduating with a Global Studies major and a Writing minor. I’m not a hippie; I chose the major because of the poli-sci aspects and because it allowed to me to go to Italy and get credits. I studied in Bologna last year, spending 14 months in Europe. I love to travel, see new things, and am very open to new experiences.

I cook. A lot. Mediterranean and Indian are my favorite dishes. I’m used to the Italian style by now, which means cooking in mass quantities, with plenty for everyone.

Next year I’ll be working for a new non-profit Jewish organization based in Santa Barbara, acting as Sub-Director and head of Public Relations. I’ll be out of the house most of the day, and plan to work on short stories and a full length novel most nights, time permitting.

I love pets but don’t own any. I enjoy hiking, the beach, reading, watching DVDs but not television (we don’t have one in my current apt), dinner parties and just hanging out with friends, going salsa dancing-I drink when I go out, which is not that rare but not that often. I don’t smoke or do drugs.

I’m from the San Fernando Valley, a suburb of LA, though it’s very different from city life. We have strawberry farms and swap meets, and I’d rather go gardening or buying plants than go shopping…But hey, when the Gap has underwear sales I can’t pass on those. They’re too damn comfortable.

Did I leave anything out?

recovery

Sun peaks when I leave the office
drive up the gravel driveway, tulips red, white
under the stained porch. you stand underneath
the light, an angel, mine, waiting for her hero
tapping your foot in time, smells of cheese and blueberries
streaming from the kitchen
our son in your hands-his face full of pride at his old man.
the way things should have been.

today in history

1938 Foundation for Tel Aviv harbor laid
1961 Amnesty International is founded (Nobel Peace Prize 1977)
1962 US stock market drops $20.8 B in 1 day
1964 Palestine National Congress forms the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) in Jerusalem
1993 200,000 demonstrate against mafia terror
1983 Aaron Small is born

the drunk bolg

here it comes, yo! to yall sto ascoltando di musica italiana che veramente mi spacca il culo sempre! oh kay domani, pero ci non si sa, ti ho ordinato pero chi si sa che lo faccia?

okay enough aitalian. im kind o f sur drunk but tits cool cuz im dhalf drunk of the SAKE! yeas, yes, itsgood stuff the saprroro and the sushi. amnmany many, kinds, my friends, jews and ohterhs.

JEREMY JACOCKS MY ROOMATE BOUGHT ME SCHINDLERS LIST AS A BIRTHDAY PRESENT.

what a guy. so sweeeeeeeeell....the birthday comes up soon duece duece i shall be for the gos to tell i think drunk writing aor dialiing is easier than DRUJNK TY{ING fuck this.

bye/!

If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.

Oh woody. so true, so true. Mexican food is the devil.

Save Lincoln!

I saw him today on campus, collecting money for himself. Wadda zaddik.

Daily Nexus Online-Now Look What You ‘Punk-Ass Biatches’ Made Us Do

probably my last article :(

Tall Tales from Poland

Yes, I see the Cossacks on the subway,
waiting for the early train at Penn Station.
or the blackshirts on Melrose Avenue,
buying tight-fitting jeans for Kristallnacht
But this horror of horrors, Buchenwald and Dachau
are yours, not mine. existing in a victimized vacuum
of stories, tall tales, fictions from untouchable worlds
the mind fetters of 1938, still shackled as it once was
but no longer!
Portnoy’s passion brings fear of pogroms
in New York, bright California, after Yoga class.
"Oy! They are hiding on the screen! in newspapers, these pages!"
you tell me, cowering on the couch, pistachios in hand
Come see bubbe and zayde! Give an eye! Your enemies-ghosts, dissolved
from the camps, from America, and worst of all
your horrors only, to face unbearably
alone.

The film

These pictures below are taken during filming of "Into the Breach," a night for day, Black and White, six minute Action short. Wow, big sentence there. The film kicks ass and will be screened this Friday night at the Reel Loud Film Festival.

The cast is dressing up and performing as 101st Airborne Paratroops, minus all the camoflauge schmutz on our face. Then we're partying it up at my place, 6645 DP.

I don't even need to mention it, but I wore my brother's Magen David on my chain during filming. I felt like Private Schmulowitz all over again. Did I ever tell you my grandpa was a sharshooter in the Russian army?

Yeah. Yeah I know he kicks ass.

I wrote a piece for the Nexus that should print out on Wednesday. It's about my neighbor, Lincoln Rideout. In a span of just FIVE DAYS, he broke his elbow, lost his bike seat, and had his iPod and brand new Dell Laptop stolen. What a tsadik. I shall post up the link for all you non-UCSB kids. Or adults. Which gets me thinking:

How old are you?

On Normandy Beach, overlooking our kill 

Bad ass. That's me, in Normandy (Goleta)

With Drew Atkins, Band of Brothers Pic 

Screwing off on the Set with Director Larsen 

Kurt Webb, dead Nazi 

Rambo Pic 

1948-Golan (((For Tovah)))

six years ago we flew kites
blue and white, at twilight
defending the invasion in the north
i was captain hershel, you esther
(you just looked like an esther)
flak cannons, 88s and MG fire from all directions
Thinking we'd never make it, i chose not to pray
so we danced like naked children over the holy ground
the kite became unsteady, cracking rivets along the edge
my hands in yours, tempting to jump
"grab guns when we land!" you cried over the intercom
"for my father and mother, hungary" i wrote on my sandals
kneelength wet grass made the air taste sweet
we walked through, our hearts pounding
i said a prayer while scanning the mountains
because it's possible
yes, quite probable
that i wouldn't be coming back.
Because I'd die for Her.

Guilt, Philip Roth, Masturbation-It all makes sense

Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969) features a neurotic 33 year old Jewish social worker from Newark who spills his twisted tale of identity-conflict, love, and familial guilt to Dr. Spielvogel, his psychologist. Read it. You'll never laugh so hard.

After publication, Roth was branded a literary anti-Semite, like Wilhelm Marr and Treitschke, whose work provokes more Jew hatred. He received death threats, stacks of complaint letters-Gershoem Scholem, the Kabbalist researcher, wrote: "For 2,000 years the goyim have tried to write an anti-Semitic novel-It took a Jew to finally make it happen."

To his detractors, Roth makes a sound argument, and I think the first recognition of what's been plaguing me these last couple of days. To say that his work is anti-Semitic, is an irrational, victimized argument that only contributes to intolerance and anti-Semitism. Blacklisting and banning Roth bans honesty, truth and enlightenment about Jews. Portnoy's Complaint shows that Jews are humans, who like everyone else, commit moral crimes. Jews are NOT what Gentiles say they are. Sholem, like other Rabbis, are stuck in a world of victimization and yes, GUILT, who prefer to believe that Jews, and the world, will always be stuck in 1939, and therefore, must defend themselves against any instance of anti-Semitism, potential or real, from Gentile or Jew. It's time for us to accept that we're a people (the Chosen :), and that the only route to further acceptance from others requires smashing barriers of non-communication and ignorance. No one read Portnoy's Complaint and started a pogrom in Long Island. No one paid 6.95 (which was a lot in those days. PC was second to the Bible in books sold), read it, and said "Ah-Hah! So it's all true! Those greedy, sex crazy Jews!"

The rabbis sent him death threats because they were afraid. Afraid of the truth, afraid of human situations that were so untypical for Jews to engage in, and afraid that all this uproar WOULD form the basis of the next Holocaust. It's quite simple what propelled these rabbis to brand Roth a self-hating Jew: Pain gives people a reason to go on, a motivation to survive. You strip that away and things become too easy, too mundane. People become less observant. But I'd rather live in peace and tranquility, even without God, then as a victim who fears for his life all the time. Because that's no longer true.

Be gone Bacteria!

Allergies are the devil. Or at least, manifestations of little Satans traveling through the air, up my nose, into my sinus cavities, living, enjoying their parasitic lifestyle while I cry, sneeze, cough, have difficulty breathing and then spend time bitching about it on a blog.

Why the H didn't someone tell me that Santa Barbara has California's (and possibly the World's) worst mold and allergen problem? Someone's gonna die.

Happy news! I'm doing a presentation on anti-semitism for my Italian class and it is gonna be sweet 'cause I know my shiiiiiit. (Read that last line like a limerick. Trust me, it works)

If I can survive the fucking allergies, that is. Baruch Hashem for Kleenex, Antihistamines, and other drugs, medicinal and recreational. The'yre all good.

Guilt Part 2

After doing a bit of research on Anti-Semitism in Italy, I've noticed that use of swastiskas by Anti-Israel groups epitomizes, dangerously, what I'm talking about. The Holocaust, perhaps the Jews' greatest weapon in defending action (read: war, military retaliation, lobbying) has in the last 20 or so years, been stripped away, disappeared, and ironically, used by their enemies. The most recent and horrific act of genocide is so FAR REMOVED from the modern Jew and the world entire, it has ceased to be relevant and effectual in any way. Jews' don't have any ownership of the Holocaust anymore; Anti-Israel activists are now paralleling the Jewish State to fascism and even the Nazis. Jews = Nazis..Incredible.

What happens when what you believe in is no longer threatened? Can Judaism survive and succeed if nothing is trying to stop it? Or will it eventually lose its image of struggle and triumph over evil, and then finally disappear?

The End of Jewish Guilt

During Yoga lunch with Alex we stumbled upon a topic which has since plagued me all day, all night, and sometimes during the afternoons. It connects with my Anti-Semitism class, chronicles the roots the Holocaust in Austrian and German literature and racist theorists from the mid 1800s.

Then came the Holocaust- the brutal epitome of Jewish suffering and survival. Even looking back at history, we see that the Jews' history is not a happy one. Egypt, Pogroms, Exile, Inquisition, Holocaust-all these events have shaped Jewish identity and taken root in the Jewish experience.

But what happens when it's all over? When there's nothing to complain about? When the Jewish kids from Beverlywood and New York just don't know what the hell their Bubbeleh is talking about? I can't find meaning in your suffering, Auschwitz is just a place (though I know it happened), Israelis suffer more deaths on their highways than on busses bombed by terrorists, my neighbor is NOT an Anti-Semite, and the agriculturist farmer type who in the 40s would have helped the Nazis and had shot me with a KAR if given the gun, now engages me in an insightful discussion on soil erosion and proper care needed to grow healthy basil. My only concern is that my cell phone doesn't work properly, I can't find a decent job with a Global Studies Major, and birds keep crapping on my car.

So how're things gonna roll for use Jews of the future, who live without hardship, struggle, pain? We're just like everyone else in America, except we don't pork. Or we do, but we don't tell our parents. What should we do? Come up with new reasons for people to hate us, and hopefully (god-willing! or god forbid!) they'll act on it? Maybe THAT will give us enough reason to keep surviving, and live as Jews. Or will we completely assimilate like everyone else, eventually dying off because those threatening forces which form such a necessary part of our culture have disappeared? We can't go on citing the Holocaust and swastikas as a means to an end, or any means at all, because they've become irrelevant to the Jewish psyche.

Oy. All this gives me such a headache.

another articolo

Confronting the Real World-Post College Ponderings: daily Nexus Online

Blogging in Davidson

I'm here sitting in the Library. Here's my predicament, and the joys of the Internet.

I have a midterm for my Journalism class, which totally sucks by the way. Bardach, a journalist who specializes on Cuba and the Castro familial ties, is the poorest excuse for a lecturer here at UCSB. She's disorganized (and a journalist!) can't grade papers (and is a teacher!) whose cell phone rings when she invites guest speakers to the class. I haven't touched or even seen the book we're required to read because a) I just don't want to and b) I've been busy with the film. So my idea was to ditch the midterm, study for a bit, and take it next week.

Bad idea. Apparently she's cancelling class next week, can't set up a midterm, blah blah blah, FINE.

The book is called Rich Media, Poor Democracy. After, I don't know, TWO MINUTES of Google searching, I found reviews on Amazon, and an entire website that contains excerpts of every chapter! Free Cliffs Notes mothafucka! So now I'm gonna read what the fool has to say, kick the midterms ass via plenty of bullshitting, have it cleared from my head so I can focus on real shit, real literature, my own writing, and some Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, which chronicles the unleashing of the sexual monster in a 15-year old Jewish kid.

And I'm breaking in my new jeans! What a great day. Fuck school. Smiles for everyone.

Aba, you Rock!

Today I met my dad in Camarillo to hit the Outlets and have dinner. Why I was there, you might ask? I hope you're asking? Please ask.

Why were you there?

We finished shooting "Into the Breach!" The WWII Movie where two others and I star as 101st Airborne Paratroopers who land behind enemy lines in Normandy. We make our way to the beach, kill a few Nazis, blow up a bunker, kill some more...It's great. It'll be premiering at the REEL LOUD Film Festival, May 27th. BE THERE. My birthday is the 28th. So come. Show your support. Throw your underwear on stage. Leave your children at home.

My Pops and I went all around the place. It never ceases to knock my socks off how big the Outlets are. The cover probably around 10 blocks. And they're expanding all the time, like the universe. I won't go into details of what I bought, but I did get a pair of Clarks Loafers, Slip-Ons, remember slip-ons? They're so comfortable I feel almost guilty for wearing them. Fuck sandals. Seriously. Fuck Sandals and sandal inventors. My knees feel like a mobster with a Louisville Slugger went to work, and my shins are almost completely stripped from the bone. (And I got a shirt and jeans and belt and T-shirts for my brothers and my dad got 2 work shirts and Clarks, too.)

We went to Wood Ranch for dinner. The wait was 45 minutes so we hopped to the bar. I ordered a beer and he got a White Zin. The last time I drank beer with my dad I was 18. We were in Puerto Vallarta at a bullfight. My dad, Leon, who can't speak a word of Spanish (just ask our housekeeper) says "Pardon Senor? Una cervesa por favor?" He sounded like more of a Mexican than a real Mexican. So we're drinkin, and 5 minutes later we get a table ( Flirting with the hostess pays off, it seems) and we ordered. Wood Ranch's portions will shock you: They think you just got out of a concentration camp and have never seen food, and they're here to nourish you back to pre-war health. My pops and I talked about life, my job next year, my brother, leadership, his past marriage. I feel so much older now.

While shopping I asked him what it's like to have his kids taller than him.

"It feels like you guys are older than me," he said.

Ehhh Homo Gay?

Maybe I should be a Rabbi.

Today I gave Global 102 a tour of Hillel, the workings of a synagogue, procedures for Friday Night Prayers, Kashrut, Menstration, and Homosexuality in the Torah. Oh, and Matzah, that delicious Passover delicacy we all love. I basically winged the entire discussion, but got in the groove of teaching people about Torah and Judaism and what the hell we're all about. Then I somehow got involved in this rapid fire question/answer session, answering q's as fast and intelligently as possible.

Passover food discussion was pretty cool, but I got distracted for a second because this girl was sleeping in the 6th row. But it wasn't normal, kickback sleep. Her eyes were half open, half closed, so all I saw wasthis muddy whiteness in her eyes, she looked so frozen, almost half dead. Kind of freaked me out. So of course during my lecture I HAVE to stare at her, see if she'll wake up, or move. I sneaked some jokes in, Baruch Hashem, and hopefully gave ppl a worthwhile experience. Naturally we had the 5 or 6 annoying kids who wouldn't stop asking me questions, but damn, it's fun to be a source of authority and be able to call on people, in order. The best part was this one dude who kept raising his hand, and I ended up calling on someone else. He was wearing a pink shirt. With white stripes.

I got some Moroccon Mint Tea Latte with Jeff and my intestines are paying for it. I can't drink milk. The hotter the worse. Why do I keep doing this to myself? I'll be paying for it later, this I assure you. Gotta go make sure there's enough toilet paper. You never know.

You just never know.

ipodaholic

Here's a Link to an Ipod article I wrote for the Nexus. Check it out yo.
Word.

Don't Talk to Me: I'm an Ipod-aholic