Confiding Vs Venting

Posted on August 8, 2009 by Luke Ford

I was feeling quite honored this week that a beautiful woman was confiding in me.

Then a few minutes later, she went cold.

I didn’t understand it. I wondered what I did wrong.

I find emotional intimacy with an amazing woman so intoxicating that I want it to go on forever. It always hurts me when she shuts down.

I talked about all this with a mutual friend and he explained that the woman wasn’t sharing so much as venting. That’s how she ran. She’d connect deeply with you for a few minutes and then she’d hit her limit and shut down.

Something weird happened to me in shul recently. I was embracing a male friend and got so carried away that I kissed his shoulder. I have no idea how that happened. I hope it doesn’t mean I’m gay.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Confiding Vs Venting

The Well-Timed Smack

Posted on August 8, 2009 by Luke Ford

On his radio show August 26 (third hour), Dennis Prager said: "I used to be opposed to it [smacking a kid]. I did not raise my kids with it. Over the course of time, watching children, talking to adults with different views, I have come to change my mind. I think the well-time, well-placed, loving but firm smack is a very good idea. The book of Proverbs says ‘Spoil the rod, spare the child.’ I’m prepared to differ with a Biblical verse but it turned out to be right. I don’t think you can reason with a four year-old, let alone a two-year old.

"I speak to so many adults who were whacked as kids and tell me they were better for it. Callers have changed my mind throughout my career.

"The thing that must be absent from such physical discipline is humiliation. That I do believe permanently injures a child. That’s a no-no — the humiliating of a child. It should always be done with the child closed.

"The well-timed smack is eloquent with a three year old. ‘You just don’t that.’ Smack."

Knowing the strong opposition to corporal punishment by Prager and his psychiatrist friend Dr. Stephen Marmer, I used to enjoy saying to them at Stephen S. Wise temple from 1994-1998, "I got smacked all the time and look at how I turned out."

They always got wry smiles on their faces.

Posted in Dennis Prager | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on The Well-Timed Smack

The Most Poignant Comment About The Death Of Filmmaker John Hughes

Posted on August 7, 2009 by Luke Ford

Luke Y. Thompson, movie critic, actor, and long-time friend, writes on Facebook: "I’m sad he’s dead, but frankly, John Hughes movies lied to me. They said awkward dorks like me could find love – or even basic understanding – in high school. That wasn’t true at all."

What about after high school?

Luke adds: "Hasn’t been all that true since, either."

Gary W. Hodges comments: "I’ve always found Breakfast Club in particular breathtakingly naive and dishonest."

Posted in Luke Y. Thompson | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on The Most Poignant Comment About The Death Of Filmmaker John Hughes

Evan Sayet Compares The Obama Administration To The Nazis

Posted on August 7, 2009 by Luke Ford

From Evan’s Facebook status update: Harry Reid: "These are nothing more than destructive efforts to interrupt a debate that we should have, and are having," Reid said. Simple question to those who aren’t terrified by the Nazi-style take-over of our government by Barack Huseein Obama and his corrupt leftist pals in the House and Senate…how is Harry Reid able to debate the issue when he hasn’t read the bill?

MY INTERVIEW WITH EVAN.

Eight people — none of whom I recognized — gave this remark a thumbs-up. In the comments thread, Evan added: "The thing is, Tracey, they ARE Nazis. The only difference is two-fold, first, Obama is not a NATIONAL socialist he’s an INTERNATIONAL socialist, the difference there being only the size of the playing field. Otherwise all policies are the same. The other is that Hitler was "in your face" with his rhetoric while Obama has learned to be a "smiley-… faced fascist," only speaking the truth about what he believes when he thinks he’s off the record (like his hateful attack on religious Americans in San Francsico) and when the news leaks out (like his threat to finish Hitler’s job if the Israelis don’t surrender to his and his Islamist allies’ demands."

"The thing is this, Tracey, words have meaning. When I compare Obama to the Nazis it’s because that is an accurate phrase. Germany, too, was a democracy until a charismatic orator, using goons and thugs — often culled from the prisons like the Democrats/Muslims are donig — to … Read Morebeat anyone who challenged them into submission. Obama has attempted to steal the 2012 election by stealing the census, he has engaged in scapegoating unparalleled since Hitler (everyone who disagrees with him is bought off or evil) and we are truly in Germany circa 1936 and this Jews not going to keep quiet and pretend it’s not happening. Never again means never again."

Posted in Barack Obama, Evan Sayet | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Evan Sayet Compares The Obama Administration To The Nazis

I Got Into A Fender-Bender In Beverly Hills

Posted on August 7, 2009 by Luke Ford

Oy, this is all so embarrassing!

Until I opened — on my Blackberry — this morning’s Los Angeles Times, I didn’t realize that Sonia Sotomayor’s elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court was anything to celebrate.

This I saw the headline: "New York celebrates Sotomayor’s confirmation"

Wow. All of New York is celebrating? Why? I know people in New York. I wonder if they are celebrating. It turns out they weren’t.

Then I pondered the deep significance of the first Puerto Rican going on the Supreme Court and I felt an excitement unknown to me since Black History month.

As I opened my eyes to the glories of racial diversity, I met a couple of nice ladies wearing "Wise Latina" t-shirts and I just went lost control.

Oy, the shame! I reached for a lithium tablet to calm my troubled waters but popped a Levitra by accident. After four hours, the effects had not worn off, so I got in the car and drove myself to the hospital.

Last time I do that with a serious medical condition! I should’ve called an ambulance.

Making my way through Beverly Hills, taunted by scantily clad babes, I scraped cars on Cannon Drive with a young woman driving her dad’s black BMW. A marriage and family therapist, she was getting married this weekend.

Mazal tov! I guess I broke the glass a little early.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on I Got Into A Fender-Bender In Beverly Hills

The Maimonides Of Pick-Up Artists

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Luke Ford

JConnectLA‘s Tu B’Av love party at 7174 Melrose Blvd is jammed.

I haven’t gotten any sleep for days. I’m stumbling around, feeling old and lost and claustrophobic, yet people keep coming up to me and telling me what amazing energy I have. They attribute it to Torah. I attribute it to Kundalini Yoga and Alexander Technique.

I crash on the couch with a musician from Israel who moved into town about six months ago.

"This is the epicenter of Jewish LA," he says, stretched almost horizontal with his head hunched forward. "What does that say about LA?"

He’s not impressed. "All the shuls in LA are the same. All the shuls in Pico-Robertson are just like each other. Do any of them have anything going on?"

Yeah, they do, but shuls aren’t generally friendly places for struggling artists without a wife and kids and respectable income.

I mingle. Ben Sharabi is talking with my friend Jezebel.

"You’re the Maimonides of pick-up artists," he tells me. "You’re like the world’s wisest man in those Dos Equis commercials. We should shoot a knock-off of those commercials with you drinking a Manishevitz. Would you be willing to trim your beard?"

A look of horror crosses my face.

Jez complains that guys only want to f— her. Nobody wants to date her. She had a hard session of therapy today, but she doesn’t let it change the way she treats other people.

"JDate is for creeps," she announces.

"I’m on JDate and I’m not a creep," responds a guy.

"Have you looked in the mirror?" says Jez.

A guy said to her in Las Vegas last weekend: "Don’t you think my buddy here is sexy?"

"What about the hair?" asks Jez.

A friend of mine is finishing off his doctorate in Political Science at UCLA. He’s been working on it for 14 years. He says he has some theories that will revolutionize the world.

"What’s your email address?" I ask. "We should stay in touch."

"Can I give you my phone number?" he says. "My hands hurt."

"I know an amazing physical therapist," I reply. "Lyn Paul Taylor (website)."

I chat with the Orthodox rapper Etan G. "We’ve had four kids since joined us for Shabbos lunch [circa late 2004]," he says.

"I’m working on promoting a new album."

I run into therapists all night. One is dating an acquaintance.

"He’s Mr. Monogamy," I assure her.

I run into an ex. "Why are you wearing your Shabbos clothes?" she says.

Posted in JConnect LA, Personal | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on The Maimonides Of Pick-Up Artists

Automatic Writing

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Luke Ford

I found out about "automatic writing" this week while reading the Richard Elmann biography of the poet W. B. Yeats.

"Automatic writing" means writing without conscious control. Say you are watching TV or talking to a friend and your hand is moving across the page. It’s a tad more sophisticated than doodling.

Apparently Yeats’s wife could do this and he’d put her at it a few hours a day, asking her questions and letting her demon out on paper. This was of considerable help to him on many of his poems, particularly his most famous poem "The Second Coming."

   Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I want to write like Yeats so I sat down at Starbucks Tuesday morning and stared out the window at the traffic and put my penned hand to paper and tried to open up to automatic writing. Nothing happened. So I let my handle just want over the page and all it produced was squibbles. I’m terribly disappointed. I will have to return to my carefully thought out screeds of pure reason (tempered by divine revelation).

Jeff emails: There is an equivalent in the Jewish tradition going way back to Abulafia, which is keeping a dream journal. Not one in which you recall your dreams in the morning, since by that point there

Posted in Literature, Personal | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Automatic Writing

Remembering Slain Israeli Gays

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Luke Ford

Is there any hip ethical movement in Modern Orthdooxy that Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld is not a leader of?

JTA reports:

WASHINGTON (JTA) — An Orthodox rabbi spoke out against anti-gay rhetoric in the Orthodox community at a Washington vigil mourning two Jews slain at a gay center in Tel Aviv.

"It’s time to do some internal accounting" as to whether such "rhetoric has created this climate" that allows for violence and "vilification" of gays and lesbians, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom — The National Synagogue said Monday night at the candlelight vigil.

Herzfeld called for the Orthodox community to create a "communal pledge" that "we will not create a climate of gay bashing" and "enforce it."

In an interview after his speech, Herzfeld did note that homosexuality was "prohibited by the Torah," but said at the same time that crimes like the murders Saturday evening in Israel were "a desecration of God’s name."

Posted in Homosexuality, Israel, Orthodoxy, R. Shmuel Herzfeld, Rabbis | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Remembering Slain Israeli Gays

LimmudLA Is A Beautiful Woman

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Luke Ford

I’ve got a date with her Sunday!

This will be the sixth time we’ve gotten together.

The first few times she was real shy. I like that. It means she’s classy. She don’t give herself up to just anybody. She has standards. Yet, she likes me. I really think she likes me. She’s kinda shy and reserved. She’s religious. She’s observant. But she’s not all stuck up and thinking she’s better than everyone else. She talks to everyone. She even talks to me.

She has lots of friends and they’re all nice. They make me feel real welcome. I can’t wait to talk to them. And there’ll be eats and drinks and ice cream and sing song.

She’s tall and slender and dark and mysterious. But on Sunday she’ll be mine!

Khunrum emails: "Luke we weren’t aware you could sing. What type of warbling do you and your Yiddisha buddies do…songs of devotion? show tunes? rock n’ rolla?…why not bring your "camera of death" to the next get together and post the festivities on your site? It would be a huge improvement from the usual cut n’ paste Dennis Prager blah! blah! blah!"

Bob emails:
I’m imagining a Debbie Gibson medley followed by Air Supply’s two greatest hits and in keeping with his unruly beard “If I Was a Rich Man” from Zorba the Greek.

Get down one time with your bad self, Luke!

Posted in Limmud | Tagged , , | Comments Off on LimmudLA Is A Beautiful Woman

Dennis Prager Turns 61

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Luke Ford

Dennis had his birthday Sunday, August 2.

For a birthday present, he asks listeners each year to email him with the details on how he has touched their lives.

I’d do that too on my birthday but fear it would arouse otherwise suppressed memories. Some sleeping dogs are best left sleeping.

On his show today, Prager said that his doctor, Michael Richmond, who voted for Barack Obama now regrets his vote. The doctor fears Obama’s healthcare plan.

Dennis: When you stop having to take care of your family and your community and the state takes care of you, educates you, hospitalizes you, completely takes care of you, you become a more selfish human being. How could you not? The very mentality of the government will take care of them and you… Do you think entitlement makes better people or worse people? You don’t have to earn it. It’s a right. All I have to do in life is breathe. Do you have a right to housing? Why doesn’t the government provide you housing? It is more important that you have housing than health insurance.

Posted in Dennis Prager | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Dennis Prager Turns 61