Nearer My God To Thee

Donkey Punch Discussion

SickandTired describes on ADT the Alex Devine scene in DonkeyPunch:

-Alex talks to the cameraman several times about French hitting her with "that hand" or "that ring." At least 5 times that I counted.

-Alex talks to French more than 8 times about hitting her with "that hand" or "that ring" for the scene. She does laugh about it once early on, but is definitely angry about it towards the end of the shoot.

-Alex threatens to "not finish the shoot" to the cameraman about 2/3 of the way thru the scene if French "uses that hand again."

-French tries to choke her a couple of times and she clearly says "don't choke me," to him...and he complies. He even says (staying "in character" it would seem) "I won't choke you" or "I won't hurt you," and complies with her request to not choke her. So clearly, he could understand her and, when he wished, not do things she asked. During one of the early anal entries she cries out in pain and asks for a break, and he complies again, clearly understanding her and withdraws from her anus.

-The part where she is hit on the "wrong" side of her head (seen in the trailer) occurs WHILE French comes in her ass. She says quite plainly "PLEASE STOP" and pulls away, but he's already come. The cameraman/director THEN starts talking and says "WAIT, RIGHT THERE" and then the scene cuts as Alex pulls away from French and accuses him of hitting her on "the wrong side." It should be noted that, contrary to some of the opinions presented here, French did NOT hit her in the "wrong side" of her head with his ring hand. He clearly hits her with his LEFT hand and his right is gripping her ass, with the ring clearly visible. It was still clearly a non-welcomed assault by Alex, but he didn't use his ring at all for that particular attack. From what I could see, at no time does his ring ever come into contact with her head for the entire shoot.

-After the above incident, the scene (with camera still rolling) continues with mayhem ensuing. Alex is upset (the camera is all over the place so hard to see facial expressions for this segment) and complaining about the incident, the director is upset that the money shot was screwed up (cum has already leaked out of her ass onto the black couch), so French is asked to re-insert his cock in her ass so they can shoot the "donkey punch" again (words spoken by the cameraman) and fake the orgasm. Alex clearly says "I don't give a s--- about the donkey punch, just DONT HIT THIS SIDE." The director requests that she show French where not to hit her, she does, and they re-engage and fake the orgasm...again with a "donkey punch" but obviously not in the "wrong spot" this time.

-The ring is featured prominently in several of the shots. There are even a few closeups of JUST French's right hand with the ring on it.

-This is, obviously, a very rough scene. Alex does encourage and invite a lot of abuse verbally, even asking him to hit her stomach during a reverse cowgirl shot. And he "foot slaps" her head violently several times, some of which occurs while she lying on her back and laughing about it. The scene has escalating dialogue the entire time with her getting more and more upset about the ring, but it is interspersed with her also encouraging and/or laughing about some of the other abusive treatment. She even "disses" French about the taste of his ass several times.

-After the shot ends, Grip, Cram and Alex do a short scene where she is roughed up "playfully" by them (and appears to rough them up also) and they claim that "this cunt f---ed up the scene right at the end." Again Alex makes some complaints (it sounds good-natured here to be honest) about getting hit in the "wrong spot," to which Cram replies with a slap to her head that "There's no wrong spot to hit a woman." They then have her lick up the cum that dripped out onto the couch and apologize to the viewers. The Johnson's then said that she f---ed up the production although admit that "Alex did get a pretty good beating."

Quasarman writes on ADT:

I'm pretty sure Malcolm McDowell didn't actually rape the woman in the first scene. I'm almost positive he didn't actually kill that homeless guy either. Above and beyond that obvious truth is the fact that Kubrick was making a statement about society in general whereas in Donkey Punch, there is no statement other than it's apparently fun to punch a girl in the back of the head while f---ing her and the punch is not simulated by a trained stuntman, it's real and it's delivered by an untrained chimp hopped up on viagra.

That being said, much as I'm loathe to defend it, everyone who agreed to participate in the movie knew what they were getting into. That's enough to satisfy my Libertarian sensibility. I certainly don't condone it and the responsible members of the adult community should indeed condemn it but If a girl accepts a paycheck for being punched in the back of the head, regardless of how much she needs the money, she's an idiot plain and simple.

David Aaron Clark writes on ADT:

If there's one thing that irritates the piss out of me it's the fatuous jerks who of course know that violence in mainstream movies is SIMULATED & performed by unionized, fully protected & trained STUNTMEN & WOMEN, yet still bring up your tiresome & tired rationalization.

(Yeah, it's a wonder Jet Li hasn't been ARRESTED, the way he breaks people's bones & s--- in his movies, riiiight?)

As for still being on friendly terms with the "director," if you want to call him that, anyone familiar with the tropes of domestic abuse -- not to mention pimpology 101 -- knows that victims tend to continue the cycle of abuse by drifting back towards their abusers.

I'm reading Thane Rosenbaum's first book Elijah Visible. It's thinly disguised autobiography about a lawyer named Adam Posner (read Thane Rosenbaum), the child of Holocaust survivors who turns his back on the moral demands of his tradition and bangs shiksas.

Now, before I truly understood the profundity of the Torah, I enjoyed banging shiksas as much as anybody. But that doesn't mean I want to read about such behavior when it is excused by being the child of Holocaust survivors.

I'm tired of writing about lawyers imagining themselves stuck in a cattle car instead of an elevator or spoiled brats drifting away from a Passover Seder and finding themselves in the Holocaust.

I'm tired of Jews (be they literary characters or real people) who weren't in the Holocaust using the Shoah as a get-out-of-jail card for their own bad behavior.

Women say 'casual sex is immoral'

The Sex and the City image of women seeking casual encounters for pleasure does not quite fit the latest research.

Nine out of 10 women interviewed in-depth about their views said they thought one night stands were immoral.

Dr Sharron Hinchcliff will tell the British Psychological Society conference in Cardiff it made her question whether women have really gained the sexual freedom they are supposed to have enjoyed since the 1960s.

Steven I. Weiss blogs:

Take a look at DealBreaker, the new business-gossip site, and it gives off an air heavy in, I don’t know, what is it? Oh, yes: foreskin.
In the many posts since the the site’s launch, it’s managed one aside about The Fed’s new Jew in charge, and at Jewish best the hope that a couple (Gary Weiss: Could be. David Weidner: maybe) analysts are part of the J-pop. In the meantime, she’s got stuff about some hippie named Paulson, a writer named Muffie (Muffie!), and a suggestion that WASPs rule the Street.
Go back before the launch, and you’ve got more Scientologist than Yiddishist, names like Thomas H. Lee (the very white fellow pictured), and even a guy in a sombrero.

Stephen Anzalone writes me:

I'm just curious who the f--- you think you are to drop names like Craig [Marino] and John [Baudanza], and call them what you call them ["gangsters"]? I dont see people calling your mother a crack whore and reviewing what pipe hitting niggers pull trains on her. Go f--- yourself, its people like you that are unhappy with the mundaine existance you eek out, so you spend your time talking about the MEN you wish you had the balls to be. Get a job, and a hobby you pathetic little dick smoker.

I found your website, and the "review" you gave on Privilege on 23rd street and the bulls--- you said about it. What is a pole smoker like you doing in titty bars anyway? Your boyfriend would be very unhappy.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

"Just watch Fishbein, writes Tod Hunter:

First AVN gives a 3-1/2 star review to "Donkey Punch," which I haven't seen but sounds like just the kind of thing that would give the misogyny-brutality contingent at That Magazine paroxysms of glee, and then Mike South presses him on the subject and Fishbein says "We won't review Donkey Punch movies any more," and then Fishbein has a little chat with Jeff and whammo it disappears. Isn't even on the JM Website any more.

What was it Mark Twain said? "Always do what's right. This will gratify some people and surprise the rest."

Somebody deserves kudos here: Maybe Mike South, maybe Jeff, maybe even Fishbein, who knows.

Den from CAVR.com writes Mike South: "Mike, good job in reporting this to Mr. Fishbein. Sure wish you would also get him to stop reviewing the choking movies. AVN needs to take a stand on choking!"

Your Life As Story

Penthouse Pet Crystal Klein replies:

Nothing to dish, as usual. If I did have something to dish, I would, as I am always very thrilled about your interpretation of it on your site. Too bad I can't think of anything to dish that would remotely have anything to do with porn.

On another note however, I found it a very meaningful coincidence to see Holly read the book "Your life as a story", only to find out that you recommended it to her. Now guess what: I was much faster than you. I've had this very book for almost two years now, and have read most of it. Most of it is forgotten by now, but hey, I tried. I might just give it a try again.

So you are wondering what's so interesting in my life to be writing about? Well, I guess not much, as I still haven't written one single page of it. But I've been planning to do so my whole life. I wish I was a pornographer's daughter. Much more interesting. Jealous.

What's going on with you and your constant struggle to understand the mystery called Holly? Any news?

Tone Capone Update

He calls me back at 8:41 p.m. Thursday: "What's good, nigger?

"When are you coming to the 'hood with me?

"I got my own internet radio show once a week. Check me out April 14 at 5:15 a.m. on KCLAFM.com. After that, you can catch me every Thursday at midnight. I've been trying to focus on my radio announcing skills.

"I play underground rap music. If I want to play a song that says 'bitch' one thousand times, I can do that.

"I'm looking for sponsors for my radio show. tone_capone@yahoo.com."

According to The New York Times: "Blacks and other members of minorities of various ages are merging onto the digital information highway as never before."

Tone: "I did two scenes today."

Luke: "Are you smoking dope right now?"

Tone: "Is that what you white folks call it? Dope?

"I call it what it is -- marijuana. Weed. It's a relaxer."

Wikipedia has some surprisingly good listings

Jenna Jameson Savannah Samson Rocco Siffredi Taylor Hayes Alisha Klass Seymore Butts

Joanna Angel Interview

I phone her in New York Thursday afternoon.

Luke: "You're having your Joanna's Angels 2 party on the seventh day of Passover (April 18). What's up with that?"

Joanna: "Are you going to come?"

Luke: "No. It's a holy day."

Joanna: "I'm not eating pizza there [bread and such is forbidden during Passover]."

Luke: "You deliberately scheduled that so that Orthodox Jews can not make it to your party."

Joanna: "Is the seventh night a holy night?"

Luke: "Yes. And the eighth night."

Joanna: "I thought it was just the first two nights."

Luke: "No. You didn't learn much in yeshiva."

Joanna: "I know I'm cute but I'm not so young and I haven't practiced the Jewish laws in so many years, I've forgotten some of them. I guess I shouldn't invite my parents.

"Are you going to write in to me your problems for my new Spin magazine column? It's a dream column to write about people's sex problems. They hired me because they want me to give bad advice. I'm having the time of my life. I'm telling people to do so many sinful things.

"Every issue they are going to have a one-page photo of me. They did shoots where I look like a librarian, a nurse and a schoolgirl. I hope they use the librarian one. It's my favorite. I was an English major.

"I know this kid who got kicked out of highschool for having sex in a library. I'm jealous. I've always wanted to have sex in a library. I've never dated anyone into libraries. I've only had sex with one person who's graduated college."

Luke: "Blown any rock stars lately?"

Joanna: "No, I just make Kylee Kross do it instead. Sometimes I'll just watch and it'll make me feel like I am young again.

"I'm too old to hang out with student bands.

"I thought I would get my mojo back at the South-by-Southwest festival. I didn't.

"It used to be that I would have sex with at least one or two members of every band that came through town. Now there are all these new bands and I haven't slept with anyone in any of them.

"Once you start doing porn and having sex with professionals, you realize that these student bands aren't that good in bed."

Luke: "Which porn stars are the best in bed?"

Joanna: "Manuel Ferrara and James Deen.

"Manuel is romantic. He makes you feel like the center of the universe. I was in Ass Wreckage with him. Even when you're in some dirty movie with him, he still makes it romantic. He's a ladies man. When he saw me at AVN, he said, 'Oh Joanna, I can't wait to make love to you again.'"

She giggles. "Mr. Marcus is also romantic. He loves women. It feels nice every once in a while. You get tossed around like a whore all the time. It's nice when somebody treats you nicely and ----- you like a lady."

Joanna tells a man that she's on the phone with me and she wants privacy.

Luke: "Is he your boss?"

Joanna: "He's my partner [in burningangel.com]. I don't get bossed around by anybody."

Luke: "How are your parents dealing with the Joanna Angel phenomenon as it keeps getting higher?"

Joanna: "You started it. It's all your fault.

"I was on Page Six [of the New York Post]. It's been a secret dream to be on Page Six.

"My parents are proud because when someone asks my mom what I do, she can say, 'Joanna writes for Spin.'

"When people make small talk with me and I don't feel like [revealing her porn work], I can say, 'I write for Spin.'"

Luke: "How was South-by-Southwest?"

Joanna: "I puked all over Eon [McKai's] shoes in the street."

Luke: "Did he think it was an alt thing for you to do?"

Joanna: "He thought it was a really alternative thing for me to do.

"I drank a pitcher of margaritas at this Mexican restaurant. Then I went to another bar and had a few shots. I had one shot too many. Ohmigod, I feel it coming on.

"I ran outside and puked all over the street. Eon came with me to help me and he held my hair and I puked on his shoes.

"Then I washed them for him.

"I don't do drugs anymore. Sometimes I just have to drink alcohol. I made a New Year's resolution to drink more and do less drugs. Isn't that normal? I want to be a normal American."

Luke: "Do you go to therapy?"

Joanna: "I do."

Luke: "Are you making a lot of progress?"

Joanna: "I think so. I just talk and she listens. Her name is Dr. Christina. One time I talked about you.

"Sometimes she thinks I'm lost. She thinks I need a better separation between who I am and who Joanna Angel is. Because I have to be Joanna Angel so much, I forget who's who.

"She's right. That $75 an hour is doing something."

Luke: "What makes James Deen such a great lover?"

Joanna: "He's really rough and sometimes I like that. He's not so rough with me any more.

"There were a bunch of guys I was with who I'd tell to hit me or choke me and no one did it hard enough. Finally I met someone who did it hard enough. I had this fantasy and nobody was able to fulfill it because they were scared of hurting me.

"He knows how to do rough stuff the right way."

Luke: "How did you do on your South-by-Southwest marketing panel?"

Joanna: "I tried to make jokes but people weren't laughing. The owner of break.com, a college humor site with people falling down the stairs, as part of his presentation, he was going to show a video on the internet but his plug-in wasn't working. I said, 'We can watch one of my videos instead.' But nobody laughed.

"Nobody had any questions for me. One person asked me for my autograph.

"Afterwards, I felt like I was the stupidest one on the panel.

"Rufus from Nerve.com said to me, 'Looks like you are doing pretty good.' I interned for him."

Luke: "He used to stare at your breasts."

Joanna: "Everyone did. I wanted them to. I'd go into the office wearing low-cut shirts. I liked the attention."

The Light Of Heather Mac Donald

Chaim Amalek writes:

Tonight I saw the light. The light of Heather Mac Donald. She speaks in paragraphs and pages of clear, coherent thought.

"Never kiss a woman who leans away from you; never climb a wall that leans towards you; and never give a speech after Heather Mac Donald."

I just had to look up a word that she used in her talk: "Synechdote." Do you know what it means? When a small part of speech or a story stands for the whole. She used that word. It has been, well, decades since I had to look up a word that I heard used in a talk.

One hundred people showed up at least - a good, solid turnout. Not one hot chick in the audience.

In the Q&A that followed the talk on the state of the Republican Party in NY, some elderly gentleman starts a speech about how homos are all set to have a huge party in Jerusalem, and what we as Americans can do to make Israel more secure.

The guy identified himself as a retired foreign correspondent for some US paper. There is one like him at every meeting, reminding the goyim how central Israel is to American Jews.

She noted the absense of real leadership in NY Republican circles. But I noted the absence of hot women at Republican meetings. Provide hot young women, and the drones will follow. You could start a service in which you rent out porn chicks just to show up and prettify political meetings with their presence. Hot chix can jump start social movements.

Tales Of Times Square

Author Josh Alan Friedman calls me back Wednesday afternoon.

He's madly trying to finish the Al Goldstein book (I, Goldstein: My Screwed Life), which should be out from Thunder's Mouth Press by October of this year.

Josh has about ten hours of tape with Al. The former Screw publisher was hard to track down. He has an apartment now but he spends his time bothering people, trying to get money and viagra prescriptions and money for his viagra prescriptions.

He was in Los Angeles three weeks ago working on the memoirs of songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and recording an album of their songs. "I want to call it 'Songs for Negroes Only, but Jerry Leiber wants to simplify it and call it, 'Songs for Niggers.'

"They wrote some songs that were too racy for The Coasters to do. We're writing songs together. I got to Canters twice.

"I stopped by Feral House. Publisher Adam Parfrey assures me there will be a new edition of When Sex Was Dirty with all the typos corrected. He wants to take the ten chapters about New York out of Sex and put them in Tales of Times Square and release it to coincide with the movie Tales Of Times Square, if it gets a release. Then he says when can fix all the typos and I can get the right words in.

"Jeff Goodman loves When Sex Was Dirty and loves his portrayal in there even though he says I made him seem like a cartoon. I said, 'Jeff, you are a cartoon.'"

Luke: "What about the guy you wrote about sharing TV masturbation fantasies with?"

Josh: "He won't talk to me anymore. I feel terrible, but I found out that I am not the only one he won't talk to. But he's got a point. I've done a Truman Capote on people. At least I changed their names. What else do they want? I betrayed some secrets.

"I loved Allan MacDonell's book. It got better as it went along. By the end, I wished it was longer.

"Gil Reavill had a movie come out -- Dirty starring Cuba Gooding. It was reviewed in The New York Times. I think it opened and closed in a week. I talk to him once a year."

Plot: "Two gangbangers-turned-cops try and cover up a scandal within the LAPD."

"The worst that Gil said about Al Goldstein in his book I might quote that in Al Goldstein's autobiography. That's one legitimate way to view Al.

"I didn't even call Al's son Jordan. I have a long list of people to interview for the book but we don't need any of it. Al's got a big enough mouth."

Luke: "What did you think of the documentary on Al - Screwed?"

Josh: "Terrible."

Luke: "What did you think of Philip Roth's book on Al Goldstein -- The Anatomy Lesson?"

Josh: "Roth is a genius but almost every one of his books is about 200 pages too long."

Casey blogs:

Reputations in academic writing are so fragile because (in my humble opinion) reputations are based in politics rather than scholarly contribution. This is why it is sometimes so difficult for academics to agree on what the good books are. Style is so difficult for many graduate students because the books that have been recommended to them by professors and peers are not necessarily examples of good writing. Occasionally, I have heard the argument that part of the bad-writing phenomenon has been critics' attempts at representing something that is elusive and, perhaps, beyond the bounds of language. But ask someone to explain what Derrida or Deleuze or Jameson or Judith Butler means, and a coherent summary is generally provided. If, for example, Baudrillard had wanted to defend his proposition philosophically and coherently, he would have written, "I think what Plato thought," and then cited passages from Plato's Parmenides to support his metaphysical assumptions. But Ezra Pound commanded: Make it new! and, seeking whatever fame they can find in the academy, academics have found ways to try to make old ideas seem new. In their efforts to update ideas that can be found at least as far back as pre-socratic philosophy (see Heraclitus, for example), theorists of the late 20th century asked language to carry more of a burden than it could bear.

Josh Alan Friedman Update

He replies: "Blacks And Jews has played about a dozen one-nighters at theaters in Texas. Next one in spring. It wasn't picked up right away. Kevin Page (the director) and I got caught up with other things, without having time to push it along. I'm finishing the Goldstein book (I, Goldstein: My Screwed Life), which should be out from Thunder's Mouth Press by Oct. this year. And I'm writing the memoirs of Leiber & Stoller, a well as doing an album with them in L.A. Blacks And Jews relegated to the backburner for now, but still expect something to happen."

I Have Fathered A Virtual Village

I hung out with a 19-year old girl this week.

Dear reader, how do I convince you of the tenderness of my solicitude towards someone who's read me since she was 13? Virtual virginity is as precious as the real thing.

Amalek writes:

Yes, there is nothing better than social intercourse with a truly young legal white woman. They got us by the balls. But I'm afraid that in the long run, she's not good for you. What you need is a woman your own age, someone you can grow old with. A woman who is past all of the tumult of baby drama and that part of life, who fits you like an old sofa in which has been spilled countless beers held by other men.

According to Wikipedia:

Donkey punch is a slang term for a sex move performed during doggy style or anal sex. The move involves the penetrating partner punching the penetrated partner in the back of the head or neck. The term may refer to the surprised party "bucking" like a donkey.

The practice of hitting one's partner for sexual enjoyment is familiar (see Sadism and Masochism), but in the various joke-descriptions of the donkey punch more exotic rationales are often given for it. For example, sometimes it is said to cause the muscles around the vagina or anus to contract around the penis, giving enhanced pleasure to the active partner. In some exaggerated tellings this phenomenon is of such great force as to result in the inversion of the rectum (which may then be described as a "pink sock"). Sometimes the active partner is said to punctuate the technique with a vicious cry of "Donkey punch!"

Alex Devine spills all about her experience on the set of Donkey Punch

She (is she Smokey's girlfriend from Shane's World) posts March 6, 2006 on Extremegirlforum.com:

Ok, I am finally going to reply to this.... DONKEY PUNCH was the most brutal, depressing, scarey scene that I have ever done. I have tried to block it out from my memory due to the severe abuse I recieved during the filming. I had been made to believe that the scene was going to be more sex, penetration, and rough as opposed to being 'beat up' with a few penetrations. The guy, Steve French has a natural hatred towards women in the sense that he has always been known to be more brutal than EVER needed. I agreed to do the scene thinking it was less beating, except the 'punch' in the head. If you noticed, steve had worn his solid gold ring the entire time, and continued to punch me with it. I actually stopped the scene while it was being filmed because I was in too much pain. I begged for him to remove the ring but he refused. That almost made me walk off the set and say 'fuck it'. I sucked it up and wanted to finish so i would be paid. Witht he ring on his hand still, we continued the scene.

**Now i am not sure how much you all know about me, but I have had some major surgeries on my head. One was on the lower back right of my skull.... The doctor never replaced the bone there because it grows back on its own. It had been several years since that surgery, and i now have grown a strong cartilage in place of my missing bone.

I had specifically explained that Steve could not hit that spot, and that anywhere else on my head was fine. I explained this to him as well, showing him on my head the places. He acknowledged the request of mine. As the pop happened he punched me several times in the head. Exactly where he was told not to. He did it with the ring on too.

*You can hear me scream in pain 'wrong side! ow, ow, wrong side!' in the movie and trailer. I had to re-do the pop shot/donkey punch for 'better footage' while in pain, and he wore the damn ring again. At the end of my scene they had me sit on the couch with the directors and explain that I was ok and was willing to do the scene.

I was in tears I sincerely hope that no one enjoys that scene. I want to cry when I think about it.

Steven French should be in jail - not in porn?

Picman writes on ADT: "How about throwing the director in there with him for allowing the brutality to continue. And the producer too, for thinking of such a concept. This is not rough sex delivered in the heat of passion. Just a calculated assault. Some people have no shame."

David Aaron Clark responds to a "that's debatable" post:

That's debatable. " No, it's not. Unless you think whether people should freely sit around & watch snuff movies is somehow a debatable issue. Or think that aggravated assault is somehow a "debatable issue."

It just amazes me how many of you turn off your brains -- & any sense of decency -- once the blood starts flowing to your dicks (or clits, not to leave out the self-hating, mysogynist women out there who have learned to love & emulate their torturers). Glad it's all academic to you from your armchair, bub.

I suspect that when most pornographers get angry about the abuse of women in porn, it's not the abuse of women in porn that's primarily at issue. It's the opportunity to vent on others the hatred they have for their own jobs. Porn sex is a full contact sport and people get hurt, physically and emotionally. What Vivid Video, David Clark, Rob Black, and Khan Tusion have in common is far more than what any of them have in common with non-porn producers of entertainment.

Melissa Lauren writes:

I know Steven, have worked several times with him, and never had a problem. Very sweet guy. I don't know Alex on the other hand, although I've heard crazy stories about her being locked in a bathroom for half hour on set, doing drugs and being out of her mind. I'm not saying it's true - just what I heard, and we know how gossip goes sometimes. I've been, on a director's side, in a situation where the girl I was shooting went through a really strong scene, never complained during it, smiled and asked for more, and after the shoot it was a whole different story. She basically blamed me for not respecting her limits (hello, you know you can say stop when you dont like something?) blamed me for letting her drink on set (when she showed up on my set at 9 am with an almost empty bottle of wine) etc... So I'm kind of weirded out by that story. It'd be interesting to ask the director what exactly happened. Sometimes girls tend to make up or exaggerate stories. Seen it more than a couple of times. Fortunately, there's always the unedited original tape, and/or witnesses.

Holly writes: "Is that legal? I guess technically it would be the same as a girl getting her ass spanked in a video, but brutal scenes like these are what attract unwanted attention from anti-porn advocates, dont'cha think? Hearing about a video like that makes me understand why some people hate porn so much, and I hate being associated with something like that via industry name."

The legality of any kind of porn is up to community standards, including this kind.

Luke: you'd probably like donkey punch in your own life
HollyRandall: hell no
HollyRandall: that's not cool
Luke: why not? You love to be slapped etc
HollyRandall: i find that really disturbing
HollyRandall: poor girl
HollyRandall: yeah but not incredibly hard and i don't want to be punched in the back of the head
HollyRandall: that hurts
HollyRandall: i like play slapping
HollyRandall: not "i'm going to kick your ass bitch"
Luke: you like more pain than any woman I have ever known
HollyRandall: then you don't know many women
HollyRandall: i'm probably a lot more vocal about what i like
Luke: I can't even begin to approach delivering the level of pain you like inflicted. That would scare me.

David Clark writes on ADT:

I don't know Alex Devine. Just like Melissa, who also WASN'T THERE & only has gossip blaming the victim to offer. I only care about her in the abstract as a fellow human being.

Reread her description of the scene. Continually punching her in the soft spot on her head with a metal ring while she's begging him to stop? & the "directors" become criminal accesories by not stopping this scene but standing there videotaping it like Chuck Haidl's idea of some really cool dudes?

That situation could have quite easily become literal snuff porn, just like when Khan used to choke out the girls before he got scared off. In this situation, "what's right for me isn't necessarily right for you" is not on any level a logical or even sane response. If I think it's okay to rape & dismember three-year-old children, or cheat people out of their life savings a la Charles Keating, & you don't, do our "opinions" carry equal moral value? Do we "agree to disagree," & do you let me continue my destructive actions?

BASED ON HER OWN DESCRIPTION -- not to mention the proof of the trailer & the words of those who seen this clever little gem of a video -- this is NOT "overly rough sex." It's hatred, plain & simple. & the so-called "directors" sat there, no doubt giggling, & let it happen. & now are trying to profit from it. What a cesspool porn has become in some quarters of the valley!

"She got paid to do the scene, now it's over"?

Where the hell do people like you come from, exactly?

Yankey Doodel writes: "There's a reason punching in back of the head/neck isn't allowed in boxing, that's where the brain stem is."

Kami Andrews writes:

It's very easy to say what you would do in some one else's shoes but the bottom line is your not. I know I have reacted differently in emergency situations than I thought I would, my brother was in an accident and when I called 911 I couldn't talk. If you had asked me prior how I would have dealt with it that would not have been my answer. I think the natural reaction to attack her for complaining is really sad, especially if you are familiar with her body of work and realize she has never spoken out before. Earlier in the thread some one said walk and speak out [and] people will support you but the reality is this thread.

David Clark Emails Me: 'Yes, Sometimes You Are An Irredeemable Dork'

Gee, this is the first time I've ever felt the need to call you sanctimonious & perhaps a bit clueless, fellow navel-gazing scribe. It certainly IS the abuse of women in porn that's at issue here -- & I'm angry on two fronts. First, I'm angry that a portion of the community in which I live & work are being treated in such a brutal, criminal manner without check or any real censure. I may not personally know Alex Divine but in a very real way she's my neighbor, & for me to not speak out in the strongest possible terms would constitute turning a blind eye to suffering & abuse right outside my door.

Then, on a more egocentric level, I'm angry that a form of art & entertainment I've always been fascinated by & drawn to is becoming step by step nothing more than -- at least in an alarmingly greater & greater portion of the commercial arena -- exactly what Andrea Dworkin & her simple-minded, one-sided ilk claimed it by definition must be. I always did & still do sneer at the half-baked idea that sexually explicit depictions for the sheer visual & sexual pleasure of it are somehow inescapably, intrinsically "hate speech" against women. However, that's exactly what the bile expelled by the likes of Khan & the Donkey Punch grinning bullies constitutes. Not unlike some of your public anger directed towards Holly when her actions inadvertantly make you confront a weakness or need in yourself you'd rather not have to face, porn made by & for people like this represents not a thing their own self-hate & insecurity, externalized & aimed towards the most convenient target -- in this case not Jews, Blacks, Arabs, homosexuals, what have you, but women.

I'm angry that the decent, responsible members of this community who go about their business &/or art every day in the most humane way they know how are suffering, if not possible brain hemorrhages & the kind of treatment that when committed upon animals earn the perpetrators jail time -- an insult & a libel against who we are & what we it is we say we do. I'm angry that it becomes that much more difficult not only to present ourselves as responsible members of a humane, enlightened society to others but to ourselves if we condone or, even worse, profit from this kind of behavior. Porn, like professional sports, politics, the entertainment industry. organized religion, law enforcement, etc, can be a rough & tumble business, & as with any endeavor, not always very pretty or perfect in its process. But though it might meet the definition of the genre on the surface, this is no more "porn" than images of Christ in bean dip on the local news is journalism, or blowing up a Palestinian ice cream truck & the innocent young patrons surrounding it is an act of "self-defense."

Using absolutely no viable criteria whatsoever, you're throwing out a blanket statement as to what I and other porn "producers" have in common, and do or don't have in common with "producers" of non-explicit entertainment -- & I might note that certainly network reality shows, for one, have more in common with Khan & the Donkey boys than certainly either the Vivid style or what I do. Your thesis is negated thanks to one simple fact -- by your own admission, you have not watched any of our movies. To put it more simply, on this occasion you're doing nothing but talking out of your smug, self-satisfied hypocritical ass. Your narcissism is getting the best of you, I fear.

By the way, Luke, if you're going to insist on reducing what I do to being a "producer," than may I from now on refer to you as a producer of internet content as opposed to an essayist or journalist? At least I have the qualification of having actually read much of your body of work.

Dillan Lauren Update

3/28/06

We discuss rough sex.

Dillan: "Do you hit girls when you have sex with them?"

Luke: "God no. Some girls like rough sex."

Dillan: "I can like rough sex. I like to be dominated but I like to be dominated sensually and mentally. I might like to be choked but you're not supposed to kill somebody. You can be rough without injuring. Spanking is not supposed to leave bruises."

A Public Apology To Steve French

GripJohnson (from Legend Productions and Chatsworth Pictures) writes on ADT:

Cram [Tony Malice] & I would like to issue a public apology to Steven French. We regret the numerous death threats he has had to deal with since his participation in Donkey Punch. The man can't even buy a croissant in the mornings without being pelted with produce on the street by angry adt & reallukeford posters.

We only thank God, Alex is missing bone from her head and her soft brain provided cushion for Steven's punches. We couldn't live with ourselves if he had suffered any nerve damage on his hand. So, on behalf of Cram & myself, sorry, Steven. Oh, and don't worry, Cram says he knows a guy who can restore the luster to your gold ring.

Mike South Vs. Donkey Punch

Mike writes:

I have been hearing about this video for a couple of months now but didn't give it much thought until I read the gut wrenching story of one of the participants. I mean not even I would have thought that they were doing this for real, that it wasn't staged. And even if it was...how f stupid do you have to be to foist this on the adult industry at this time? Apparently you have to be as stupid as Jeff Mike, honcho at JM Productions. Who released this abortion. When confronted about it JM tried to pass it off as an "old release". One need only look it up on the net to see it was released in Dec of 2005, Hardly an old release...

AVN reviews the DVD in the March issue and gives it 3.5 stars and an overall good review saying " rougher than most, but consenting cast is entertaining."

When I brought up the issue with Paul Fishbein, Head Honcho at AVN he had this to say: "We won't review Donkey Punch movies anymore."

Indeed I sensed that this was something that "Fish", as he is affectionately known, wasn't aware of, and understandably so, Im sure he doesn't read every review and I believe the video may have presented itself as staged. Even at that it shouldn't be something that we in this industry have to deal with. I, for one, do not want my name associated with an industry that would support this.

This is not free speech, this is aggravated assault and aggravated assault is NOT protected free speech. So a BIG f--- YOU to JM Productions for having no concern for fellow pornographers. If they want to be an outcast I say fine, lets treat them as one. Distributors can refuse to carry their product, retailers can refuse to buy it and industry publications can refuse to sell them ad space. [Adultdvdempire.com refused to stock it...good for them] And at the same time maybe all of the above can avoid the criminal charges that may come from having it on your shelves. Can we as an industry finally say "We may not know where the line is but this has certainly crossed it"?

Jews, Gentiles, Jewish Goyim Celebrate Wedding Of MediaBistro's Taffy Akner To Convert To Orthodox Judaism Claude Brodesser

4 p.m. Sunday. The wedding ceremony is scheduled to begin at the Loews at 1224 S. Beverwil Drive.

4:15 p.m. I arrive clutching Richard Ford's The Sportswriter. The crowd is about one-third goyim, one-third Orthodox Jews, and one-third secular Jews.

It turns out that I need not have worried about securing a bow tie. Much of the men wore regular ties.

I spot many writers I know -- Richard Rushfeld (LA Times), his girlfriend Nicole (Variety), Anna David (novelist), Rochelle Levy (formerly with AFI), Dana Harris (Variety), Michael Sonnenschein...

Hanging out with the writers, I want to tell the outrageous stories I often divulge at writer gatherings, but I'm surrounded by people from my religious community, so I try to hold myself in check. I'm constantly aware of the tension between being holy and being honest with what I'm thinking.

Los Angeles freelancer Janelle Brown (cute, young and married) covers the event for The New York Times. She gets 850-words. There's also a photographer from The Times.

I charm MediaBistro.com founder Laurel Touby (she's short and blonde and has 21 employees, her husband writes for Business Week). Once she finds out I'm single and hetero, she insists on introducing me "to the most beautiful [single] woman at the wedding." Taking me by the hand, she walks me up and down the depth and breadth of the wedding until she finds her tall slender ex-employee Becky who now works for MTV.

I introduce myself to Becky and her two friends. When asked how I know Toby, I launch into a lurid story of how I picked her up while teaching at Smith's College and recovering from my third divorce, giving Laurel the A grade she so badly needed to get into Harvard Law in exchange for her services of a tawdry nature.

Taffy breezes in.

"Tell me about Becky!" I demand.

"You're 20 years older than her," says Taffy, and that's the end of that.

I spend much of the night chatting about meaning with Michael Sonnenschein. We have a Courtier and the Heretic thing going.

I dance with various Orthodox rabbis, one of whom never returns my "Shabbat Shalom" greeting. But Sunday night we dance arm-in-arm.

Richard Rushfeld suggests that I get a place near Yamashiro's on that one Friday night a month when various writers gather there.

I tell him that it is more important for me to be with my shul.

"Maybe your shul needs a break from you," he says.

In the middle of the wedding, Claude gives job-hunting suggestions to an acquaintance.

Jewish weddings are more relaxed and informal than most of their Christian counterparts.

After the wedding and the dinner, there's mixed dancing (women with men, rare in traditional Orthodox Judaism).

A rabbi-friend tells me to ask Anna David to dance. "She's beautiful," he insists.

"I can't dance," I insist.

I win.

I leave at 9:30 p.m.

Don't take this in a gay way, but I only feel comfortable dancing with Orthodox men.

At the wedding, I read 42 pages of The Sportswriter. I got zero phone numbers.

I went home alone.

Jeffrey writes:

You seem to have carried your self centered aspeger's well into Jewish man middle age, when most functional orthodox men succumb to hemorrhoids and prostate problems.

Here are some tips. First, don't carry a book with you. Either it is a "prop" to get girls to ask you about the book, or you clutch it much like Linus.

As a prop, it does not work. Chicks do not notice things. No one notices anything. Watch the Shawshank Redemption: when is the last time you noticed a man's shoes?

If you want a prop, have lots of photo albums and ties in your hovel and handtowels in the toidy. Chicks love coming to a bachelor pad and seeing pictures and ties and towels in the bathroom.

As for needing security, don't think about this, just do it, leave the book at home. The sun will come up the next day.

Second, make small talk. Don't engage someone in conversation with your analysis of the interrelationship between Portnoy's Complaint and the Jewish Journal's sorry ass writing style. Instead, ask someone how they like the weather. Tell them you like their hairstyle. Ask them if they saw the UCLA game. Do not list the meds you are on.

Third, stop reading so much and donate some of your time. You mention etta israel - a jewish institution for kids with learning disabilities. Volunteer your time there. Walk a disabled kid to shul. People will say good shabbos to you - walking a disabled kid to shul is just about the highest form of good deed you can do.

As for mixed dancing, stay away.

You know the joke - a hasidic boy is getting married and asks his rabbi if he can ask some personal questions. The rabbi says fine. So the boy asks, can my wife give me oral sex? The rabbi says, sure, it is absolutely ok between a man and a wife, no problem. The boy continues, can i have sex with her by entering her from behind? The rabbi says, yes, anal sex is totally muttar (permitted), it is ok. The boy is relieved and asks the rabbi, may I ask one more question? The rabbi says ok. The boy asks, can i have sex with my wife in a standing up position? The rabbi becomes enraged and exclaims NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT, IT IS ASSUR (prohibited). The boy is shocked, he asks, why can i do all these other sex acts, but I cannot have sex standing up? The rabbi says, you cannot do that because it may lead to mixed dancing!

Dick Smothers Jr. Interview

From CNN.com 3/18/03:

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- They say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but the eldest son of veteran humorist Dick Smothers of the Smothers Brothers says his life's ambition is to become "the Orson Welles of porn."

Late last year, Dick Smothers Jr., 38, shocked his father by embarking on a career path that so far has included acting in several porn films, developing a Web-based X-rated game show and launching an adult entertainment Web site.

In fact, the younger Smothers, a self-professed exhibitionist who says he has "an incredibly overactive libido," made his porno film debut as the star of an adult movie titled "Bad Influence," playing the Dustin Hoffman-inspired role in an X-rated send-up to "The Graduate."

...Of course, his father, renowned as the bass-playing, straight-laced half of the Smothers Brothers comedy duo, was stunned at first. "I think he told me after the fact," Dick Smothers Sr., 64, recalled in a separate interview. "My first reaction was, 'What name are you going to use?' ... He says he's going to use his name, and I said, 'Wait a minute. That's my name. I had it first.' "

The elder Smothers stressed he does not condone his son's current career path but doesn't condemn him either. He said his son has always been a firebrand and has tried to break into show business for a long time.

Dick Jr., the second of six children and the eldest son from his father's first marriage, even appeared once with his old rock band on a short-lived revival of the Smothers Brothers' TV variety show.

Luke says: I got an email from Dick Smothers Jr. (born in 1964) Friday morning, March 24, 2006. It was perfectly spelled and punctuated. Impressed, I asked him for an interview.

We begin our telephone conversation at 8:37 a.m.

Dick: "Am I correct that you don't like people [who do bad things]?"

Luke: "I'm just a reporter, so the bigger the scumbag, the bigger the story. I don't get emotionally involved."

Dick: "Randy Detroit is like a minor-league scumbag. He's not terribly fascinating.

"Back when Randy and Pamela Peaks did their first Pamela Peaks In The Kitchen? cable TV show. Kat Kleavage called me up. She's a friend of mine. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body. Neither does Pamela. She's just stupid.

"I did the show as a favor. They told me it was just going to be on local cable. But then a year later, I got a message from Pam asking for me to sign a release so they could sell it on DVD. There was no way I wanted that out there. I didn't bother to answer the phone call.

"I ran a search on it and sure enough she's selling the thing without a release. I contacted both of them. I said, 'You broke the law. You can settle with me or I will sue you.' Here's Randy's response: 'I'll give you a $100 for your IDs and your release.'

"I emailed back: 'You had your chance. I'll see you in court.'"

Pamela Peaks emails me: "We have the release."

Luke: "So what are you doing these days?"

Dick: "I left penetration performance in porn the day they announced that AIDS broke out [April 2004].

"Because I can act, I will now and then get offered a movie. They'll cast me in the lead and they'll edit in the stunt.

"Obviously the business isn't overflowing with competent actors. It's worth it for them to do this with me. You can't train a seal to fly.

"I've got some job opportunities up here in Northern California. My family's all up here on my mom's side. I've been out of touch with them for a long time."

Luke: "How do you feel about your time doing porn?"

Dick: "I got out of it all that I could've without immersing myself in the culture. From a purely adolescent viewpoint, the bragger's rights will follow me for the rest of my life. When civilians find out what I did, I'm elevated in their eyes to heroic status. That's the best part out of it.

"From the press I got, I was able to parlay it into some other jobs. I was selected to host a pilot that never aired for Howard Stern Productions and Pilgrim Films to do American Chopper and this sci-fi show Ghosthunters."

Luke: "You must've paid a price?"

Dick: "Emotionally it was not the easiest. It was more work than I thought it would be. When suddenly f------ is a job, it's just not fun anymore. And if it's not fun, what good is it?

"I'm not the person who can just lapse into a mindless animal state, which is the space you need to be in for sexual performance on camera. I'm more cerebral than that. After the initial excitement wore off, I found I was becoming distracted. I would find my mind wandering. I'd try to remember if I had set the VCR.

"Unless I liked the girl I was working with and I could tell that she liked me, I didn't want to do it. I was like a punk. They'd be like, 'Do this!' And I'd be like, 'No!'"

Smothers did about 40 hardcore scenes.

Luke: "What did you come to love and hate about the industry?"

Dick: "I loved the acting. Many people made the assumption that I got into the business because I was a failed actor. I'd never acted in my life until I did my first [porn] movie. I knew that I could and I always wanted to.

"Cash Markman handed me the script and I learned it and I went out and did it.

"I like the friends that I made -- Cash, Tony Tedeschi, Nick Manning, Randy Spears, Layla Jade."

Luke: "Do you own an adult website?"

Dick: "No. I don't own any of the titles. If I'm going to earn a living, I'd rather be given a defined task with set hours and a guaranteed pay check every week.

"If I'm going to run an online store, it's going to be for my music, and that's enough of a nightmare."

Luke: "How did your time in Adult affect your dating and love life?"

Dick: "I made a conscious decision when I entered the industry to not date while I was in it. I didn't bother dating any porn girls. I didn't bother asking out civilians. I knew they weren't into it. It was too difficult for them to handle even if they were attracted to me. At some point they are going to think, 'OK, what happens when I introduce him to all my friends? And they ask what he does.'

"I didn't date at all during the two years I was in the business. The only sex I had was on camera aside from a hairdresser. It got lonely."

Luke: "That's a stiff price to pay."

Dick: "It is. Unless you are going to immerse yourself in the culture, but it was not a culture I wanted to be involved in. Swinging etc is not what I'm into. I still have a problem going out with a girl or having emotions for a girl who gets gangbanged for a living.

"If I was going to have sex in a relationship, I would like that to be the one part of my life that is just mine. Something exclusive. If you are going to date someone else in the industry, you aren't going to have exclusive anything.

"When the AIDS things came out a couple of years ago, it prompted me to make a decision that I wanted to make anyway. I was not into it anyways, and then [stuff] like this starts happening, no, I don't think so."

Luke: "What about the prices you've paid since leaving the industry? I imagine that half the female population would not date or marry you because you've done this?"

Dick: "No. Having it in the past is not nearly as unacceptable to them as doing it now. I started dating right away when I got out. I've had a fulfilling dating life. I had one girlfriend for about three months. That ended for issues that had nothing to do with the porn industry."

Luke: "Have you ever been married?"

Dick: "I was married when I was 20. It was, technically, for four years but we were only together for two years."

Luke: "What's the longest time period you've been monogamous for?"

Dick: "Two-and-a-half years."

Luke: "Do you think you are capable of monogamy?"

Dick: "I prefer monogamy. I love having an intimate exclusive relationship but I'm finding that a lot of the girls I'm dating don't want that. That's what usually ends up ending the dating. I don't date more than one girl at a time. It saps my energy. I want to be intimate with somebody.

"The vibe I get from the culture in America is that everybody wants to leave themselves open for something better. I'm not good enough? Fine, keep hunting bitch.

"Any last vestiges of that ego-motivated promiscuity that existed before I got into porn were burned out of my psyche during my time in porn. I came out of it valuing monogamy more than when I went in.

"It's analoguous to people who were beaten by their parents. They either grow up to beat their own kids or they become the best parents in the world.

"The same thing with porn. People either become extremely jaded or refine their values. I'm definitely the latter. The highest, most satisfying sexual expression we have is to do it with someone you love, or, depending on your old lady, with one of her friends now and again. That's never happened to me."

Luke: "Did you learn anything about the media from your time in the media spotlight?"

Dick: "To maximize any heat you generate, a lot of energy has to go into it. I did it all on my own. I didn't have a publicist. It could've been more properly exploited if I had had an organization behind me.

"When it came to getting straight acting gigs, it didn't matter how good my reel was. They were not interested. As far as they were concerned, the [porn] work I had done was not legitimate. They didn't even give me the time of day.

"It wasn't so much that they were hostile against someone who was in porn. They viewed me as having no experience even though I did 40 f------ movies. Sometimes I did 30 pages of script. When we did The New Devil in Miss Jones, I shot for ten days. There was a lot of acting. I've got a great reel. I turned in some really really good dialogue scenes.

"They don't shut anybody out for having done porn but they don't take it seriously. I heard a lot from porn actors, 'They're just jealous.' I bit my lip. I wanted to say, 'No, it's because you act for s---. You don't have what they consider legitimate experience.'

"If you have studied and done some commercials, then they'll take you seriously."

Luke: "Did you exploit your father's good name for nefarious ends?"

Dick: "Hell yeah. I don't consider it nefarious and I don't consider his name that good. Did I exploit his name for my own ends? Absolutely.

"It's about heat. Heat is recognition factor. Brand recognition. It's celebrity. To generate heat, you have to take heat from somewhere else. If you want to start a fire, you can't do it just by thinking about it. There has to be some ignition source.

"I've been a musician for a long time. Primarily I'm a singer. It's a nightmare trying to get musicians together. It's like herding cats. If you can't pay them, forget it. You're lucky if they show up at all.

"I knew that if I was going to take a stab at having a career in entertainment, I was going to have to generate heat. My father and uncle being 30 years past their relevancy [as The Smothers Brothers], even though they are still out there gigging, but as far as being big stuff, it's been a long time. Their heat has diminished greatly over the years.

"For me to light myself on fire for the world to see, I needed to douse myself in gasoline. Dick Smothers Jr going out and releasing a CD of his music is not news.

"The closest you can get to breaking the law in the eyes of the public, without actually breaking the law, is to do porn.

"Since I knew people in the business going back 17 years... I got into the business because I was dating Mia Powers, who's long been out of the business and is still a good friend of mine in her civilian life. I had a relationship with Jeanna Fine when she was out of the business.

"I was almost 40 years old when I got into porn. There was nothing to ruin. I was working as a manufacturer's account representative for six years. I lost my job for the worst reason possible. I let my employers know that I caught them doing something unethical. They fired me.

"I said, 'I want to take a stab at something. I want to feel more in control of my own destiny.'"

Luke: "How did this affect your relationship with your father?"

Dick: "Not a bit.

"He was a little worried at first but then they saw that the media was coming to them.

"The only time it affected it was when we did Inside Edition. He kinda lost it.

"They asked me what it was like growing up having a celebrity for a father. I was honest. Celebrities will have people who work for them who become territorial and jealous towards the entertainer's family. I've talked to other people who experienced the same thing.

"It's humiliating when you visit the house you grew up in and some woman is following you around like you are going to steal the silverware.

"My dad said, 'That's because you stole that case of wine when you were 14.'

"I said, 'You're pulling the gloves off? OK. Let's get real, people.' I responded with a litany of things that I had done bad.

"How about you?

"My dad is not topical being off-script. He had what he thought were prepared responses to obvious questions and I took him out of his comfort zone. He was florid. The veins were standing out. He was screaming.

"Aside from that, it didn't affect our relationship. We've never been the closest family."

Luke: "Any similarity in the feedback you've received from others over the course of your life?"

Dick: "A friend of mine for 23 years told me the other night, 'You have always been consistent. It's always been easy being your friend. You've always been the same person. You never went off on kicks. It wasn't like you suddenly found Jesus. You never pulled any weird s--- on me.'

"People who knew me when I was younger, and then I ran into them after I did [porn], they said it didn't surprise them."

Luke: "You've described yourself as an exhibitionist."

Dick: "Not a pathological exhibitionist. I'm not one of those people who always has to have everybody's attention wherever he goes. But I like having attention. I like performing. I was asked, 'Do you like going to nightclubs?' 'Yes. If it is crowded, I'm o the stage and everyone is paying to see me.'

"I don't like being part of the crowd. I like being separated, whether that is being elevated above them and having their attention or being isolated from them... I'm not a super-social person. That whole Spring Break mob mentality has always pissed me off. If I have a girlfriend, I like going out and doing things. But by myself? No.

"I love to perform. I love to create and project a persona. David Bowie is my one idol. That's what he was all about. When he's a character, he doesn't try to pass that off as who he really is. I can't stand the whole celebrity vibe where I am always a star. No, you are not. You get the runs like everybody else. You get halitosis like everybody else.

"A friend has a good line for these guys, 'Save it for the stage, asshole!' That's my philosophy.

"Being on stage or on screen is a great feeling. Having that kind of attention is a nice feeling. Fortunately it is not one that I am addicted to or have to have all the time."

Luke: "When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

Dick: "A paleontologist. I love dinosaurs. Then I found out that paleontologists just dig up bones and realized it was boring. I like dinosaurs with the flesh on them. I wanted to be a sea biologist for a little bit because I had this fantasy that I was going to discover a sea monster.

"I collect comic books. I read science fiction. If you looked at my interests on paper, you'd think you were looking at a guy who played Dungeons and Dragons.

"Once I picked up an instrument when I was 14, from then on, that's what I wanted to be. From before then, as soon as I discovered KISS. I wanted to be a rock star."

Luke: "What did you love and hate about your upbringing?"

Dick: "I love that I got to experience things that other kids didn't. If it was Christmas and my father and uncle were performing at Harrah's Tahoe, we'd spend Christmas with them. The tab was picked up. We got picked up at the airport in a limousine. We stayed in a suite that was three stories high. There was a 20-foot Christmas tree. There was a cook and a maid. All this stuff we didn't have at home. I grew up in normal middle-class surroundings in Santa Cruz. We didn't have maids. I had to do chores. I got $5 a week allowance.

"In one sense, I liked that my dad was adventurous. He bought this converted trawler, 67-feet long, and he thought he was Jacques Cousteau and that we were going to sail around the world.

"My father was impulsive. This is what we're doing. No advance notice. No discussion. We just find out that we're going to be sailing around the world. We were scared. I didn't want that. I was eight years old.

"My dad found some beds he thought were cool. If he liked something, he'd think you'd like it. He thought he was doing something cool for me and my brother. We came home and found out our beds were gone and they were replaced by these bunk beds made out of dinghies.

"Dad's like, 'Isn't it great?' We said no. His feelings were hurt.

"My dad was the only celebrity in Santa Cruz. Everybody knew who I was. Other kids are prejudiced. They think they know who you are -- you're spoiled, you've got everything you want, you think you're better than everybody else.

"The reality was that I did more chores than most kids I knew. My mother was much stricter... They had freedoms I did not have. I had the worst of both worlds for a bit. I did the time without enjoying the crime. I was never bought a new car. My brother (18-months younger) and I shared a car. My dad bought us a used Volvo station wagon. We almost killed each other. Two teenage having to share a car. We lived outside of town. We couldn't take buses down into town. We couldn't ride bicycles down into town. If we were to get where the women were, it was the car.

"It was almost like Greek myth. 'Here you go, work it out.'

"I wish that I would've grown up in LA and I'd been around my own kind, other kids who dealt with some of the same issues that I had. I would've been part of the entertainment industry culture rather than have been isolated from it. I would've been part of the industry. I would've worked in the industry.

"My father only worked in the industry. He showed up like a guy to a 9-5 job. Aside from that, he didn't have anything to do with it.

"I was clueless about the industry. I grew up in Santa Cruz, which was hippies, lesbians and surfers. When I wanted to be in the industry, I didn't know anybody. There was no red carpet waiting for me. 'Oh yes, we've been waiting for you, oh son of Dick Smothers. You have returned.'

"No, it was, 'Yes? Who are you? What do you want? What do you have for me? Nothing? Well, nice talking to you.'

"I'm grateful that I know what it is like to be a normal person. I know what a normal person's life is. I've had to live that life. I didn't have an example of how to live that life. My example was a guy who told jokes for a living, did TV shows, screwed girls and all kinds of fun stuff. I thought that would be my life."

Luke: "How do you think your father's promiscuity affected you?"

Dick: "He and my mom would get together and break up, get together and break up. It was like a yo yo. They were divorced and married to each other twice. We lived together as a family, and then apart, so many times. I saw how it affected my mother emotionally. You're a kid. All you know is that your mom's mad. I had anger towards my father for that.

"Since then, I've made an effort to understand my father. He was only 20-years old when his ship came in. When that happens, you don't have a lot of incentive to grow up. You can be impetuous. You can act on whims. There are people around you who are more than delighted to enable you.

"If it was me, I don't know what I would've done. I would've been off the hook. I would've been f------ everything that moved.

"My father wasn't promiscuous as much as in love with romance. He didn't just bang chick after chick. He'd see a woman that he liked and he'd wine her and dine her and be very romantic. Then, when they'd want too much of him, he'd cut them off and find another one.

"Wife and family was a comfort zone that he would return to when he felt he needed to. It wasn't a place that he made the focus of his life. When things were tough and the world was getting to him, he had his family to come to. When things were going good, he was off doing his own thing.

"I've seen a lot of growth in him over the past ten years. He's tried to be more of what he thinks a good man is. It's made it easier for us to get along.

"My personal issues were different from his. When I was in my early 20s, they were identical. My wife left me because I was screwing hookers."

Luke: "Why were you screwing hookers? Because you could?"

Dick: "Excitement. I was a kid. When things started feeling old, they just weren't fun anymore.

"The way we got married was different. We didn't have an engagement and send out invitations. We were drunk and in Las Vegas. I was 20. She was 19. We'd been having great sex for four weeks. She's like, 'Let's blow everybody's mind and get married.'

"We wound up falling in love and staying together [for two years], but still, she was more mature than I was. I lived with my mom when I married her.

"Because I was a jerk in my marriage, I wasn't holding up my end. My wife was stripping. I was managing an apartment we lived in in San Francisco. It entailed vacuuming the hallways once a week and rotating the cans underneath the garbage shoot.

"She busts her ass wearing high heels and make-up all day with these creepy guys drooling all over her, and when she gets home, the place is a mess and I'm lying there watching TV.

"She became an authoritarian figure to me, which contributed to me not being attracted. I turned her into that. I wasn't like that before. She was wild about me. She was very sexy. I was dumb s---. She was hot. She was a great woman. I just wasn't turned on by her anymore.

"My mom died the same week my wife left me [in 1986]. I don't have a religious upbringing, but I felt, 'Dude, somebody up there is really angry at you.'

"My wife wasn't some awful woman who found another man. I drove her away.

"As far as my mom goes, that wasn't my fault. She got run over by a car."

Luke: "In some ways, you were trying to recreate your dad's life."

Dick: "Yes. I wanted to be like my dad. I wanted to be a bigshot who did whatever he wanted and had money and had fun. He had fun. He was wined and dined and he bought cars and went skiing in Switzerland. The thing that sucked about it is that we weren't really in on it.

"I've never been to Europe. We went to Mexico. I haven't even been to Canada. I had friends whose dads weren't celebrities and they went on vacations [overseas]. My dad was more like, 'This is mine, man. You've got a house and s--- that I paid for. Leave me alone.'

"Who wouldn't want to be like my dad? He raced cars. He had his own TV show. My dad was cool."

Luke: "But you didn't seem to internalize the lesson of how much devastation he wrought with his promiscuity."

Dick: "I wouldn't say 'wreaking devastation.' It was more the damage he caused by being self-absorbed. He wanted to run on his own schedule and his own whim.

"I didn't get that [lesson about promiscuity] at all, only in so far as it directly affected myself. It was more like, I want to have that kind of fun. I want to be the guy that does that. I don't want to be the one who gets left at home.

"I was completely disconnected. Intellectually, I could've recognized that, but as far as internalizing it, no I didn't.

"The process began when my wife left me and my mom died."

Luke: "Do you think you can be sexually promiscuous and not wreak havoc on other people's lives?"

Dick: "I don't think so because there are always emotions connected to it. Even if you are just dating somebody, you are being intimate. Part of you has to be either in denial or messed up to be able to have sex and to have it mean nothing.

"I can't just date. If I don't like somebody enough to have an exclusive relationship, then I just won't have anything to do with them. I know other people for whom this seems to be easy but somebody has to be getting hurt somewhere. Even if you are not making promises. Even if you are being straight forward and saying, 'Look, I am just f------ you.'

"You're dead right."

Luke: "How many women have you slept with in your life?"

Dick: "I started having sex when I had just turned 13. A couple hundred."

Luke: "How do you think that has affected your soul?"

Dick: "I don't think it has affected my soul. The path of excess can lead to the palace of wisdom. My experiences have led me to be more true to who he is. I have an enormous amount of integrity now and I don't violate it. I will not manipulate emotionally. I will not go after something just because it is something I want if it could hurt someone else.

"To get those things out of my system... Those things we do because of insecurity or ego. I don't feel the need to impress anybody. Any time anyone tries to one-up me, I can go, 'Dude, I used to ---- girls for a living.' If we're going to butt heads like that, I'm armed to the teeth.

"I was able to get all that ego crap out of my system. I have no insecurities about my abilities as a man and my value as a lover.

"My main issues revolve around being able to go out there and make a living as normal people do. I dropped out of highschool. I was a musician. The only training I've had is as a singer.

"I have friends who own houses and businesses. I'm still working it out."

Burt Kearns writes me: "Dick Smothers Jr made his debut in "My First Time," the softcore series we did for Showtime."

From the internet:

1. Women: Shave Head (Really frum = Women with shaved heads)

2. Men: Play with the beard...the more you twirl it, the better!

3. Do the "Thumb Dip" (The lower you dip, the frummer you look)

4. Whenever quoting a Gemara in order to paskin, never quote from a Mesechta that has anything to do with the subject. For example: If the question is: "What bracha do I make on Apple Sauce?" Do NOT quote from Mesechta Brachos (that's too logical); quote something from Gittin! Always say, "I heard Rav Feinstein say...", even if you weren't alive when he was.

5. Always quote "The Rosh Yeshiva". Everyone will obviously know who you're talking about!

6. Whenever you're quoting someone to prove that you are right in an argument, always quote a name that is an acronym (i.e. Rashi, Ramban, etc). Heck, you can even use your own name, it won't make a difference! Frum thinking clearly states that, "if someone is commonly referred to as an acronym, he must be right!"

7. ***Do NOT do this!!! This is NOT frum!!!*** Bring up a siddur when called up for an aliyah, and say the brachos on the Torah from it. VERY not frum.

8. Have tons of children.

9. When davening with a minyan, remember it's very important to say out loud the first three (some hold four) words out loud, and then mumble the rest quietly.

10. "I don't hold by that Rav."

11. Always call your children by their first TWO names. i.e. Sara Yehudis, Yisroel Meyer, Pesach Yehuda, Noach Areyah, Shlomo HaMelech, etc. How many REAL frummies do you know with only one first name?

12. Put Hebrew dates on everything, and stop using civil dates altogether.

13. In the supermarket, peer into you neighbors basket and say, "You eat that type of cheese?"

14. Translate everything you say, every time you say it, i.e. Chazal -- our sages. This will demean your listener as uneducated and suggest that he can't remember the translation from one time to the next.

15. ***Do NOT do this!!! This is NOT frum!!!*** Sing that uppity NCSY benching tune.

16. Must speak in that annoying Brooklyn accent.

17. Meditation is completely assur. (G-d forbid you should spiritually become closer to G-d).

18. You should not wear a tie during Shabbos Mincha.

19. Girls Only: Get the "Bob"/Bais Yaakov haircut at 18 so everyone will know you're ready to get married.

20. Learn Gemara and lain out loud along with the ba'al koreh because maybe he'll pronounce a komatz as a patach and that pseudo-Sefardi Modern-Orthodox sheigetz with the small black beanie who stands next to him reading from a Chumash won't catch it because he's busy talking about real estate throughout the laining.

21. Got to do that hat-slanted-ever-so-slighty-backwards thing for the full gangsta-frumma look.

22. Go "coast to coast" without showering or changing your clothes, sheets, or shaving, until you truly look like a caveman.

23. ***Do NOT do the following:*** Wear shirt with stripes. Bobby pins and especially those shiny metallic clips. Yalmulke with a rim that's bigger than your head. Tweed jacket with non-black hat.

24. Never say "Thank You"; instead say, "Shkoiyach...". Remember it's only one word.

25. Pssshhhhh.

26. Videotape your wedding even though nobody on either side of the family owns a television.

27. Go to bars dressed in your hats and jackets, drink, stare at teenage girls, and claim do be doing kiruv.

28. You must go to the Hilton or any other expensive-type hotel on your first date.

29. Bikur Holim (visiting the sick) is for wimps, wusses, and girly-men.

30. When learning, make sure to have as many Sfarim open as possible. Many poskim hold you should have out: 2 Mesechtas of Gemara, a chumash, a chelek of Shulchan Oruch, a Ritva, and a sefer written by an achron that nobody knows.

31. Bow REALLY deep at the beginning of Shemona Esrei.

32. For the ladies, if he doesn't ask to marry you until he asks all the stupid petty questions like "what is your name", he's off limits, unless his father is a jeweler who makes big fat diamond rings.

33. Never wash your tallis.

34. Who needs kavanah when davening? Just scrunch up your face, purse your lips, shut your eyes tight, bang one fist into your palm, whisper the words loud enough to disturb your neighbor, let your spit be liberated from the confines of your lips, and get that really, really constipated look on your face. Only then will the Big Guy hear your supplications.

35. The answer to any question: "Mamash, takka, im yirtzeh hashem, bli neder, kanaina hora, lo aleynu, shelo nedah!"

36. Your wife (or you, depending on your gender and all), must wear a frummy robe Shabbos night.

37. When the Bais HaMikdash is built (G-d willing soon), you must dedicate something in honour of a dead relative or a family simcha, i.e., "This Mikva was built in the memory of so and so", or "This Korban Tamid was sponsored by the sisterhood in honor of Shmuel David's Bar Mitzva."

38. When you're engaged, you have a chiyuv to set up your friends too. You might not have anybody in mind for your friends before you're engaged, but once you are, you obtain a special power that makes it possible to sense a good shidduch when you see one.

39. Have a really expensive gold watch that, if pawned, would buy crates of sepharim in Israel.

40. Daven a really fast Shemoneh Esrei so that you can be the first one to say out loud "Ya'aleh V'yovo..." for Rosh Chodesh and other such inserts for special days in the calendar in order to remind others that are davening to remember to say these special paragraphs even though they already heard the clop on the bima and even though this burst of self-righteousness may mess up their concentration.

41. Make sure to get engaged after only three dates, but make sure the baby comes no sooner and no later than nine months from the wedding.

42. Make sure to always look miserable, because G-d forbid, people might think that you are taking some form of pleasure in this world.

43. On Shabbos, Take off your jacket after Hamotzi and put it back on right before bentching.

44. Separate your trash between milchig and fleishig.

45. On the days when you make it to minyan, make sure that your friends who didn't, know all about it.

46. The only pop albums you own are Billy Joel.

47. Go into Baskin Robbins when there're other Jews there and say really loudly, "I wish I could eat here," just so people know that you keep Cholov Yisrael. Then leave.

48. After you get engaged, married, have a kid, etc...go around to everyone else and say "Im yirtze hashem by you," even if they are 70 years old or under the age of 12.

49. If someone's name is "Doniel" or "Gavriel", pronounce it "gavri-kel" or "doni-kel" in order that you shouldn't say G-d's name in vain.

50. Download mincha, maariv, and bentching onto your palm pilot and stop randomly in heavily populated Jewish areas to daven from it.

51. Daven with your eyes closed and your finger holding open the page. DO NOT LOOK IN THE SIDDUR IT IS VERY NOT FRUM TO HAVE TO LOOK.

52. Wear one of the new Hatzoloh walkie-talkies that have the Secret-Service-type earphones. Keep the power off, but contantly concentrate on what everyone thinks is an important message.

53. Put mezuzas on the doors of your minivan and tell everyone "It's the latest chumrah, but most people don't follow it."

54. Use the term "Please G-d" in your conversations - anywhere "G-d Willing" can possibly be added.

55. Ban any fiction books in your house aside from those ridiculous "frum novels" which are neither frum nor novels.

56. Call a single man at the age of 32 a "boy," as in "I have a wonderful 32-year-old boy for you!"

57. Be extremely frightened by ANY kind of dog (even a poodle with a head the size of a golfball) and immediately cross to the street when you are within 2 miles of these beasts.

58. Dress your (13) children in matching outfits, girls get dresses, boys get vests and pants made out of same material (i.e. purple tafeta, blue velvet, plaid wool); do this until the oldest is 19.

59. The non invitation...never directly invite anyone to your house for a meal. It is better to tell them to call you when they would like to come. Doing this will be yotze you on the mitzva of hachnasas orchim, and it puts the pressure on to the other person to call you. When they never actually call you, because for some strange reason, they didn't think that you gave them a real invitation, come over to them in shul 2 years later and ask them why they never called you. Make sure to look insulted.

60. Whenever a friend gets married, stop looking at her in the face. Now that she is married, you must always look at her stomach to see if it's getting any bigger, because now that she is married, she will be getting pregnant any day. After a few months and no belly, talk to everyone you know about her.

She posts on Extremegirlforum.com:

Ok, I am finally going to reply to this.... DONKEY PUNCH was the most brutal, depressing, scarey scene that I have ever done. I have tried to block it out from my memory due to the severe abuse I recieved during the filming. I had been made to believe that the scene was going to be more sex, penetration, and rough as opposed to being 'beat up' with a few penetrations. The guy, Steve French has a natural hatred towards women in the sense that he has always been known to be more brutal than EVER needed. I agreed to do the scene thinking it was less beating, except the 'punch' in the head. If you noticed, steve had worn his solid gold ring the entire time, and continued to punch me with it. I actually stopped the scene while it was being filmed because I was in too much pain. I begged for him to remove the ring but he refused. That almost made me walk off the set and say 'fuck it'. I sucked it up and wanted to finish so i would be paid. Witht he ring on his hand still, we continued the scene.

**Now i am not sure how much you all know about me, but I have had some major surgeries on my head. One was on the lower back right of my skull.... The doctor never replaced the bone there because it grows back on its own. It had been several years since that surgery, and i now have grown a strong cartilage in place of my missing bone.

I had specifically explained that Steve could not hit that spot, and that anywhere else on my head was fine. I explained this to him as well, showing him on my head the places. He acknowledged the request of mine. As the pop happened he punched me several times in the head. Exactly where he was told not to. He did it with the ring on too.

*You can hear me scream in pain 'wrong side! ow, ow, wrong side!' in the movie and trailer. I had to re-do the pop shot/donkey punch for 'better footage' while in pain, and he wore the damn ring again. At the end of my scene they had me sit on the couch with the directors and explain that I was ok and was willing to do the scene.

I was in tears I sincerely hope that no one enjoys that scene. I want to cry when I think about it.

Kendra Jade Calls

9:17 p.m. Thursday, March 23, 2006.

I hear voices in the background. Then Kendra (in Chicago) comes on the line. "Did Anna Malle die?"

Luke: "Yes."

Kendra: "Ohmigod, how did I never know that?"

Luke: "Because you don't read lukeisback.com."

Kendra: "Hold on a minute, Cynthia. I'm working. Someone came to my job and said, 'You did a movie with Anna Malle and she's dead.' I'm like, she's what? How did she die, Luke?"

Luke: "She turned around on a highway and got hit by a car and cut in half."

Kendra: "Ohmigod. Where?"

Luke: "In Las Vegas where she lived."

Kendra: "Ohmigod, that's the most horrible thing I've ever heard. Who will look after her kids?"

Luke: "Her husband Hank."

Kendra: "Ohmigod, that's pretty awful, Luke. She was one of the first people in the business who was even nice to me. At the time when the whole Jerry Springer thing happened, she told me, 'Keep you head up. Don't let everybody get you down.' She was cool with me.

"What if that happened to me? How could somebody die and nobody knows it? What if I died tomorrow? Would people know I was even dead?"

Luke: "The people who read Lukeisback."

Kendra: "Luke, honestly, that is the most horrible thing I've ever heard."

Luke: "Tell me your memories of her."

Kendra: "I can't tell you right now, honestly, because I'm drinking.

"OK, Luke, I have to go to work.

"This is going to happen to me. I'm going to die and people will never know it.

"Will you call me later?"

Luke: "Yeah."

Lisa Hay writes in the book Surviving Crisis:

She tells me her fiance knocked her out after she accidentally called him the name of an old boyfriend. Her voice begins shaking like the ice cubes in my glass. "I went to the women's shelter, but they wouldn't let me stay 'cause I had no ID. I didn't have no money so I had to walk home." She downs a shot of Jack. "While I was walking I got jumped by some nigger. He hit me in the face, and raped me... I got the cops and they took me to the hospital. I tried to press charges but they arrested me instead for being drunk."

..."Stripping is hard on your body," she says. "I have to go to a chiropractor three times a week, and I have tendonitis in both ankles now. I fell off the pole and fractured my shoulder so now I have to and get cortisone shots."

..."Some men come in for conversation. Their wives don't give it to them, they are having problems at home, they just need someone to talk to that they don't know, and why not go talk to a beautiful woman? I could be a psychiatrist...because I've been doing this for four years, and because they tell you things that you would not believe."

Paul Theroux is a gorgeous writer

I am reading his 2002 trip through Africa. I've never been into travel writing, but digested a ton of late. Not because I am interested in descriptions of other lands, but because the travel writing I'm enjoying is just gorgeous realistic story telling with structure and realization.

I listened to some gorgeous Theroux short stories, particularly enjoyed one about a US State Department official falling in love with a lit professor who protested nuclear armament in 1982 Britain.

I've met Paul's son Louis a couple of times. Louis interviewed me for his first book (not yet published). His GF worked for the BBC.

Surviving Crisis (Creative Nonfiction Reader Series) is superb.

I read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez but I have no interest in magic and had to force myself to finish it so I could say I did. My fictional interests are limited to realism.

Good News On Wald Vs. Ford Lawsuit

Judge Bascue granted my motion March 22. He found my chronic fatigue syndrome, previous travel commitments before the lawsuit was served and other aggravating factors to be sufficient to find 'excusable neglect.'

Judge ordered my lawyer to file our formal Answer to the complaint within 5 days. It will just be a carbon copy of our 'Proposed Answer.'

Judge Bascue ordered both sides into mediation to try and resolve the dispute. There isn't a lot of hope for that given the disposition of the parties.

Is It A Good Sign When A Woman Calls You While She's Taking A Bath?

Amalek: "Yessssss. I once had a craigslist woman call me while taking a dump. Never met her. She wanted me to meet her at midnight to go for a jog. And a picnic."

Mary Carey Update

I call her Thursday afternoon.

Mary: "Don't post that last email. I was drunk on the plane yesterday [to Kokomo, Indiana]. I drank for the first time in a week. I got depressed. Harold and I were fighting.

"I landed at the strip club. The club pressured me to be a high energy fun drunk party girl. They wanted to take me to bars. I'm good at playing that even when I'm sober. Harold thinks I'm acting like a retard.

"They were the first club I've landed at that wanted to take me straight from the airport to a bar. Harold hates it when people encourage that bad behavior.

"Harold's sister lives in Indianapolis. She knows I'm Mary Carey because I accidentally sent their 13-year old daughter an email with the tagline marycarey.com. It was awkward. When I hung out with her over Christmastime, she looked up to me. She was emailing me to send her pictures of me so she could show her friends. She thought I was pretty.

"Eversince then, the little girl hasn't contacted me. If she isn't mad, I'd hate for her to think it is cool to be a porn star."

Such a thing as being stressed while smokin a bowl?

Jim South Jr. blogs:

So I was nice and loaned Mr Marcus my piece. All I asked was for him not to leave with it. No problem. Hour later our office is packed and the phone is non-stop. I go to get my bowl and he's gone. Hour or so later he shows up. So I start smoking with him and there is this new girl assistant. Forgot her name (not important) and she starts in with how she's a princess and gets what she wants.

...She comes right back in, grabs my shirt, then pushes me towards the door and says "Go!" while smacking me on the back!

Junior writes Feb 24:

I time traveled last night! Most people call it blacking out. I remember the ride to the bar, being at the bar (which was really cool), then in a car, then woke up on a couch (time travel). WTF is going on? Last weekend I drank the most I have in a long time. I'm not depressed or anything. In fact I've been really good. You think after drinking for 14 years I would know my limit. Oh and apparently I was an asshole too! Those of you that know me know I don't every get violent or angry when drunk. Guess my sarcasm got the best of me. Best yet I may never know what went down! Here's to drinking heavily in moderation!

Author Brian Gage blogs:

So I've been working on a new book for almost 2 years and it's finally off for sale. Soft Skull is reviewing it right now, and I'm hoping to hear back in a few weeks...Submission is the worst time, because even if I've worked with the publisher before, I get all nervous and rethink what I could have done to make the book better...It's a book of 15 short stories and totals about 300 pages in length, so it's unlike anything I've put out before which is good.

Thou Shalt Be Holy

How can someone get started on a more ethical path? Rabbi Telushkin suggests a list of four warm-up exercises: “I tell people that if they make personal prayers to God, they should also make personal prayers for someone else, to help develop empathy. Also, they should start praying whenever they hear an ambulance siren,” he says, noting the shortest prayer is the one Moses made for his sister Miriam’s health: “Oh God, please heal her.”

He goes on to suggest that people try to observe a “24-hour complaining fast,” to hold back on negative comments and try to appreciate the good. And, he recommends that people try to “restrict their expression of anger to the incident that provoked it,” not to bring in other incidents from the past.

He quotes Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav: “If you are not going to be better tomorrow than you were today, then what need have you for tomorrow?”

Friend: "There is just a time in a woman's life when she must don proper clothing and realize she's not a tight 19 year old anymore. Though she looks good for her age, she's too old to be doing this."

I will not listen to any more hatred from you against the industry from which I earn my living.

Two of my meals today were chocolate-banana smoothies. Why must I degrade myself this way?

Friend: "Would you like me to make you some more basil-tomato soup? I am doing a big cookup this weekend to supply myself for next week, I can whip you up a few things. You will have the opportunity to try these things in private-- if you hate anything new you can spit it up immediately and I would be none the wiser."

I would be very grateful. I fear that if I see another chocolate-banana smoothie, I might cut myself.

I like potatotoes, lentils, beans. I love love split pea soup but with the pork on the side.

Why I Am A Conservative

The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

What’s really going on at The Los Angeles Times with Anthony Pellicano?

Initially, in their early reporting about Pellicano, they gushed like love-struck school girls about his daring feats and deeds of wonder from Delorean to Judas Priest to Michael Jackson fame. They were the first and often the only news organization to always report the incarcerated P.I.’s viewpoint. Everytime Pellicano said, “I wasn’t there” (when he was spotted outside Nicole Simpson’s house the night she and Ron Goldman were brutally murdered), “I didn’t sanitize anything” (when the coroner said that Don Simpson’s death scene had been altered) and down to “I’ll never snitch on my clients” (right before Pellicano went to federal prison in 2003) the LA Times was thoroughly Johnny On The Spot.

One of the Time’s staff reporters , Chuck Philips, who was the lucky one to get the gumshoe’s “I’ll never snitch” swan song, often bragged that he had a very “special” relationship with Pellicano. Again, it gives one pause to wonder exactly what sort of objective journalism was involved in the many stories he covered for the Times since 1990 where Pellicano had been an active player. These stories included Judas Priest, Michael Jackson and Don Simpson to mention a smattering. Philips appeared to be only one of a burdgeoning crowd at the Times though.

To make some extra coin, I've decided to rent out my blogging services to weddings, bar mitzvahs, baby showers, funerals and other happy occasions.

Rather than aim to be in The New York Times, why not seek to be memorialized on the pages of Lukeford.net?

This idea came to me today when I was talking to my buddy Rob about a wedding I must attend Sunday. It's dress code is "black tie."

I asked the couple getting married if that meant I could wear my black undertaker suit I wear to shul every week. They said no. It meant tuxedo.

I don't have a tuxedo, not a clean one anyway with all the bells and whistles. I don't want to spend $50 to rent one. So I'm just going to show up in my undertaker suit to this fancy shindig in Beverly Hills and pretend ignorance about the "black tie" clothing protocol. I figure that because I'll be dressed differently I'll be more likely to attract chicks.

Rob lambasted me. He said I shouldn't even go to the wedding if I was not going to dress as instructed. He asked me what gift I was going to bring. I said the gift of myself. I don't give gifts unless it is to a woman I'm sleeping with (and I think it is tacky to sleep with my friend's fiance just before their marriage).

When Rob lambasted me for my miserliness, I thought that maybe I could blog the wedding on and that would be the greatest gift. Yes, The New York Times would have a reporter and photographer there, but my approach will be unique.

Now I just have to find the perfect book to get me through the long hours of feasting and festivity.

Who is this woman? Candy Vegas.

From Craigslist (pers-143701519@craigslist.org):

I am an ex-adult film star with about 850 scenes behind me. I got into it with my then boyfriend and then stayed in it a little too long for other reasons. I never knew how to do anything else and I was afraid to fail at something else. Now saying that I have not been in many LTR so that is really what I am looking for. A tender man that will love and cherish me for all my inner beauty. I'm a very good hearted person and want that sort of person in return. A sexual relationship is the last thing on my mind and if that happens then it will have to be after a long romance period.

I'm 5'8" 120lbs with fake breasts that I am planning to remove in July. So I will be a natural B after that.

You: Tall and handsome. A true gentleman with love in your heart. A man that is not afraid to let the romance rain on his woman.

Vilnia writes:

You are not dating Holly, yet you are talking of marrying her?

I did not like your Dara Horn Interview. I am neutral on the Humphry Knipe interview. I enjoyed the DCypher interview. I enjoyed your banter with Crystal.

You do best in interviews where the subject turns the tables and forces you to confront yourself. It was great why DCypher forced you to admit to being: "...someone who does not live up to his ideals."

Subjects like the Dick Delaware are great.

Leslie writes: "I would guess the average lukeisback reader doesn't give a damn about reading an interview with your future father-in-law but it would be a total different story if it was with your future mother-in-law though. I guess Suze would decline, it wouldn't be good for her business if you'd ask her the good questions."

I Interview My Future Father-In-Law Humphry Knipe, Father Of Holly Randall, And Author Of The Nero Prediction

Traditionally, fathers-in-law interviewed their prospective sons-in-law. But I turned the tables Tuesday (March 21, 2006).

With great exertion, I kept myself from calling him "Dad."

Humphry, 64, phones me back at 11:09 a.m.

Luke: "When did you begin work on this book?"

Humphry: "The early 80s. I started on a Mac Plus computer. I've had other projects in between. I finished it last year."

Luke: "What prompted you to join MySpace?"

Humphry: "Just a joke. The kids in the office, you catch 'em on MySpace. Hmm, obviously you have lots of spare time. Maybe I should find you something to do. The younger girls spend a lot of time on MySpace. I don't have the foggiest idea how to respond to anybody. I have the weirdest people wanting to be my friend."

Luke: "They are my readers. I linked to your MySpace profile."

Humphry: "I'm getting bombarded by the oddest people with not the faintest connection with what I'm about.

"If they are your readers, I will look at them with more respect."

Luke: "You write on Amazon.com that you grew up in a medieval environment in South Africa."

Humphry: "Serfs and so on. You had a whole class of people that belonged to a different caste and it was as though they had different feelings. You couldn't exploit them if you didn't think that. That was the white mentality."

Kaiser Sauze writes me: "So similar to the topics we discussed in the last few weeks. Perhaps the ability to view other humans as such is innate."

Luke: "Do you think things are better in South Africa today?"

Humphry: "Hell yes. I went back last October. My mother, God bless her, is still alive at 87. The mayor of the little town where she lives is a black lady. We are happy with the political situation. It is so much better than Zimbabwe, which is a horrible dictatorship."

Luke: "Isn't crime and rape out of control in South Africa?"

Humphry: "In large cities in particular. Many of the perpetrators aren't even South African. They come flowing down from the north, from Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria, Angola. In South Africa there's work."

Luke: "What was so puritanical and Calvinist about your background?"

Humphry: "My mother was brought up in the Dutch Reform Church, which is a Calvinistic sect. The whole period I was in South Africa [until 1966], television was banned. I didn't see television until I went to England at age 25."

Luke: "Was that a bad thing?"

Humphry: "It was awful. We really felt deprived. It was thought to be dangerous because it introduced foreign influences. The Afrikaaner apartheid regime wanted the modern world to stay away.

"I imagine that my early interest in porn was that we were never allowed to see anything like that in South Africa. The most risque thing you could see were bikinis.

"Then getting to swinging London in 1966 where you had Page Three topless girls, nude modeling agencies, that was a huge cultural shock."

Luke: "Did you have much sex in South Africa?"

Humphry: "Yes, at university, I managed to get it in a little bit. I worked there for a couple of years as a teacher after graduating. The girls were pretty hot.

"I wasn't into the swinging parties until London."

Luke: "You write: 'Nero seemed to the most 60s of the Roman emperors and, looking back, I probably wanted to recreate that magical time in a historical setting.' What was so magical about the swinging 60s in London?"

Humphry: "There was the feeling that the world was going to change, which of course it didn't. Not much, anyway. There was this feeling of infinite possibility. There was this curious mixture of gangsters, musicians, hipsters, aristocrats, moderns... Everyone was turning on together and you had this feeling of novelty and revelation.

"Are you familiar with Donald Cammell? He directed the 1970 film Performance starring Mick Jagger. Donald was avante garde. He was buddies with Kenneth Anger."

Luke: "Cammell committed suicide in 1996."

Humphry: "I'm going to work him as a character into a new novel.

"There's a new book coming out called Donald Cammell: A Life on the Wild Side. My order has been in on Amazon for months.

"I was just watching a [1998] BBC documentary entitled Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance.

"He was one of the most interesting people I've ever met. He was a naughty boy.

"London in the 60s was libertinism to the point of license. Acid, grass, booze, girls, rock 'n' roll, wild parties, taken to the extreme with the swinging parties. They were some of the funniest and most interesting experiences I've been through.

"I was introduced to it in 1971 with the Wet Dream Festival in Amsterdam. Germaine Greer was there."

Luke: "But it was all a delusion."

Humphry: "It wasn't a delusion. It was experimental and didn't work. Once the yobs started emptying out of the pubs and started busting these psychadelic gatherings, it ruined the whole thing. It only lasted three or four months. I remember being in a club where Pink Floyd was playing in the corner in 1966."

Luke: "This idea that the world was going to change was a delusion."

Humphry: "Yes. It didn't turn out that way. Part of it was the turbulence from the Vietnam War. It was the rock 'n' roll era and peace and love and all that stuff."

Luke: "Why would you want to recreate a magical time that was based upon delusional beliefs?"

Humphry: "It was an awful lot of fun. I know you're asking me about Nero.

"Nero was the first person in history, certainly the first leader, to use soft power. The whole Roman modus operandi was hard power. He was the first guy to use soft power as a diplomatic force.

"What we had was rock 'n' roll. It sped around the globe. I picked it up in South Africa. It was tremendously influential in introducing American values. It was an extremely successful use of soft power. That's what Nero was going for. That was the climax of the Roman empire during that [first] century.

"Nero had this brilliant flash that he could [govern] through converting people to the cause of art and music. We now think of it as delusionary. It was. It was a brilliant flash-forward to what is happening now.

"American culture is a huge force in the Third World. It's only a matter of time before it imposes the other aspects of democracy on the Third World. The music and the culture and the art are the stalking horse."

Luke: "Where do you identify with and admire Nero?"

Humphry: "In his use of soft power. He wasn't a homicidial lunatic as people claim. It was a time of enormous turbulence. You had to kill off your rivals if you were going to survive. He killed off fewer people than his predecessors Claudius and Tiberias.

"Why did certain people rebel at certain times? This comes back to the self-fulfilling prophecy. The stars say that Nero is in a dire situation on April 18, 65 AD when Epaphroditus (my narrator) foils the great conspiracy of Piso.

"When Halley's Comet appeared in 66, Nero was warned by his astrologer that he had to do something to placate the comet. The comet was thought to predict the death of a king. You'd know that at that time your enemies were putting their heads together to knock you off."

Luke: "Do you believe our lives are affected the stars?"

Humphry: "Absolutely not."

Luke: "Why would you spend ten years of your life studying something you believe to be nonsense?"

Humphry: "It gives you a key that's almost never been used aside from Michael R. Molnar, who wrote 1999's The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi. He and I correspond.

"It's a historical tool. You can do an anthropological study of voodoo without believing in voodoo."

Luke: "Why not spend that time studying something you believe in?"

Humphry: "I just studied astrology to the degree that that proved to be a useful tool. I wondered why certain things in Nero's life happened at that time. Why did he kill his mother? Why did his mother try to kill him?

"The chronological scale is the vertebrate of history. You can work out what the astrologer would've been whispering into his client's ear 2,000 years ago. Astrology exceeded every other religion in power and influence. Astrology is an intoxicating mixture of science and religion."

Luke: "Do you see anything good in religion?"

Humphry: "Solace. It cheers people up. It gives them hope."

Luke: "But you don't need that solace?"

Humphry: "Sure I do. Everybody does. It's just an impossibility, something for which absolutely no proof exists."

Luke: "Ultimately, is there objective meaning to life?"

Humphry: "Absolutely. Propagation."

Luke: "What's the point?"

Humphry: "So you live forever, or until the comet comes."

Luke: "So there isn't any ultimate meaning."

Humphry: "By having children, or relatives who have children, you do continue. You are billions of years of old. There's an unbroken stream of life from the beginning to you."

Luke: "Do you see yourself living on in your children?"

Humphry: "Notably, the poor bastards. They'll be carrying some of my strengths and a lot of my weaknesses."

Luke: "Is it fair to say that you hate religion?"

Humphry: "Absolutely not. I don't, for example, hate astrology. I find it interesting that people have these irrational convictions."

Luke: "You love Sam Harris's book The End of Faith. That book is bathed in hatred of religion."

Humphry: "He doesn't like religions that are jihadistic, that are aggressive. To have nuclear weapons in the hands of people who believe that the world has to be destroyed to save it is dangerous."

Luke: "How could you not hate religion when every organized religion of which I am aware says that the industry we work in is evil."

Humphry: "I don't know if you are correct in saying that every religion does so. Do the Hindus believe that? The Buddhists?"

Luke: "We know that the three monotheistic religions do."

Humphry: "Those are just our little religions. There are lots of others. I don't know if the Chinese, isn't that Shintoism? I don't know if they have the same attitude.

"During Greek and Roman culture, you had pornographic drawings in public bathhouses. It's not true to say that every religion hates erotica. Some of those Indian religions have the Kama Sutra and elaborate drawings of erotica."

Luke: "How do you feel about the people who dedicate much of their lives to wanting to put pornographers such as you in jail?"

Humphry says that free speech has always had its enemies, and that pornography is without a doubt a form of free speech. "Even a cartoon can cause a ripple that runs around the world and causes over 100 deaths."

Luke: "There was a time when you pulled Holly aside when she was eight and said, 'Mommy and daddy might be going to jail.'"

Humphry: "That was the Traci Lords thing. Now I'm afraid that our stuff is too vanilla."

Luke: "Would you elaborate on this sentence you wrote: 'I know that Nero would have approved that my wife Suze Randall has gone on to become the world's most successful erotic photographer.'"

Humphry: "Because erotic vignettes were a part of Roman dinner parties, even during the Republican period before Nero. It was usual for the more risque members of the aristocractic society to have a porno show as a highpoint of a dinner party. You bring on the actors and they do their scene and they get applause and some coins thrown at them. This is during Julius Caesar's time long before we get into 'decadent' Nero and Caligula.

"These are the roots of our civilization. We're trying to get there. They had a much more liberal attitude towards sexuality and erotica than we have."

Luke: "How would you feel if a daughter of yours became a porn actress?"

Humphry pauses for five seconds. "Obviously there would be nothing I would try to do to prevent her. I'd prefer to have her at the books studying. It's a short shelf-life. As a result, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody who has any alternative."

Luke: "Would you not be filled with horror?"

Humphry: "I don't think so, otherwise I couldn't be associated with it at all.

"There would be some shock, initially, I'd imagine, if it was suddenly jumped on me, surprise. I would definitely not forbid it. I haven't forbidden anything."

Luke: "How would you feel about one or all of your offspring working in the family business behind the scenes?"

Humphry: "I don't mind at all."

Luke: "What wishes do you have for your kids aside from being happy?"

Humphry: "I can't think of anything better than happiness. Happiness requires a lot of components."

Luke: "Is happiness achievable as a direct objective or is it only achievable as a byproduct of higher pursuits?"

Humphry: "Happiness has so many components..."

Luke: "What price have you paid for your association with pornography? Has it made your life as a writer more difficult?"

Humphry: "Just the opposite. It's given me the free time to write because we've made money. It's been a boon for the writing."

Luke: "Have you encountered a lot of people who take you less seriously because of your association with porn?"

Humphry: "No. They're fascinated by the odd combination of high-grade intellectual pursuits and [porn]. They're confused. They expect pornographers to have gold necklaces and to be sleazy greasy dimwits. They come across a guy who used to be a teacher, whose father was a teacher, whose wife's father was a teacher, a straight background, dabbling in this business."

Luke: "Are there parts of your book you are most happy with and parts you are least happy with?"

Humphry: "I was happy with the whole thing because I was able to rewrite it so many times. A lot of people find it hard to get it. They think it is a book by an astrology. They don't understand that it is an anti-astrology book, that it shows it up as a false science. It's part of my general religious skepticism. It is preposterous to imbue these planets with human personalities."

Luke: "I saw in the book a metaphor for your own journey. The slave is you."

When I brought this up to Holly, she said her father would hate this theory.

Humphry: "That's certainly insightful. I do identify with Epaphroditus, coming from nowhere and ending up in Hefner's jacuzzi."

Luke: "Many of these porn potentates, such as Hefner and Larry Flynt, remind me of these Roman emperors."

Humphry: "The sybaritic lifestyle. These caesars were military dictators."

Luke: "They also had a court that paid them obeisance. If you betrayed them once, you were out."

Humphry: "They had to do that. There was no secure line of kingship.

"Larry Flynt never set up a court on the scale of Hefner. Hefner was the king. Flynt lives in a small house. We used to go five times a week to Hefner's mansion. There was an open bar 24-hours a day, superb meals served when you want them, the parties, and the famous jacuzzi where things happened. There were Bunnies living on the premises."

Luke: "Do you regret writing the book Suze, which cost you your relationship with Hefner and his mansion?"

Humphry chuckles. "I suppose so."

On New Year's Eve (I guess it was after a few drinks), Humphry and Suze told me that they did not regret the book.

Humphry: "Suze was moving on with her career. The problem with working for Playboy was that they owned everything. We would not be in the financial position we are in now if we had stayed with Playboy.

"Hef's mansion was the most magical party center in America."

Luke: "What do you love and hate about being a part of the porn industry?"

Humphry: "You get to see some beautiful girls. I don't like meeting them because it usually ruins the illusion. As works of art, some of them are fantastic.

"What I hate about it is the sordidness that sometimes comes along with it. The drugs. They ruin themselves. They associate with the wrong people. Some of the producers do things I think are inappropriate and pretty disgusting and probably not healthy. You see girls who are roughed up."

Luke: "Why do you think girls do pornography?"

Humphry: "For the money. They can go from somebody who tosses hamburgers at McDonalds for $5 an hour to somebody making a $1,000 a day."

Luke: "Can you respect someone who has made the choice to star in pornographic movies?"

Humphry: "Absolutely. I think Jenna's great. I used to know her very well. She was frequently a guest here. I liked Traci Lords a lot until I found out she was underage. Veronica Hart. There are a lot of bright girls. Jenna is the postergirl for pornography.A really sweet, really straight girl who put her head together and made something of herself. I don't know how many millions. I think she has a good life."

Luke: "What percentage of women who do this does it turn out to their advantage?"

Humphry: "I'd imagine the stats would be similar to the regular starlet stats in regular Hollywood. Most people just get burnt or don't get anywhere and just collapse. For every Charlize Theron, you have thousands of wannabes who sleep with producers and do prostitution to keep going and in the end they would have to go home with their tails between their legs with some of the best years of their life, when they could've been getting an education, for example, spent on trying to become a movie star."

Luke: "Is pornography just another form of prostitution?"

Humphry: "There's a big difference between prostitution and pornography. Prostitution is disgusting. That is one thing I would be very upset about if one of my kids got into. You just take whatever comes, fat old hairy men, anything. It's very dangerous. It's awful.

"In pornography, you know the guys are going to be presentable and professional and tested and often a fun experience to be with. Prostitution is just about the lowest form unless you are very high-priced hookers, and even they don't have much choice in who they can take on. Any girl in porn will know who she is going to do it with. With us, we ask the girl, 'Who would you like to work with?'"

Luke: "What's the difference between being an 'erotic photographer' and a 'pornographer'?"

Humphry: "Semantics. No difference."

Many of the things Holly told me about her parents they contradicted. Either she isn't seeing them clearly or they are not telling me the truth. Holly believed her parents would be appalled by my memoir. I don't think that would be true.

Holly often tells me that her mother could not accomplish a photo shoot without her. Somehow Suze was doing it for more than 20 years without Holly's help.

Holly doesn't believe her parents business would run without her help. She feels it is her fate to run it. I say she should create her own life separate from her parents and their business.

The happiest time of her life was when she lived in Santa Barbara (prior to 1997) a couple of hours drive from her family and away from their business.

Holly writes me: "I wasn't aware my grandmother was a member of a Calvinist sect! Ridiculous how I have to find out from Luke about my family!"

HollyRandall: i liked your interview
HollyRandall: I KNOW my mom can finish a photoshoot w/out me, she's done it many times
HollyRandall: i'm just good at dealing with her when she's stressed
HollyRandall: and i don't think my father would be horrified by your memoir at all
Luke: you wanted to hide it from your parents
HollyRandall: but my mom might be a bit dismayed at parts that involved her friends
HollyRandall: i'll let my dad read it
Luke: how's your ankle?
HollyRandall: i don't think my mom would anyhow-- just because she isn't interested in reading much on the business, she prefers books that offer escapism, i suppose
HollyRandall: very swollen
HollyRandall: so did you like talking to my dad?
Luke: yes, he's easy to talk to
HollyRandall: he's awesome
Luke: it's like talking to you
HollyRandall: when i was a little girl, guys used to make fun of me all the time and tell me i was ugly
HollyRandall: this one guy in particular used to always say to me, "Holly, no offense, but you're ugly"
Luke: wow, men haven't done that to you in a long time.
HollyRandall: and on Valentines Day at school i never got any cards or anything
HollyRandall: so my dad used to always reassure me that when i grew up there would be "A line of men around the street and I'll have to beat them off with a stick"
Luke: you became a sexual vixen
HollyRandall: lol not that's not my story
Luke: except they've formed a virtual line in cyberspace
Luke: I want you to beat me off with a stick.
HollyRandall: on Valentine's day, every year my dad would write me a Valentine's day card, drive across town, and mail it from there
HollyRandall: he wrote lovely things about what a beautiful, smart girl i was
HollyRandall: and signed them "your secret admirer"
HollyRandall: until i one year, when I was nine, figured out it was him Luke: when? HollyRandall: i suddenly recognized the writing was his
Luke: That's awfully young to receive romantic gestures.
HollyRandall: they weren't pervy romantic
HollyRandall: they were Valentines day cards for kids, you know?
HollyRandall: YOU didn't do Valentine's cards at that age?
HollyRandall: anyhow the point was that my dad was thoughtful enough to do something to make me feel loved and special
Luke: No, that stuff was discouraged in my communities.
HollyRandall: and that was better than actually having a "secret admirer"

Amalek writes me: "You've had better. No sparks. And you failed to ask my questions. Your love for Holly's eggs blunted your style."

Kaiser Sauze writes me: "I'll be in LA in the summer. Maybe we can all hook up and have a meal (Johnny Thrust too). It would be a lively chat I should think. For the first five minutes anyway. PS - Holly's paying."

HollyRandall: "I knew Kaiser would make a comment about how the whites treated the blacks in SA, and trace it back to me. I love these people who come out of nowhere and go around denouncing people while they hide behind a pseudonym."

A Critique Of Modern American-Jewish Literature

My friend "Yaakov" writes:

Allegra Goodman -- Boring beyond words. Has no idea how to tell a story. Just another Cynthia Ozick wannabe. One is enough, thank you very much. '

Tova Mirvis -- Better. She tries to tell a story. But when she hits act three, drops dead.

Dara Horn -- Unreadable. Post Modern goyishe junk transmuted into Jewish life. Again, no idea how to tell a story. Too much time in writer's work shops.

Nathan Englander -- Talented, but a terrible liar and much beloved by Jihadists for he makes religious Jews look and act like hypocrites and liars and everything the Jihadists say we are. Basically he's Philip Roth with long hair.

Rebecca Goldstein -- I read the first ten pages of each of her books. No idea what was going on.

Every one of these writers have one thing on common: no craft. No idea how to tell a simple three-act story. No notion how to take a character from point a to point b and make that character grow and change.

Nooooo, they're all to post modern for that.

These writers are just ghastly products of university writing workshops. They read each other's work. The public could care less.

These writers are simply ghastly and I have no doubt that nobody even reads them except maybe one another -- oh and their white shoe enablers at the NY Times. The same useful idiots who brought us, ta-da! Raymond Carver. Now there was a massive dose of Thorazine.

My friend Bava Kama Sutra responds:

You might consider dropping him from your friend category.

It's interesting how so many people don't have a high enough self-esteem to be able to say, simply, I don't get it. Instead, if they don't like or get it, it's automatically "bad" and without craft or merit. It's interesting that The New Yorker seems to like Goodman very much -- but I'm sure that your friend's level of expertise is far beyond that of a simple magazine such as that. And, the public "could care less" -- really? Is that why The New Yorker publishes her work? Because the public doesn't care? My, what an ego your friend has -- he (for it must be a he) has conflated larger public opinion and his own worthless one. In short, what a moron. But to each his own.

What has this person written that is better than what these writers write? If he wants a simple (for the simpleton) "three act story," he should watch Sesame Street or some other childish rubbish. Go look at a picture book. Read a fairytale. But stay away from high art. We hate what we don't understand, don't we?

I'm just so tired of people calling literature bad if they don't like it. Why should everyone have to write the same kind of "3 act" story? That's not enough for some people, me for instance. Honestly, I think Goodman can be "boring," but it's only if you're looking for a certain kind of quick fix story as opposed to (though not necessarily so) artistry. And Ozick - - she's brilliant. She's not trying to write simple stories. Goldstein -- she's not my favorite but I see what she's doing. My students are reading her now and don't like her -- yet they loved Morrison. Who knew?

I don't care if you post my response, but don't use my name. I don't really think he's a moron, though. Who does he like to read, for example?

> I have so many friends, I can easily afford to drop them when I disagree > with how they express their opinions on literature.

I guess some of the literature I now like is an acquired taste-- like coffee, or wine, or beer. I never could develop a taste for beer, but the other two I like. I didn't start out liking Ozick (was more of a Grace Paley/Bernard Malamud fan), but now I couldn't go back.

I don't want your friend to think I'm mean. I'm really not. I'm nicer than you are.

> On my blog, I try to provide the kind of civilized discourse that is > essential to the smooth functioning of a democracy. (Allan MacDonell)

You like to antagonize. And now I realize that's the only reason you sent me your friend's comments. I'm so predictable.

> I was trying to promote democracy, it was either that or invade Iran.

Invade Iran.

An Email Exchange With Jewish Voice & Opinion Editor Susie Rosenbluth About Rabbi Aron Tendler

Bella writes Suse:

I know that the truth is of no great importance to you. But the victims of Aron Tendler (which include myself) have been going to the Rabbis of the community for over 20 years to tell our story. Rabbi Shalom Tendler, Rabbi Hier and Rabbi Bess have known for years. So to suggest that your situation in NY has anything to do with us, is abserd. The family is sick...Matis, Aron, Mordechai and their cousins who posed in Penthouse in 1960, are all sick. Stop blaming the victims. We don't even know Mordechai or any of his victims. We are all former students (and congregants) who he carried on relationships with for over 14 years. He molested a 16 year old girl boarding in his home as well as planned to have sex with another 16 year old, and that is why he was removed. He should have been thrown out of the school system but Shalom protected him. You don't care about the truth that is obvious, but we just thought you would like to know the "truth." And for the record, we are not anonymous, The RCC and SZ know our names and spoke with each of us directly. You should get them help instead of enbling them.

I wouldn't suggest anyone davening with Aron privately or they will probably be molested by him. He has admitted to us that he was molested as a child and that he masturbated all the time as a child. He has a huge problem. He needs help. He is running away because he is afraid to death that Esther will hear ALL the details of how he has been cheating on her for 20 years, not to avoid what his brother is enduring. Your paper is a disgrace.

Susie responds:

Anonymous letters like yours are usually as valuable as unsigned checks. I will keep note of your email address, however. I do not know Rabbi Aron Tendler. I never met him and spoke to him only once by phone in preparation for my article. I did speak to people at YULA and I did speak to members of his congregation. For the record, Rabbi Tendler sent me to no one. I found the folks to speak to on my own.

Child abuse is not a crime that should be reported only to rabbis. Molesting a 16-year-old should be reported to the police. Why weren't these cases reported to the police? Why was the District Attorney's sex-crimes unit not alerted?

When I searched for any reports of abuse against Rabbi Aron Tendler (abuse is what you are describing, not the silly civil case in which Rabbi Mordechai Tendler is currently embroiled in New York Superior Court), there were no reports that the police or District Attorney's office had.

The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles had no more luck than I had.

I am not for a moment suggesting that what you are saying did or did not occur. I am saying that a man is innocent until proven guilty, and, to date, the only accusations directed against either Rabbis Tendler, as far as I know, are anonymous, Internet nonsense. Accusations like those--like yours--are worthless.

Bella responds:

YULA covered it up. And I don't know who you spoke to but it they were both my friends and I saw first hand what happened...there was no investigation...they wanted to keep it quiet as do all jewish communities.

But over 15 people came forward to tell what happened (all those years back) all ontheir own with the same stories. You don't know our names but others do and to think I will tell "you" my name to prove a point is quite foolish. No one at YULA is even still there so they have no idea what happened. The JJ sat on this story for two months and once the letter was sent out they reported on it in a very weak manner...yet seemed to think YULA was responsible when I spoke to them. But no one ever takes responsibility in this community.

You obvisouly didn't speak to his victims at SZ. I hear from congregants daily thanking us for getting rid of him, so not too su e who you communicated with other than those who are pro Aron which seems to be the basis of your whole paper. They were scared and being threatened...who was going to belive them at 16? Dr. Powell wanted him out and made that very clear but Shalom protected him. Shalom spoke to one of Aron's victims 3 yeats ago after she tried to take her own life because of what Aron did to her...she didn't report it then because she was living in his home and he had a tremendous hold over her until about 5 years ago. Whatever I say will go in one ear and out the other and we don't care if you believe us. But perhaps you should get ALL the facts before you run such an article about a man who destroyed so many poeple's lives. It is quite irresponsible of you.

Again, The RCC and The Board @ SZ as well as The OU know exactly who I am and who we all are. This isn't about blogging, this is about a very sick man who manipulated women who came from broken homes and while trying to seduce us talked against us to anyone that would listen. It took us 20 years to get rid of him but we finally did. And we are very proud. Robert Schacht (A board member) told one of Aron's victims one month ago that "The amount of women coming forward is astonishing and we want him out"...so not sure where you are getting your info.

They are hardly "worthless", as The RCC fired him a year ago and he was just thrown from SZ. Look at the facts and take off your blinders. A guilty man has seen justice. And if we weren't credible then he would still have a job.

Susie responds:

I obviously did not speak to the hundreds of members at SZ. I spoke to whomever I could. I don't believe you because when a man has sex with a minor girl, and as many people as you say knew about it in fact were aware, the police get called somewhere along the line.

Until the police are called here, I'm afraid you don't have my ear.

I have also spoken with several people here on the east coast who have recently (last year or two) moved here from Los Angeles, where they were, according to their own stories, very close to Rabbi Aron Tendler. To a man and woman, these folks say he is wonderful and that they do not believe your story.

If your story is true, you must prove it. A man is innocent until proven guilty. If, as you say, he was fired because of verifiable accusations, give me names and I will interview people, ask the questions all of us who have healthy skepticism must ask, and write my story. If you ask me simply to trust you--an anonymous person who says, in effect, here I am, trust me--I say: forget it.

The story you ask me to believe, as you relate it, is something out of the 19th century (maybe 18th), not the late 20th. Sorry.

Bella responds:

I never said he had "sex" with a minor, I said he molested a minor and Dr. Powell knew what he was doing with a another 17 year old and tried to get rid of Aron...so stop saying it's me it' s over 50 women who all went public and that's why he's gone. Call the RCC and ask them why they fired him one year ago and why he quietly walked away from a position held for over 20 years. Even girls at YULA say they remember he used to flirt with them.

Everyone told me contacting you was a waste, you are probably being paid by The Tendlers...and for the record a huge law suit is in the works agianst Aron and YULA for enabling that bastard for all these years. I wonder how you would feel if he molested you or your daughter. Shame on you. I know my own sexual epxeriences with him and I have taken a lie detector test and I will show up in court to testify and even then, after you see over 50 women who have been telling their story for years testify, and he is found guilty as will Rabbi Hier, even then you won't believe us. To be honest, we are so happy he is out, what somene like you thinks (one of the sick sheep) is of no consequence to us. As a woman you should be ashamed to protect such a sick family. I wonder what hashem is going to say to you one day but that's your problem. Shalom knew, Powell knew, and Bess new, call them yourself. And you reported erroneously about YULA...I just spoke to an insider at YULA and she said they have been telling everyone that no one at YULA now was their at YULA 20 years ago...so you and The JJ are lying, but we aren't surprised. There is a very powerful lawyer who sued The Vatican who is taking this case...so lie and do what you have to do but we will have the last laugh.

Susan responds:

I hope, as you say, this will go to court. Because we have open courts in this country (thank G-d), the case will undoubtedly be covered by the free press. If the accusations can be proved, Rabbi Aron Tendler will be found guilty, and the consequences will be much more dire than simply walking away from a synagogue job, which, I understand, will be replaced, probably by members of the shul who want to stay with him.

If the accusations sound like yours (flirting--in whose opinion?--taken to be "molesting"), you'll be laughed out of court.

If Rabbi Hier is found guilty, it will shake up the entire country--his power base is significant throughout the Jewish, and non-Jewish, world.

I have no doubt Hashem would agree with me and the Constitution of this great country that we call home, that a man is innocent until proven guilty. That's what the beit din system is all about. Prove Rabbi Tendler guilty and we'll all cheer for you. If he is found not guilty, his supporters will cheer and you can gripe that it's O.J. Simpson redux.

I count myself in neither camp. I am a supporter of the truth. Thus far, Rabbi Aron Tendler's opponents have been anonymous (at least as far as the public is concerned) and have contented themselves with smear jobs geared to forcing him from jobs. The people you claim know who the accusers are will not make statements of any kind for or against Rabbi Tendler, so, for all intents and purposes, for the public at large, the anonymous accusers are on their own.

Your problem seems to be that you cannot accept the innocent-until-proven-guilty concept. Instead, you insist that anyone who holds by that principle is either in the employ of the accused (I am not) or cannot understand how a victim might feel (I do indeed and for reasons I have no interest in sharing with you). I just insist that victims be treated with respect, which means having to take responsibility for bringing the accused to court and not simply satisfying themselves with anonymous innuendo.

At this time, I have no reason to believe any part of your story and neither, it would seem, has anyone else in authority. The onus is on you and this "very powerful lawyer" to prove Rabbi Tendler guilty.

Like the rest of the world, I will watch with interest.

Be aware, you've given me enough in this email, should I desire, to take you to court, should your identity ever become known. You've called me a liar and an accomplice, and have accused me of taking bribes. I will save this email.

Unlike you, who takes name-calling so easily, I do not. As I said, I have no idea whether you are telling the truth or not.

While you are concerned about what Hashem thinks of me, if I were you, I would worry much more about what He thinks of someone who contemplates having "the last laugh," as though ruining a man is a cause for levity. Shame on who?

Bella responds:

I can't even read the rest of your e-mail...your a sick woman. If performing oral sex on a woman and getting into bed while Esther is in the next room, with another young girl, will be laughed out of court than you live in a jewish world I want no part of. I will make sure that every paper in town sees your e-mails to me. No one is going with Aron unless they are going to Israel where all the sickos in that family go. Your not a journalist, your a tendler cult member. DO NOT CONTACT ME AGAIN.

Susan writes:

One thing you should know about me: I ALWAYS have the last word, so if anyone will end this dialogue, it will be you.

My response to your email is, as things stand now: "Says you." If your accusations can be proven, I will cover that. As of now, all I have is your feverish prose, the word of an anonymous woman who is not only crudely accusing Rabbi Aron Tendler, she is accusing me.

I have never met Rabbi Aron Tendler--I spoke to him briefly to prepare for the article and I spoke to others in his community.

Please make certain that "every paper in town sees" my emails to you. I sign them because I am proud of them (which is more than one can say for you).

The operative phrase is: A man is innocent until proven guilty. If that qualifies to make me, in your words "a sicko" or a "Tendler cult member," then just who is the "sick woman" in this dialogue?

By the way, I didn't start the dialogue, you did, and I ALWAYS respond to folks who write to me at The Jewish Voice.

Jewish Whistleblower writes me:

Luke, it is a waste of time and breath to even get into a conversation or dialogue with Rosenbluth.

She is no different than any other koolaid drinker in the Catholic community that screamed and shouted down victims/survivors and their supporters with nonsense about the rights of child molesters and the piousness of Church leaders and doctrine.

The fact is that we have a Constituion that allows me to call Aron Tendler a child molester and Mordecai Tendler an exploiter of women because it is simply factually true.

The fact is halacha REQUIRES me to speak out and expose hypocrites like the Tendler brothers, see the article by Rabbi Dratch on the Jsafe website.

The fact is that Susan Rosenbluth was aware of child molester Rabbi Baruch Lanner in Teaneck, NJ. She saw the rabbonim there cover it up, she knew the allegations were credible and accurate and she remained silent for over a decade allowing more children to be molested and more lives to be destroyed.

A few months ago Susie published an article where she referred to Rav Moshe Tendler as a Halachic advisor she consulted as to publishing a story. That's the level of objectivity she has in reporting on the Tendler family, she followed their father's instructions in the past on what can and should be reported.

Susan's articles have all lacked basic fact checking and review. There are so many glaring errors and simply false statements, that it would be easier to state what she got right. She claims that bloggers tried to have Aron thrown out of the RCC. Well, Susie claims to have spoken to people in the know, how did she not discover that he hasn't been on the RCC for months? As to the failure of YULA to phone the police, isn't that exaclty what they said in their statement to the police? They clearly covered up the abuse by failing their moral and legal obligations to contact the police. The same style cover-up was conducted in NJ with Rabbi Baruch Lanner and Susie was happy to give her silence to that cover-up as it protected her precious advertising revenues. Mainly the only thing Susie is good at is spelling the names of people in her articles correctly.

Susan Rosenbluth is simply part of the problem in our community. She is a defender of the rights of the abusers. No other newspaper I know of makes hundreds if not thousands of copies available to the family of a sexual predators they defend in their pages so that they can distribute the smears in that newspaper as part of their campaign. Yet that is exactly what has happened for several months in Monsey. Susan is not a journalist, she is paid executioner, destroying the names of decent people and protecting the true rashas.

Susie responds to me:

A critique from an anonymous blogger? I've always said that an unsigned letter is worth about the same as an unsigned check. Do you know who JWB is? I don't, and, therefore, I have no interest in responding to him, her, it.

I will respond to anonymous people who write to me personally. I will not respond to anonymous publications, and especially not to those which allow all manner of disgusting posts. No one believes in freedom of speech more than I, but I also believe in decorum.

I was giving serious consideration to accepting your invitation to a phone interview addressing how I as "a Jewish journalist approach these types of matters." But, quite frankly, your association with JWB, Canonist, Vicki Polin, et al, requires me to decline.

Jewish Whistleblower writes:

Apparently, the only thing Susie is good at is brow beating a survivor of clergy abuse in some of the most high-handed and unprofessional series of emails that I have ever seen emanating from someone who claims to be a journalist. Susie manages to utterly distort the facts. Susie is clearly just cruel and uncompassionate. To treat a person like this just brings into clear focus the absolute lack of heart my community has towards the victims/survivors of abuse.

I know fully understand how one of Aron's survivors could try to commit suicide.

But be assured Susie, the community is changing and ancient dinosaurs like you are on the way out.

Bella, stay strong, Susie is not worth your time or energy. She is the past of a dark period in Jewish history, while you are our future. Focus your energy on the civil lawsuit. Bring midat din to this world, to the Tendlers of the world, we need it.

Anthony Pellicano Update

Ross Johnson writes:

Sunday, March 19, 2006; Los Angeles, Calif. -- Facing a day of reckoning and wiped out financially after having gone through two high-priced attorneys while spending 30 months in federal prison, jailed Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano has overruled his pro bono advisory attorney and will push for an expedited trial on April 18, said two Pellicano family members Sunday night.

The family members, fearing that the prosecutor in Pellicano’s wiretapping, computer fraud, and racketeering trial will push for a gag order in a hearing tomorrow in Los Angeles federal court, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Government prosecutors are also expected to press Judge Dale Fisher for a protective order that would prevent the press from access to any evidence proffered before trial, according to a source. Pellicano has told friends that he has little faith that a delay in his trial would be beneficial.

Though Pellicano and his pro bono advisory attorney Steven Gruel have yet to see any evidence the government has compiled pursuant to the wiretapping charges, Pellicano wants to go quickly to trial and is willing to do it without the help of a federal public defender, say the sources.

I Want My 20-Minutes Back

Smiling Arab writes:

Twenty minutes. I'd like them back.

I'm not familiar with the genre of "incredibly boring interviews with incredibly boring people," but I think you're making it into your own personal niche. I have no idea why you're seeking out people more tedious and empty than the interviewer (that would be you) to talk to.

I especially liked the part about the Jewess and her family holding up cards with numbers on them at the dinner table to describe how their day was. It's like The Royal Tennenbaums without the incest, mescaline and Gene Hackman.

Maybe next week you can feature a special interview with a person raised by nuns that makes documentaries about cardboard factories?

Kaiser Sauze replies:

Arab, to be fair most people without a vested interest would have given up on reading that article/interview after the first 40 seconds. It's a niche piece, thus posted on his .net site. I am surprised you dedicated the whole 20 minutes.

Luke is an easy target, but do you really find him "tedious and empty"? I think his transparent moral duality and the fact that he bares his weakness in dealing with it is morbidly fascinating, almost courageous.

Smiling Arab writes:

Hmm, I think that came out wrong. What I meant to say is that Luke is probably the only reporter more interesting than any of his subjects. For whatever reason, he picks these dead souls wandering on the fringe of American literature, sociology and politics. It's funny when he breaks them down into the fundamental building blocks of matter, like that "sex-positive" hipster awhile back. It's less so when he takes dreary people at face value. I mean, women like this--happy lives, happy childhoods, no conflicts, one big happy face presented to the world--have pretty much destroyed literature for now and all of time. I don't blame kids for melting their brains into a plasma TV with Grand Theft Auto on it: by and large, Pong is more interesting than anything these people have to say, in print or in interviews.

Secondly, conflict--internal, external, displaced, implied--is Luke's thing. He may be as much of a honkey as any descendent of British thieves and pederasts but it's strictly an Asian trait to ascribe merit to the complicated man who struggles with issues compared to the Westerner that believes he's got it all figured out. The love/hate relationship that he has with his subject--which has been going on for, oh, six or eight years now--is what sets him apart from some mindless drone like sexycity, caging drink tickets from the drugged and generally taking up the space that could be better used by importing some Chinese prole willing to work 18 hour days for a bowl of dog food.

SabrinaLuvs posts: "Hey Arab! People on the board like what you have to say so I'm curious to know what you would consider interesting to see Luke write about on his site thats more interesting than the writer himself?"

Smiling Arab writes:

Fine, Arab's five helpful steps to recover Luke's mojo:

1. More Jim Goad. It's bizarre, you already know the most brutal, savage writer of this generation yet you ponder whether or not the Holocaust destroyed the linear narrative of Jewish literature with Homely Spice.

2. More Amalek. I know he's your pretend friend and everything but he hasn't been around since Holly came back around. I realize I'm encouraging your split personality here but DANCE MONKEY BOY, DANCE.

3. Fewer shrill harpies in your life will improve your complexion and make for better reading, so get rid of Cathy Siepp and the rest of the weird yentas. More Kendra, more Mary, and what happened to Rob Spallone stealing double-A batteries from the Kwik-E Mart?

4. Schedule more interviews with producers and directors. The best Luke story ever was when Buck Adams had a nervous breakdown on set while your tape recorder whirled away. While you're at it, "What kind of kids did you hang out with in high school?" is not an interesting question, though I'm amused that you're asking it both of whores and creepy Jewish chick writers concerned about the non-anthropological perspectives on their community.

5. More discussions of Torah, because it cracks me up whenever I see written in plain English what you crazy Orthodox believe.

Finally, the one that will really set you on the right path: Interview David Duke. The man is a whore and will speak with anyone that will ask. You, Luke Ford, are the perfect man to wave a microphone in his face:
a.) You're Jewish (well... not to real Jews, but to Duke you are), he burns crosses, it's hilarious,
b.) Unlike your yenta posse, he's actually led an interesting life, and he'll probably ask you for a few numbers of porn chicas if the rumors are to be believed,
c.) He's had more plastic surgury than Houston, so you can recycle most of your porn star questions, and
d.) Because deep down, despite waving your tefillin around to all and sundry, you agree with him on just about every social issue except for the gas chambers, and I think the two of you seeing eye-to-eye on things will bring about the kind of closure that Jew and Gentile need.

Hollywood's Brutal Truths

Robert J. Avrech blogs:

A few days later I call Esther. I listen to her ramble about her non-career, about her "awesome" talent, about how no one understands her, about her dwindling bank account, about her abusive boyfriend, about her miserable agent; and I politely bring the conversation to an end when Esther viciously rants about how much she hates her mother who has never supported her artistic dreams...

Dara Horn Interview: 'It's Like A Bad Blind Date'

On March 10, I emailed Dara:

Dear Ms. Horn,

I would love to interview you about your books and your vision for a new Jewish literature for my humble blog www.lukeford.net.

If I could secure said interview, it would raise me greatly in the esteem of a...friend of mine.... She says that traditional linear narrative is impossible after the Holocaust and I need to know if this is true.

Dara, 28 (though she looks 27), calls me Wednesday, March 15, 2006 at 4:30 p.m.

Earlier in the week I had confided to a friend: "I just don't have anything to say to her or ask her. I've just done a ton of reading on her (in addition to reading her two novels over the previous few months) and she speaks and thinks so differently from me, oh boy. I'm going back to the basic questions I ask anybody about where they find meaning in life. This could be a big flop."

My friend responded that I should ask Dara more specific questions about her work. Why does she incorporate yiddishisms? Is this her response to the Holocaust? To the gaping literary hole created by the extermination of almost everything Yiddish? Is she a post-Holocaust writer? What does she think about that? Does she see her work as fitting into that genre? In Jewish literary studies, the big post-Holocaust writers are Melvin Jules Bukiet, Art Spiegelman, Norma Rosen and Thane Rosenbaum. The newcomers to that genre are Horn, Nathan Englander, Steve Stern, and Jonathan Safran Foer.

Luke: "Is it OK if we speak on a first name basis?"

Dara: "Fine with me."

She laughs and breathes hard. My spirits lift.

Luke: "I'm tape recording this so I can transcribe."

Dara: "OK, sure."

Luke: "Let me start with some simple questions. When you were a little kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

Dara laughs. She speaks rapidly. "Nobody has ever asked me that in an interview before. I was obsessed with dinosaurs at one point, so I wanted to be a paleontologist. Every kid wants to be an astronaut. The Challenger blew up. I decided I'd be an astronomer. I was writing always, keeping journals. A certain friend [Elif Batuman, who's doing a PhD in comparative literature at Stanford] and I, when we played together, we would write down in our journals everything that had happened in our games. She now writes for The New Yorker.

"I was always writing but it didn't occur to me until I was a teenager that this was something a person could do. And even after that, I didn't think about it as something one could do for a living, it kinda isn't. You have to be doing other things."

Luke: "Was there a seminal event when you realized your destiny was to be a writer?"

Dara: "Gosh, I can make one up. I published an article in Hadassah magazine when I was 14. Then I published another article when I was 15. It was nominated for a national magazine award. It was the first time a Jewish publication was ever nominated for the award. It was a big deal. They had a big awards event with all these editors. I was the only person there with braces."

Luke: "Were you impossible to deal with after that?"

Dara: "It was too surreal. It wasn't the kind of thing you could explain to people you knew at school. 'I'm doing this thing over the weekend. I'm going to this lunch at this hotel for something I did for a magazine.' 'Oh, that's cool.' It didn't make any difference for my daily life at school and homework. I don't think I became too insufferable. Maybe my [three] siblings would disagree."

Luke: "Are there any similarities between your writing as a child and teenager and the writing you do today?"

Dara: "Probably. I never wrote any fiction until my first novel. I always saw myself as writing nonfiction. The first things I published were travel articles.

"One thing that is similar is my interest in Jewish literature. Also, an archival impulse of recording things. As a child, I kept journals and diaries. I had the fear that one's experiences disappear if they aren't written down. I never thought about it very clearly when I was a child."

Luke: "Is there any consistency in the feedback people have given you as both a human being and as a writer since you were a child?"

Dara: "Hmm. Interesting question. Feedback meaning?"

Luke: "'Oh, you're intense. Or intelligent. Or questioning.' Any common threads. Writing is the person. For instance, even when you were four years old, your parents told you this, and even today your husband tells you the same thing."

Dara: "I've always been a nerd. I've always been obsessed with trivial details. I've always had a good memory. As a teenager, I was CO-captain of my quizball team in highschool. We would go on local TV, like the character Benjamin [Ziskind] in my book The World to Come. I was very interested in things most people have little interest in. That crystallized in my interest in Yiddish, which is the epitome of my interest in Jewish literature and my nerdy interest in things that normal people are not interested in.

"People who knew me as a child would say that I was very strange. I wasn't interested in cartoons and videogames. I would play games that I and my friend would invent together. We created this new galaxy and different creatures that lived on the various planets.

"My siblings and I wrote poems together and we still do for people's birthdays. I was raised in making things up.

"I never could throw anything away. I'm a pack rack."

Dara grew up in Short Hills, New Jersey. Her parents still live in the same hills.

"In some ways, they've led a traditional life.

"Short Hills is infamous for Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus (published in 1957). Short Hills was where Brenda Patimkin lived.

"Philip Roth is influential where I grew up. My mother's family is from Newark, New Jersey. After World War II and after the riots in the late 1960s, there was this massive Jewish exodus from Newark and everybody went west to other towns in New Jersey.

"Goodbye, Columbus says the Patimkins were the only Jewish family in the town, that they were there by some sort of special arrangement.

"I read the book when I was a teenager and I thought it was hilarious because the public school I went to in Short Hills was about 40% Jewish. It's not the same world he describes in that book.

"When people think of American Jewish writing, people think of Philip Roth. Well, I think that was true 40 years ago."

Luke: "How do you emotionally react to Philip Roth?"

Dara: "I'm not a huge fan for a couple of reasons. A big one is just the misogyny. It's annoying. It has nothing to do with American Jewish literature but it doesn't resonate with me. Philip Roth is a guy's writer. It's annoying that he's considered the quintessential American Jewish writer when his writing has nothing to do with anything anyone my age has ever experienced. Some day I should be lucky enough that people should say that about me."

Luke: "If you caught your husband enjoying Portnoy's Complaint and laughing uproariously, what would you do to him?"

Dara: "I wouldn't be surprised. I thought it was a funny book when I read it as a teenager.

"My favorite Philip Roth novel is American Pastorale because it was written as historical fiction."

"I went to private [secular] elementary school from first grade to sixth grade. Then I went to public school."

Luke: "What kind of clique did you hang out with in highschool?"

Dara: "No one. Have you ever had a writer who had a clique in highschool?"

Luke: "No."

We laugh.

Dara: "I don't think writers tend to have friends in highschool. It's a prerequisite for being a writer. If you ever have a writer tell you that he had friends in highschool, I'd be interested to know.

"I am lucky that I am close to my siblings. We were all close in age and we all went to school together. It didn't matter that I didn't have a clique in highschool because they were my clique. We had kids night out where the four of us would go out on Saturday nights.

"I'm second in the birth order."

Luke: "Were you the peacemaker? What was your role?"

Dara: "I don't know. I'm certainly not in any role of authority. I am the middle of three sisters. My older sister and I are four years apart. My younger brother is 13 months younger, and my sister is two years younger than him. I was the boss of the younger two in games we would play as children. We would do skits and plays and I was often writing the skits.

"My sisters are also published writers. My younger sister Ariel had a novel (Help Wanted, Desperately) come out two years ago. My older sister (Jordana Horn Marinoff) is working on a novel. She's worked as a journalist."

Luke: "Is it true that as a child, you had a dream that your siblings bowed down to you?"

Dara laughs. "It is not true. They would've killed me. They wouldn't have sold me into slavery.

"I was very much at their beck and call. I still am.

"My brother is also an artist. He's an animator for Comedy Central."

Luke: "Do you think that's art?"

Dara: "He's an artist. I don't know if what he does... I don't think even he would call what he does art. He's not high-minded about art. He just likes to draw."

Luke: "Were you always the smartest one and the one getting the most accomplishments?"

Dara: "Oh gosh. No. We all excelled in different fields. My brother shined in art. He had his work exhibited as a teenager. My sisters were also talented students in school and Ivy League graduates. We cooperated. We'd trade assignments. My brother was never a good writer and I was never a good artist so I would help him write an essay for school and he would help me with a science project where I had to draw diagrams."

Luke: "Were you a teacher's pet?"

Dara laughs. "These are leading questions, aren't they? My goodness. I did well at school."

Luke: "Did teachers adore you?"

Dara: "I had some teachers who adored me."

Luke: "Were you adorable? Were people like, 'Oh Dara!'"

Dara: "No. I was very obnoxious. I don't think I was very likable as a child and teenager."

Luke: "Were there any subjects you were bad in?"

Dara: "I was never fond of math."

Luke: "But you still got A-grades?"

Dara: "I did OK in math."

Luke: "Did you get As?"

Dara gives a guilty laugh.

Luke: "Tell the truth."

Dara giggles. "These are questions that no one has ever asked me. Perhaps that is for the best.

"Yeah, I was a big nerd in school."

Luke: "I promise I won't ask you the difference between genre and literary fiction.

"I've read all your other interviews on the web."

Dara: "It's humbling being a nerd because you don't have much of a social life and in the hierarchy of school, nerds are at the bottom of the totem pole. While teachers really like you, nobody else does."

Luke: "Did you ask someone to the Sadie Hawkins dance?"

Dara: "No. I really didn't date anyone until I met my husband at 19.

"That's right. I had one boyfriend before."

Luke: "Were you invited to the Junior Prom and the Senior Ball?"

Dara: "I was not invited to the Junior Prom. I went to the Senior Ball with a friend.

"I was highly unpopular at all these things. I wrote an essay about this ("The Last Jewish American Nerd") in The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide To Guilt.

"No, I was never invited to the prom. People always wanted to be my lab partner."

Luke: "Is your husband allowed to criticize your writing?"

Dara: "Oh wow. But of course. Oh wow. Ohmigod. My husband is encouraged to. It's very helpful to me. It's helpful to have people tell you what's wrong with your writing and you won't think they're saying it because they have some personal vendetta against you. It's important to have people critique your writing who, even if they don't like your writing, will still like you. That's not true of editors and other people you deal with professionally. If they don't like your writing, that's pretty much the only reason they're talking to you.

"My husband reads, generally, chapter by chapter of what I write. It's annoying for him. It's like being serially published. By the time I finish another chapter, it's been months since he finished the last one.

"My siblings and my parents read a lot of it also."

Luke: "Did you spend much of your childhood in your head alone fantasizing and dreaming?"

Dara: "I didn't because I was always surrounded by my siblings. We were always playing these imaginative games. I didn't come home from school and plant myself on the couch with a book until I went to bed. I was lucky that I had playmates who were always with me.

"The idea of creativity as a group effort is not talked about a lot when it comes to writing, but it is important to create with other people, and not just in your head."

Luke: "Were you a happy child?"

Dara: "Yeah. Our parents ran our family like an institution. Everything was regulated. At dinner, it became rowdy and my parents decided that each child would have five minutes to speak and no one else was allowed to interrupt. Then we had to devise all sorts of ways to get around these rules. We'd hold up cards with numbers on them telling people what we thought of their day.

"We went to about 40 countries around the world."

Luke: "I read that."

Dara: "So you know everything there is to know about my life already.

"That [travel] had a big impact on my writing.

"I was a lucky child. I had parents who encouraged me and my siblings. In my house, you were always fighting for attention and you always knew you were not the center of the world. That's important not just for writing but for life."

Luke: "Which fiction have you seen yourself in most clearly?"

Dara: "Seen myself? I'm reminded of Kafka's comment that 'I have nothing in common with other people or even myself.' I don't look for myself in fiction."

Luke: "What about your experience of life?"

Dara: "Hmm. I'm not really interested in reading about myself. What do you mean?"

Luke: "You read something and you go, 'That's how I've experienced life.'"

Dara: "Not, 'This is taking place in my highschool.'"

Luke: "You emotionally resonate with it."

Dara: "Gosh."

Luke: "As a teenager?"

Dara: "Gosh, this is an interesting question. I've never thought of it that way."

Luke: "I confess it's Portnoy's Complaint."

Dara giggles. "'This is my life.' Probably not in quite that way, but I don't know you.

"So you're looking for a character I identify with?"

Luke: "No. This book is how I experience life."

Dara: "I'm afraid of giving an answer I'll regret."

Luke: "That's what I'm hoping for."

Dara laughs. "I know you are."

Luke: "I want you to say something that you will eternally regret that will be captured on my blog."

Dara laughs. "And it will be there every time someone types my name into Google for the rest of my life."

Luke: "Yes."

Dara: "Gosh. I should just pick something."

Luke: "Pride and Prejudice."

Dara: "Gosh no. The plot of which is, 'Will you marry me?' Four hundred pages later, yes. No, that's not my experience of life.

"I'm going to walk around my apartment and look at my books. The problem is that I have just moved to a new apartment."

Luke: "Is there any one book that has made you cry the most?"

Dara repeats everyone one of my questions that catches her by surprise. "I'm looking at See Under Love."

Luke: "I'm looking for something that reveals your emotional psyche and lays it bare."

Dara: "I don't have an emotional psyche."

Luke: "I'm looking for a Rorschach's test."

Dara: "Yes, I know."

Luke: "But I failed because I made it evident."

Dara: "Someone I don't like is Bernard Malamud.

"I really like Haruki Murakami but I don't think he reflects my experience of life."

Luke: "If it comes to you..."

Dara: "No. Now I'm looking through all my books..."

Luke: "What do you love and what do you hate about your life now?"

She repeats the question. She says "Gosh." She repeats the question.

"I love my family. I love that I finally feel like I am doing what I want to do. I hate that having this eight-month-old daughter I have to work around her. I don't like having to decide whether I should spend more time on her or more time on my work. While I feel lucky to be able to choose to spend more time with my baby or more time on my work, I still hate choosing. I hate that that's such a boring problem. I don't mind it. I have a baby-sitter. I hate that you can't talk to people about the problem."

Luke: "They'll fall asleep."

Dara: "It'll go nowhere and not be meaningful.

"There are certain things I don't like about myself. I wish I was more organized. I wish I was more patient with my work and with people in my life."

Luke: "What do you love and hate about being interviewed?"

Dara: "I used to think I hated being asked the same questions over and over again, but now that I'm being asked different questions, I feel stymied."

We laugh.

Dara: "I feel like I'm in trouble.

"I'm still looking at my bookshelf as we talk to see if I can find a book that resonates with the way I feel. What I like is usually not my experience of life. I'd tell you 'The Death of Ivan Ilych' and 'The Kreutzer Sonata.'"

Luke: "Is there a movie that reveals your emotional landscape?"

Dara: "A movie? I don't have such a complicated emotional landscape. I'm a happy person. I'm a lucky person. My life could not be made into a novel because it would be boring."

Luke: "I'll have you in tears by the end of this."

We laugh.

Dara: "You're trying to dig out some dark secret of my past. Good luck. I don't have any dark secrets in my past. If you can find one, that would be very interesting to me.

"I've never been psychoanalyzed."

Luke: "I've had too many years of therapy."

Dara laughs. "You know all the tricks."

Luke: "Anything else you love and hate about being interviewed?"

Dara repeats the question.

Luke: "How many people who interview you have a clue what your work is about?"

Dara: "That's something I don't like. I don't like it when I do an interview with someone who is asking me the questions off my publisher's material or asking me something after having just read the back of the book. The interviews I've liked best are ones where people have spoken to me about the book, not about me."

I laugh. She laughs.

Dara: "I feel like I have something to say about the book. Questions about me? It's like a bad blind date. We don't know each other. Who are you? It's like filling out a personals ad. I like long walks on the beach.

"I'm used to talking about my book. I'm much less used to talking about myself."

Luke: "As you travel, what depresses you and what inspires you about Jewish life?"

Dara: "Are you from England?"

Luke: "Australia."

Dara: "OK, now I can. I lived in England for a year. I found Jewish life there depressing for several reasons. First, the lack of variety of Jewish religious life. I grew up in an egalitarian community. I was a professional Torah reader as a teenager. I was very involved in my community's religious practice. When I went to England, there was nothing like that. There was just traditional Judaism with Jim Crow seating in the synagogue.

"I remember they had this newsletter from the Hillel [type college organization] that said, 'Jewish law respects women because Jewish women are mothers.' We're in college. No one here is a mother. I found that depressing. I don't necessarily find traditional Jewish life depressing. I find the lack of openness to other possibilities depressing.

"What I truly found depressing was the anti-Semitism and the lack of outrage against it. It was the European Jewish community. These people were used to lying low. People would say things that in America he'd be strung up for but British Jews would just laugh it off.

"What I find inspiring -- when you travel the world and find so much consistency from one community to another. You can be anywhere in the world and walk into a synagogue at 10 a.m. on a Saturday and you know what will be happening. That's not true of anything else in the world.

"Being Jewish is a very unique and particular way of being human that makes the world a little bit smaller. You can experience the whole variety of the world within this smaller community. You can expect people to welcome you any place in the world."

Luke: "Do you believe in the God of the Torah and have you always done so?"

Dara: "That's an interesting question that no one has asked me before.

"I do believe in God. I would hesitate to say that I believe in the God of the Torah because that means so many different things to so many different people."

Luke: "Whatever that phrase means to you?"

Dara: "I do."

Luke: "Have you always?"

Dara: "Yeah."

Luke: "Oh man."

Dara laughs. "I'm such a boring interview. I don't have any crises of faith.

"I'm going through a time now where I'm less into it. People always say that having a baby is such a spiritual experience. I say the opposite. Once the baby's there, it's distracting from spiritual thoughts. As a mother, I have less mental energy to devote to religious thought. That's something I regret about my current life. I wish I was more passionate about my religious beliefs."

Luke: "I assume you are a Conservative Jew and I assume it is hard to be passionate about Conservative Judaism?"

Dara: "These denominational labels are on the way out. Am I a halakhicly observant Jew? I'm not strictly shomer shabbat, but I observe Shabbat in my own way. It sounds stupid. I take the elevator on Shabbat but I don't do my professional work on Shabbat. I don't write my books on Shabbat. But I turn on lights so people will say, 'She's not shomer shabbat.' I eat in non-kosher restaurants. So I don't keep kosher? I only eat vegetarian food at non-kosher restaurants.

"I'm not Orthodox."

Luke: "Is it fair to say that it is hard to get passionate about Judaism if you are not Orthodox?"

Dara: "I totally disagree with that. I am very passionate about Judaism. I just happen to be at a moment in my life where spiritually I don't feel particularly moved. I've been thinking about that for the past month.

"I always have been passionate about Judaism. I consider myself blessed to have been born into a tradition where religion is similar to literature. In how many religions do people go around dancing with books? Would I have been a writer if I hadn't been Jewish? Probably."

Luke: "Are there parts of Jewish life you find artistically stifling and other parts you find inspiring to your creativity?"

Dara: "Jewish literature after the haskala (Jewish enlightenment aka 19th Century) has been inspiring. That tradition is something you can reinvent is a radical idea that is the essence of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature. It's not either/or. It's not either you live a traditional Jewish life or you forget it forever and are severed from it. It's not a matter of degree. It's something completely different. It's taking the tradition and doing something with it that changes what it is.

"That's what people have done every generation.

"You see a radical change in the literature. You don't really have self-aware fiction until the 1800s.

"I grew up in Jewish suburbia, which most people find empty."

Luke: "Did you feel like some things weren't being done in American Jewish literature?"

Dara: "Well this I have surely talked about in other interviews. I guess I can say it again.

"In the Philip Roth generation, you had writers who didn't know much about [Judaism], or if they did know, it wasn't reflected in their writing. They were only interested in social life. If you read Philip Roth, it's anthropological. There's not a lot of looking back.

"I was interested in writing fiction that was informed about Jewish tradition.

"I saw in Hebrew and Yiddish literature something that I didn't see in American-Jewish literature [in English] -- fiction as a commentary on the Torah, a midrashic exercise where you are creating a story that is related to Torah text. I thought it would be neat to have it in English. There are other writers who do this, but not many."

Luke: "Has the Holocaust changed literary structure?"

Dara: "Is this the question mentioned in your email?"

Luke: "Yes."

Dara laughs. She repeats my question. "That's giving a whole lot of credit to Hitler for changing people's ways of creating art."

Luke: "That's what I say."

Dara: "I don't think so. It certainly ended secular Yiddish literature.

"Did it change narrative structures? Narrative structures have changed in the past 60 years but I don't think that the Holocaust is the reason for them.

"Can you tell something about what the reasoning is behind this?"

Luke: "I can't understand what she's saying. I really tried."

Dara: "OK.

"I have some ideas about what this might mean."

Luke: "Sure. Go ahead."

Dara: "[Theodor] Adorno has this stupid quote that 'writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.' I think that's stupid."

Luke: "So do I. I don't have the foggiest idea about what she means. Something about midrash opens the tear in the text and fills it. Oh, I shouldn't even. I have such a hard time understanding what she's doing."

Dara: "There's a woman I'm always on a panel with named Alicia [Suskin] Ostriker."

Luke: "She's into Ostriker in a huge way."

Dara: "I don't know much about it either. The only reason I know about it is because I am always on panels with her. I don't particularly... I do slightly midrashic things also. I'm a feminist in that I think that men and women should be treated equally but it is not something that terribly informs my work.

"I don't like people going around saying, 'I'm not a feminist' because I don't think they really mean that. That's because 'feminist' now means kook."

Luke: "Or ballbuster."

Dara: "I don't like the pejorative use of the term.

"I happen to be a woman. I happen to be a writer. I don't think that I am a woman terribly influences my work. There are women for whom it does influence their work in a conscious way.

"Linear narrative. I'm writing my doctorate on narrative theory."

Luke: "Oh boy."

Dara laughs. "I should know more about this than I do.

"Both of my books are nonlinear."

Luke: "Yeah!"

Dara laughs. "I've often wondered if I would be capable of writing a linear narrative."

Luke: "Yeah!"

Dara: "I've wanted to try and never succeeded. I've often thought that for my next book, I should pick one character, one place and one time..."

Luke: "Yes!"

Dara: "And just do that and be done with it. But I don't know if I could. I don't think it has anything to do with the Holocaust or feminism, it's that I'm easily bored and I have trouble focusing on one thing for that long.

"That's the stupid answer. The more complicated answer is that [linear structure] is not what is exciting to me about writing novels. It's the ability in a novel to see the connections between things that you wouldn't otherwise see. For example, in real life you don't have the opportunity to look back on your life and your family's history and see what led you to where you are now. We can guess. It's the way you are doing this interview. What kind of kid were you? Did people every say something to you as a child that they say to you as an adult? You can speculate on these things but you can't really know them.

"In fiction, you have this amazing opportunity to create a past that causes the present.

"This gets into the question of how we influence each other's lives. This is something you can not see in real life. You can't see what impact your life has on other people. In novels, you can see those ways, you can create this web of influence.

"I don't see how this has anything to do with the Holocaust.

"I guess you could say that there's a breakdown in certainty in the world...and that's reflected in writing. There's no authoritative narrative voice that can be relied upon to be the answer. But there was literature like that well before the Holocaust. In Yiddish literature, you had this post-Holocaust type writing before the Holocaust. I remember reading this poem in Yiddish called 'The Wolf' by H. Leyvik. It begins with a description of a town that's been destroyed told from the perspective of the one survivor. Eventually he turns into a werewolf. It reads like a Holocaust poem but it was written in 1920 after the Petliura Pogroms where 100,000 murdered."

Luke: "What did you think of Wendy Shalit's [January 30, 2005] article in The New York Times Book Review about people misrepresenting Orthodox Judaism?"

Dara: "It wasn't really about literature. I remember thinking it was dumb.

"Ehh, 'dumb' sound pejorative. I don't mean it pejoratively."

I laugh. "You don't mean 'dumb' pejoratively."

Dara: "I would take it back but since you're taping, what can I do?

"Fiction writers like to hide behind this idea of art for art's sake when it is convenient for them. There are writers who get a thrill out of pejoratively presenting religious Jews or women or other groups.

"There are a lot of books that positively present religious Jews and what bothers me is that they treat is as anthropology. I was a judge for a short story contest and there were so many stories that took place in religious communities that were always explaining everything to you. She was covering her hair because of her modesty. When I'm reading Salman Rushdie, he doesn't feel the need to explain to me in three paragraphs why this character is covering her hair. Obviously there are cultural things that go over my head when I'm reading Salman Rushdie but I prefer to miss them than wait for the subtitles.

"As a fiction writer, you need to invite a reader into a world. When people write about a culture that is alien to their readers, they feel a need to present this culture and that can be done positively or negatively. What makes it effective is when it's presented to you in a way that you don't feel like you are in a zoo.

"I think we're past the old idea, 'Is this good for the Jews?'"

Luke: "Would you agree with Wendy that authors Tova Mirvis, Nathan Englander and Jonathan Rosen just don't get Orthodox Judaism?"

Dara: "I don't think I've read their work carefully enough to answer that question. What does it mean to get Orthodox Judaism?"

Luke: "To love it."

Dara: "To know it is to love it?"

Luke: "I guess."

Dara: "That's presumptuous?"

Luke: "Maybe."

Dara: "I feel that I know a fair amount about Orthodox Judaism and I don't feel obligated to love it. I don't feel obligated to love my own form of Judaism, whatever you want to call it. There are things I dislike about Judaism, mainly things I dislike about myself."

Luke: "What do you hate about Judaism?"

Dara: "The pedanticness. It's a problem in my personality and in Judaism. This obsessive need to go over every single word and assume that every single word is infused with this deep meaning. There's this OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) quality to it. There's so much of Judaism that you feel could've been made up by an OCD person or a little kid with OCD tendencies. 'This week I'm not going to eat bread.' 'This week I'm only eating outside.' 'Today I'm not turning on lights.' 'I'll eat milk and I'll eat meat but I won't eat them together. I have to wait six hours in between.'

"This is definitely an annoying thing about me. I've been annoying since I was a child for that reason."

Luke: "How smart does one have to be to get your novels? Are you writing for an elite? Do you have to have a 140-plus IQ to understand your novels?"

Dara laughs. "I hope not."

Luke: "Would 120 do? Would room temperature [IQ] do?"

Dara: "That would really ruin my publishing future. No, I don't think so."

Luke: "You think an average Jew can read and understand your work?"

Dara: "I think an average anybody can read and understand my work."

Luke: "Aren't they really difficult and intricate and really demanding?"

Dara: "They are definitely intricate and complex but I think they're presented in an acceptable way. All these [subjects] are made accessible to the general reader. I don't think you need to be Jewish to understand my books."

Luke: "You think the average person can navigate all these jumps in time and references to various literatures?"

Dara: "I think the average person can navigate the internet which has a lot of jumps in time.

"The purpose of writing is communication. I'd feel like a huge failure if I felt that people couldn't read my book and it was inaccessible."

Luke: "That last jump in The World To Come was a different way to go."

Dara: "People react strongly. They either really like it or really hate it.

"In serious literary fiction, you are not allowed to do stuff like that. You are not allowed to be earnest in serious fiction. You always have to be ironic. If you say something earnest, it is considered unsophisticated.

"In Yiddish literature, there's a lot of earnestness. They don't put emotions in quotation marks. They say what they mean. They're not afraid to throw in all kinds of parables. In our culture, they seem corny."

Luke: "Why couldn't the book end with the two main characters, Ben and Erica. Then they entered the world to come. What a downer."

Dara: "This is an ambiguous ending. You can either read it as they both died or they both survived.

"I just did an interview with some other blog and the person said, 'I got to the end of your book and I felt like somebody had just given me a million dollars. I was so happy about the ending. The characters all got together.'"

Luke: "What was he smoking?"

Dara: "But it's true.

"When it says he enters the world to come, does this mean they're dead?"

Luke: "Yes."

Dara: "But when you get to the final chapter, it says that this world to come is only a forgery, only a copy of the real world to come."

Luke: "So they got married?"

Dara: "It could be either way."

Luke: "Why not just be one way?"

Dara laughs. "If it had just been one way, you wouldn't ask the question."

Luke: "What do we get out of asking the question? In one way, we can get emotional fulfillment."

Dara: "It shows you what kind of reader you are.

"In the beginning of the book, there's the conversation between Chagall and Der Nister about the story called 'The Haunted Tailor.' At the end of the story, Shalom Aleichem says, 'Don't make you tell you the ending of the story. It should've ended happily. It ended sadly. Because I'm not the depressive type, I don't feel like getting involved.'

"Der Nister says, 'We should perform that one in the theatre.' Chagall says, 'But it doesn't have an ending.' People like endings. They like redemption. Der Nister says that's not realistic. There are no real endings in real life.

"There are two kinds of readers -- the Chagall reader who wants the redemptive ending, and there's the Der Nister reader who appreciates the open-ended possibility.

"What do you get out of asking the question? What do you want out of a book? What is the purpose of a story?"

Luke: "I want it to warm my heart. It's a novel. If I am reading it for pleasure, I want to go on an emotional journey."

Dara: "Do you want to control that emotional journey? Do you want to feel secure that it is going to take you to a destination you want to be in?"

Luke: "Yeah, I like a happy ending."

Dara: "Is there such a thing as a happy ending in life? No. If two people get married in a book, that's the happy ending. In real life, a wedding is followed by a marriage, which might be good or bad.

"There are no happy endings in life. There are only happy beginnings."

Luke: "The purpose of reading a novel, unless you're an academic, is pleasure."

Dara: "But there are more pleasurable things than reading a 400-page book."

Luke: "Really?

"You want to experience life keenly and deeply in the concentrated form of a novel. You want to go on a journey and grow and experience things you don't get to experience in your life, like happiness."

Dara: "This has the potential to be a happy ending. It doesn't end with a death. It ends with a birth."

Luke: "If that's a happy ending..."

Dara: "Why not? You don't think so?"

Luke: "No. I did not experience it that way."

Dara: "It's an open-ended ending. It's a Jewish pattern. If you think about the Tanakh or the Torah (Hebrew Bible), it doesn't really end. The Gemara [Talmud] doesn't have an ending even though it is called the Gemara (completion).

"It's interesting that we feel like we need these endings in literature."

Luke: "Isn't the traditional three-act narrative structure built into our very being? That we demand from our stories a beginning, middle and end? Rising conflict, release of tension, followed by realization."

Dara: "This book has that."

Luke: "Do you think that traditional narrative structure is built into..."

Dara: "It's been destroyed after the Holocaust. No, I'm kidding.

"My book definitely has a beginning, middle and end. When you get to the end, it transfers the story into your mind. You as a reader become a participant in the story. Your impression of what happens at the end becomes part of the book.

"Perhaps there is some relevancy to all your questions about my childhood, perhaps creativity is collaborative, it includes the reader."

Luke: "You've redeemed my nosy questions. We've got a beginning, middle and end now to the interview. Rising conflict, tension release, realization."

Dara: "We've experienced it all.

"You don't think my book has a happy ending?"

Luke: "No."

Dara: "With the final chapter?"

Luke: "No. It drove me nuts. I loved the love story between Ben and Erica the curator. I wanted more of it."

Dara: "Everyone likes different things."

Luke: "Some people like the gloomy Russian parts?"

Dara: "Ohmigod, there are people who say the Russian scenes steal the show. Der Nister is the best character in the book and it really should've been a book about him."

Actor John Goodman Visits Porn Star Karaoke

John had a few drinks, sang a few songs, and while he was leaving at 10:40 p.m. and complained that people were rude, that there weren't any porn stars, and that "there were no pharmaceuticals."

Early in the night, I walked up to him and told him that a friend just told me today that I was like his character Donny in The Big Lebowski. He was a few sheets to the wind and didn't give a damn.

Dan G writes:

"Well, considering he played Walter (In a Best Supporting Actor-worthy performance, I should add Academy snobs!) in the The Big Lebowski, and Donny was played by Steve Buscemi, I can kinda see why he didn't give a damn.

"Of course, this opens up a whole new debate about what Luke's friend was trying to imply...was he comparing him to the irritating, no-account little pussy so often dismissed with a terse 'Shut the ---- up Donny!', or to the 'Nam-obsessed, abrasive converted Jew Walter, who is thoroughly pussywhipped by his ex? The mind boggles. Jon Turturro stole that movie anyhow."

Michelle sings a song I've never heard before but I love it -- Kelly Clarkson's "Because of You."

I've become a big fan of American Idol's Kelly Clarkson. I love her song "Since U Been Gone":

But since you been gone
I can breathe for the first time
I'm so movin' on, yeah, yeah
Thanks to you, now I get,
I get what I want

Since you been gone
You had your chance, you blew it
Out of sight, out of mind
Shut your mouth, I just can't take it

I run into Eve at 10 p.m. and feel happy. I take her outside for a heart-to-heart.

"How come you spell and punctuate correctly?" I ask.

"English and literature were my favorite classes," she says. "I had a hard time staying awake in math and science."

"Me too."

"The only time I liked science was when we got to light things on fire."

My friend Tara says she was invited to appear on black rapper Flavor Flav's VH1 show. She was not honored. She says Flava is a drug addict without enough class to hide his problems.

"He's a crackhead," she says. "I can't stand that. If you are going to be a druggie, be classy. A few swipes of the nose are OK, but don't be all cracking out."

"I feel you," I reply.

Eve says she was also asked to appear on the show. She auditioned because VH1 was right next to the Santa Monica DMV. They pay only $150 a day. 

"They give you stacks of paperwork," Eve remembers. "Have you ever been arrested? Have you ever been in a fight? All this drama. I write in big bold letters, 'No.'"

Tara says she's never been arrested either.

Eve: "I had to make an audition tape about why Flavor should go out with me and why he should accept me on his show. 'Oh, because he has such good fashion sense with the clock and the horn hat. Oh, and I'm really good at stroking his ego.'"

Quincy says U2 is the closest I've gotten to rap music.

Tara yells at Ryan for allowing me to take photos of him smoking pot. "It made you look like a drug addict. It made you look unstable. Say something Ryan."

Ryan's silenced and overwhelmed by her aggressiveness.

Then he says: "I thought we were friends."

They hug it out.

Tara says some guy from London wants to hook up with her when he visits Los Angeles.

"I am not a toy," she says. "Last summer yes, when I lost weight and looked beautiful and wore size nine. I would be a size nine now if I wasn't drinking so much."

Luke: "Why are you drinking so much?"

Tara: "Anxiety, I guess."

Luke: "Do you think that's a healthy way to deal?"

Tara: "No. I've had about four bottles of Chardonay over the past week. I've been eating a lot less. Right now I'm really bloated and wearing my size twelve jeans. But I don't care."

Eve likes to drink, but not heavily, not usually. She recently switched to lite beer.

John Good man walks out.

Tara screams: "Is that John Goodman?"

She runs up to him with Eve and gushes that he shouldn't leave.

"The people are rude," John explains, his breath reeking of alcohol, "it's crowded, there are no porn stars and no pharmaceuticals."

Tara says he should just get dinner and then come back. The babes will be here after 11 p.m. She takes his picture.

She tries to give him a pen with her website address on it. "This is my website. You should check it out. You can read the news and you can see where the babes are going to be."

He's not interested so she gives it to his minder.

Tara says later: "He has a drug problem. It's well documented. He can't get insured on movie sets because of his health problems.

"He's drunk. It's not even 11 p.m. And it's Tuesday.

"My first exposure to him was in the Campbell Soup commercials where he was dressed like a lumberjack and seemed like a nice guy. Now he's an old drunk looking for pharmaceuticals."

11 p.m. Kurt walks out with his date Kitten. The waitress runs out and gives him his wallet.

Brad Artson, Bob Wexler, Mark Bookman And The Battle For The Future Of The University Of Judaism

Dr. Wexler is the U.J.'s president but Artson and Bookman battle to succeed him.

Rabbi Artson (the runner-up to David Wolpe in the Temple Sinai sweepstakes nine years ago) gets most of the limelight. You can download his picture here. He's the only person at UJ (and the only rabbi) of which I am aware who offers his own picture as a download. I wonder if it is a popular screensaver?

Brad's first love was politics. According to his official biography: "A cum laude graduate of Harvard University, Rabbi Artson was an intern for United States Senator Alan Cranston and for United States Representative John Burton. For the two years following graduation from college, he worked as a Legislative Aide to Willie Brown, the Speaker of the California State Assembly. He was ordained with honors at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1988."

Brad was a typical left-wing political activist but when his mentor John Burton resigned under threat of revelations about drugs and other improprieties (Cranston was also reprimanded for ethical shortcomings), Artson considered running for Congress, explored the possibility, realized it would not fly, and shifted his focus to rabbinics (though he's remained committed to the Democratic party and has many friends in such powerful places).

With one of the sharpest minds in the Conservative movement, Rabbi Artson (I've seen him around the Pico-Robertson neighborhood wearing blue jeans and his tzitzit out) has a love for public service (his detractors would call it a lust for power). An eloquent speaker and writer, he carries himself in a regal manner. His students call him "Rabbi Artson." They have such feelings as respect and fear towards him.

Rabbi Artson believes his Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies is in fierce competition with the Jewish Theological Seminary. But there is no competition. The quality of the faculty and students are superior at JTS and the New York institution has more money. Academic demands at UJ are below those of JTS.

I suspect that most Ziegler students were rejected by JTS or realized on their own that they could not make it there.

Rabbi Artson believes the focus of the University of Judaism should be Judaism (and particularly the training of rabbis). He opposed the opening of the college of liberal arts. He wants to replace Wexler and implement his own vision. He opposes the secular graduate programs. He wants to use that money to perpetuate Conservative Judaism.

"It's hard to imagine that when the prophets called on Israel to rededicate themselves to God," Rabbi Mordecai Finley (a frequent UJ teacher) has often said, "they meant folk dancing."

Dr. Robert Wexler and his family became Modern Orthodox a few years ago. Consequently, he shifted the UJ away from the Conservative movement to a more independent place (this cost the UJ Conservative funding and makes its financial task more difficult).

As a Modern Orthodox Jew, Dr. Wexler no longer believed in many of the tenets of Conservative Judaism. This alienated him from many of the leaders of the Conservative movement.

Brad's argument is that Bob should not lead the university anymore because UJ was born as a Conservative school. It's nice that Bob is Modern Orthodox, says Brad, but he should do that on his own and not drag the the school with him.

Many key people at the UJ (and Danny Gordis when he ran Ziegler and lived in Los Angeles) belong to Orthodox shuls and spend more time there than in Conservative synagogues. This creates bad feelings on the part of those primarily committed to the Conservative movement.

Brad's main enemy at UJ is not Bob Wexler, who supports Brad and the way he runs Ziegler. Brad's main enemy is UJ's number two administrator, Mark Bookman, who would also love to be UJ president. Mark and Brad have had many screaming fights.

Bookman supports the secular programs at UJ.

Brad has big advantages over Mark in becoming UJ president -- Brad is a rabbi, has published widely, is a dynamic speaker and thinker and is well-respected, even by people who dislike the UJ.

Brad's name was floated as the new leader of the JTS but that was never going to happen.

Brad completely runs Ziegler. Nobody can do anything without his approval, including the questions you can ask a candidate for the school.

If a majority of the admissions committee opposes admitting a prospective student to Ziegler, Rabbi Artson reserves the right to veto such opposition and admit the student on a probationary scheme.

Rabbinic students not cut out for receiving ordination often receive instead a masters degree in Rabbinics.

Rabbi Artson pays lip service to Israel, but I don't believe he's a Zionist (Artson is almost a pacifist, and such an approach could never sustain a Jewish state). Though he requires Ziegler students to spend one year in Israel, when the second Intifada began in the fall of 2001, Brad gave exemptions to those who sought one. He said he was concerned for their safety.

Many students and professors at UJ are not Zionists.

Brad does not encourage his students to move to Israel. He's not concerned that two of his faculty members (Mimi Feigelson, Aryeh Cohen) do not stand for the Israeli national anthem.

Rabbi Artson is a great politician. He has smooth people skills. He is a moderately successfull fundraiser. He has the support of his faculty and his students because he fights for the same things they believe in. Brad's stabilized the school. He's brought in new faculty. He's established more prestige for Ziegler vis-a-vis the UJ.

One day Rabbi Artson may convince the UJ board that he is better suited to running the place. Dr. Wexler is not skilled with finance and he does not have Artson's shmoozing skills.

Rabbi Artson and Rabbi Elliot Dorff are considered by the media two of the more gay-friendly leaders in Conservative Judaism. Rabbi Dorff has a daughter who is a lesbian and Rabbi Artson has an activist sister who's also an out-of-the-closet lesbian.

Rabbi Artson's second-in-command (Ziegler Associate Dean Rabbi Cheryl Peretz) is zealous in implementing his vision.

Brad's supporters include Elliot Dorff, and Lois Oppenheim. His detractors include Zofia Yalovsky, Dr. Ron Wolfson, and Gady Levy.

Happy Purim

Lainie Speiser writes from Penthouse magazine:

Will you be reading the Megilla todayt? Getting bombed? Gorging on Hamantashen? Will you dress Holly like Queen Esther, or better yet Vashti? Hamantashen are nasty, leave it to the jews to think of prune filling of all the fillings to choose from! Why do we always have to suffer?

And think of the power of the boobies. If Vashti had come out like her husband the king ordered, showed her tits like he asked, he wouldn’t have needed to look for a new queen/bride and Esther wouldn’t have single handedly saved the jews from Persian oppression.

I’m going to my sister’s house (she’s married to a southern goy but still far far more religious than I could ever be), my folks are already there, they took her little ones to temple (they’re half jew but apparently the right half), last night they broke fast with couscous in milk and French toast (that’s the Sephardic way). So tonight will be blitzes and all the traditional stuff.

I do have very fond memories of Purim as a child, it was the most joyous holiday that I remember because it was all about fun and rejoicing and costumes and candy. It’s the Jewish Halloween. I loved it.

I Celebrate Purim With Shaarey Zedek

I've been writing about the Valley Village shul and its longtime rabbi Aron Tendler for 17 months.

Not all the reaction has been positive. YouWillBurn writes Monday: "ALL LIES. YOUR SITE WILL COME DOWN OR I WILL HACK IT. JUST REMEMBER HELL IS VERY HOT YOU WILL GET PAID BACK IN THE NEXT WORLD WITH A LOT OF HELL. ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD WILL NOT SAVE YOU. (OR HONER) DO YOURSELF A FAVOR SHUT DOWN THE SITE. YOU WILL NEVER WIN. YOU HAVE NO PROOF. AND IF YOU DO BRING IT OUT. AND DON'T GIVE ME TROUBLED GIRL TO TESTIFY. PLEASE EVEN JACKSON WOULD DO THAT. BRING SOME PHOTOS VIDEOS, SOMETHING CONCRETE. G-D WILL PAY YOU BACK WITH A LOT OF GEHENIOM. SAVE YOUESELF FORM EMBARSMENT NOW WHILE YOU ARE AHEAD."

About 70% of the reaction I've received has been on that level.

I was warned to expect a hostile reaction if I showed my face. I was told that many people wanted a piece of me, though this mood seemed to change this past week and some people, I was told, regarded my work on Aron Tendler as heroic.

I dressed in my usual black undertaker suit and rust-colored sweater that was once black. I wanted to take an extra clonazepam but figured that was wrong to do before driving.

I parked 300 yards from the shul at 6:15 p.m. I had 30 minutes to fill before the evening prayers (Maariv). The megilla (scroll) of Esther would be read at 7 p.m. It is a commandment to hear every word.

I shook from cold and nerves. Grasping Gateway to Happiness by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, I walked up and down Chandler Blvd in front of the shul for 20 minutes until I saw a stream of people headed inside. I joined them.

There were three security guards out front. I figured that they might have pictures of me (as they did at the Stephen S. Wise guard station).

I looked at them as I walked past and blew on my cold hands. They paid me no mind.

I had these fears (and a few fantasies):

* That someone would tap me on the shoulder and say, "It would be better for you if you left."

* That I refused and got thrown out by a collection of burly Jews.

* That people would get in my face and yell at me.

* That I would form lifelong friendships.

* That I'd meet my future wife.

I walked the corridor until I found an entrance to the men's section. I found a seat in the back next to a man about 30.

Remembering the old adage that if you walk into a church, they welcome you warmly while if you walk into a shul, someone will yell at you for sitting in his seat, I ask the young man if anyone sits in this particular seat. He says no.

Though I don't exchange another word with the man, his presence comforts me.

I sit down and read Rabbi Pliskin's prescriptions for overcoming sadness.

An old man sat next to me and asked if they were going to read the book of Esther tonight. Yes.

I daven (pray) Maariv with the 200 people present. The room capacity is about 500. About a quarter of the adults are in costume and about 95% of the kids. The crowd is 80% modern (as opposed to black-hat right-wing). Most of the right-wingers daven next door at Emek Hebrew Academy and thus can avoid paying shul dues (about $1,000 a year).

A white-haired heavy-set man with a sonorous voice read the megilla. Every time Haman's name is mentioned, the crowd erupted in boos, but quickly quieted down so the reading could resume. A few people yelled out support for their favorite sports teams. We were done in 35 minutes.

I had followed along in the Hebrew for a page, then read the entire megilla in English in 10 minutes and tackled Rabbi Pliskin on anger.

I felt constricted and aching in my pew. I couldn't wait to stand and move.

Many of Aron's supporters did not come to the shul. They had their own meeting and their own megilla reading. Many are ex-board members of SZ. They have not seen the evidence the SZ board and the RCC and the OU have seen. They think Aron's been shafted by internet rumors. They support the rabbi do-or-die.

I followed the crowd downstairs to the Purim carnival, a major fundraiser for the shul. I was too cheap to spend any money. I looked up and down for a drinking fountain and finally found a small one tucked next to the taps where you wash your hands.

I stood against the wall and looked around and read Rabbi Pliskin.

"You need to move around the room," I think to myself. "You look like a sniper."

I saw few single women in their twenties and thirties.

I did not see Aron Tendler all night.

As I walked outside to leave at 8:30 p.m., a beautiful married woman in her thirties holding a baby asked me if I needed any help. I obviously looked lost. She was the first stranger to say hello to me.

Knowing that my problems were beyond anything she could help me with in a minute, I said I was fine. I was just visiting. I thanked her and left.

I'm a lousy reporter. I'm as thick as a brick. I detected nothing during my time at Shaarey Zedek. I detected no dissension, no anxiety and no gossip. Instead, the shul reminded me of Young Israel of Century City. The pews were constructed the same. The manners were the same. The people were the same (filled with self-contained concerns).

It was just the type of shul I'd like to join if I lived in the neighborhood. It was bursting with kids. (The average age of adults was about 40.) It should live and be well.

Whatever his flaws, Rav Aron Tendler has helped mold something beautiful.

I get home. A friend calls to inquire about my adventures. "Did you talk to anyone?" he asked.

"No."

"You do have Asperger's."

"I didn't want to go around approaching people," I responded.

"I thought you were writing this book about rabbis who prey and you wanted to understand the relationship of people to their rabbi in an Orthodox shul."

I do want to know those things. It just didn't feel like the time and place to approach people.

The relationship between a pulpit rabbi and his congregation is different in each shul. People who are Orthodox from birth (FFB - Frum From Birth) tend to treat their rabbis more cavalierly. They're already learned in Judaism. They don't need a rabbi as badly as someone new to the religion, so they can go their own way and pick and choose between rabbis and act as their own rabbi.

Newcomers to Judaism burn with fervor even if they can't recite kiddish (blessing over wine). They're strict. They put the rabbi on a pedastal. They may frequently consult with him and ask his advice. They view the rabbi as Hasidim view their rabbi -- as their direction connection to God.

FFBs look at a rabbi who has behaved improperly and they are able to say, 'Cut him loose. We'll get another one.' BTs (baalei teshuvot) may have a closer connection to their rabbi and are more defensive of him because they've invested so much in him.

Shaarey Zedek is largely BT and such firebrands rise to positions of leadership (even if they are not skilled in elementary Jewish rituals).

There's a lack of appropriate screening for sexual predators in the Orthodox rabbinate. It's just been assumed that anyone who wants to become an Orthodox rabbi is not a sexual predator, but it turns out (in my view) that as many Orthodox rabbis are sexual predators as secular plumbers.

If a kid is caught eating traif (non-kosher food) or breaking the Sabbath or he can't learn a page of Talmud, he'll be screened out from becoming an Orthodox rabbi. But with this sexual problem, there's no programmatic screening out.

Aron Tendler probably felt a lot of pressure to become a rabbi. Either that or a lawyer and Aron is not the smartest guy and he would not have made a great lawyer. He was raised to be a rabbi. That's all he knows.

The Valley Village shul is to the religious right of the Modern Orthodox shuls in Pico/Robertson where girls having a bat mitzva are allowed to address the congregation. SZ seems to be moving more to the right each year.

Shaarey Zedek was a friendly place ten years ago. Aron was in his prime. He would shake hands with everyone. The knock on Rabbi Sugarman was that he did not have people skills. He'd walk by people and not say hi because he was in his own world. Rav Aron would always go out and say hi until the last few years when he became inaccessible.

If, walking to shul, you say "Gut Shabbos" to fellow frum Jews in LA, about a third of them won't answer back.

Chaim Amalek writes:

Had the Jews been more welcoming, the great victories of Christianity and Islam in winning converts would have been Judaism's, and half the world today would be Jewish. But the Rabbinate feared a loss of power, so turned Judaism into a numerically minor cult. You can see it in your life. You go to church and you find yourself welcomed and given love. You go to temple, and you want to eat pig.

Early on, the rabbinate settled upon a course of action that ran counter to the commandment to be a light unto other nations. To be a rabbinical Jew is to invite the wrath of God. God hates torah jews. That's why the Holocaust happened. Too many Jews studying the Talmud instead of being holy.

These people, who assert that the words of the rabbinate were (through the mechanism of the so-called "oral" law) in fact the words of God, are an abomination before the Lord. That's why God much prefers the prayers of Christians and Muslims to the prayers of Talmud Jews.

Also, the reason so many Jewish men are bald is that so many Jewish women shave off their hair and replace it with sexy wigs composed of the hair of hot Hindu women.

Is Dolly still throwing a birthday party for you? She was going to fly me out there, let me stay at her place, and hook me up with hot fertile young shiksas. But then you had to go and queer it all by getting into a pointless discussion of her culinary skills.

>It's off.

Always thinking about yourself. Maybe they will throw you a surprise party at Shaarey Tzedek.

A bush in the hand is worth two in New York. Dolly still has that itch. You are her Mandingo Warrior. Her Hebrew Hammer.

Ordinarily, when a woman is not interested in me, not only does she not write or call, she does not return my emails or calls.

Fortunately, there are still lots more women in the phone book I can call.

 From Jewish Survivors:

After a long and rocky engagement Polin - Ford wedding will be taking place this evening.

Luke Ford secretly flew into Baltimore earlier today. The couple will marry tonight at around 8:00 pm in the home of Hillel Tendler.

The ketubah demands that Luke stop hanging around with his friends in the porn industry, instead he will be attending classes at Ner Israel Rabbinical College. He should receive his Semikhah (rabbinic ordination) with in the next few years.

Vicki has agreed that she will turn over The Awareness Center to Rabbi Saul Berman, while she sets up house and prepares to be a housewife. The couple plan on residing in a small apartment on Yeshiva Lane.

Sheva brachos will be hosted by Aron and Mordecai Tendler, Matis Weinberg, Yaakov Menken, Eliezer Eisgrau, Ephraim Bryks, Hershy Worch and Baruch Lanner. Marc Gafni will be unable to attend the ceremonies due to a prior engagement.

The newlyweds wants to wishes everyone a Happy Purim!

Joshua D. Bloom writes 3/4/06 on Amazon.com:

I honestly was really looking forward to reading Luke Ford's book. A few months ago I stumbled upon his website and found an unusual cross between writing about porn and kink and writing about Jews; mostly about Jews and porn and Jews and kink. From the website I realized I wasn't going to always agree with Luke, but as someone who takes these subjects seriously and the interplay between the two, I was very interested in his personal story.

The beginning of XXX-Communicated: A Rebel Without A Shul starts off with Luke tell about his childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and his departure from his family's Seventh Day Adventist (and then own church) devoutness to his conversion to Orthodox Judaism. Luke comes across as completely unlikable. He seems determined to make everyone hate him, but then doesn't understand why everyone does hate him. Perhaps he is looking for pity, but he comes across as the most unsympathetic character I have ever come across. He is attention seeking, misogynistic, conservative valued, hypocritical, deceitful, and prone to inappropriate behavior. It becomes apparent why no one seems to want him after reading the book: not his one-time friends, not women, not the pornography industry, not synagogues.

I did honestly buy the book excited about the notion of a Jewish rebel who challenged the mainstream and tried to be a good Jew while miring in the banality of porn and kink. I have truly never been more disappointed with a book than this. I was left not liking Luke Ford, not feeling sorry or pity for him, but rather actually despising him and thinking that he was a pathetic attention driven individual. Worst off, he comes across as a lousy reporter and an incredibly bad writer. His book is hard to follow. The array of people who hate him or who are his enemies blur after a while and they become indistinguishable.

The writing degenerates as the reader gets further in. There is no redemption moment at the end of the book. Luke comes across as no better a person and no better of a Jew than he did a decade earlier in the book.

I believe that this is probably the worst book I have ever read. My recommendation would be to avoid this book. Do not buy it; do not read it.

L.A. Times' Manilow misses Mathis moment

The writer describes Manilow's appearance when first arriving on the charts in 1974 as "lanky and almost girlish with his doe eyes and blond tresses."

Then a real tease: Manilow praises Liberace and the writer posits: "Manilow questioning the cultural heft of Liberace might invite thoughts of how much in common they share."

The writer then throws in another hint with a reference to outed American Idol star Clay Aiken: ”How far off could Clay Aiken be from Manilow's musical core?”

Then we get into the backstory of little Barry Pincus. And here, the article goes haywire, jumping from his youth to ad jingle career to his first solo album-- skipping his most creative period, and the time when music aficionados first heard of him—his long and historic stint as Bette Midler’s musical director, arranger, producer-- and onstage pianist, the man who led the band when Bette played gay joints like New York City’s now infamous Continental Baths.

No mention of the Baths. No mention of Bette (even though Manilow recently troubled the charts when he produced her 2003 Rosemary Clooney and 2005 Peggy Lee tribute albums).

Yoav Botach Sued For Palimony

Troy Anderson writes 2/13/06 for the LA Daily News:

Makeup artist to the stars Judith Boteach thought she had found true love when it took four people to carry all of the flowers and jewelry lavished on her the day multimillionaire Yoav Botach proposed marriage.

Boteach said she learned a month after their Orthodox Jewish wedding ceremony that her groom hadn't obtained a California marriage license, but she believed in their future together.

"I loved him," said Boteach. "I trusted him and he kept telling me (the wedding license) wasn't necessary."

But their relationship ended unhappily, with Boteach kicked out of the couple's Beverlywood home in her nightgown. And she is now embroiled in a court battle for half of Botach's fortune - millions of dollars she claims he promised her should the couple ever split.

"This is the largest palimony case in American history," said Robert W. Hirsh, Boteach's attorney, who explained that his client cannot fight for alimony since she and Botach were never legally married.

According to court records, Botach co-owns 144 commercial and other properties in Los Angeles, as well as Botach Tactical, a nationwide distributor of police and military equipment. But Boteach is seeking access to financial documents to determine the defendant's assets. "We would not be surprised if his net worth is $700 million," Hirsh said.

Sherman also says that it was made clear to Boteach that the couple's 1997 ceremony did not constitute a legal marriage because they did not obtain blood tests or a marriage license. "Judy had been married twice before and was well aware of the requirements of California law in that regard," Sherman wrote. "Prior to the wedding ceremony, Yoav had a private conversation with the rabbi ... and Judy.

"In that conversation, Yoav announced that he wanted to make it clear that their 'marriage' was not legal in California and that they were going to get 'married' in a religious ceremony only. Judy consented and the religious ceremony then took place.

"After the religious ceremony, Yoav and Judy resided together until approximately August 2002 when they separated."

Hirsh - a Beverly Hills attorney whose wife's family was helped by Boteach's family upon coming to the U.S. from Israel more than 25 years ago - said he filed the suit to help Boteach and other women.

While their families had long known each other, Boteach said it wasn't until the mid-1990s that she met her future husband when he began attending her synagogue. They hit it off and Botach proposed, Hirsh said, but when he asked her to sign a prenuptial agreement, she refused and instead traveled to Australia to visit her sister. The two eventually reconciled and Hirsh said Botach relented on his request for a prenuptial agreement. The two set a wedding date, and Hirsh said Botach informed his bride that he had taken care of all the arrangements. An Orthodox Jewish ceremony was held Dec. 25, 1997, Hirsh said.

"She showed up to get married, thinking everything was proper," Hirsh said. "Then a month later, the subject of a license came up and he told her, 'We don't need a license. We have an agreement and there is no license' - that she would get half if they ever separated."

Jewish Bigamy?

About a month ago, I walked into shul and saw a flier screaming about the following story:

A source writes me:

Rabbi Chagai Batzri, son of the head Dayan Judge in Rabbinc Court of Jerusalem, married a second wife. The problem is he never divorced his first wife, Luna. How did he do that? Easy, his father arranged a special permit to marry a second wife [about a month ago] given by a number of Sephardi rabbis. It was written by Rabbi Ben-Zaken of Beverly Hills. Rabbi's Batzri's new wife just joined the fold by converting to Judaism. His first wife Luna Batzri protested to no avail. They are still fighting in LA civil court over the division of their assets. Luna refused to go to Bet Din over the assets. She feared the rabbi's family connections will work against her chances for a fair trial. So, she went to the civil court. So, rabbi Ben-Zaken found her disrespectful and granted Rabbi Batzri a special permit.

Rabbi Batzri's story was aired on Israeli TV at length since then including interviewing his father. It was also written about at the daily newspaper HaAretz.

- How come Rabbi Batzri was permitted by the Rabbi's to marry a new wife without a Get?

- What about all the poor women remaining Agunot because the husbands refusal to grant them a Get (a Jewish divorce)?

- Isn't the Batzri case a clear of discrimination against women? When a husband refuses to grant a Get, the woman will never be married by any Rabbi. Reason: She is considered not single. But in case of a man...

- True! NOT ANY MAN! It helps to be a son of a Dayan. not just a Dayan... But the Head Dayan of the Rabbinical court of Jerusalem... Who has lots of friends... Who happen to be... Rabbi's! Suddenly and in a split second a solution was found how to free the rabbi. Free to get married again.

- Happy Ending? Not to his wife. Certainly not to the numerous Jewish women called AGUNOT, who are shackled for the rest of their lives to sadistic men that refuses to grant them a Get and blackmails in return for a Get.

- If you don't believe it - read Kolech.org. How many women are not as lucky as Rabbi Batzri?

The Bazri's case proves that: WHERE THERE IS A WILL - THERE IS A WAY..For men only! Shame on you Rabbis.

Robbye Bentley Volunteers To Rebuild New Orleans

"I'm using my frequent flier miles," she says. "I've already booked my trip for mid-April, and I'm going to stay a week. I think it will give me a great perspective of the real world, I can't wait to take my camera."

Trinity James Update

The ex-porn star joined up with the XXXChurch five months ago and blogs March 9:

My decision to leave Las Vegas and to leave the adult industry was a very hard on to make but at the same time it has came with its ups and downs.

I dont feel like I am being used or feel like I am dirty. I have gotten to see my little girls face every morning and every night wish is a blessing in itself. I have gotten to make a few normal friends and live a normal life for about 5 months now except the problem is for most of it I have been a wreck going day by day. Some mornings I wake up in a decent mood but by afternoon I am back to being depressed and some days I just wake up that way I have tried everything to change it but everytime I get through some of it more is piled up on top off me.

I have made some good accomplishments though I got through my CNA course and now I am taking a medical assisting course and I have already gotten a decent job.

I feel like I have let alot of people down it has been hinted to me that my husband wouldnt of married me knowing that he would of had all this responsibility (which i still dont understand) and also that I was the one that told him that I would take care of him that is why he stayed in Vegas.

Now from the outside people would think things are getting settled for us finally he has opened his business and I have a job at the end of this month well thats all great except for one thing we are totally different people now and no one is at fault but myself. I honestly feel like I should of never done this.

I knew I couldnt do it alone and i didnt think I was alone but that is what has happened. I am in a place [Indiana] where I dont feel comfortable and I am just fighting it all alone.

Somedays I wish that I would just have never gotten into the industry....one thing that I havent missed in awhile is the thought of going back I hadnt thought about it in a while which is a good thing but this morning when I woke up that was the first thing in my mind and there are many reasons for it.

I could take care of myself again and not have to count on anyone my husband could still be the only person other than my child to look forward to seeing my face....all i see anymore is disappointment and I know that is not good.

I need to feel like I am needed and I am not anymore.

I could leave my husband and go to a place where noone knows me and start all over..but then would i not only be unhappy i would have a broken heart to go along with it but to tell ya the truth that is the best solution I have came up with. If I am so wanted here why all the stress..why all the unhappiness I have so many why's and honestly no answers to them I have so many questions I wanna ask but no point in asking them and when I do ask I get the same ole answers and they really arent answers they are just answers to validate what is going on, maybe I am just crazy who knows.

XXXChurch Goes To Gay Expo

We have just been invited to attend the Gay Erotic Expo in New York coming this October. We have accepted (even got a 50% discount on our booth space) and now XXXchurch will be there.

JC's Girls Update

HeatherVeitch: I had the BEST day at church my Pastor called the whole church of 1700 to get up out of there seats and come down to the front to support me.
HeatherVeitch: he told them that he was drawing a line in the sand and that they were going to be for me or against me but he would not pastor a church where they were against me
Luke: Good Morning America?
HeatherVeitch: no it never happend but I have some big dogs in the water some unexpected ones I have to keep it secret. I want to make sure it really is going to happen HeatherVeitch: I started a lot of stuff in england you should read my blog later and see what is going on
HeatherVeitch: I also had my first experience with bad media... these guys kept trying to get me naked . The pics are at mbpicturesnews.com
HeatherVeitch: they were bad boys that acted like they didnt know who I was but they were really tring to get me doing something that they could put out bad about me
HeatherVeitch: so do you think I should go to porn kareokee one day? whould you go with me?
Luke: sure I would go with you
HeatherVeitch: that would be fun... do you sing?
Luke: no
HeatherVeitch: I cant sing at all . so we could not sing and not drink togather
HeatherVeitch: i looked and looked for any of my old low budget movies but I couldn't find them ....that was so great! because they are going to be so hard to find . People keep searching for them but there is so much out there it is just too hard

Shaarey Zedek Update

Rabbi Stulberger's (he's the principal of Valley Torah High School, the Valley's biggest Orthodox day school, and an expert on the sins of gossip, referred to in Hebrew as "lashon hara" aka evil speech) sermons Saturday at the Valley Village Orthodox shul were against gossip. Aron Tendler, a longtime rabbi of the shul, has just resigned after numerous accusations of sexual wrongdoing.

Valley Torah High School is significantly financed by slumlord Sam Menlo who was a major figure in creating the school. The Valley Torah building is dedicated to the Menlo family. There's a big placard.

Instead of giving a traditional sermon on this week's Torah portion, Rabbi Stulberger read for a few minutes from the work of the Chafetz Chaim against gossip.

A former president of the shul stood up at the downstairs minyan and said we have a right to know what went on with Aron.

Aron got up and said he'd be happy to talk privately with anyone who wants to know.

Rabbi Stulberger's speeches had no effect. Aron's indiscretions remain the topic of discussion at Shaarey Zedek.

Regarding the search for the new rabbi, Rabbi Stulberger told the congregants to leave it to the search committee (overwhelmingly right-wing).

Sam Menlo, of Los Angeles. "Case files bulge with the bureaucratic legacy of Sam Menlo's life as a landlord: code violations, thousands of them, at rental units beset with everything from vermin and mold to wretched plumbing. With a real-estate empire spanning Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange Counties, Menlo has a 30-year track record of skirmishes with city and state agencies, capped last fall with a sentence to live for a time in his own filthy Anaheim complex ... Some units were so moldy that mushrooms sprouted from the ceiling ... Menlo was no small-time landlord without the means to fix the place up. He was an extremely wealthy man -- and one continually in trouble with cities throughout the region ... Menlo, as owner and operator of the [Nursing homes], battled Los Angeles County and the state Department of Health services for eight years during the 1970s over more than 2,000 health code violations and 78 counts of alleged criminal neglect at his nursing homes. Investigators found patients lying in beds full of excrement and urine and one patient with bedsores infested by maggots ... ..... At synagogues and charities throughout the region, Menlo has an entirely different reputation: that of a Holocaust survivor of exceptional decency and philanthropy. In letters to the court in the Anaheim case asking for leniency, at least 10 rabbis or directors of of Southern California Jewish schools, synagogues or associations enumerated Menlo's generosity. 'He's a fine man. He's just a marvelous person," said Rabbi Yonason Denebeim of the Chabad of Palm Springs, where Menlo has donated thousands of dollars over the last 15 years. "I wish there were more folks like him." [Menlo is worth $154 million] [YOSHINO, Y., 12-30-01]

Toni Morrison - The Most Overrated Writer In America Today

That she got a Nobel Prize in literature shows how pointless such awards are. Her work is banal. I've read her novels Beloved and Love.

A friend responds:

Man, you are just going to slam every writer I've ever loved.

In Sula (I think that's the book), a character called Sixpack is explaining his love for a woman: "She gather me, man. She gather my pieces and give them back to me in the right order. Don't you know it's a wonderful thing when you've got a woman who's a friend of your mind."

I committed it to memory a thousand years ago. How can you not love those lines?

How Did He Get His Shiksa To Do That?

I went to shul the other day and my friend had his shiksa there. How did he get her to do that? I haven't been able (for about eight years) to get any shiksa I've dated into shul. I can get them to do a lot of other things but not that and that's the one that counts the most.

Friday Night Live sported not just one but two ululating beauties on the bima.

Eli Attie, writer for the TV show The West Wing, spoke. He wore blue jeans and a yarmulke perched precariously on his head. It looked like it had been a long time since he'd been in a shul and he didn't seem particularly comfortable. He turned out to be a terrific speaker and a gracious person.

'I shall care not a whit for whatever ill befalls Luke Ford ever again'

Allan writes Cathy: "Not after seeing those photos. Any woe or bad luck is more than made up for by the wanton flesh contained in those pics. All I can add is that when he does get out of the house, he knows where to go."

Anonymous writes: "Seeing that beautiful woman lolling around in Luke Ford's graduate-student literary debris pile brought back many wonderful memories from my studious youth, but, to quote Bill Paxton's all-time classic movie line, "Game over, man!"

I exchanged email with Jewish Press Editor Jason Maoz, who replies to me:

[Joseph] Sobran and I actually exchanged several e-mails about three years ago, and he came across as funny, sensible, and downright nice. It's almost like a different person writes his columns. The human mind is a wonderment. I actually caught your stuff on Sobran a few days ago because I'd been too busy to read your Jeffrey Hart interview when it first appeared.

Not enough has been written about what I would describe as William Buckley's seemingly ambivalent attitude toward Jews. Yes, he basically read the Birchers out of mainstream conservatism in the 60's, but he did it almost reluctantly and after a great deal of prodding by the ADL. (Besides, the Birch Society was never an anti-Semitic or anti-Israel organization per se, although it did draw its share of anti-Semitic members. But Buckley was more concerned about the Birchers' overall kooky, paranoid image and how that image affected the media's portrayal of all conservatives.)

His reaction to Sobran was also frustratingly slow and muted, as was his response to Pat Buchanan. Even Buckley's celebrated statement in 1991 about Buchanan's anti-Semitism (which originated as a special issue of NR and evolved into a slim book a few months later) was not nearly the unambiguous condemnation some made it out to be. In fact, the following year NR endorsed(!) Pat Buchanan in the Republican primaries over Bush the First -- and Buckley was still very much running the show at the time. Buckley's statements on Israel over the decades have been inconsistent at best, and it's notable that NR has taken a much more staunchly pro-Israel line in the years since Buckley relinquished his day-to-day control.

Holly Randall

Smiling Arab writes:

Of course Holly is a facilitator of evil (everytime I see that word I think of overenthusiastic corporate luncheons on the theme of "team building"). So am I. People hire me to hurt each other, and it's frankly beyond my abilities to know with absolute certainty whether it's done righteously or if their "defense" is simply a way to rationalize their own heartless cruelty. Yet every morning, prior to destroying people, I pull on hundreds of dollars worth of clothing that contains the malnourished blood of tiny Malaysian children, and this probably bothers me a scintilla more than the person whose life, career, finances and/or reputation I'm about to ruin.

Holly, who I have difficulty believing would consciously bring harm to any living creature, sees things a different way. Personally it's a life I couldn't imagine, and I'm sure she feels sickened by how I just described mine. But upbringing, mores and so on really aren't at issue. Mother Theresa, the media embodiment of saintliness, left thousands to suffer in agony by beseeching them to pray rather than seek medical treatment which was available to them--and funded her little beacon of light in Calcutta with money from the Duvalier family. Show me a human saint and I'll show you a murderer. Looking at the world the other way is pleasant enough to do on December 25th and a few other days a year but you're sucking on a narcotic lolly if you do so the rest of the time.

Kaiser Sauze replies to Holly:

Holly, you do understand that the majority of people who are responding here, especially in your defense do so from an entirely different perspective than yours. I know that on the surface their words are a comfort to you, but really lets put some perspective on this. They consume. You create. It is easy to flippantly support something that exists only conceptually. Something that is viewed on film or computer screen displayed only at it's most marketable.

There is no attempt at shock value here, but they do not see the puss and lesions, cannot feel the bitterness and worthlessness that many of the "performers" express once they cut away from/are cast aside by the industry.

I never once used the term "evil". You are using that as the construct of your argument. I am not judging you. Or at least I do not in any way feel superior. I just see a simple truth - you make money from filming people do things that you would never do, let alone do for dissemination to the masses. You can dress this fact up in any way that you want. You (or those who have spoken for you) can say there is no gun to their heads and other overly dramatic, yet remarkably analogous statements. A gun made of metal and plastic, no, but a gun none the less (read food/shelter/money for their kids/drugs so that the itching in their brain goes away.) Or do you actually believe, beyond what people say, in the moment and out of necessity that this is what they would choose to do with their lives? That they would say the same 10 years later?

In response to your questions:

I am interested in moral dilemmas's, the human condition etc. Porn to me is a petri dish of such study. At this point I really only enjoy it as such.

I was raised in a liberal, non denominational environment. In short, this is not about god/your soul/my soul. I am not even entirely sure any of those things exist.

Now a question for you. If you ever do have a child, especially a daughter. Would you encourage her to become a performer? I am very interested in your answer.

Luke says: Of course Holly would never want her child to perform in porn. Ninety nine percent of pornographers do not want their children performing in porn (or anyone they care about performing in porn).

Max writes:

I just wanted to take 5 minutes to tell you how much I appreciate your blog. I also bought some Hustler in one of those bonus packs that had an article you wrote some time back recalling the time your mother and taylor met. It was funny and unflinchingly honest. There is so much dishonesty and it seems to be growing. I did a tour in afghanistan. My squad went out with the press. I had to lie my ass off which really bothered me. I also felt like it was some kabuki theater. The press knew we were lying, we knew they knew we were lying and we understood that no matter what we said it would be distorted to the reporters slant which is omission of the complete truth, another lie.

I also like the jewish perspective. In terms of spirituality, the closest thing to what I believe is in the tanakh [Hebrew Bible]. I have not converted yet. However, because there was the strong possibility that i could die in that s---hole, I made sure that my religious preference said jewish because I didn't want some christian saying things that I never believed about Jesus being G-d.

Before I left I wanted to talk to a rabbi. The reform temple in Indianapolis wouldn't have anything to do with me, even after I explained my situation ie I was going to war and I just needed to talk to someone whose religious perspective I respected. The rabbi was such a giving and caring man that he wouldn't give me 5 minutes. So much for his spirituality. Maybe he thinks all war is evil and only evil men fight. In Afghanistan a rabbi came and talked with me. He was orthodox and he was so cool. I was the only person on my firebase that would either claim jewishness or admit to it or whatever. But he took his time to fly there just to see me one additional time. That really boosted my morale. He also helped me mellow out because I have a lot of hate for the kind of people that do what the taliban has/is doing there.

Luke says: Yes, most jews/rabbis discourage converts etc, but many are warm and you have to fight your way in. I think you are confusing some of my work with Scott Fayner's. He writes lukeford.com now as i sold it in August 2001. I have never written for Hustler. He has.

Max writes: I thought it was one and the same. Like, Luke was the nom de guerre. Well, I guess there are two males that right excellently. The orthodox rabbis told me the only true Judaism is orthodox. I told another jewish friend that and he got angry at what the rabbi said. When the rabbi told me I didn't have to be Jewish to be right with G-d, I felt better and ready to do more combat. Now, I realize why Judaism doesn't make it easy to convert. Unlike christians that tell me I am going to burn in hell because jesus is not my Lord and savior, so they are always desperate to witness and wholesale salvation.

Luke says: You got to work at it. Anything that is valuable, you have to work to acquire it.

By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press

SANTA ANA, Calif. - The son of a former Orange County assistant sheriff and two friends were each sentenced Friday to six years in prison for the videotaped sexual assault of an unconscious teenage girl. The sentences came after the victim told the judge she had been violated "in every way possible" and urged the maximum penalty so her attackers could feel the same pain she did.

Now 20, she choked back tears as she described viewing the taped assault so she could testify against the men effectively.

The video, which has not been made public, shows the nude victim being sexually assaulted on a pool table, prosecutors said.

"When did I become a piece of meat? How can anything human do the things that they did? They did things not even a savage animal would do," the victim said.

Defense attorneys argued at trial that the girl was a willing participant in a "weekend sexcapade" and was faking unconsciousness because she wanted to be a porn star. The first trial of the defendants ended in deadlock in June 2004.

A second jury convicted the three defendants last March of a total of 15 felony counts of sexual assault. They were acquitted on other charges, including rape. "I look at each defendant as being equally culpable," Judge Francisco Briseno said Friday. "This was with one intent, and that intent was to degrade the victim."

Gregory Haidl, 20, the son of millionaire and former Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl, apologized to the victim during the hearing. "It was never my intention to hurt you and cause you pain," said Haidl, who taped the July 2002 assault at his father's home. "I can't take back any negative feelings and emotions, and I'm sorry for that also."

Kyle Nachreiner, 21, told the court he accepted responsibility for his "repugnant" actions, while Keith Spann, 21, declined to make a statement but sobbed openly as his mother pleaded with the judge for leniency.

Assistant District Attorney Chuck Middleton the terms were sufficient to "send a message to these three men, and if they're smart they'll come out of prison and lead a respectful life."

The victim told prosecutors she was pleased with the prison terms. She has filed a $26 million lawsuit against the defendants, Haidl's parents and others.

........

June 2, 2004:

Judge Won't Allow Ex-Porn Star Testimony in Rape Trial

Source: Inland Valley News by: Lisa B. McPheron

(SANTA ANA, CA) -- An adult film star-turned-health advocate [Dr. Sharon Mitchell] believes the video that Orange County prosecutors said is evidence of a sexual assault is actually amateur pornography. However, she won't be able to express her opinion to the jury since the judge will not allow her to testify during the rape trial of three Rancho Cucamonga teenagers.

"All in all I think this is a very amateurish attempt at making a porn film," said Dr. Sharon Mitchell, who directed, produced or performed in more than 1,000 adult films and co-founded the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation.

The video in question was made nearly two years ago at the Newport Beach home of Don Haidl, an Orange County assistant sheriff. Haidl's son Gregory Haidl, now 18, and Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann, both 19, are on trial for raping and sexually assaulting an unconscious 16-year-old girl, also from Rancho Cucamonga. Haidl owns the camera the three defendants used to record the 20-minute alleged assault.

On Wednesday, Mitchell testified outside the jury's presence so the judge could determine if her testimony is appropriate for the trial. She said the video had aspects of professional pornography techniques, including camera angles and sexual positions. "You have to have a degree of athletic ability and clearly be conscious," Mitchell said of one of the positions. [Called "Reverse Cowgirl"]

Previously, former friends of the accuser testified that around the time of the alleged assault, the 16-year-old girl bragged about being a porn star after viewing a short video of consensual sex she had with Spann.

I was having lunch February 26 with National Review writer Matt Scully (author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy), who's friendly with and admiring of columnist Joseph Sobran. Sculley described what a Shakespeare scholar Sobran is. That Joseph is a wonderful and warm man.

"In the warmest of hearts," I recited to my friend Cathy Seipp, "there is often a cold spot for the Jew."

I argued that Sobran hated Jews. Matt argued back. He said Sobran's response to Bill Buckley (in Bill's book In Search of Anti-Semitism) showed Joseph to be a good and reasonable man.

February 28, I asked Jeffrey Hart, the author of a new book on National Review, about Sobran. Dr. Hart said Joseph had Jewish friends. Dr. Hart was unaware of Sobran's participation in a conference denying the Holocaust. Hart was unaware of any anti-Semites ever being in influential positions at National Review.

On February 29, I emailed Sobran to discuss these matters. He did not answer my email.

Jason Maoz writes in The Jewish Press:

Obsessed With Jews

He’s the columnist who complained that "Hitler died in 1945, but anti-Hitler hysteria is still going strong"; cautioned against "the excessive moral prestige Jews have in the media and the public square"; whined about "Jews deciding the standards, setting the criteria of humanity"; and observed, in chilling if artful prose, that because Jews "set themselves up as the arbiter, there is, if you’ll pardon the expression, a certain ‘kill the umpire’ impulse."

He’s the writer who decried, in a column following the release of "Schindler’s List," what he called "all this Holocaust-harping" and characterized Nazi genocide as basically a German overreaction to the crimes of "Jewish-led communist movements." And he’s the commentator who warned that "History is replete with the lesson that a country in which the Jews get the upper hand is in danger. Such was the experience of Europe during Jewish-led Communist revolutions in Russia, Hungary, Romania and Germany."

No, he’s not Patrick Buchanan, he’s Buchanan’s ideological soulmate, Joseph Sobran, a talented writer who in the mid-1980’s descended into the fever swamp of anti-Semitic polemics and hasn’t emerged since.

Though Sobran’s work is now mainly relegated to the Internet, he’s had a remarkably mainstream career, not only as a syndicated columnist but as a regular commentator, from 1979 to 1991, on the CBS radio network’s "Spectrum" series and as a senior editor at National Review for nearly two decades.

Sobran’s relentlessly negative focus on Jews and Israel led former National Review editor William F. Buckley, in the magazine’s July 4, 1986 issue, to publish an editorial distancing himself from his employee and acknowledging that "any person" who’d read a recent series of Sobran’s newspaper columns "might reasonably conclude that those columns were written by a writer inclined to anti-Semitism." (Sobran inexplicably managed to retain his title of senior editor at the magazine until 1990 when Buckley finally asked him to step down.)

Sobran was invited to address the Holocaust revisionist Institute for Historical Review in 2002. Among the lowlights of his speech: "Why on earth is it ‘anti-Jewish’ to conclude from the evidence that the standard numbers of Jews murdered are inaccurate, or that the Hitler regime, bad as it was in many ways, was not, in fact, intent on racial extermination?…. I lack the scholarly competence to be [a Holocaust denier]. I don’t read German, so I can’t assess the documentary evidence; I don’t know chemistry, so I can’t discuss Zyklon-B…. Of course, those who affirm the Holocaust need know nothing about the German language, chemistry, and other pertinent subjects; they need only repeat what they have been told by the authorities … the Holocaust has become a device for exempting Jews from normal human obligations. It has authorized them to bully and blackmail, to extort and oppress…."

Sobran becomes annoyed no end whenever anyone dares mention the historical role of the Catholic Church in the persecution of Jews. His reaction to Pope John Paul II’s conciliatory remarks on his visit to Israel in 2000 was to ask, "Where is the corresponding statement of Jewish leaders repudiating and repenting the Jewish role in a cause whose crimes dwarf those of Hitler? Did major Jewish spokesmen or organizations condemn Communism as it devoured tens of millions of Christians?... Even today, how many Jews condemn Franklin Roosevelt for his fondness for Stalin, as they would condemn him if he had shown the slightest partiality toward Hitler?"

It should go without saying that a fantasist of Sobran’s ilk views Israel in much the same negative light as he does "major Jewish spokesmen" and what he’s termed the "anti-Christian" Jewish establishment.

"Israel," Sobran has written, "exemplifies most of the ‘anti-Semitic stereotypes’ of yore: it is exclusivist, belligerent, parasitic, amoral and underhanded. It feels no obligation to non-Jews, even those who have befriended it."

And, in a column in which he condemned the "relentless pro-Israel propaganda" of non-Jews like Jeane Kirkpatrick and George Will, Sobran complained that it was due to the enormous power of the American Jewish establishment that "Israel’s journalistic partisans include so many gentiles – lapsed goyim, you might say."

Should it come as a surprise that Pat Buchanan has called Sobran "perhaps the finest columnist of our generation"?

Jason Maoz can be reached at jmaoz@jewishpress.com

My friend Bill talks to me about our shared Judaism.

Sophia is taken aback. "I'm Jewish but I'm not proud of it," she says.

Luke: "How do you feel about being Jewish?"

Sophia: "I feel like we are the most persecuted people on the planet."

Bill: "You are not proud to be persecuted."

Sophia: "No, I'm not."

Bill: "Why not?"

Sophia: "Because I am related to a bunch of victims."

Luke: "Have you been persecuted?"

Sophia: "I haven't. But my family, a lot of them died in Germany. So we don't talk about it. The Judaism is underground."

Luke: "Who died?"

Sophia: "Some uncles. My grandma's family, a lot of them were left over there.

"He wiped out almost all the Ashkenazi Jews."

Luke: "How did that affect you?"

Sophia: "It makes me who I am. It's not something we're proud of."

Sophia says she frightens away the college guys with her knowledge. One of the majors she wants to pursue is philosophy. She carries around a book published in 1854 - Lectures on the True, Beautiful and Good by M. V. Cousin.

Holly Randall writes:

"So all in all, it was a great scene. She's such a good performer, now I remember why I liked her so much."

"Oh good! Did she do the anal?"

"Of course she did, mom. You know I wouldn't let them skimp on that."

"Oh good."

And then, the conversation turned to what would be to others, a normal one between mother and daughter.

An Open Letter To Rob Eshman

Dear Rob:

Who came up with the side-splitting jokes on the cover of your Purim issue? Or is such genius only possible through collective effort?

Rob replies:

We paid Jon Stewart to come up with them. I think it was worth all $18 million.

Most are by Journal staff, and a couple by a very funny guy named Jake Novak, a New York-based comedy writer. Carvin Knowles, cover artist extraordinaire, did the layout.

Glad you enjoyed them, unless you’re being facetious, in which case we’ll refund the purchase price.

I've Gone Stark Raving Mad

I'm so far beyond the pale of the sane I've exchanged a whole bunch of bantering (on my end) emails with an attorney accusing me of libeling his client.

My side of things:

If I don't get sleep tonight, I'm going to go out and libel someone else. Just kidding, don't bring that up at our trial.

I may not have my honor, but at least I have my humor.

Damn, you are quite the muse. Never had this much fun in such a situation (not making light of your client's situation, just my own).

Aron Tendler Aftermath

A female student of Aron's from YULA writes about Amy Klein's Jewish Journal article linked above:

[Shaarey Zedek] released the letter to Amy. It would explain the weak reporting and how she got the letter so fast. It would also explain the message that was left to me on Monday that I would be reading the result.

...It’s been confirmed by an insider that there were NO NEW allegations as stated in the [Shaarey Zedek] letter, they were just covering their ass because they should have removed him six weeks ago, and that the letter WAS sent to Amy by the shul for release, which is sickening as she listened to our story for four weeks pretending to care, what a snake. Also, there was no investigation back in 1987...an outrageous lie. Shalom moved Aron and that was that.

There is a high profile lawyer looking into possibly taking the case against Aron and YULA for enabling him and that if you are a victim in the last 20 years of Aron’s and especially if you were under age, please contact Luke.

Kaiser Sauze writes:

Holly, I'm sure you are a sweet gal and all, in some ways I think that makes you all the more objectionable. Your sweet veneer and your (parents) winding driveway into the hills hang like a sheen of normalcy over what you actually do.

There can be no doubt that you are a facilitator of destruction in the lives of those you photograph. (Just ask Simp/Luke.) An honorable person of your "position" and intelligence should be forced by conscience alone to refrain from taking advantage of the desperation/stupidity of others.

When you frolic in the fountains of Rome (funded by the profits of your exploitation) do you ever wonder if your "subjects" dreamed of visiting the very spot in which you stand? Or perhaps you do not give them enough credit as human beings and feel a natural separation between your place and theirs.

Like I said, I'm sure you are great to talk to in person and all, but your "act" makes me uncomfortable. The same kind of "uncomfortable" I experience when I imagine living in my parents house in my late 20's.

Global Deception: The UN's Stealth Assault on America's Freedom

Joseph A. Klein's new book is published by World Ahead "Do you have liberals under your bed?" Publishing -- a new conservative imprint based in Los Angeles.

Tuesday morning, March 7, I find free parking 200 yards from the Luxe Hotel at Sunset Blvd and risk my life balancing perilously on the concrete gutter in face of onrushing traffic as I speed to the Center Breakfast Club. It's 8 am.

I see the speaker and a candidate for the 42nd Congressional district and two other people, but I've beat Michael Lynch and Stephanie from David Horowitz's CSPC (Center for the Study of Popular Culture).

For ninth grade, I went to a conservative Christian school where I heard all sorts of kookie ideas about how the United Nations was leading to one-world government, which was a very bad thing.

I'm only showing up today because my psychiatrist says I need to leave the house more often.

I eat three muffins and a plate of fresh fruit while downing four cups of mint tea.

Michael shows up. His voice has dropped four octaves. He's recovering from a bad cold.

He gives me my name tag. I feel like I belong.

At 8:30 a.m., Janet Levy gives an introduction. "We're beginning to see evidence of a UN global tax, ostensibly to combat AIDS in Africa."

It seems that every other cause these days is to fight AIDS in Africa. I think I have some simple solutions. Don't have unprotected man-on-man anal sex. Don't have sex with people who do. Embrace monogamy rather than hookers. Don't share needles.

Hmm, I'm going to put all these things on my to-do list.

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Klein stands up and condemns the UN for its "insidious agenda -- elimination of our Second Amendment right (to bear arms)."

He condemns taxation without representation. "That's why we fought the American Revolution. The stamp tax, etc."

He talks about a possible tax on emails by the UN.

"The UN has pursued an aggressive socialist agenda."

Klein notes that the majority of members of the UN are authoritarian and anti-West and anti-Israel.

"The tipping point which led me to write Global Deception was 9/11. I was a block away when it happened. I saw people jump to their deaths."

"To this day, the UN can't define terrorism."

"UNESCO gave a human rights award to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela."

China, Iran, Cuba and company have sat on the UN's human rights commission.

If they can sit on that commission, then why not Luke Ford? Why can't I sit in judgment? I am about as moral as Cuba but nowhere near Iran's stature.

I like the feel of sitting with the UN human rights commission. That is one shul that won't throw me out no matter how depraved I act.

My friend Jeffrey arrives 30-minutes late. Once again, he wears blue jeans. I'm in my black undertaker suit that Penthouse Pets Jamie Lynn and Cassia Riley took such a shine too (under the duress of the LA Weekly camera, the article comes out April 20).

"Nice of you to join us," I scrawl on a napkin.

"Traffic," he writes back. "Where's your girl?"

"Which one?"

"The blonde."

Which one?

Cathy.

"She's not a morning person," I say.

Only 16% of the seats on the Human Rights Council are available to Western democracies and 55% to authoritarian regimes, says Klein.

Israel pays almost twice its proportionate obligation only to be unduly bashed.

"The UN couldn't get a majority vote to condemn Sudan two years ago."

"They produced a report on Guantonomo Bay without ever visiting it. They said that force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike was a violation of individual autonomy."

Joseph A. Klein looks and sounds like Robert J. Avrech (though not quite as dashing and James Bond-like).

"Some Arab countries want a UN ban on defamation of religion."

Uh oh. I'd be in big trouble.

This will be a resolution that will go before either the Human Rights Council or the General Assembly.

That'd be the end of my writing career. Might as well hang up my keyboard and return to secretarial work.

"The UN should return to the original intent of its founding documents."

"Just because one opposes the UN does not make one a unilateralist. There are alternatives. The UN needs competition."

He asks the crowd of 30 persons if the US should withdraw from the UN. Eighty percent agree.

My mind is distracted by thoughts about a woman so I can't truly bear down on this weighty matter.

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

Jeffrey buys the book Global Deception. "I don't just write words," he says. "I put down my money."

"The pen is mightier than your puny wallet," I respond.

"Depends on what you pen," he replies.

I ask Joe Klein if he's changed his position on Iraq (he supported the invasion). He says it is unchanged, but that if we had known then what we know now, it probably would've been better not to have invaded. He says we needed a more solid basis in our national security rather than just creating democracy.

"On balance, history will probably say it's a good thing."

There's a lengthy convoluted question wondering if the UN will create a one-world government governed by sharia (Islamic law).

I can't keep my mind off the woman. We broke up Monday (for the second or third time, depending on how you calculate things).

I determine to use the experience to make myself a better man, a better lover, and a better vessel for God.

I won't exploit our intimacy to churn out copy. It would be a sacrilege to mine our hearbreak to pump up my blog. To divulge secrets would be to act the cad.

Some people like to get their photos taken with Joseph A. Klein and other people like to get their photos taken with Penthouse Pets. I guess people in the first group are morally superior to those of us in the second group. One thing, however, is certain in this confusing world of our's -- Jamie Lynn is better looking than Joseph A. Klein.

A Modern Orthodox journalist writes: "Now, be honest -- wouldn't [Cassia Riley] look so much better in a helmet-shaped wig and grungy ankle-length blue-jean skirt that looks like it hasn't seen the inside of a washing machine since around the time Monica first inhaled Bill's cigar? Luke, why do so many Orthodox young women look so unkempt and, well, smelly? I attended an Orthodox Feminist convention a few years ago and a good number of the attendees were almost defiantly ugly. And many of those who weren't pug ugly were about the most unfeminine creatures ever created (presumably) without penises. Is the word "frum" a derivative of "frumpy"?"

Women in business suits are my thing.

"Well, women in business suits are about the only women who still wear pantyhose, and there's nothing that makes a pair of legs look both elegant and feminine at the same time. It's amazing how quickly these trends take hold -- as recently as, say, 2000, nylons were still considered an essential in every woman's wardrobe. Almost overnight it changed. I've been at weddings where the girls were almost all bare-legged, and some even wore flip-flops. Nothing says "do me" like pasty-white legs and rubber shoes hinting of toe cheese and flaking heels."

Chaim Amalek writes:

ON THE ONE HAND: If you go into Borrough Park in Brooklyn, you see tons of young jewish mothers who are fit, trim, and pushing kids around in baby carriages. ON THE OTHER HAND: Feminists, be they Jewish or other, are almost by definition harridans who have been rejected by the society of men "Orthodox Feminist" sounds vomitous Fat, blubbery, rubbery, Craigslist and JDate rejects. "DO I CHALLENGE YOU? DO YOU FEAR ME, JEWISH MAN?"

I really like this black chick. By which I mean that I really like staring at her face and what not.

> She's sweet, smart, good grammar, and in love with another man.

Yeah, she should breed. Tell her I urge her to breed.

Well, if she told you that, why would you think you are going to be getting any of that?

> Triumph of hope. David Ben Gurion said that if you don't believe in miracles, you're not being realistic.

Stick to crank skanks. Any comments from these chicks on your estate? These are really hot pics. Taps into primordeal male fantasy of super hot babe sitting on the floor of a regular joe's hovel.

Luke says: I got outrageous pics for the photographer of me in a black suit, white shirt, tie, yarmulke, pouring over sacred text while these three girls paw at me, pull my tie, kipa etc...sit on my lap. But my concentration on my studies did not waver as I once again turned my back on worldly pleasures to ponder the eternal verities.

Not once did any of these beautiful women (nor the photographer) make any negative comments about my hovel -- which is more than I can say for two-thirds of the dates I've brought over, some have insisted on turning around and leaving as soon as possible. Others who stayed would complain that they always left with bruises (not having a bed and all that).

The last time I had a woman this beautiful at my hovel was when Holly made a rare appearance just prior to the New Sensations party. We made out on the floor like squirrels on crack while my favorite Air Supply CD played in the background. Holly had never tasted such wild ecstasy. She couldn't get enough (for about three songs anyway).

I had to walk the girls (Jamie Lynn, Penthouse Pet of the Year, Cassia Riley POY runner-up, and Eve Mayfair) wearing lingerie past my landlady and then down to Pico Blvd Thursday morning. Cars were honking, stopping, people pouring out of stores and gaping and whistling and making comments and wanting to be in the picture. I have not experienced such horror since the evening Holly told me I was not her first lover.

It was a great time. I added a black porn star friend of mine, Eve Mayfair, for ethnic balance.

Jamie and Cassia say Holly must've taken some great photos of me. Actually, no, I don't think she's taken any photos of me. She must fear I'd crack her camera. Our time together was spent on scholarly pursuits.

A cynical worldly person emails me:

Yeah I’d like to see Eve, if she’s young, fresh and fine maybe she’s Pet material.

Oh please since when do you care about ethnic balance, are you getting a BJ out of this, you can tell me the truth. Jewish boys do LOVE the dark meat, they love black booty.

Those of us in the observant community do not touch women outside of marriage.

"The girls were great. Very professional. They brought plenty of clothes, their make-up was great (they even touched up Luke a bit), and they shot incredibly well. A great experience."

"Yeah sometimes a little mascara really brings out the intensity of Luke’s eyes, I’m glad the girls could be of assistance!

"Funny because Jewish men seem to really, really, really love JBs even more than the average man. And by the way, none of my girls are flakey no shows, this is Penthouse Magazine and we’re quality people of our word. You’re so used to all the skanks who are up all night doing crank and don’t make it anywhere. I bet my girls were on time and everything [15-minutes early!]. Just so you know for the future my word is SOLID.

"You’re a pretty good man Mr. Ford even though you’re Australian. I can say that you’re the only Australian person I’ve ever been fond of and befriended. But if you were a blood jew, you’d be all into the sistas."

Chaim writes: "What are all those pill bottles by your tv?"

Those are my medications. It's not easy to turn out a column like this without pharmacological help (in addition to natural remedies). The yellow boxes by the microwave are Dr. Natura's colon cleanser.

Chaim writes: "If you post that those are your HIV meds, you will be believed. Yeah, this is sort of what I had in mind, but with her looking at the book like she's reading it."

I like the Pets equally. Jamie is sweeter and more goyisha, Cassia is more profane and Jewish. I had to keep asking her to watch her language. She was yelling out the f-word and I feared my landlady or neighbors would hear and there would go my reputation.

"OMG I know what a potty mouth! I’m going to buy her a surprise over the weekend, a tee shirt that says “f--- you, you f---ing f---.” If you go on her my space is all giving the middle finger. That’s her signature posed, the middle finger, while Jamie’s is the eyebrow arch. I love them both equally though. And they truly love each other too."

Jamie’s wilder in the bedroom than Cassia, it's all talk with her, Jamie’s really the dominant.

The photographer and the girls wanted some music so I played my AOL favorites -- a mix of Debbie Gibson, John Denver and Christian hymns -- while the girls gyrated around me. They were a good sport. They made no criticisms. They saw the good in my poverty.

Pete writes: "Luke, The girls dressed up your hovel very nicely. Cassia is mind-boggling and I find the profane side of her charming. One thing is puzzling me...like Cougar in Top Gun, I've lost the edge. Of all of the photos, my favorite is this one. You're on fire, young man."

I spend 30 minutes cleaning up my hovel.

Photographer Kevin Scanlon (he shoots a lot for the Jewish Journal) shows up 25-minutes early, which is cool. He's a slight friendly chap. He looks around my hovel. So many possibilities. We bring in his lighting equipment.

The Penthouse Pets arrive at 9:45 am. I sneak them past my landlady. Cassia's sweats ride down her butt. Jamie's finishing off a cigarette.

They dump their bags of lingerie by my bookshelves and stuff themselves into my tiny bathroom and put on make-up. These girls are troopers. They make no complaints about their appalling working conditions. Really, Mexicans fresh out of the Rio Grande live better than I do. They work harder though.

I'm nervous, jumpy, in my black undertake suit.

Eve arrives at 10 am.

I email Lainie Speiser at Penthouse for permission to take a few pics of my own.

I arrange my four books on my shelf.

I'm relieved that the three girls get along. Jamie refers to Cassia as her wife.

Cassia's had two weeks off.

In the Valley, they live near each and Martina Warren and Charlie Lane.

I wish I had my taperecorder on to capture the chitchat but that might inhibit my models.

One complains (I better not say who, she told me not to publish this) repeatedly about cellulite that neither I nor the photographer can detect.

Kevin assures the girl that no photo will leave his computer unless it shows them at their best.

I've never made that assurance to anyone but Holly "everything's fair game but my cooking" Randall, and she doesn't believe me and insists on immediately deleting from my camera all photos of herself that she doesn't like. I like her straightforward vanity. It's better than when people pretend and manipulate.

I like using my relationship (or ex-relationship with Holly) to establish rapport with models. It helps for models to see me as a human being who's been able to establish a genuine friendship within the industry and doesn't just use every human encounter (only 99.9% of them) as fodder for his column.

People are not fodder. When will I internalize that value?

Cassia and Jamie are a riot. They love each other. They raise hell together. Cassia has a booming voice. I have to shush her. What will the neighbors think?

Eve is demure. Her emails are superb. Everything is spelled and punctuated correctly, so rare in a porn chick. She worked in offices in San Francisco for four years prior to entering Adult.

She's in love with a white guy. Most of her boys have been white. She likes to be a white boy's first black girl.

JaneAusten: Are you going to post about what grat work Cassia, Jamie, and Eve did on PornStarPerformance.com?
JaneAusten: I can't believe you played such crappy music JaneAusten: for a photo shoot
JaneAusten: don't you have any dance music cds?
Luke: i am exhausted
JaneAusten: What have you been doing?
Luke: not sleeping
JaneAusten: Did Holly keep you up last night?
Luke: no sex for a week
Luke: no we broke up
JaneAusten: Is it your chronic fatigue?
JaneAusten: I wouldn't notice that you broke up since you keep writing about her every day
JaneAusten: It makes you look obsessed.
Luke: I am obsessed. I am a fool for muff, I mean love.
JaneAusten: how are things with Suze Video? Are they making you rich?
Luke: i get about $150 or so every two weeks
JaneAusten: wow, holly is really looking after you, are you going to invest in a bed with your earnings?
Luke: A teeth cleaning. No bed. Yes, she spoils me. I don't deserve her. Luckily for her, I don't have her.

From the Luke Ford Fan Blog:

So, I'm reading Cathy Seipp's blog in horrified fascination. I'm referring, of course, to guess blogger Lewis Fein. I've long thought of Luke Ford as a talented writer undone by a lack of self-control about all things sexual, but Mr Fein takes the "I really need an editor" thing to a totally new level. His post about the DMV was absolutely brilliant -- one of the funniest things I've ever read. But his obsession with big black dick is very disturbing.

It might be a good idea if Lewis submits his future posts to Luke for editing before publication on Cathy's blog. This would help Lewis because I'm certain that a homophobe like Luke, for whom big black dick is the scariest thing in the universe, would remove all the icky references to David Ehrenstein's amazing wang. I think it would also help Luke because he would learn editing skills that could be applied to his own inappropriately sexual writings. Just a thought.

Amalek: why her? why you?
luke: why now? if not now, when?
Amalek: How'd the hook up come about, and how can you tell?
Luke: I've been acquainted with her for months and always felt the sparks. I just can't fight this feeling anymore. I've forgotten what I started fighting for. It's time to bring this ship in to the shore
and throw away the oars forever.
Amalek: But did Dolly wound you that deeply that you would now betray your own race?  First you rejected the Jewess, then the white woman.  What next - women as a gender? Where will this stop?
 Is Cassia Riley going to be at the photo shoot? Where will it be ? She is freakin' gorgeous. WOWW (the extra "W" is for extra "WOWW")!

Luke, she's a Jewess and in need of your help: "I love big guys with tattoos. I like the rough guy. I like a little bit of ghetto in them. You can't be a pretty boy. You can't wear Polo shirts. You've got to be hardcore. I like 'em bad."

Save her from the Shvartzes! But have fun with your's first.
 

On May 26, 2003, the University of Judaism admissions director Amnon Finkelstein and 24 yo U.J. student L. fell two stories to the concrete from the Pico-Robertson apartment window of U.J. student Devin Gesser. Both Amnon and L. were naked and both sustained severe injuries, including brain damage.

I call Amnon March 3, 2006.

Luke: "What happened in the fall?"

Amnon: "Devin Gesser took a course with me. She came to one of my office hours and showed me a comment by one of the professors [Dr. Miriyam Glazer] on campus to her paper. I thought the comments were harsh. They suggested that Devin wrote on less than a highschool level. I read the paper that Devin wrote for my seminar. I asked her to write a better paper. Even after several drafts (so I could help with style and structure), she still wrote a horrendous paper. I wondered if she was using drugs. I gave her a C-.

"Then she started to show up in my office almost daily asking me about opportunities to study in Israel. I did not feel that she was ready for that but I encouraged her to apply.

"One day out of the blue, she invited me to come to her place for a birthday party and end of year party. It was unclear. I was a complete bonehead. I did not ask anybody else that she claimed she had invited. I simply went on my own. I fell into some kind of trap or game or joke at my expense. I don't know what happened.

"When I arrived, she was with a young lady I had not seen before (but heard about because Devin had shared with me her sexual interest in L.) -- L. I do not even remember how L. looked.

"They were hardly dressed when I arrived. I realized it was some kind of a game.

"Earlier that day, I had a long bicycle ride. I came very thirsty. I asked to drink something. She gave me orange juice.

"At this point, my memory starts to fade.

"I remember clearly that I could not hold myself standing. I fell down on the carpet. It was the equivalent of seeing a dark shade falling over your eyes.

"The next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital. The first thing that came to my mind was that I had too much to drink last night, I pulled a DUI.

"The neurosurgeon came to my room and explained that I fell [about 18-feet] off an apartment onto the cement. I went through an air conditioning wall unit on the first floor. That's what fractured my front skull.

"I understood that L. fell on me. I understood that I fell or was pushed first. L. fell on my stomach, I understand, but there was no bruise on my stomach.

"Since I fell very close to the wall of the building, it was clear I did not jump or fall on my own. From the way I fell, the police suspected I was pushed.

"I understand that a neighbor saw me falling and he called 9-1-1.

"The police asked him if there was an argument. He said no. It was quiet. Suddenly I appeared. The windows are French windows, meaning they go from the ceiling to the ground. I don't believe that either Devin or L. were able to lift me to a window. I am 6'2" and at the time I weighed about 195 pounds.

"I tore the rotator cuff on my left shoulder. I could hardly move my neck for a long time.

"I have seven fractures in my skull, four on the front, and above the right ear. There is a deep fracture on the upper corner of my forehead which will probably never heal. Part of the bone disappeared.

"I sustained serious memory and cognitive problems that started to heal around January 2004."

Luke: "When you saw that Devin and L. were barely dressed when you walked into their apartment, why did you not leave? Why did you proceed to drink alcohol with them? Were you intending to have sex with either or both of them?"

Amnon: "I did not leave for two reasons. First, I had an orange juice first and only after that a shot of alcohol. I wanted to stay for a while longer in order to understand the circumstances. At that point, I was dizzy and disoriented and before long I was out. The second reason is that Devin said that she expected others to arrive. I thought to myself that if nobody came in fifteen minutes, I would be out of the door, but it was too late.

"On that note, at some point, I suspected that Devin had some help dragging me out of the window down to the pavement. However, I cannot prove it."

Luke: "Do you think you might've been drugged?"

Amnon: "I can not prove it. I suspect that I was drugged. I had alcohol in my blood when I woke up. I remember having one or two shots of tequila at Devin's apartment but I don't remember having the amount of alcohol that they claimed I had."

Luke: "Did you ever have sex with Devin or L.?"

Amnon: "Absolutely not. They did examine that in the hospital. There was no penetration of L. or Devin. I believe that L. had sex with Devin on a regular basis and I believe they had sex on that evening. I woke up for a few seconds, or it could be a dream, but I do remember them having sex on the carpet next to me.

"Two weeks after I got home from the hospital, I got a phonecall from L.'s father. (L. got my number from Devin.) He asked me what happened. L. was on the phone too. I could not really give him information. I purposefully did not expose his daughter and her relationship with Devin. From his questions, I could deduct that she was lying to him about her use of alcohol. She was on anti-depressants and was told not to drink anymore. When I came to Devin's apartment May 26, L. was there with a bottle of vodka in her hands.

"They wanted to know if I was suing anybody. I said no.

"I did talk to the homicide investigators after I was released from the hospital. They told me that Devin was completely high and inaccessible on the night of the accident. She retained a lawyer immediately afterwards."

Luke: "What if on that night you'd been left sitting there in the apartment and the two girls were lying injured on the pavement?"

Amnon: "This is a question that has been on my mind and probably will never disappear. If I had been there smoking a cigar waiting for the police to arrive with the bodies of two young ladies on the cement, can you imagine what would've happened?

"I asked my neurosurgeon why I was not tested for the date rape drug. He explained that it was a normal procedure only when women arrive injured at the hospital."

Luke: "You were naked."

Amnon: "The time was too short for me to have removed my clothing. Someone must've removed it."

Luke: "In retrospect, do you think this was an error in judgment on your part to have almost daily meetings with Devin and to visit her apartment? Were there other students you met with daily? In your other positions of authority at universities, did you ever meet with young female students daily in private or help them write papers?"

Amnon: "In retrospect, it was a mistake to extend a helping hand to Devin. At other universities, I always spent a lot of time helping students with their papers. In fact, in one case I had a student who simply could not write a coherent argument. She was a serious student, but she also suffered from Lupus. Her constant severe headaches prevented her from concentrating for a long time. Each time she needed to write a paper, I helped her by breaking down her assignments to small segments and papers into paragraphs. I taught her techniques and methods that helped her to overcome her difficulties. As a result she was on the Dean’s List until her graduation. I did care for my students, whether males or females. In another case, I had a male student who was graduating in a field he did not like. He wanted to study graphic design not being an engineer. I worked with him on his application to the best school in the country. We design together his resume and I helped him with his application essay. I even gave him the phone number of my brother in law for advice (my brother in law is an incredible graphic designer). This student was accepted to the school. I can continue to give you many more examples. One case with a disturbed student should not cast a shadow on my belief that assisting students is our moral and professional obligation, especially given the exuberant amount of money they pay as tuition. My co-worker at the UJ used to see students every day. Students at the UJ have nobody to talk to. They felt alienated and disenfranchised. Administrators, who were willing to listen for a bit, were visited daily. In the student retention plan that I designed for the UJ, I put special emphasis on meeting students more frequently and listening to them.

"In my seminar, each student could submit me a draft and work with me over it before they submitted the final paper for grade. I did work with other students on their paper, with some several times per week. I felt that most UJ students were unprepared for academic writing. Since mine was a senior seminar, I believed it was my obligation to see that they at least acquired knowledge in this respect.

"In retrospect, it was naïve of me to help Devin with her paper, allow her to visit me almost daily and visit her apartment. Indeed, in her case, it was a poor judgment."

Luke: "Did you date or have sex with any University of Judaism students while you were an administrator there?"

Amnon: "No. The fraternization policy was unclear but at the time I was dating another woman. I did not date any other person on campus or anywhere else. Most of my employees were females. Of course I never dated them. I was good friends with my major [female] assistants, much to the chagrin of some in the administration."

Luke: "Had you previously gone to students homes or apartments for parties?"

Amnon: "No."

Luke: "Did you ever visit L.'s or Devin's apartment aside from May 26 2003?"

Amnon: "As far as I know, L. lived with her parents. I had never met L. before May 26, 2003. I did visit Devin’s place once before the night of the injury. I came over to help her with a paper she was writing for a different professor. We ate dinner at a sushi place near her apartment."

Luke: "How did the University of Judaism react to what happened?"

Amnon: "In a typical University of Judaism way, a mix of covering up and rude, almost vicious, behavior by Mark Bookman [provost and Chief Operating Officer].

"I was in the hospital about 20 days after my injury. I went home. Mark Bookman showed up with Zofia Yalovsky. He saw a bicycle in the living room, which I had left there before I went to see Devin. He claimed I was completely healthy and that I did not even injure myself. He behaved strangely. He suggested that the university could not employ me because I was seeing a student in a personal way and having sex with her. I explained to him that this was not the case. I even offered to go through a lie detector.

"At the end of June, I was let go. It was cruel. They never discussed with me the history of the case. They never invited me to give my version of events.

"That's not the only case of cover-up. There were other cases of cover-ups that I had to deal with as an employee of the UJ."

"While most of the UJ’s actions towards me and the case were despicable (even before the details became clear), one person was consistently concerned about my health. When I woke up in the hospital after several days in a coma, Andrea Harris was there by my bed. She visited me almost daily and her wonderful husband Josh was there to support me physically when I returned home. Their hospitality and friendship were those life events that we all live for. Two other female employees visited me once each; one was another employee and the second a student who worked in the admissions office.

"Now, let’s assume for the sake of the argument that what happened on May 26, 2003 was sinful, outrageous and immoral as some of your readers pontificate. What really happened to the principle of “Bikkur kholim” (visiting the sick), a Mitzvah, that so many pious believers at the UJ keep talking about? Our wonderful religion distinguishes between sins “against the place” (damage to property) and “sins against another person” (hurting another human being). While one may criticize me for attending a party at a student’s home, or for demonstrating poor judgment, I committed neither sin. I accept full responsibility for not thinking the whole matter through before I attended the student’s home. Yet, I was the victim in this case. The crowd of the believers at the UJ suddenly forgot what their own religion teaches them. In the name of PR and other hidden agenda, all that was solid melted into air.

"I believe that a disciplinary hearing was in order. I should have been given an opportunity to explain the circumstances behind my injury and the UJ had the right to reject my testimony. Instead, the UJ stopped my health insurance during the time when I needed it most and never, not even once, approached me for an explanation. Moreover, Devin Gesser was allowed to continue her course of studies at the UJ. In your web site, you wrote poignantly, that with my accident, we have all sinned. In reality, it was the UJ that committed the worst sin of all, a sin against another person. I know that a member of the Jewish community in Los Angeles wrote Bob Wexler a letter expressing her outrage precisely because of this behavior."

Luke: "How long were you at the UJ and how would you describe your experience there?"

Amnon: "I was there about two years. The place is managed like a mafia -- behind closed doors. Even though I was on a committee called the President's Council, you do not council anybody. The president [Dr. Robert Wexler] does his business with Mark Bookman and Gady Levy, who does a good job. He escaped the army in Israel. He left at 17. He let others do the job for him.

"Zofia Yalovsky arranged for her daughter to attend the UJ and study education. She enrolled her other daughter in the University and had a habit of taking care of people she thought were loyal to her. I was among the people who interviewed her daughter to the school of education. When it took a bit “too much time” to accept her, Zofia called me and blamed me for dragging my feet. It was another faculty who did not want her daughter there.

"Zofia's husband had an office at the university where he did his own private business. He was not even employed by the university.

"There was strong anti-Israel sentiment at UJ. There was an Israeli student named Shanny Mahalu. I helped her enter the program. She worked hard. Her English was not good. Her boyfriend later joined her in the city to live with her. She later got a job with El Al security.

"She came to me crying one day about three months into the program. She said one of the professors [Sue Kapitanoff] did not return any of her papers. It was a freshman seminar. Shanny ran after her. She confronted her about it face-to-face. Sue claimed she left all the papers in her student box. Shanny said no. I advised her to force Sue into her office to look for the papers. She did that. All the papers were there unread, unchecked, ungraded. She was the only student who did not get her papers examined. She was also the only Israeli in the class.

"Sue has a long history of antipathy towards Israelis. You can ask Shoham Nicolet, who's now the director of housing on campus. He was then a student. He was well aware of anti-Israeli sentiment on campus. As well as Zofia Yalovsky, who is also Israeli and probably one of the most hated persons on campus for good and bad reasons.

"I wrote a memo to Lois Oppenheim. She refused to investigate. Lois has a long history of anti-Israeli sentiment. Lois was born to rich parents who were members of the Bund [socialist Jewish group with strong anti-Zionist leanings]. They took her all over the world, almost every summer, and they never included Israel on their trips. Her sister is a radical leftist activist on the East Coast. Lois did her PhD on Chile and she was there during the Pinochet revolution. I heard from Shoham that she blamed Israel for 9/11 in a bitter lecture in front of her class.

"I had a debate with her over lunch in front of Andrea Harris. We'd come back from the funeral for the husband of Beryl Geber, the dean of the business school.

"The debate got nasty. She went on an anti-Israeli rant.

"Shoham started a campaign to do something on Yom Ha'Zikkaron, the Day of Remembrance [of the soldiers who died in Israel's defence], one day before Israel Independence Day. He asked me to emcee an afternoon event in the main auditorium in remembrance of the Israeli soldiers who died during the War of Independence (1948). I was proud to do that.

"When we played the Israeli national anthem, there were two faculty members who refused to stand -- Mimi Feigelson and Aryeh Cohen. Aryeh was a member of a Kahane group who, after the Lebanon war, decided he was moving to the other side.

"I wrote an email to Dr. Wexler calling his attention to that. He did not think it was a big deal.

"The UJ either covers something up immediately or get rid of those who bring shame upon it. But they cannot get rid of Aryeh Cohen because Aryeh Cohen is a tenured professor.

"Lois Oppenheim approached me in a personal way when we were driving to the University of Redlands. She offered to date me and to have sex with me. I immediately said no. Upon returning to the university, I shared it with Andrea and I wrote an official letter to Zofia Yalovsky, who was in charge of human resources.

"Two weeks later, Zofia called me to the garden behind the campus and told me in no uncertain terms, if you insist on pursuing this matter about Lois, you might find yourself out of a job.

"Mark Bookman and Lois have a very interesting relationship. They go way back to the New Left of the sixties. They used to demonstrate a lot, according to Lois. While they compete against each other and stab each other in the back, they also cover for each other. I'm sure my memo got to him and he probably told Zofia to see me to drop it."

Luke: "Why would you write a memo to HR about Lois Oppenheim asking you out?"

Amnon: "Because I felt uncomfortable with Lois using her position to impose herself on me (I was reporting to her). Her explicit suggestion came after a long chase of advances, invitation to visit her place with and without others present. It was very clear to me and others in our division (academic affairs), that Lois liked me very much when I arrived. I thought she was very nice and intelligent, but did not see us going out or developing an intimate relationship. I consulted with Andrea, a co-worker, before my trip with Lois to the University of Redlands. We agreed that only if she would make an explicit suggestion for sex, would I react in a more formal manner, which I did.

"The relationship between the university and the students is horrendous. Andrea Harris was the most popular person on campus because she was the only one [of the administrators] who listened to them. Mark Bookman could be a fantastic guard in some stalag in Russia. There was a stream of students coming into her office and according to the students, drugs and alcohol were common at UJ.

"The year before my arrival, the director of housing on campus was known to have had sex with one of the students. Even after that was discovered, he was not fired. He was allowed to finish out the year. Then he was forced out."

Luke: "You've been a professor and elsewhere. Have you ever had sex or dated a student?"

Amnon: "Never. I was a visiting professor at Northwestern. I had one class with about 180 students. I had about six teaching assistants, all females. None of them complained about me because there was no reason to complain. I was married.

"At Northwestern, students come to your office hours with the sole purpose of getting better grades. Sometimes it was like a fashion show. I had one student who was particularly anxious to develop something with me. She sent me a few cards to my home address, cards that were very embarrassing and created a lot of problems for me. She invited me to her home to stay with her when her mother was away. I kept some of her emails. I kept some of the documents that Devin would send me. I wanted to be able to cover myself. Nobody could accuse me of initiating anything.

"I rejected this student. I did not think it was appropriate. She was a mediocre student. Her interest in me was only to improve her grades.

"I read the email she sent you that I kissed her in the classroom. How could I do that in a big lecture hall that was occupied?

"She told you that I gave her anti-Israeli publications. This is a good illustration of her less than prudent interpretation. I never taught a course about the Middle East, but since she was interested in both sides, I referred her to two books that represented the essence of both sides. It was my role as an academic who believes in freedom of speech and thoughts. The last thing I can imagine is that I need to defend my Israeli origins and love for the country."

Luke: "Did you ever ask to borrow money from any of your students?"

Amnon: "Absolutely not. I was never short of money. I was never rich. I never asked anybody for money.

"I read your source from Decker College. There was almost an implication that I was involved in Decker's demise. I came to Decker four months before it was closed and one week after the Department of Education began its investigation. Decker was in complete disarray. I had to let some people go. I brought some people in. I know that some of my employees warned me about certain people who were spreading rumors about me.

"I had three women in my family who were very influential over me. My grandmother was one of the founders of Israel. My mother was a member of the Haganah underground. My sister is remarkable. She is one of Israeli's first feminists, a constructive feminist and not a hateful one."

Luke: "Somebody who knew you socially said you were a loner with few connections to family. That's unusual for an Israeli."

Amnon: "I have a small family unfortunately. I have one sister in New York and one uncle in Tel Aviv and two nephews. My father died when I was 22. My mother died in August of 2004. I do not have pictures at home of people because family did not have pictures of family at home either. I know that the locals here find it important to have a million pictures of everybody.

"I am engaged to be married. I am a private person. I do not share things about my private life when I go to work. I have a small group of friends because I move so much. I do not operate on quantity but on quality.

"I was not close to the Israeli community in Los Angeles. I did not feel comfortable with them. I worked long hours."

Luke: "Were you in the Mossad?"

Amnon: "Absolutely not and I have never claimed to be.

"While in graduate school, there were students who from time to time ask me about the Mossad. They thought that if a person from Israel spoke more than English and Hebrew, he had to be an “agent.” There is an almost romantic notion that people have when it comes to the Mossad. For others, it was an expression of latent anti-Semitism (after all, we are all part of a world wide conspiracy to conquer it all)."

Luke: "Were you involved in the raid on Entebbe?"

Amnon: "No. I was in the IDF during that time."

Luke: "Did you kill people when you were in the IDF? Did you tell people you've dated that you had?"

Amnon: "Are you asking whether I killed people with my own hands? No, I did not and I never shared something like that with anybody. Killing people is not something one could share so easily, not to mention do. I do think, at the same time, that there is such a myth around Israel and its army that I find myself explaining its nature every time I lecture or discuss Middle Eastern problems. Americans, in particular, who are so uninformed about the world, tend to portray the IDF in mythical colors, which I find very difficult to diffuse."

Luke: "Several people have described you to me as litigious. Did you threaten lawsuits over the UJ incident or has this been something you do? Threaten lawsuits?"

Amnon: "I have never filed a law suit in my life. Does it count as litigious? Am I principled and stand for my opinions and beliefs? You bet! Do I believe in your right to do, feel, think, write, say and act as you wish? Absolutely. In the US, people avoid face to face confrontations or real dialogues. Americans seem more comfortable going behind each other’s back to spread rumors or to file law suits. I’d rather let you know where I stand and move on."

Luke: "In retrospect, do you think life would've gone easier for you if you had just gone ahead and made love to Lois? And, if necessary, Mark Bookman?"

Amnon: "I hope you are not serious."

Addendum: While most of this interview was done by phone March 3, some of it was done later via email. I then put things together. I emailed all persons mentioned in the article for whom I could find contact info (that means everyone at UJ mentioned) for their response to Amnon's comments. So far, nobody has responded. I also emailed ex-employees of UJ for fact-checking.

A former UJ person writes:

I think Amnon was actually polite and very frugal in his description of Mark Bookman. Mark is a maniac, power hungry person who does not know when to stop. He managed to push away Beryl Geber, a wonderful woman and a reputable academic, from the UJ; he took over both operations and academics; he controls through Zofia all administrative aspects; he treats employees like dirt, and now he even controls admissions. I am sure he would love to be the president, but I heard that the Board would not allow him because he is not a rabbi.

His behavior towards employees is noteworthy. When Andrea Harris resigned from the UJ and moved to Pepperdine, he did not allow her to complete the last two weeks of her employment. He sent a security guard to her office and forced her to live the campus immediately without even saying goodbyes to friends and colleagues. It was a humiliating spectacle where she was observed by the security guard and her colleague to make sure she did not take anything from her office that did not belong to her.

In another case, Mark Bookman reduced the salaries of all university employees (I believe he left out only the "inner circle"), whereby he actually did not follow the letters of the contracts with many university employees, whose salaries he reduced.

Mark Krikorian writes:

WASHINGTON (March 2006) – ''Legal immigration good, illegal immigration bad.''

This is often the limit of the analysis underlying debates over immigration in Congress. Supporters of amnesty and guestworker programs often claim that if only illegal aliens were legalized, the problems they create would disappear. In addition, many of the immigration proposals currently being considered would significantly increase ordinary legal immigration; Sen. Arlen Specter's bill, for instance, would double the number of green cards issued, to as many as 2 million each year.

To add some depth to this superficial understanding of the issue, the Center for Immigration Studies has released a new report, ''Two Sides of the Same Coin: The Connection Between Legal and Illegal Immigration,'' by James R. Edwards, Jr., Ph.D. Edwards, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute and co-author of The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform, explores the intertwined histories of legal and illegal immigration and how current immigration policy encourages lawbreaking.

The report, available online finds the following:

* Legal and illegal immigration are inextricably related. As legal immigration levels have risen markedly since 1965, illegal immigration has increased with it.

* The share of the foreign-born population who are illegal aliens has risen steadily. Illegal aliens made up 21 percent of the foreign-born in 1980, 25 percent in 2000, and 28 percent in 2005.

* Mexico is the primary source country of both legal and illegal immigrants. Mexico accounted for about 30 percent of the foreign-born in 2000, and more than half of Mexicans residing in the United States in 2000 were illegal aliens. * The level of illegal immigration is severely masked by several amnesties that legalized millions of unlawfully resident aliens. The largest amnesty was the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized 3 million aliens.

* Amnestied aliens to date have been fully eligible to sponsor additional immigrants. This has contributed to the ranks of immigrants, both legal and illegal (and often both).

* Many aliens who receive a permanent resident visa each year have spent years living in the United States illegally.

* Amnesties, technical qualification for a visa, chain migration, and vast opportunities to come to the United States (particularly via the tourist visa, the most abused visa by eventual immigrants, according to the New Immigrant Survey) all foster an ''entitlement mentality'' among many foreigners.

I'm nervous because I've never bathed any before.

Dear reader, the prospect of being spread over some esteemed LA publication fills me with dread. The attendant fuss might distract me from my important scholarly endeavors and expose me to the precise type of moral temptations to which I am highly vulnerable.

Lord, grant me chastity, but not yet.

Even though I only..., I fear that I am going to.... Stay close to your computers for the news.

I don't like being in front of a camera surrounded by nubile babes. It's narcissistic, shallow and lacks ultimate meaning.

Holly writes: "So? Most things in life are. Lighten up."

I have two interdisciplinary Levinas scholars from Brandeis posing with me Thursday morning at the hovel and then in front of the Museum of Tolerance (how could anyone criticize or discriminate against us there?). I'll be in a suit and they'll be in bikinis.

Maybe I'll introduce the girls to the Editor and then he'll put us on the cover.

Before the shoot, I'm going to pop a levitra so I make a good impression in my suit.

Dear reader, would you ever be able to love me if I posed wearing my kipa and studying the Talmud while these chicks pretended to choke and torment me? I believe that such a photo would concretize Judaism's teachings about the twin desires (for good and evil) that struggle inside every person. Thus, by posing for such a shot, I would be a light unto the nations as envisioned by the prophet Isaiah.

How will I ever explain this to my teachers (or the rabbis I've called predators or predator-enablers)? Any suggestions?

I've prepared several layers of defense in the event of my being called on the carpet and asked to reconcile Bava Metzia 17A with my conduct:

* In Amnon's fall, we sinned all. Through one man, sin came to the world and through the sacrificie of one (my doing this shoot and then getting hung on a blog) we can gain salvation.

* You have to first grab people's attention (hot chicks) before you can share your ideas and transform their lives into ones vibrant with meaning, purpose and good deeds. I know a lot of people first read me for the smut but then they stay for the Torah.

* Rabbi, you always said, "Love God and do what you like."

* I invited a black babe to participate, and she's really black, no light-skinned chick. If she comes, I'll dedicate the shoot to promoting Black History Month and greater understanding between the races.

After the photographer leaves, the girls and I will collaborate on a paper for Shofar (scholarly Jewish monogram) about Levinasian's view of the face-to-face encounter and whether there is any room for the erotic or is that just objectifying (the worst thing a man can do in my view)?

The bathing suits vs suit was not my idea. The photographer and the girls' publicist came up with it. I wanted something more scholarly.

It's all Stacy and Jill's fault because they did not reply to my disinterested (means impartial, untainted by ulterior motive) invitation.

But if I have to go through with this to promote my ideas, and while I have the girls at the hovel, why not take some photos for my private collection? Then study a little Pirkei Arvot (Ethics of the Fathers) with them, smoke the good bud, sip Manishevitz, and let my animal magnetism do its work. One of the girls is Jewish (not yet Orthodox) and the Jewish people need Jewish babies.

I just hope I don't get swept away on a floodtide of hormones and forget my higher values.

I've got both the Steinsaltz and Artscroll Talmuds. I believe these girls are traditionalist and will find Steinsaltz too much of a heretic. Perhaps I should hide that reference guide.

Anyway, the experience should provide an opportunity for me to experiment with different literary forms and ponder the complexities of being and unbeing.

Sarah writes: "I love that you are so drawn to women's minds, as opposed to their bikini-clad bodies. Simply tell you rabbi that by stripping away the material (i.e. clothing), you are better able to focus on their faces, in a Levinasian sense."

I haven't had a decent night's sleep in three days

I'm frazzled. I'm not myself. I fear I might go out and hurt myself by plagiarizing Allan MacDonell.

People don't understand the strain of thinking about yourself all the time.

Holly Randall writes on XPT: "I'm not sure if my vote counts since I don't perform in front of the cameras, but I don't feel it's made my love life any less intimate at all."

William Hyde writes: "What cements a relationship between a man and a woman is mutual respect and trust. A man and woman can meet, fall in love, and have a mutually fullfiling relationship without being physically intimate [ie. having sex]. It's emotional and intellectual intimacy that forms the bedrock of longlasting relationships. Sex is a purely physical act [albeit a thoroughly enjoyable one]. Pornography doesn't rob anyone of anything... intimacy, dignity or otherwise. Under the best of circumstances it can enhance a physical relationship, and only becomes an obstacle when people let their own jealousy and possesiveness take control. And although that kind of caveman mentality is understandable, it's a little impractical in an age when more and more women are challenging the double-standard that labels them "whores" for displaying behavior that men are typically admired for."

Da Burglar replies to Holly:

You are right on the edge, the pareto efficient intersection, of where porn can help or harm, add to or rob, a relationship betwixt a man and a woman. You and Luke, BECAUSE you merely make and write about explicit, filthy pornography and not ACTUALLY perform in it...can reap the benefits of doing/reenacting all the things you see everyday in and around the porn sets you are on...and NO ONE else can see/share in what you do.

Furthermore, on those cold rainy Late Winter nights when Luke has taken a double dose of Viagra and as he is driving Holly's beautiful head into the Oak headboard on her bed, as he plows her lentil beanfield mercilessly like King David after watching Bathsheba play with Mr Bubbles from his rooftop, no One else anywhere on the planet is watching Holly get plowed (and by extension, vicariously plowing Holly through visual fantasy/mental rape enabled by pornographic films), so Luke & Holly's physical/sexual-spiritual intimacy is kept between themselves.

See Holly, you intuitively understand and express the point of this thread despite your doubts and slightly guilt-ridden conscience. Luke is having a thoroughly Moral Impact upon your heart and mind.

Jeff Steward replies to Holly: "Cool. Can you stop by my office when you get a chance, I want to hit you."

Holly replies: "Careful... that might just turn me on."

JamesN writes: "Holly, i hold you responsible for the fact Luke is now somehow photographing mentally-disabled 35-year old women who are cared for by their aging family in their childhood room replete with teddy-bears, nancy drew books, and a wardrobe of mostly sweatpants and sweatshirts with embroidered cats on them to go to the park in. I worry about him and pray his faith is strong enough to resist giving her a bag of twizzlers and then sexually-abusing her now that he's a bottle of cialis and nothing but Reason magazine to facilitate his self-abuse."

By Amy Klein, Religion Editor 

Rabbi Aron Tendler has stepped down six months early from the pulpit of Shaarey Zedek, an Orthodox synagogue in Valley Village, because “it was no longer appropriate for Rabbi Tendler to continue,” shul officials said.

Tendler, 51, first announced his resignation in a January letter to congregants. At the time, he said he planned to remain leader of the synagogue until the High Holidays in September. But in a March 6 letter to congregants, shul president Jim Kapenstein and board chair Yacov Yellin wrote that Tendler would be stepping down immediately in light of “new matters which had recently been brought to our attention.”

The letter offers no specifics and shul officials declined to elaborate.

Separately, The Journal has learned that Tendler was once accused of inappropriate conduct at the Yeshiva of Los Angeles (YULA), an Orthodox high school in Pico-Roberston where he had worked from 1980 through June 1999, first as a teacher and then also as a principal. The 1987 investigation was inconclusive, but Tendler transferred from the girls school to the boys school, which is located on a separate campus.

Allegations against Rabbi Tendler surfaced on Jewish blogs — web logs — more than a year ago, citing anonymous sources who alleged the rabbi had behaved inappropriately toward women and girls. These rumors were alluded to briefly in articles published in two East Coast newspapers about problems facing the rabbi’s brother, Mordechai Tendler, who is currently defending himself against accusations of sexual misconduct.

Tendler is regarded as a charismatic leader and an inspiring teacher and speaker — someone who could turn around troubled youths, leading them to more religious, more successful lives. In 1999, he received an educator’s award from the Milken Family Foundation.

“We intend to uphold appropriate conduct not only in sexual abuse but other types of conduct,” said Rabbi Avrohom Union, the rabbinic administrator of the Rabbinical Council of California (RCC).

A female student of Aron's at YULA who went on to have an intimate relationship with him writes me:

I thought Amy's story sucks. She sat on it for 6 weeks and suddenly has something to say...they are so full of it, even to say how he is “regarded” is such BS and so out of line at this point...there should be outrage over this...and YULA did NO such thing. Shalom Tendler said, “If it’s true, he will be moved to the boys school.” And he was. They knew about him and did nothing and YULA is to blame for 20 years of Aron’s molestation acts and taking advantage of vulnerable women in town. The JJ is weak and clueless and a bunch of wimps as well.

There was NO new information. No one new came forward. The [Shaarey Zedek] board has been dying to get him out because they have had so much pressure from us and powerful people in town, they have been plotting this since his resignation. And to lie to everyone instead of admitting that they made a colossal mistake and should NEVER have let him have an additional 8 months, is just more BS from the Jewish community.

After Aron was moved from YULA's girls' school in 1987, the Orthodox rabbinate which supposedly has zero-tolerance for sexual predators, allowed Aron to keep running for years National Council of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) programs (aimed at highschoolers, many of whom have a tenuous relationship with Judaism).

Just as when what appeared to have been a May 26, 2003 attempt in Pico-Robertson at a double murder that only narrowly failed, the Journal used the occasion to explore how good institutions deal with gossip, this time the Journal presents the resignation of a two-decade-plus sexual predator from a position of religious authority to let us know that Orthodox Jewish leaders have always had Aron under control, have always had sexual predators under control, and that Jewish schools have always had zero-tolerance for sexual impropriety between their employees and students.

If you have money, you can get away with murder in this town (and get institutions named after you (Stephen S. Wise's Milken Community High School, no surprise that the Milken Family Foundation honored Aron Tendler) or dedicated to you and your's (Stanley Diller and Yeshiva Gadola).

I want to know what the Jewish Journal knew and when did they know it. It is inconceivable to me that they did not know of Aron's removal from YULA's girl school when it occured (in 1987). One of its star reporters, Julie Fax, was a student at YULA when this happened (not that she was then writing for the Journal, but she has been for approximately a decade, and surely word of what happened to Aron in 1987 reached the Journal).

Amy writes: "Tendler is regarded as a charismatic leader and an inspiring teacher and speaker — someone who could turn around troubled youths, leading them to more religious, more successful lives."

Yeah, by who? Who regards Tendler that way? Let's name the people. I don't know many people who'd say he is an inspiring teacher. I do know many people who'd want to kill him if he came anywhere near their youth.

I want to know what Rabbi Avrohom Union (and insert the name of any leader in Los Angeles Orthodoxy) knew about Aron Tendler and when did he know it. I believe, and I have evidence to believe, that Rabbi Union, Rabbi Nahum Sauer, Rabbi Shalom Tendler (Aron's uncle), Rabbi Bess and other leaders in Jewish Los Angeles (including at Aron's shul Shaarey Zedek) have know that Aron was a sexual predator for many years (in some cases, these rabbis have known for 19 or more years) yet they couldn't be bothered to do anything about it until now. Instead many such leading Orthodox rabbis and their institutions have fallen all over themselves to honor Aron and to ostracize Aron's victims.

Rabbi Avrohom Union's RCC still has Aron Tendler listed as its chairman of the Kashrut Committee. It is impossible to believe that Rabbi Union and his fellow rabbis who run the RCC have not known for years about Aron's bad behavior yet they've honored him with this position. To Rabbi Union and his mates in the Los Angeles Orthodox rabbinate, such honoring of sexual predators (when such predators have powerful friends and family) is “uphold[ing] appropriate conduct not only in sexual abuse but other types of conduct.”

Which is more perverse -- Hustler Magazine or the RCC? Hustler Magazine (one of publisher Larry Flynt's daughters, Tonya, accuses him of sexually molesting her when she was a child) ran for years the cartoon "Chester the Molestor" (which depicted the protagonist enjoying the sexual afterglow of plundering a ten-year-old girl) drawn by Dwaine Tinsdale, who was convicted in 1990 of sexually molesting his underage daughter (a legal technicality later caused the conviction to be overturned). The RCC has had Rub Aron running loose for decades.

Full disclosure: I was rejected from the RCC's conversion program in June 2001 (as soon as they learned about lukeford.com, which I sold in August 2001). Rabbi Union ran the program. A friend reported back to me at the time that in response to his inquiry about me, Rabbi Union looked appalled and told him I was the most evil person he'd ever met.

(The RCC has the most prestigious Orthodox conversion program west of New York. By contrast, converts through less rigorous Orthodox law courts such as Beth Jacob's (not that I've ever been in its program), have had trouble having their conversions recognized overseas.)

As many rabbis regard me as the most evil person they have ever met (Rabbi Brad Artson at U.J.'s Ziegler School of Rabbinics describes my writing on rabbis as "toxic"), I don't believe that any of this has affected my coverage of Rabbi Aron Tendler or Rabbi Union or the RCC (though I understand many people would disagree).

I've had no dealings with the other rabbis I've mentioned in this article (aside from attending their lectures a few times).

I was ejected from three Pico-Robertson Orthodox synagogues in 2001 (Young Israel of Century City, Beth Jacob and Chabad's Bais Bazalel, in that order) (related article on my Young Israel expulsion) and one in 1998. Many in the Orthodox community (and elsewhere) say that my writing on rabbi-predators is motivated by my hatred for rabbis.

Chaim Amalek writes me: "You've got some of the best blogging out there. Keep pounding the Juden until they agree to give you a syndicated show on radio or cable. And then pound them some more. You'll know that you've really made it when the Pharisees try to buy you off."

I was called last night to pose for a picture for a certain publication. How should I pose?

Amalek, may his name be erased, writes me:

In your tallis, wearing tefillin, surrounded both by large pictures of rabbis and your books.

Wait, yes, you should wear a tallis, a keepah, have your right hand resting on a large format copy of the talmud (Bava Metziah, Steinsaltz edition) and your left hand resting on a copy of "A History of X." That pic should be taken at your hovel. Wear the undertaker suit.

That's you - Jew and porn gadfly.

Or maybe wear a crown of thorns.

Pose with Mike Albo and two guys in yeshivish garb beating you up on the street.

Or maybe just a pic of you peeling potatoes.

JMT writes me: "Don't show any pink."

Prisoner of X: 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine By Allan MacDonell

Allan writes:

The overriding editorial imperative at Hustler was not to be a snob and never to look down on the little man. We were akin to Jesus in our acceptance of sinners and sluts.

Tough, tightly-wound Connor in particular was Christlike in his willingness to mingle with persons of impaired virtue.

Mook writes: "When I first arrived in the Valley, I was a naive, young meth-addled stripper who was looking for legitimate work only such as gangbangs, bukkakes, anal creampies, and Max Hardcore scenes. I, too, fell into the clutches of such a rogue, whom I will not name, and was an unwitting victim just as so many before me. If only someone had warned me that men in porn could be so unchivalrous. Who knew? This man took something precious (whatever the "industry standard" is at the moment) from me, and no matter how hard I scrub, the feeling of violation will not wash away."

Chaim Amalek writes me:

I am so far removed from the company of women that little of what you wrote made any sense to me.  Hence, I will address your missive on quantitative grounds, and quantity has a quality all of its own.   First, Dolly's letter to you.  Ignoring salutations and line breaks, I count about a dozen lines, succinctly stating her grievance and its likely resolution.  Your response: 116 lines, or about ten words to each of hers.  Not manly, too mewling, too much the work of a vegetarian who seeks out the approval of semites.  That is not the way to master a true Daughter of the Southern Cross.   OK, I've read it.  I cannot imagine any mentally healthy, sober woman thinking better of a man for having sent her such a letter.  In fact (and I'll bet your high-end blogger friends will agree), this letter is something of a classic, an archetype of what not to write.   You should've listened to me, kept track of her fertility cycle, and just knocked her up.  Then it would be she writing such letters to you, which is as it should be.   Forty fast approaches, and along with it, Craigslist women.  See you soon!

...........

Dear Dolly*,

I am sorry I hurt your feelings and if you will work with me on such matters, I will never again repeat them (whether we are friends or lovers). I will never again say anything remotely negative about your cooking (or any area you want me to stay away from publicly or privately).

What is unhealthy in this particular situation is that you would not work this through with me when it was going on (Wed/Thursday). You would rather work yourself into a rage/depression than talk to me about  it and  resolve (at least in part) what went wrong and at least have clarity. It helps to articulate these things so we both know what is going on, rather than letting four days go by.

I know that if there is something important in your life that you want to talk to me or some other guy in your life about, and I or he ignores you, I remember from the past how you fly into a rage and threaten to track down me or some other guy at work or at home (even if this is something I or he clearly does not want, as I never want you to come to my house uninvited, as I would never show up to your's without an invite) so you could have the immediate communication you believe you deserve whenever you want it (though you certainly don't extend this same openness to others).

When you do something that hurts my feelings, I raise it with you
immediately in a low-key way and let you know precisely what hurts me and ask you kindly to not repeat it. Often you will choose to go on repeating these things and then I give up and live with them for the time being (you are going through so many wonderful changes right now, I am very proud of you, changes that are good for you, it does not matter to me how they will affect me), but I make good-faith efforts to raise the issues with you when they occur in a gentle way. I wish you would do the same with me or with anyone else in your life. In other words, I wish you would act like an adult and work things through when they occur.

The adult thing to do in this situation would've been to talk to me Thursday when I made my numerous apologies. I understand that you may not have been able to forgive me but we should've tried to work on things.

One of these days, you may blow someone off for several days, and then discover to your chagrin that that they are forever gone from your life (when if you had simply spent one minute acknowledging their good-faith efforts to rectify their mistakes, a lot of heartache on both sides would've been avoided).

Dolly, you did not do Wednesday night's dinner for me. You did it all for you. Not 1% was for me. Everything leading up to the dinner, the dinner itself (even though the food was 100 times better than I could've made for myself, but food is not important to me) and afterwards was an ordeal for me that I never sought in any way nor would I ever want repeated.

Every time you have made dinner for me it has been an unmitigated disaster for me. The first time you xanaxed out, had a few drinks, appeared to have overdosed, and obstinately refused to tell me (you love to mumble things about what you are thinking but refuse to clarify them articulately, I guess it is a favorite tactic of your's to torture people who care about you) what was going on. The second time (last Wednesday/Thursday) you worked yourself into a rage and then ignored my good-faith efforts to work things through
even though I completely apologized, saw my mistakes, and wanted to overcome them.

Such dinners I have never sought and frankly do not want. They have been nothing but agony for me yet you persist in believing they are something I want. I don't.

I've never asked you nor hinted to you that I desired you to spend time cooking for me (yes, I like it when you cook for me but only when you can do it with an ordinary amount of grace and ease and without feeling in any way burdened, and it has never been something I have asked from you, not once, not ever, not hinted, not dreamed about, not suggested).

I hated the position you put me in last week. I hated you constantly mocking my food choices and you constantly letting me know how much aggravation this was causing you, etc. I hated eating late. I hated eating under such pressure. My stomach curled into a tight ball last Wednesday for hours before and after the meal. I couldn't sleep. It was a horrible night for me.

I hated your dozen calls and emails last Wednesday reminding me of how much you were martyring yourself to do this for me.

I have never asked for such an enormous expenditure of energy on your part to make me a meal nor have I ever given any indication that that is important to me. You know very well I would've been much happier with some burritos or salad or something simple at 6pm when we could've watched the movie together rather than you going into this martyr thing and blaming me for it every step of the way.

I have told you many times about things that important to me and that I would love for you to do with me. You've shown little interest in doing anything that I would like you to do with me -- such as meet my friends and participate in any of my interests. Thus, I have quit asking you to anything because all I get is dissed (you can't be bothered to tell me you can't/won't go, you just leave it open-ended because you need to constantly remind me that I have no importance to you but as an amusement, someone to torture or play with at your whim) when I raise something I'd like you to join me in.

So, you know very well things I'd like and you know very well they have nothing to do with you cooking me meals. You did last Wednesday's dinner entirely for yourself, it was another opportunity to diss me, to put me to an impossible test, and then a wonderful opportunity to hate me afterwards for failing your impossible test.

You went off on something you wanted to do, completely ignored what I wanted, got all worked up about it, and blamed me every step of the way and then for days afterwards.

Please spare me: "you need someone more stable than me, and I need someone more stable than you."

I've asked you many times to not give me advice about my love life. I don't want to know your recommendations on who I should screw, who I should date, who I should marry, and who I should impregnate. I've said this and written this to you over and over again. Please listen to me this time and please stop it.

Even if I was holding on to some delusional dream about you, and I'm not, your nagging on the matter would not help.

Nor do I want you to seek my recommendations for you on these matters nor do I want to hear you getting into specifics with me about other guys you are seeing and evaluating and seeking and holding on to.

When there are problems in the way we relate, whether we be as friends or lovers or colleagues, let us deal with those issues as adults, when they come up, with precision and focus and fairness.

.............

Let's just leave things on an as-needed basis. If you need me, I'll try to help.

I don't think there's any ill-will between us. You are right that much of my long email today was absurd. Most of your responses were spot-on.

We've each said our piece. I don't seek any more communication or friendship with you. You don't hear me or anyone in a deep way. I don't want to go to any movies with you. I don't want to hang out with you. If I see you in public, I'll avoid you. Not because I dislike you, I just want some distance.

I have your father's book. I'll want to get it back to you when I've reread it. I may seek your help with something some day and you may seek mine. I'll be happy to connect you to people or give you contact info or help you get work and I'm sure you'd do the same for me.

Let's skip our chitchats, IMs and phoners unless it is for something
necessary and let's forget about any plans for my birthday or anything. If you spot any important mistakes on my websites, and want to let me know, I'll be grateful. Feel free to give my phone number to anyone as it is publicly listed. I always want to correct mistakes and break stories and do my work honorably. Feel free to give me a heads up on anything I'll find interesting, useful or life-saving and I'll do the same for you.

Peace out.

Penthouse publicist Lainie Speiser writes me: "I am proud to present my April ’06 Penthouse Pet to you. I discovered her at Webster Hall where she works as a Go-Go dancer and was overwhelmed by her smoldering, exotic good looks. I chased after her with my card and glory be she was into the idea. This is her bio and photo. She went to Catholic school of 14 years and is probably the most “normal” of the young ladies in this industry."

I call Krista, who grew up in New York, at 12:15 pm Monday. She steps off a busy New York street and finds a quiet place. She says that as a kid, she wanted to be a veterinarian. "Once I was in highschool, I didn't know what to do. I went to college for a year-and-a-half but I just wanted to continue modeling.

"I thought Catholic school was great. It's a love/hate thing. I loved the rules. I hated the rules. I loved the uniform because it made life easier. I'm religious. I thought it was important to be taught that. We were taught religion every day. It was a small, very warm, school."

Luke: "How do you reconcile your religion with posing nude?"

Krista: "I try not to put the two together. What I do is my job, my art, and my passion. It has nothing to do with me being Catholic. I still have my morals and my beliefs.

"I've been modeling and acting for five years. I met Penthouse at a Penthouse lingerie fashion show I went to. We exchanged numbers and pictures and took it from there."

Luke: "What do you love and hate about being a nude model?"

Krista: "The only thing I hate is that people automatically judge you and put you into a stereotype. But this is my job. It doesn't have anything to do with who I am.

"The reason I love it is that I think the magazine has become very tasteful. The girls are very beautiful. I'm happy to be part of it.

"I have a boyfriend. He's very supportive. The only way it could affect my love life is people wanting to be with me just because of what I do. With the nude pictures, people could not take as much time to really get to know me and just judge me by what I look like."

Luke: "How have all your years of modeling affected you?"

Krista: "It's made me wiser. It educated me. It showed me how to trust people and to be aware and educated on the business. Sometimes it is not about the money, it's about the exposure and the networking."

Luke: "How has it affected you that you make your living from your looks?"

Krista: "I am appreciative that I am able to make my living off my looks. It's also personality. You still have to be a businessperson. You have to know how to play the game. A lot of companies don't only want a pretty face. They want somebody who can represent them."

Here's Lainie publicity release:

New York, NY, February 20, 2006-She's sexy, she's sultry, she's sweet and luscious, she's Krista Ayne, April '06 Penthouse Pet from New York City and Krista wants you to know she's just a nice, Italian Catholic girl from Staten Island.

"I go to my parents house every Sunday for dinner, even if I've been out all night, I hardly ever miss a week to enjoy a long, old-fashioned sit down meal out in Staten Island. I definitely do believe in tradition," say Krista who currently lives in Manhattan.

The smoldering 23-year-old was discovered at the New York City nightclub Webster Hall where she has been employed as a Go-Go dancer for the last eight months. "I've been dancing all of my life though. This is the first time I've danced at a club. I love it because I get to walk around in pasties and a g-string with sexy accessories like angel wings or a fun electric blue wig. Sometimes I'm a Geisha and other times I'm a Vampire. Sometimes I'm a burlesque queen, it's whatever the theme of the club is that night. Its like a weekly costume party, that's how I look at it."

One look at Krista's breathtaking shoot and one can't wonder if international stardom isn't too far away, but in typical Staten Island Girl Next Door fashion this charming young lady is taking it in stride. "I'm proud to be on the cover of Penthouse, my photographs are so classic and high fashion. Everything is happening so quickly I have to stop and think about it because I can't believe it."

Jenna Presley Interview

Jenna calls me Sunday morning, March 5, 2006. "I've worked 35 days in a row. This is my first day off.

"I'm finding that with less drama, I get shot a lot more.

"I went to a party Friday night at Cinemax and met a lot of B-list actors. I know a lot of A-list people who are cool, but hanging out with B-list people, they think they're huge. They made sure they told me what they do for a living. This one guy is reading two lines on CSI tomorrow and he wants me to watch.

"It was the first time I had gone out in a while and I had the worst headache."

Luke: "In real life, are you loud in bed?"

Jenna: "In my real life, I like to make love, but right now I'm f------ a guy who f---- like a porn guy, even though he's not in porn. He makes me really loud because he f---- me. He doesn't have sex with me. I don't typically f--- a guy unless he's my boyfriend. This is the only guy I make an exception to because he's a really good friend of mine. He's married.

"It's his choice. I told him I didn't want to. She doesn't know.

"He's hot. Down-to-earth. Cool. I'm all about personality, it doesn't matter what you look like. If you can make me laugh. He's hilarious.

"If you're sweet and confident, it doesn't matter if you are a 500-pound fatman.

"Steven St. Croix invited me to the Cannes Film Festival. I thought it was in Oklahoma."

Luke: "What percentage of people in the industry do you think have a drug or alcohol problem?"

Jenna: "Huge. I think that 90% of the business does drugs or alcohol but maybe 70% have a problem. I include pot as a drug. I know people who come on set stoned and they can't perform. A drug problem to me is when it affects your work life.

"There was a director who got really drunk on set the other day and he started crying for his mommy.

"I drink every now and then. I rarely smoke pot because I will just binge for two days after. That's how pot affects me.

"I know that if I take shots, it's a problem that runs in my family. I can have one Malibu and Pineapple and then be cool the whole night. I smoke cigarettes. That's all I do.

"I smoke half-a-pack a day of Capri. At least I look like a lady while I'm smoking.

"I did the whole drug and alcohol thing. I'm over it. I danced in Tijuana."

Luke: "How many friends do you keep up with from highschool?"

Jenna: "None of them. There's one girl in my top eight and my sister is my number one.

"She's a nice girl, but when I got put in the hospital for anorexia, not one person called me. They all have their excuses. But at least she drives up to see me regularly. I think she's trying to make up for not calling me.

"I don't know if that is because she's very into the Hollywood scene and wants to be famous. She can't live that through me. I'm not in the Hollywood scene and I'm not famous. I think she thinks it's cool that I've met people in Hollywood through this business. She considers porn an option.

"I tell her, 'If you want to get into mainstream, don't get into porn.'"

Jenna blogs:

While I was suffering from anorexia senior year [at Hilltop High School] I wrote a journa entry on you all. Its a little harsh but I thought you should know that I WAS in tears. NO ONE Called me, and it hurt! Why do you want to talk now that I am making money? You WILL NOT be getting any! SO HERE is THE JOURNAL ENTRY:

*****I BLANK OUT MY WEIGHT FOR SPECIAL PURPOSES, PEOPLE FIND IT OFFENSIVE, THIS JOURNAL ENTRY MAY BE OFFENSIVE, SO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK! May 17,2005 ASSERTIVE WITH PEERS: When I was in Kindergarten I remember being the leader and so many wanted to be me. What happened? Ever since 1st grade, I have become the follower. I always do what me peers tell me to do, I always have to be the "perfect" friend and in order to do so I have to be a pushover. I only wish that I could find the leader in me once again. I wish that i could say, "no" and stand up for what I truely believe instead of doing what everyone else does. I have become such the copy cat in an attempt to be (once again) the "PERFECT FRIEND" BUT it obviously had not worked because ever since I have gone to an inpatient center NOT ONE of my friends has called me except for this girl from my outpatient center I previously attended which makes me feel as though I can only be friends with other anorexics because we can truely realte and understand ones feelings.

ANYHOW, if I could build courage, I would call ALL of my "so-called" friends and I would tell them to "f--- OFF". I was NOTHING but nice to them and they can't even pick up the phone and f---ING CALL ME? You know, I had a "friend" that was stabbed, I believe senior year right before I was hospitalized, and I CALLED HIM IN THE HOSPITAL TO MAKE SURE HE WAS HEALING. NO he never called me! It really pisses me off and Its NOT like I can call any of these people because my mother erased ALL of their numbers off of my cell phone. With this said, I am SOO Nervous for my High School graduation on June 18 because this means that I have to see all of the f---heads that I USED to consider my friends. What will I say to them? "Hi how have you been? JUST incase you were wondering, I was suffering from f---ING anorexia, I was (blank) f---ing Lbs, I weighed less than my 11 yr old little brother, I was having Kidney failure, I had heart trouble, I lost my period, I could have had a stroke and you never called ME!! f--- OFF

WELL That was almost a year ago, but I AM NOW more assertive with peers which was MY goal. So i thought I would post an OLD journal entry. This Still bothers me, its been on my mind.

Luke: "Have any of your fans turned into friends?"

Jenna: "No. I don't meet anyone on the internet. I tried to but this guy told me he was an agent in mainstream and he turned out to be my biggest stalker.

"Highschool is hard for me to remember because I was so malnourished the last two years. Studying for a test was a bitch because it was so hard to remember everything.

"My mom bought me a car at 16 and she wants it back. I'm not driving it anyway because I don't have a license.

"When I had anorexia, I had my driver's license taken away because I was passing out in public places. I passed out in food stores. I haven't passed out since June but I'm having a helluva time getting my license back.

"I call my brother all the time but he's always busy. He's always BMX racing or doing homework.

"The last time I talked to you, I told you he was ten. He's 12. He read the interview and said to me, 'I'm not ten, you idiot!'"

Luke: "He's reading your stuff?"

Jenna: "He always does. I told him you made a mistake.

"I got an email from him last month. He said he got in a fight with the principal's son and punched him twice and gave him a black eye. 'I got suspended.'

"I've never been in a fight in my entire life. I got a little teary-eyed.

"I'm reading my friend Dave Navarro's book Don't Try This At Home. He's a former heroin addict."

From the Jewish Journal September 24, 2004:

With rainbows of fabric swishing around her 5-foot-11 frame, rings on every finger and bracelets hugging the length of her wrists, Reb Mimi Feigelson cuts an impressive presence — an aura in no way diminished by the fact that she is 80 pounds lighter than she was two years ago.

...Using the same spark of wisdom and originality that has made her a beloved teacher among her students at the University of Judaism and in Jerusalem, Feigelson is trying to conquer her lifelong weight problem with her own spiritually based weight management system that swirls together personal teshuvah, repentance, and Divine balance in the world.

...Uncomfortable with the idea of "losing" weight, because loss has a negative connotation, Feigelson decided instead to "give away" her extra weight – about 115 pounds when she started. Two years ago she e-mailed 60 close friends and family, and asked each one to take a number corresponding to a kilo (she’s Israeli and thinks in kilos—about 2.2 pounds). When she gets up to that kilo, she asks the designated person to send her positive thoughts once a day, and she keeps thoughts of that person with her. She uses words and ideas associated with the numbers to focus her prayers as she enlists God’s help as well. When she finishes a kilo, Feigelson asks the designated person to donate money to a hunger-relief organization in recognition of that kilo.

"I don’t feel like I’m dieting. I feel that I am part of a process of tikkun [repair] in the world. God has a vision of a just world, and I’m creating the opportunity for that justice to manifest itself," she said.

..."In the ultimate scheme of things I was eating more than my portion, and someone else in the world was not getting their portion, and this is a way to reverse that," she said. She has a vision — though no specific plans — to spread this approach, harnessing the thousands of pounds people lose every day to feed the world’s hungry.

Luke says: These are beautiful sounding sentiments, but do they work?

In Mimi's case, they have not.

This article exemplifies what I don't like about the Jewish Journal -- it is not real. It runs these high falutin articles gushing over their politically correct subject but reality is ignored. Can you imagine the Journal following up a year or two later saying this diet we promoted didn't work?

Professor Feigelson can be an engaging teacher, but why on earth would she go public with such matters? I have to assume she was prepared to face the uncomfortable fruits of failure.

Yes, I go public with embarrassing stuff all the time, but I am a laughingstock.

Chaim Amalek writes:

You expect too much from the ethnic press, of which the Jewish press is a part. There is room in every publication for fluffy articles. Even the Torah has filler.

How many times have you seen Brokeback Mountain? And how has it affected your life? I know going to "Munich" has made me more tolerant of Hamas.

I went to a lecture the other day by a female professor. Throughout her brief talk, a male professor repeatedly interrupted with his boorish comments. He didn't bother to raise his hand. He just blurted things out.

Noboy else acted this way.

Why can't men just shut up and take short breaks from trying to prove publicly how smart they are?

'Judith Hauptman, one of the [Conservative] movement's most respected Talmud scholars...'

Who says so aside from the Forward?

Are any of the people Jennifer Siegel quotes (all of whom support ordaining homosexuals) respected scholars of Jewish text at the level of a Joel Roth (who opposes ordination)? Not even close.

Watching hardcore porn for a living has a lowering, deadening effect on the mind:

From the Guardian:

I resigned as an examiner in June after six months, wearied by the relentless viewing of hard-core pornography and its lowering, deadening effect on the mind. I felt like a gatekeeper to the sex industry. A sex worker.

Talking to friends was interesting. The smirks on their faces soon turned to slack-jawed bewilderment when I answered their questions about porn viewing. I could have given a lighter 18-cert touch to my replies, but their expressions of disgust confirmed to me that it is troubling to watch degrading stuff - even if you do get paid for it.

My friends and I are neither prudes nor puritans, but porn liberals who imagine hard-core tapes - those available only in registered sex shops and given the classification R18 - as liberating and exciting, rather than the joyless, graphic genital fests that they are, should consider the relentless debasement of (mostly) young women involved...