"Gimme More" came on and Paulie Walnuts started doing minimalist dance moves that could be described as career-ending.

Paulie, I said. Don't pile on.

It's not that I like Britney or her music. (Although "Gimme More" is weirdly her best song.) And it's not that I defend her choice to become megafamous. Something is very wrong with a person who fiends for that much attention. But now that it's all said and done, her unraveling kind of is our fault. Every time I watch an E! news segment on her latest wig/child custody battle/fast food order I'm complicit.

We're all gonna feel really guilty about all the poking and prodding if she kills herself. I put Seacrest on mute and did a blog post instead.

Attention, Oaklanders!

Mayor Ron Dellums is endorsing Hillary Clinton! Ew!! And to make it worse, you can read about it in The Nation. If you don't live in Oakland and thus have never seen Dellums show up at the Lakeshore Farmer's Market in his flowing white linen garments and facial hair to match, just know that he was a renowned anti-war, pro-civil rights Congressman for nigh on thirty years before becoming the latest supposed savior/mayor of the Town.

(Below, somehow-whiter-looking-than-me Mayor Ron Dellums.)


Best theory (cribbed from Brian) is that this is a case of the old guard civil rights guys drinking the Obama Haterade. Sharpton, Jackson, now Dellums.

Come on, guys. It's not Barack's fault that Sen. Joe Biden called him "the first mainstream African-American [candidate] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." (I know, it's still shocking nine months later, huh? Articulate, Joe? Articulate? Does that word have no baggage to you?? Sharpton's classic response: "I take a bath every day.")

Anyway, that crowd seems to resent Obama because he's not sufficiently one of them. Mostly because he is part of a younger generation and didn't come onto the political scene until he worked as an organizer in Chicago's South Side as a young man in the '80s. I will travel further out onto this limb and say that I think this team-think is typical of many lefty-sixties-baby boomer types. There's The Team and there's everybody else. Everybody else implicitly sucks.

Obama is more independent-minded than that.

And there I go, sinking deeper into the Obamorgy. Shit!

Don't Call It Graffiti

Little something I wrote for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies website. It was a very hard assignment--I had to watch people do cool graffiti art, go to a party and chop it up with East Bay Express people.


Such a hardship, poor Clebbie.


Thanks, Jon!!

Jews Come Out of the Cultural Closet

Ah, what a time to be a Jew. No slavery, no pogroms, no shtetlech, no concentration camps. And for the first time ever, we're cool!

On Wednesday's Daily Show, Jon Stewart Jewed it up with Ted Koppel--"It's like when you're sitting there at Passover..."--as he now does whenever he has on a fellow tribe member and I'm thinking, Jesus. This is almost too much. One more "mishpocheh" or "punim" and I might get nauseous.

(And incidentally, Koppel with Stewart...How many degrees does that put me from Stephen Colbert?)
I mean, yeah, there have always been Jewish entertainers, as is the case in any population that would otherwise be depressed by all the oppression and stuff. I'm sure up in the Catskills they were making gefilte fish gags. But for a while there, even Jewish comedians purveying obviously Jewish humor weren't acknowledging that they were Jewish.

Take Seinfeld. (Please.) His show was all about New York Jews and their neurotic nothing-doing. But did Jerry and Elaine ever flake on a Bat Mitzvah invite or scalp for High Holy Day tickets? Contrast that with Seinfeld co-producer Larry David's current show Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which characters do both. Also on HBO, the most Jewish character ever played by a gentile: Entourage's deliciously dickish Ari Gold.



Sarah Silverman debuted her Comedy Central show last year by warning viewers to expect "full frontal Jewdity."

Shoot, had he come up these days, Jon might not even have felt the need to change his name to Stewart.

And it's not just the comedy world. Did the Beastie Boys ever rap about the girlies with the big ole tukheses? Hell no. But hip hop producer Scott Storch--who I'm so not endorsing, btw--calls his production company Tuff Jew. And 50 Cent's team of lawyers? They're called Jew Unit.



I could go on. I already mentioned Stephen Colbert's 1-800-OOPS-JEW Atonement Line. And one channel up, on E!, Sal Masekela (who is, by the way, the son of South African jazz legend Hugh Masekela, in case you, like me, were wondering like crazy) was wishing the Daily 10 viewership a "Shanah Tovah."

For a little Jewess who grew up in a desert exurb in which "Jew" was not even, for better or worse, a category (the categories: white, black, Mexican), it's all very heartening. When Adam Sandler came out with the Hanukkah Song, I thought that was as good as it was gonna get.

UPDATE: Check out Jews Come Out Part Tsvey.

Who I'm Worshiping Now: The Answers

Great sleuthwork, Clebketeers. Lolo wins and Buffy gets a prize, too.

THE ANSWERS:

1. The Known World author Edward P. Jones.

2. TV personality & Clebbie style idol Debbie Matenopoulos.

3. Comedian Demetri Martin. "Other things stop working or they break. But batteries--they die."

4. Person Who Thinks She Can Dance, Sabra. (Or as the show "So You Think You Can Dance" hokily crowned her, "America's Favorite Dancer.")

5. The man Kanye calls to fix his beats: Timbaland. Maybe during their next chat he can also enlighten Mr. West on the delicate art of being a producer who raps. Timbaland knows his $500,000 beats need nothing but a little whipped cream and maybe a cherry, while Kanye smothers on all his crappy bananas and nuts and hot fudge.

6. I haven't once watched her new show 30 Rock because it's on some sort of channel with a low number during the evening hours. But I still have love for Tina Fey.

7. Carmela Polwick is a very small cat. Much smaller than Inguento. Sorry, Inguento.