The Last Exiled....Amazon

Do i have to dance all night?

2009-03-20T15:41:00.000-04:00

I am not sure why that is, but it is, what it is. I first learned the depth of my deficiency during the poetry components of 4 years of secondary school English. Good thing poetry never counted for more than 15% of one’s overall mark or I might never have got out of high school alive.

My four years of English poetry taught me that no matter what I thought a poem was about I was dead wrong - every single time. Not only was I wrong every single time I thought I had finally encountered a 'eureka' poetry moment, more often than not, I was completely stymied by what the poet was trying to say in 90% of the poems I encountered in the first place. The only exception is Tehillim. Not only do I get it, I actually enjoy it. There is only one other poet which comes close to my experience with Tehillim – Leonard Cohen.

I won’t say I understand what he is trying to say, but his imagery with words always conjures up these vivid pictures in my mind and I tend to relate emotionally to his poems. For example, one of my favourite lines of poetry runs –

I stepped into an avalanche,
it covered up my soul,
When I am not a hunchback,
I sleep behind a hill,
you who wish to conquer pain
Must learn to serve me well,
- Parasites of Heaven

He lost me on the whole ‘hunchback and sleeping beneath a hill', but I know what it feels like to step into an avalanche and feel it cover up one’s soul, and I get the conquering pain bit, well, I think I do. Every where I have gone this week I keep hearing his ‘Hallelujah’ and I grow nostalgic. I found this You Tube video of him singing “Do I Have to Dance All Night” with Laura Branigan on background vocals. Even though recording sound quality is really poor, I relate to it very well and can’t stop singing it under my breath. Apparently, this song has never been released in North America. Shame really.

Lyrics -

I’m Forty-One, the moon is full,
you make love very well.
You touch me like I touch myself,
I like you Mademoiselle.
You’re so fresh and you’re so new,
I do enjoy you, Miss.
There’s nothing I would rather do
than move around just like this

But do I have to dance all night?
But do I have to dance all night?
Ooh tell me, Bird of Paradise,
do I have to dance all night?

You never really have to tell me what
you really think of me - alright.
Let’s say I’m doing fine,
but do I have to dance all night?

Do I have to dance all night? …

I learned this step a while ago.
I had to practice it while everybody slept.
I waited half my life for you, you know,
I didn’t even think that you’d accept.
And here you are before me in the flesh
saying “Yes, yes, yes!”

But do I have to dance all night? …

I learned this step a while ago …

But do I have to dance all night? ...

being porked

2009-03-13T13:07:00.000-04:00

I have been travelling and things won’t really settle down until next week but a ridiculous 5 hour flight caught me about 6 hours from the last meal. Usually, I carry something with me rather than dine a la carte on airplane fare but yesterday was an extraordinarily chaotic day and what food I had was inadvertently tucked into my checked luggage. It didn’t help that I ran late, and by the time I got through airport security, I didn’t have an extra 20 minutes to stand in line to pick something up.

Depending on the airline and length of flight one can always request kosher meals but my experience with pre-ordering kosher meals has been at the best of times a ‘sometimes’ experience - as in sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not. Anyway, here I am wasting away, when the West Jet sandwich cart comes around, and I think, I’m saved and so is the woman beside me with the extraordinarily horrid cheap perfume; if I can appease my hunger she may well be spared my wrath for the next 5 hours.

This is where I know my higher power has a sense of humor as my choices are Asian chicken/pork teriyaki in a wrap, turkey with tomatoes, mayo and bacon or…. a ham and cheese sandwich with mayo. You could always suggest I put away any religious scruples and scarp it down except I have an allergy to all pork products. It’s been a source of much entertainment to my family for years and they get great amusement recounting all my personal health horror stories from their inadvertently feeding me toxic foods. All except for my grandfather, who took it as a sign personal reproach from G-d, and in a bout of extreme guilt for producing an ‘ethnic’ Jewess granddaughter gave up pork with me.

What is it with you people and your obsession with ruining a perfectly sandwich with pork? Not only is it a personal hazard to me but stories like this one continue to surface. ABC News:

Alvarez, 37, was first referred to the Barrow Neurological Institute at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix with balance problems, difficulty swallowing and numbness in her left arm. An MRI scan revealed a foreign growth at her brain stem that looked just like a brain tumor to Dr. Peter Nakaji, a neurosurgeon at the Barrow Neurological Institute.

"Ones like this that are down in the brain stem are hard to pick out," said Nakaji. "And she was deteriorating rather quickly, so she needed i Yet at a key moment during the operation to remove the fingernail-sized tumor, Nakaji, instead, found a parasite living in her brain, a tapeworm called Taenia solium, to be precise.
"I was actually quite pleased," said Nakaji. "As neurosurgeons, we see a lot of bad things and have to deliver a lot of bad news." When Alvarez awoke, she heard the good news that she was tumor-free and she would make a full recovery. But she also heard the disturbing news of how the worm got there in the first place.

Nakaji said someone, somewhere, had served her food that was tainted with the feces of a person infected with the pork tapeworm parasite. "It wasn't that she had poor hygiene, she was just a victim," said Nakaji.

Please, enough with the victim stuff, if she avoided eating the pork she would have been fine.

Raising a new generation of civil servants

2009-03-06T08:05:00.000-05:00

Stuck finding the perfect present for a 4-7 year old child with authority issues? Amazon offers the Playmobile Security Check Point. Although, at US$62.00 is doesn’t come cheap but what civil servant ever does?

The most priceless review comes from Loosenut:
I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger's shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger's scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said "that's the worst security ever!". But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.

The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I've heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I'll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead.
Absolutely priceless.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

2009-03-05T16:50:00.000-05:00

The NY Times ongoing and obviously desperate search for relevance, is now reduced to turning out copy like this in their ‘politics’ section.

WASHINGTON — Well, that didn’t take long. Just 44 days into the job, and President Obama is going gray.

It happens to all of them, of course — Bill Clinton still had about half a head of brown hair when he took office but was a silver fox two years later, and George W. Bush went from salt and pepper to just salt in what seemed like a blink of an eye. But so soon? “I started noticing it toward the end of the campaign and leading up to inauguration,” says Deborah Willis, who, as co-author of “Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs,” pored through 5,000 photographs of the first head over the last year.

Mr. Obama’s graying is still of the flecked variety, and appears to wax and wane depending on when he gets his hair cut, which he does about every two weeks. His barber, who goes by only one name, Zariff, takes umbrage with bloggers who alternately claim Mr. Obama, 47, is dyeing his hair gray (to appear more distinguished) or dyeing it black (to appear younger). “I can tell you that his hair is 100 percent natural,” Zariff said. “He wouldn’t get it colored.”
Hope, no one has their heart set on getting a Pulitzer for the Politics desk.

Open Borders are fairy tales Palestinians tell themselves

2009-03-03T07:11:00.002-05:00

This Ynet News article caught my eye because it sounds like a first.

As the world's top diplomats pledged billion of dollars for war-ravaged Gaza in Egypt on Monday, ordinary people here, from merchants to housewives, said they'd rather have open borders than handouts. Even some tunnel smugglers who profit from Gaza's blockaded borders say they'd rather import legally through open crossings than risk Israeli bombing raids and shaft collapses.
"I want a ceasefire and open borders. Crossings are better than tunnels," said 22-year-old smuggler Abu Mahmoud, leaning over a shaft as workers tried to clear a 100-meter stretch of tunnel that had collapsed under a recent Israeli air strike.

The closure of Gaza, imposed by Israel and Egypt after a violent Hamas takeover in June 2007, has deepened poverty and fostered militancy. A three-week military offensive in Gaza by Israel wreaked considerable destruction but left the militants in power. Now donor countries have to find a way to rebuild Gaza.

On Monday, donors pledged a total of $5.2 billion for Gaza and for the government of Hamas' main rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas had sought at least $2.8 billion in new aid from the donors' conference in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik.
Aid officials say reconstruction is only possible with open borders. But Israel and Egypt have set conditions that include a complicated prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas, and reconciliation between Hamas and Abbas. But ordinary Palestinians say there will be no real success until the borders are opened.
In Gaza City, car parts dealer Nayef Masharawi, 60, said the blockade has been bad for business. He noted that a gallon of Egyptian motor oil bought from tunnel smugglers costs nearly twice as much as the superior product he used to import from Israel. His last shipment from Israel arrived in May 2007, a month before the Hamas takeover. The elderly shopkeeper said he had fond memories of the 1970s, when he would drive from Gaza City to his Mercedes supplier in the Israeli port city of Haifa without borders or checkpoints.

You know what I find extremely odd? The largest expense of most reconstruction efforts is often labour, and yet, the Gaza Strip has almost unlimited market of cheap labour. Second, (or in this case) the first largest expense would be materials but materials are certainly to be had on the cheap in Egypt. So why is so much money really necessary for the so-called reconstruction? I sincerely doubt the backwater of the Gaza Strip had assets of $5.2 billion before the Israeli offensive but apparently it now costs $5.2 billion to replace assets well under a billion – which I should point out were not all destroyed by the Israelis.

Be that as it may, let’s play a little game of suppose – imagine there is peace between Israel, Egypt and the Gaza Strip. No kassams, no weapons, no smuggling. Hamas and the Palestinian people have decided to contend themselves within the Gaza Strip but there is one thing which will not shape the peace and that is ‘open borders’. The freedom of movement and the free flow of goods without controls or tariffs are a thing of the past and belong to a time before the second infatada when Israel still occupied the Gaza Strip and Gush Katif was flourishing. It was in Israel’s best interest to maintain the economy of the Gaza Strip, and therefore, Israel needed to integrate the Gazan economy with its own.

But withdrawal and disengagement are not just military terms for the physical leaving of an Israeli administration. It also means a complete break with any vestiage of concern for the prosperity of the local economy and a complete divorce from caring about the welfare of Gazans. Gaza is not Israel, and therefore, Israel has no interest or concern.

In theory, ‘open borders’ will not allow the free flow of trade between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Stop and think sensibly for a moment. Why should the Israeli state allow Israel to be flooded with cheap produce from the Gaza Strip – the only industry Gaza was able to develop beside kassams? It will only undercut and threaten the livelihood of the farmers of Israel. And what need has Israel of kassams or kassam specialists – its not like the Israelis have a shortage of rockets, engineers or scientists. Open borders will not mean Gazans will be allowed to flood Israel with cheap labor. Unions are powerful organizations in Israel, and the last thing any union wants is an open labor market driving down their member’s wages.

So let the Gazans go seek their fortunes in Egypt, you might be thinking, but Egypt has its own concerns. The average income in the Sinai is lower than in the Gaza Strip and Egypt has a population of at least 80 million to contend with. The Egyptians don’t want cheap produce or kassams crossing their borders and flooding their markets. Egypt already has a surplus of cheap available labour.

Again, why would the Egyptians give free rein to Gazans when the strip is run by the Hamas, the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization with which the Egyptian government is conducting its own special militant dance with? This is the sole reason why the Egyptians have been trying to so hard to reconcile the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. It needs the Gaza Strip to be run outside of the direct control of Hamas. Can it be done? I sincerely doubt it without a common enemy to unite them. Furthermore, the needs of the Gaza Strip could potentially threaten to wreck the economy of the West Bank and disproportionately tie up resources which in turn would lower quality of life for most West Bank Palestinians. It also denies the reality of West Bank-Gaza relationship. While the West Bank and the Gaza Strip share a common enemy which unites them only temporarily - neither side particularly cares much for the other. Take the Jews out of the equation and all they have in common is a mutual hate on for each other.

Well then, have the Gazans look to the markets of Europe and beyond, and yet, how can either Israel or Egypt allow open skies and open ports be controlled by the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim brotherhood? Even if the Israelis wash their hands; don’t be surprised to find the Egyptians take an active part in any refusal without a Palestinian Authority controlling the borders. And really why should Hamas turn over control back to the Palestinian Authority and lose any hard fought advantage towards furthering their own charter and aspirations? Besides, revenge is the mother’s milk to the Palestinian psyche and Hamas cannot afford to believe Fatah will not seek compensation for every Fatah operative’s execution.

Then, what about developing of tourism? Firstly, one needs to ask why the Egyptians would allow anything to threaten their tourist economy in the Sinai – the only real industry developed in the Sinai. Then you have to ask what would bring tourists with dollars into Gaza – an Islamic run state? Gaza has no Mecca or Medina and a dry tourist resort holds no interest for most of the world to play in.

But even more importantly, Gazans at peace with their neighbors means no more hand-outs or greatly reduced international aid. Suddenly, all the ‘special’ reasons for the free flow of international welfare will come to any end – or at least will put the Gaza on equal footing with all the other third world backwaters and no more deserving than any other nation state.
So what are the viable options for a perpetually failed state in the making? Only three which I can see – join with Egypt and lay aside aspirations of a Palestinian statehood, lobby Israel to take them back (highly unlikely) or a continued state of war. I vote the Gazan leadership picks war because far too many profit from it ranging from an international payday of aid to the international merchants of war. Face it, war pays and peace costs.

There is one lesson the Palestinians need to learn from the Torah. When Moses led the ancient Hebrews out of bondage in Egypt; they learned there is no freedom from responsibility. This wasn’t just a special handcrafted message for the ancient Hebrews and only applicable to them but a life lesson for the entire world.

ah, perchance to dream

2009-03-02T11:45:00.001-05:00

Last night I had a dream. While this is not unusual, more often than not I rarely remember my dreams. Even rarer is the dream which provokes an emotional response that stays with me long after waking.

I was invited to a public mixed gathering of some kind. Not every one present was Jewish but there a number of Chassidic Jews present. In the course of the evening I was introduced to a man, a widower of many years, and a Lubavitcher. We chatted and I was surprised at often he looked directly into my eyes, and when he did, I was totally disarmed by the kindness which shone out. I had not felt such warmth since my grandfather’s passing. He asked how long I had been widowed and for the first time I was comfortable to say not only how long but how many times. I told him I had not been in the company of so many Chassids since my grandfather’s death, over a decade ago. He asked if this bothered me and I said no. Then he asked me by what Hebrew name my grandfather gave me and for the first time in a decade someone living called me, Shoshanna, and it became hard for me to breathe after he said my name.

He asked if he could see me again. I stood there weighing this over in my mind. I gave much thought to what he asked and understood full well the implications of seeing him again. This was not some causal modern undertaking with dinner and a movie but a full courtship ritual. To say yes, meant stepping way back into the past and all that it implies for me. And so, I for once in my life, I stepped back, took a leap of faith, and answered, “Oh, yes, please.”

Our date was not a dinner and a movie but a wedding celebration for another. He arrived in a car full of people and I was squeezed into the back beside him. At first, I felt incredibly awkward and embarrassed to be seated so close beside a man who was not a relative and it gave a sense of danger - this indulging in the forbidden pleasure. Never had I been so consciously aware of the presence of a man beside me, and when he spoke, I could his breathe on my check. This disarmed me and gradually I found myself relaxing for the first time in years. For once, I felt like I was exactly where I was meant to be and a great sense of peace washed over me.

On the way to the wedding, we stopped at a diner for coffee. He took me round and introduced me to everyone. The last person I was introduced to was the oldest man present. I asked him, if was a Shliach of the Rebbe. He answered yes, and asked how I knew. I answered my grandfather was a Lubavitcher. He said it was good that I came home and he would talk with me some more at the wedding. My nameless date seated me among the women and then went off to join the men. I was listening to the women talk while my eyes were busy feasting at the sight of my date across the room when just as suddenly I found myself all alone in the diner. They had gone on without me and then I woke up wishing it was more than just a dream, and if that was not to be, than I wished I could spend a lifetime, night after night, dreaming such dreams.

In real life, I have made a commitment to another, and if this dream means anything at all, I suppose it means this – dump the goy.

go yea into the streets of Jerusalem and see if yea can find a man

2009-03-02T05:47:00.001-05:00

It is no secret to those who know me that I am a big Battlestar Galactia watcher. I watched it the first time round with my mother. It was our only real time together during my teenaged years and remains one of my favourite memories. Every Sunday night without fail we would gather together to watch Battlestar Galactia at 8pm and I, Claudius at 9pm on TVO until both shows had run their course.

So having grown up with the old Starbuck it took a while for me to accept the new Starbuck as a woman. I wasn’t particularly fond of the transition and it wasn’t really until the second season got underway that I warmed up to the new Starbuck persona.

Dirk Benedict, who played the original male Starbuck character, is interviewed in National Review and has this to say about his cinematic remake of Starbuck.
“They castrated the character from that show who is the most male,” he says, referring to how Starbuck was reborn female, the most telling detail in the new show’s surrender to Hollywood’s regnant sexual politics. “They came up with the idea to remove his balls, his humor, his gallantry, and make him an angry, pissed-off woman with a cigar. That is a reflection of our society. What Hollywood couldn’t do to me in 25 years, the producers of this show did to me with a delete button.”

One real source of dissatisfaction I have had for the new series is just how unappealing most of the young male characters are. They run the gauntlet of whiny, petulant and overtly emotionally needy. I cannot help feeling none of these ‘new men’ of Caprica hold any real appear to me as men. I still cannot understand Hollywood’s love-in with the ‘metrosexual’ persona of male characters – far too tiresome in real life and even more tiresome to watch on the big screen. I admit I cheered watching Gaeta be executed and thank the writers for finally killing off the whiny little worm of a man. There is a kind of ugly ring of truth to what Benedict says, but the thing which really hit home for me as a mother of teenage sons, was this:
“Even up in Montana I’ve spent the last 20 years defending the right of my boys to throw a frickin’ snowball, to climb a tree, to jump off a little cliff, to go out in the canoe off my dock without a life jacket,” he says. “All the little boys that refused to give into that were put on Ritalin. The future warriors of America are all on Ritalin in the second grade.”

Can I get an Amen? About fracking time someone finally said it. Here I was thinking it was just me.

There are no names to take the place of those long dark holes of memory

2009-02-27T09:06:00.000-05:00

Last year, one beautiful fine spring day I was in one of my favourite used bookstores with my teenaged daughter, Kiki Tzipporah. Yes, I have a Tzipporah and a Moshe too, but no Gershom, and instead, I have Yishai.

My daughter was at the comics table at the back of the store hunting for Buffy the Vampire comics to add to her collection while I was rummaging through a stack of books on the table beside the comics. I was more or less lost in thought and wasn’t paying a great deal of attention to the conversation the two clerks were having in the back as they unpacked books from boxes until I heard the phrase “those Jooos’. It wasn’t so much even the words but the sneering tone with which the words were uttered that broke my inner concentration and caused me to pay attention and listen up.

Its not that Jews haven’t been the subject of discussions I have participated in but I bet the fingers of one hand could easily number all the conversations I have overheard by strangers discussing ‘Jews’. In a place as vast and diverse as Canada, Jews are too small a number to garner much attention, well - until lately that is. Who knows, perhaps Jews have always been a topic of ordinary discussion from non-Jews, and maybe, its just I haven’t gone out enough to notice.

Either way, these young clerks crossed my Jewdar, and held my undivided interest and as the conversation turned to the Holocaust and their long litany of complaints against the so-called overt preoccupation for the Shoah which holds ‘the Jews’ unnaturally captive and hostage to in its memory. Every single word cuts like a single knife plunged over and over in my heart.

I stood there shaking in rage when suddenly I feel my daughter’s arms wrap around me around me, and the soft whisper of her voice in my ear telling me to put the books down and now is not the time to fight. “Not this way”, she says, “Not this time, they don’t know and they will never understand. Let it go.” she says, as she attempts to pull the books from my hands. At first, I resist but then, I realize she is right, so I let the books drop from my hands unto the table. I sag against her as she pushes me towards the front of the store and leads me out the door telling me it will be okay.

But it never is. And how, to begin even to explain it? What are the words to make anyone fully understand or even feel just a tiny bit of it? How to explain to these young men - sixty years is a grandparent, aunt, an uncle, cousins, one grows up never knowing. All those blank spaces in family memory who no one ever knows because their life was stolen – all those worlds never borne…times millions? I wanted to tell those young men the horror of it never really ends until memory dies or is lost. It can’t, when your daughter at nine looks at a picture of line of young women going to their death in Auschwitz and screams because she sees her mother’s face written on another waiting in line for the ‘shower’.

I remember taking the book from my daughter and looking at picture and wondering what her name and age was. I wonder at the mystery of her life, and I wonder if in fact, she belonged to me and mine. She must, I think, otherwise how else to explain the uncanny resemblance to me. I, who grew up looking like no one living, have found my twin in the pages of an obscure book. Whose daughter, whose sister, whose aunt, whose cousin was she I ask myself. I searched through my memory and cannot find a single trace of her but what does that really prove? So many names, so many ties, but so few faces and so few memories. And it is at that moment aliyah – the need to rise up and return to Zion became a siren’s song in my daughter’s heart for she feels the weight of 2,000 years of history pressing and knows ‘never again’ only means until the time when memory dies.

I am two generations removed from the Shoah and my best friend is merely one yet we are the same age. Her father at 14 became a partisan. After the war he went back to Minsk to find his home and any trace of his large family. He wasn’t looking for parents, or brothers, or sisters, as he watched them all die before his impotent eyes. Instead, he searched for any trace of aunts, uncles, cousins…really anyone. All he found was a distant cousin in Winnipeg and a china tea cup which belonged to his mother. He carried that single tea cup half a world away into Canada. Her father is but a blessed memory now, and so, on Yom HaShoah we fill the cup with Israeli wine and take turns sharing a drink of remembrance for all those worlds we do not know which are irrevocably lost to us.

I haven’t forgotten those two young men in the bookstore, and when I hear old men who should know better deny the holocaust my heart is indeed hardened. For those old men serve only to give cover and bred ignorance in the young, and therefore, bring the tomorrow after ‘never again’ one day closer. I care not for your vapid and airy apology, nor your god who you claim to apologize before nor your church. All of this means less than nothing to those who will never know the worlds which were irretrievably stolen from them.

Dangerous Co-dependency or giving a hand to create the Palestinian Sisyphus

2009-02-27T06:16:00.002-05:00

It occurs to me that since the kassam fire has yet to cease that perhaps now is not the most prudent time to divert funding or provide funding for a Gaza Strip reconstruction effort.

But hey, that’s just my opinion.

Hollywood is on life support and broadway has died.

2009-02-26T11:08:00.000-05:00

How can you tell Hollywood has lost the ability to make cinematic magic come to life on the big screen and no grown-ups are around to apply CPR? Because the memoirs of Valerie Plame-Wilson is to be made into a motion picture. This storyline, shall be henceforth known as - the life-story most able to bore almost-all-American movie going public into a deep sleep. Larry King, take this as a warning, you have some serious competition when this pic is released on DVD/Blu-ray. Variety carries a report on the scavenger hunt for a ‘star’ to prop up what has to be the movie most like to blow and bore at the same time.
"Fair Game," the drama about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, has come together with Naomi Watts starring, "Mrs. and Mrs. Smith" helmer Doug Liman directing and William Pohlad's River Road financing.

But the big question is whether Oscar-winning "Milk" star Sean Penn will close a deal to play Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Penn is negotiating, but no deal has closed. Pohlad has a strong relationship with Penn: he was a producer on the Terrence Malick-directed "Tree of Life," which stars Penn and Brad Pitt, and Pohlad also was a producer and financier for "Into the Wild," which Penn directed.

Wilson watched his wife's CIA status become compromised after he wrote op-ed columns that accused the Bush Administration of manipulating intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq. The project, based on Plame Wilson's memoir, landed at Pohlad's River Road after Warner Bros. put the project in turnaround. Pic is being produced by Weed Road's Akiva Goldsman and Jerry and Janet Zucker of Zucker Productions.

Not only is Hollywood on life support, so is apparently the state of the live theatre. Rolling Stone:.

After launching at London's O2 arena in April, a live stage treatment of the Star Wars series, Star Wars: A Musical Journey, will make its way to the U.S. But organizers say they're steering clear of a straight forward musical theater treatment or "R2-D2 rolling across the stage," and are instead preparing a recontextualization of the iconic film franchise featuring an enormous LED screen, classic films scenes and, of course, John Williams' landmark score.

First announced in late 2008, Star Wars: A Musical Journey debuts April 10 in London, where 17,000 will be the first to sample the bombastic production. Williams is personally rearranging the neo-romantic space opera's leitmotifs like "The Imperial March" and the "Star Wars (Main Theme)" for performance live by the 86-piece Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. The symphony will perform in front of a 100-foot LED screen displaying a LucasFilm re-edit of all six movies into one 90-minute narrative that syncs to the beat of Williams' new work.

The idea for Journey came during the scoring phase of post-production on Revenge of the Sith according to Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing and a 29-year veteran of the company. "We were really looking for something that would be big and spectacular and reach as many people as possible and still deliver a really fantastic experience," he says.

Starwars – the musical journey...some things are just so wrong, wrong, wrong in any known universe but why can’t anyone in Lucasworld see what a lemon a Starwars musical is? Opening up new markets and taking advantage of marketing opportunities is all well and good, but not all mediums should be used as a delivery system. Nothing actually replaces a decent original writer and thinker - and some 30 year old plus ideas just really suck in the here and now.

Neutered in the Locker Room or Biology isn't necessarily destiny

2009-02-26T07:03:00.003-05:00

A St. Catharine’s fitness Club owner is being taken to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario for refusing (or for post-poning a refusal depending on your side of the issue)a pre-op transsexual man use of the women’s change room at his fitness club.

The Toronto Star:
The owner of a St. Catharines, Ont., fitness club says he has opted to go to a Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario hearing in a dispute initiated by a transsexual. The complaint alleges John Fulton denied a pre-operation transsexual access to the women's only areas of his gym. The transsexual – now a woman – was a man at the time of the incident two years ago.

Following a closed-door mediation hearing Wednesday in Toronto, Fulton said he has opted to go to the tribunal rather than settle. Fulton says he wasn't sure what to do when the pre-operation transsexual applied to join because his female clients might not be comfortable with a man in their changing room. Fulton, who denies ever refusing to allow the complainant to use his club, said a date for the hearing hasn't been set. "I have not said no," he said Wednesday. "The person, who is actually post-op now, is welcome to come and use the club."

Fulton said it all started when he decided to open a women's only section at his fitness club. A few days later, a woman came in, filled out all the paperwork and just before signing said she was a man, he said. Fulton said he called the tribunal and was told he had to let the man use the women's facilities, but he said he couldn't get an answer on what his rights and the rights of his female clients are. "I had to find out what my women's rights were," he said Wednesday.

This story went online at last night at 6:19 pm and comments were closed by 7:53pm. Gee, what a surprise.

This issue actually touches me indirectly. The gym I (sometimes) attend is located on the edge of an area in the downtown which is commonly referred to by the locals as ‘Boytown’. As such a great many of the local gay and lesbian community use the facilities. I don’t care who comes and it is a very clean well run facility. I use to go to an all-women’s gym but it was poorly run and the equipment was often in a state of disrepair. The deal breaker for my patronage was the decided lack of cleaniness and erratic opening hours. Nothing like standing outside in the middle of a Canadian winter at 6 am waiting for the slacker staff to show up to open the club.

I picked my new gym because it was clean, well-run and maintained a separate facility/space weight room set aside for the exclusive use of women. Women were free to use all areas of the gym but I appreciated having a separate weight room. Nothing says pinched back nerve like attempting to pull off 100 lbs weights off a bar.

This brings me to the changing facility. I would definitely object to sharing a change/locker room with a man(men). Call it my inner Taliban asserting herself but I am just not comfortable changing in a co-ed room or a gym where change/shower room facilities use was designated according to personal individual gender identification rather than a more traditional category of which physical sex you belong to. Although, once the operation was completed and said transsexual was a fully function woman per say, I don’t have a problem nor do I care.

So what to do? One can suggest dismantlement of the HRT but this issue won’t necessarily go away. Any potential plaintiff only needs to have the funds or backing of a larger organization to pursue this matter thru the civil courts and it is only a question of when and not if, before the matter comes before a civil court for litigation.

So again, what is the solution? Is it reasonable for club owners to be forced to offer three change/shower rooms with one designated as ‘co-ed’ at their fitness clubs, or allow any male/female the right to use whatever facilities they feel the urge to use, or perhaps, do away completely with sex-designated change/shower rooms?

And what about patrons like me – do I have any rights in this issue? I suspect the only right I have is to patronage or not. That being said - anyone know of a well-run and maintained Muslim or Orthodox Jewish fitness clubs in downtown Toronto, because as far as I know - only religious organizations have the right to openly discriminate on the basis of physical sex in Ontario.

He walked 800 kms just to return to Zion

2009-02-25T07:05:00.002-05:00

The 18th Knesset has been sworn in and I would just like to post a picture of Kadima MK Shlomo Mula so the next time you read or hear the phrase ‘Israeli Apartheid’ you remember him.

MK Shlomo Mula has a rather poignant and compelling life story which only underscores why Israel was founded and must remain the Jewish homeland. I don’t mean to suggest Israel is a land free of prejudice or bigotry but it is also a land where the dreams and aspirations of a exile can be met with hope and opportunity.

Preenings of weenies or Amnesty International calls for weapons embargo against Israel

2009-02-24T06:35:00.001-05:00

Amnesty International has called for a world wide weapons embargo against Israel, and for good measure, tacked on Hamas as well. The Jerusalem Post has a decent opinion piece on it even if I do feel the calls of impending doom are a trifle simplistic:
Yesterday, Amnesty International, the world's premier "human rights" brand, called for the destruction of Israel. We're overdramatizing? Were AI to get its way, the UN Security Council would impose a comprehensive arms embargo on the world's only Jewish state - but not on any of the 22 member states of the Arab League, or on Iran. Over time, Israel would find it impossible to defend itself against conventional or WMD threats stemming from hostile states or Palestinian and Islamist terror organizations.

The pretext for the embargo call was the IDF's campaign in Gaza to compel Hamas to end its bombardment of southern Israel and cross-border aggression. Over the years, Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis in terror attacks. Apparently spearheading AI's anti-Israel crusade is the group's "principal researcher on Israel/Occupied Palestine," the London-based Donatella Rovera.

Though Israel purchases arms from dozens of sources, AI's boycott call is really aimed at the Obama administration: "Israel's military offensive in Gaza was carried out [largely] with weapons, munitions and military equipment supplied by the USA and paid for with US taxpayers' money," claimed Malcolm Smart, AI's director for the Middle East.

Either to simulate evenhandedness, or perhaps because it really is blinded by moral relativism, AI perfunctorily called for a weapons embargo against Hamas. It thus appears incapable of distinguishing between Israel and Hamas, between victim and aggressor - between an albeit imperfect Western nation which values tolerance, representative government, rule of law and respect for minority rights, and a medieval-oriented Islamist movement which mobilizes Palestinian masses to hate, teaches its young to glorify suicide bombers, and inculcates a political culture wallowing in self-inflicted victimization.
The naivety of AI is what I find most astounding. This is an organization which allegedly investigates some of the most repressive totalitarian regimes in the world but has so little idea how real geopolitics is really played in the big world. Furthermore, calling for the defunding of the Israel by the US will not make the Israelis complacent enough to lie down and die while their neighbors arm themselves to the teeth. As far as I know, Hamas has not received even one AK-47 through legal channels. If Israel is not to be funded per say - why should the US taxpayers be forced to pick up the bill from the Palestinian Authority? How long does Amnesty International expect the Palestinian Authority to last once US support is withdrawn? And if Israel is to be subject of a world wide arms embargo, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Israelis take a very heavy hand approach in the disputed territories in order to neutralize the ability of the Palestinians to cause them any harm in both near and future. I know I would and I doubt it would even take a full seven days if the Israeli gloves came off.

Calling for the US to stop funding and supplying the Israeli military with arms would mean no more joint Israel-American military research projects and no more would the US have a stake and a ear on what the Israelis are coming up with. The United States would loose all her diplomatic trump cards; therefore, the US’s ability to apply heavy handed influence on any Israeli policy or arms deal would be removed. Hello India, bye-bye Pakistan. And with the US out of the picture, just who do you think will come calling to do deals? Even after the Turkish Prime Minister had his temper tantrum in Davos Turkey still wants a deal and Russia was most impressed on the effectiveness of Israeli drones and has been clamoring for a deal. Even if you could get past the American UN veto on the security council - what is to stop China or Russia from missing an opportunity to get a piece of the Israeli pie?

What else could match Peres' Nobel?

2009-02-23T17:39:00.001-05:00

What an absolutely fracking brilliant suggestion. William Safire's op-ed piece (even if it is recycled circa 1996) in the NY Times, and I quote:

For 20 years, the policies of Shimon Peres have been criticized in this space, but not once did he refuse me an interview or duck a difficult question. He's a consistent loser of elections, but a genuine political pro. (Now that the job of Secretary General of the U.N. is coming up for grabs, how about an Israeli dove?)

Peres may be President at the moment, but I am sure the Israelis are already sick enough of him that it would like doing them a massive kindness to lead him away from Israel politics and onto the world stage when Ban-ki Moon's term expires in December 2011. Besides, for sheer entertainment value, how can one beat the constant stream of exploding heads from the UN general assembly? Now, that's entertainment.

Tree of Life

2008-12-21T16:41:00.000-05:00

I have never bought a menorah although I have two in my home. One was from a relative and the other came to me strictly by happenstance. Ever since my run-in with a former fellow tenants, when the Stars of David’s were craved into my walls and doors around my flat with the immortal phrase ‘Kill the Jew’, the local neighbour people have taken to calling me the Jew Lady. From time to time I would run into this older homeless woman. It was hard to tell her age under the layers of clothes and dirt. She spent practically one entire summer stalking me on the street and every time she saw me always demanded to know if I was the Jew Lady.

Every time she started hectoring me down the street I was overwhelmed by a profound sense of guilt. It was solely irrational but purely an instinctually response. I did my best to ignore her by turning up my iPod and walking fast away. One day, in the fall, I relented, turned off the iPod, and slowed down to speak to her. I asked her why she kept calling me the Jew Lady. She answered because she was tired of always being the alone.

I asked her if she was hungry and she said yes. I took her into a local coffee shop and bought her lunch. Over coffee I asked her if she would let me help her. I explained I had friends who worked for a Jewish community centre and they could probably help her – at the least - she would have a place to go where she would not have to be alone. This idea aggravated her and she fled the coffee shop.

I didn’t see her again for weeks. Then coming home late one night shortly before Chanukah I found her sitting on the steps outside my front porch. Her bags were all arranged at her feet. She told me she had something to give me and reached into one of her bags and pulled out a menorah shaped as a Tree of life. While I am not overtly familiar with Kabalah, I do understand somewhat the nature of the symbolism associated with the Tree of Life - which can represent the unique and unknowable nature of G-d. I didn’t want to take it from her and explained I wasn’t religious. It seems to be one of the few things of value she possessed. She grew impatient with me again. In frustration, she shouted out at me she has no home, no doorway or window to put the menorah in which to light it. If I would take it and light the candles for her each night she could see it, enjoy it, and know she wasn’t alone.

What could I do? So I took the menorah, and for the first time in my life I placed a menorah in my front window on Chanukah. In for a penny, out for a pound, so I called the local Chabad house and got the candle lighting times and on the first night of Chanukah, I placed the menorah in my window, and pulled my grandfather’s siddur off the bookshelf. I lit the shamash, and started to search for the blessing, and instead, found a handwritten piece of paper tucked into the prayer book with instructions and the blessings to recite for lighting the candles each night. It was like someone knew this day would come for me and so sought to prepare me.

Once I started to sound out the words, I realized I knew them and the meaning and so I sang them out. I was surprised and taken back by the comfort I got from doing this. Perhaps, it was because for a few lost souls there was finally a little light was shining in the darkness. I haven’t seen my bag lady since she gave me my menorah but every year since, I place her menorah in the window and light the candles.
If only it was so easy for the rest of us to bring in a little light into our souls.

The whole point of my menorah story is that this year I will be out of town during Chanukah and I still wanted to bring my menorah and light it. Even though my bag lady wouldn’t see it I did not want to break faith with her. I promised her and gave her my word. I would do this in memory of her.

I was afraid it would get damaged if I traveled with it in the great lot of things I will need to bring for a month’s holiday with the Tribe so I had my friend carry my menorah back out west. Apparently, it got mangled in transit so it can no longer stand on its own. The thought of having no usable menorah to light has distressed me and plagued my sleep. I am not sure what has been made bent can be straightened and rather than risk having no menorah to light I have started a search for a new menorah but nothing I found held meaning for me.

In the end, the menorah was repaired and tonight night, I will do what literally hundreds of generations have done before me on this night. But when I place my Tree of Life in the doorway, light the first candle and recite the last blessing, Baruch Atah Adonai Elohenu Melech haolam shehecheyau vekiyimanu vehigianu lizman hazeh [Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.], know this - I stand in awe at the mysteries and inner workings of the universe in which a homeless woman can act as a catalyst to show me my place in the light of the universe.

What is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh

2008-12-10T17:43:00.000-05:00

My grandfather use to always use this expression - ‘what’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh’. I think of this often since I have had children. It has never surprised me when I see one of my children display characteristics of myself, their father, my grandparents, etc., but it’s the odd bits and pieces that set my mind to wandering

The Last Amazon left home to study neuroscience with an eye to eventually become a neurosurgeon. One of the reasons she choose to study at this university was an optional program which acts as a mentoring program for students wishing to pursue a medical career. Enrollment is very limited and she was fortunate to be accepted into the program.

I think it’s a great idea and I am not sure why more universities don’t offer a similar program considering the high drop-out rate by the second year of medical school. Far better to realize one is not suited to medicine before paying umpteen thousands of dollars in non-refundable tuition. Personally, I am hoping she opts for research rather than medicine. Not because I do not think she is not capable of being a great doctor but because I realize the pursuit of medicine often requires sacrifices and I want her to keep her options open. It’s very hard to be a doctor and both a wife and mother. I am not saying it cannot be done just that it is very hard and I don’t wish hardship on my daughter.

She applied to a brain injury clinic which turned her down due to her age - such is the joy of being only just turned 17 and in university, although she was offered a spot at the clinic for next September after she turns 18. She was eventually accepted in the Emergency department of a local hospital. Yesterday, she texted me she got the word to suit and scrub up as she was going into the OR as an observer. This wasn’t the Grey’s Anatomy observation room but a place on the floor watching the ‘action’.

I received this email from her last night:

It's hard for me to try and explain it by email. It'll be better if I talked to you about it. But I'll try anyway! I got to watch some interesting surgeries- two ileostomies, a kidney stone removal, two breast tumor removals, a hip replacement and a knee replacement. I also got a chance to talk to med students and hear the latest hospital gossip! I also talked to this anesthesiologist. I practically spent the entire day 8am-5pm on my feet observing surgeries! Oh yeah and the best part of my day was... I got to actually touch the tumors (once they were removed)!

I wasn’t even sure what an ileostomy was and had to look it up. Gross, but I suppose necessary, considering the alternatives. I can’t imagine even having the desire to touch a tumor and her father positively blanched at the sight of blood. Scraped knees, cuts, stitches, and broken bones were always my domain. All of I can think of is my poor mother (who volunteered to live with my daughter while she studies out of town) listening patiently as my daughter excitedly explains in gory detail involved of the operations she observed.

It truly has been an educational experience for my mother to live with the Last Amazon. Recently my daughter came across the term ‘coprophilia’ in her studies and did not have a clue as to what it meant. My mother volunteered to look it up and now wished she hadn’t. My mother so shocked she had to call and share it with me. All I could offer in the way of comfort was to suggest how awful to live one’s life ignorance…. I am writing this waiting for my mother’s call which I know is coming.

does age hold the key of life

2008-07-06T04:55:00.003-04:00

There is something about the sound of a violin, which renders it the perfect musical instrument to sing the lament of the exiled. The guitar, while a powerful versatile instrument of emotional expression has come to represent, more often than not, a kind of individualism. In this modern age the guitar has also come to be a potent symbol of rebellion and while exiles can be rebellious; it not necessarily rebellion which sends them off the familiar traveled roads of home and heart.

This UK Independent article tells you more about wood density than you probably ever wanted to know but I did find it fascinating to learn what potentially gave the legendary Stradivarius violins their unique sound had more to do with the age of wood density used in their construction. Chalk it up to another hidden virtue of age.

I bet there were those who wanted Sigourney Weaver to be a host for the alien

2008-07-03T17:44:00.000-04:00

In my other blog incarnation, I refused to weigh into the abortion debate. It always seems like such a lose-lose scenario, and rather pointless to wade in the fray - since there are no possible words to change any one’s point of view. This is one of the few issues, which can only be definitively decided on an individual basis and meditated by one’s life experience.

I was pro-choice long before there was any choice, but what a great many on the ‘pro-life’ side forget to address is this; there more than one alleged right to life they should be busy defending. Get as fetus-lish as you want in the posters, get graphic, hand out bloody dolls, coins, or whatever - but understand this - all you have accomplished is to turn any sane or reasonably minded individual against your point of view. Beating up clerks or doctors just paints you as thugs…and bombing clinics is an unforgivable act of urban terrorism and put you squarely on the same side as the Taliban.

On the other hand, it was not until I had carried a fetus to full-term and given birth that I was able to succiantly answer the question; when does life begin? Now I know, but even being able to answer it definitively, seems like a useless kind of thing to know. While I may appreciate the fact that life begins at conception whose right’s trumps whose body? Here is the thing - while I can appreciate the miracle of being - I would not willingly force or compel any female to carry a fetus to term against her will since the physical well-being of that fetus is entirely dependent on the level of physical care exercised by the host-female.

Years ago, a Toronto Star columnist, (I believe it was Rosie Di-Manno) wrote a column lamenting the fact a woman had 17 abortions and counting. Di-Manno is probably as pro-choice as one could get, but even for her, this woman’s actions were well over the bounds of civilized behaviour. I always thought she had it wrong. The more willingly a woman is to use abortion as a form of birth control shows absolutely her general unfitness for even being a surrogate mother to a child who would, at best, be destined to be adopted at birth.

And in the pro-life camp, I would like to ask; how far are you willing to go to restrain me from having an abortion if I deemed it is necessary? Will you bind my hands and feet to keep me from reaching for a coat hanger or a knitting needle? Does that sound too extreme? I would remind you of the time when the law of the land criminalized abortion and literally thousands of women preferred to risk jail and gamble on death rather than give birth.

Ask yourself – how far will are you really prepared to go? Will you be satisfied if you jail and make me a criminal because I refuse to become a host for another human? This is the path of the Handmaiden’s Tale and I will not let you lead me, my daughter, or even her daughter, there without a fight. Know this, I am not shy to shed much blood protecting my right to my own person or my liberty. Instead, I suggest you content yourself with imagining me and my sisteshold’s eternal damnation in the world to come.

When I first heard the Order of Canada was to be bestowed upon Dr. Henry Morgentaler, I was shocked, and thought - egad an abortionist has been awarded the Order of Canada. Why would the committee award the honour to someone who divides us??? Since then, I have a chance to read the papers and both pro & choice blogs, but mostly, it has caused me to reflect what life was like before Dr. Morgentaler fought the government and won. Well, he might divide us, but no woman in this country is driven in despair to reach for a coat-hanger or knitting needle again, and in my mind, for that fact alone, he deserves it, and my freedom demands it.

And for those of you who think, Dr. Morgentaler a common murderer and criminal, I ask you this; why does the expression and fulfillment of your value system demand a ‘woman’ give way to the despair of the coat hanger?

Out of many people, comes one nation

2008-07-02T05:09:00.001-04:00

Goes one of my nations' mottos. If you are reading this there is a probably chance you think I am referring to either the United States or the very multi-cultural Canada but you would be wrong. Although, the motto could work with either country it is neither country’s motto and actually belongs to Jamaica – my other homeland. I have officially two, and unofficially; there is a third. Canada is where I was born and where I currently live, but Jamaica is my adopted homeland.

Jamaica is a funny kind of place and ignites passions. You either love it or you hate it, but once visited, you are never indifferent. There is a certain kind of cache about being a Jamaican. Sometimes being a Jamaican is a curse, as when others use your nationality in vain and attempt to damn you with all the evils of the world. And then there are times when it is nothing but a blessing; like when the kindness of strangers eases your way.

I can not count the times when I have went through my outside door and joined the maddening throng on the street only to catch the sounds of a fake Jamaican accent and patois used as an every day kind of voice among groups of young people. Among African teenage boys, being Jamaican has a kind of ultra coolness and a street cred, which I suppose being Somalian or Congolese in origin does not possess – yet.

Although, any Jamaican looking at these boys knows they are not Jamaican, and not just because they lack the sing song quality or the proper pitch of their accents, which Jamaicans possess, but because the heart of Africa is still etched cleanly in their faces and in their limbs. Jamaicans, on the other hand, are a homemade soup kind of place. There is no purity of blood and limb but only heart. I remember reading that Bob Marley was the most recognized black man among all Africans people and smiling to myself because Bob’s father was a white man. Jamaicans know this and think nothing of it. So stories like this one from the BBC do not even get my eye to twitch.

Most wrestling fans have never heard of the West African country, so the wrestling body decided fight fans would be more likely to embrace a wrestler from the land of Bob Marley and reggae music. And so desperate is Sarkodie-Mensah to become wrestling's next superstar, he is willing to deny who he is.

"I was actually born in Jamaica - to be honest with a name like Kofi a lot of people assume I was born in Ghana," he says with a bad Jamaican accent, but doing his best to stay in character.

But though he denies it, his mother Elizabeth - the head of a Ghanaian-American organisation in the US - confirms that he was indeed born in Ghana, and not in Jamaica. The family only moved to the US in 1982. "I told him: 'Kofi, your cousins watch you on TV in Ghana and want to know why you don't say you're from Ghana,'" she says. "He said: 'Tell them it is business.'"

It certainly is business. After he discovered his mother had revealed his secret identity to the press, Sarkodie-Mensah banned her and the rest of his family from speaking to the media, for fear of compromising his career.

One love, and all of that.