Esther Kustanowitz: December 2006 Archives

Think of video games. If you're of a certain age, it's Pac Man and Donkey Kong. If you're younger, maybe you think of Grand Theft Auto or The Fast and the Furious. Religious Christians who have faith in the Rapture might enjoy Left Behind: Eternal Forces. Or if you're Jewish, you might sit yourself in front of your game screen for the tale of money, mystery, and intrigue known as "The Shivah."

Named after the Jewish tradition of seven days of mourning, "The Shivah" features not a pumped-up Vin Diesel-ish hero, but Rabbi Russell Stone, the spiritual leader of a dwindling, strapped-for-cash Lower East Side synagogue. An article in the NY Jewish Week reports that the search for the truth "leads Rabbi Stone through mob dealings in the Garment District to a humongous Upper West Side synagogue, where he confronts an evil rabbi." (Attention Upper West Side readers: I know it's tempting, but please refrain from trying to identify the game's evil rabbi as having a real-life counterpart.)

In any case, it should be interesting to see how video games define "evil." Don't expect semi-automatic machine gun fire and car crashes, though. According to the article, "players win not with guns and explosions, but with a rabbi's intellect and conversational tactics."

The game's producer, ManifestoGames, notes that the game has three different endings. Which should be familiar to Jews everywhere, who understand that there's always more than one way to read a text (or play a game). As the old pre-gaming adage goes, "two Jews, three opinions." (Or in this case, three endings.)

December 25 may be the day that all Christian boys and girls wait all year for, but for Jews, celebrating Christmas often takes a different approach, which often includes some or all of the following elements:

1) Stand-up comedy, featuring Jewish comedians from different backgrounds and billed as "kosher comedy"
2) Chinese food (not necessarily kosher);
3) Jewish singles events
4) Piggybacking on the family events of Christian friends
5) Drinking eggnog
6) Extending the "Christmas celebration" over several days (perhaps in an attempt to make the miracle of Christmas last for eight days instead of one).

In the case of San Francisco's "Kung Pao"--one of the nation's many Jewish comedy events around this holiday season--you can check off 1, 2, and 6 (two shows daily over four days... eight shows... coincidence?) And possibly #5, too. Kung Pao also features the comedy stylings of Dan Ahdoot, a first-generation Iranian (Persian) Jewish comic (interviewed here on SFGate.com).

Ahdoot grew up in Great Neck, N.Y., which he (accurately) describes as a "hotbed" of Iranian Jewish activity and says that he "didn't really know that I was very different until I went to college. That's when I realized, 'Weird! People haven't met someone from a group that's, like, .0001 percent of the population in America?'"

Ahdoot also shares his tips on how to deal with hecklers and what Jews should do on Christmas:

Do you ever get heckled?

Oh yeah. Of course.

How do you handle that?

I put the heckler back in his place. I mean, I don't pull a Michael Richards, but I've done probably 10,000 comedy shows, and I've been hit with everything. So I know how to handle it.

Do you have any advice for Jews during the Christmas season?

Stay away from Mel Gibson.

Sound advice.

In this post-"Sex and the City" era, people dissect relationships a lot. There's so much to navigate that some daters might wish they had been born in an era when there wasn't so much choice--a time when a man saw a woman of marriageable age and asked for her hand in marriage. And once married, the two learned to love and respect each other.

But people who seek the romance in "The Painted Veil," a new film starring Naomi Watts and Edward Norton, will have to pass through the obligatory purgatory of emotional torture, infidelity, hatred, and indifference before achieving redemption and love. (Additional spoilers to come.)

Based on the novel by Somerset Maugham, the story begins in the 1920s and centers on Kitty, a well-to-do young woman with an independent, modern streak, whose family has given up on her. The love story begins at a party, where Kitty descends a staircase and is spied by Walter, who says little, but ask her to dance. Her "why not" answer is an indicator of her lackadaisical approach to men--she would have danced with anyone.

The following day her parents pressure her about him, causing Kitty to proclaim that rushing into a marriage with someone she doesn't love would be "downright prehistoric." Walter shows up and asks her to marry him. Her instinct is to say no, but to get away from her mother, she accepts.

The pair moves to Shanghai, where Walter is a microbiologist and Kitty has nothing to do--it becomes quickly apparent that the spouses have nothing in common. When Kitty meets the English Vice Consul (Liev Schreiber), the two embark on an affair containing all of the spirited passion that is lacking from Kitty and Walter's marriage. When Walter discovers the affair, he devises a punishment: He moves to a remote Chinese village to serve as doctor during a cholera epidemic and takes Kitty with him.

He takes the long road so that the trip takes two weeks instead of ten days, and denies her an innoculation against the disease. "I knew you were selfish and spoiled, but I loved you. And I know you married me to get as far away from your mother as possible, but I hoped there would someday be something more," says Walter.

The process of letting go of her privileged life in favor of modesty provides the purgatory necessary for Kitty to be rid of her sins. Part of the purging is Kitty's developing a relationship with the local mother superior, who calls her "pretty" and "young." "I feel ancient," Kitty sighs, in a callback to her comment about "prehistoric" attitudes toward relationships.

Working in the orphanage, Kitty learns about duty and grace and love. She sees the good work that her husband does; this leads to them overcoming their status quo marriage of peaceful indifference and find passion within the confines of commitment.

The alignment of talent, the spectacular locations, and the strength of story creates a most memorable, if saddening, film. And it will certainly disavow modern daters of any notions that relationships used to be easier. Social circumstances, wardrobe, and location may change, but at their core, relationships are hard because, as Kitty says during a fight with her husband, "People are unpredictable." And this has always been our delight as well as our tragedy, even sans cholera.

Life in elementary school is hard. Even if you've got Lil' Condi Rice to do your homework, Lil' Dickie Cheney to growl at your enemy cafeteria workers who are trying out a multicultural menu, and parents who live in the White House. And maybe especially when it's "Dan Quayle Elementary School" and your name is "Lil' Bush, Resident of the United States."

Now you get an inside look at the (imagined) pre-adolescent life of George W. Bush, which includes hallway bully Lil' Kim Jong II stealing Lil' Bush's MP3 player and Laura the new chubby nerdy girl. (The screen below links you to the pilot, but I also recommend the "Nuked" episode.) Comedy Central has ordered a six-episode season of the show, which now exists in small, five-minute episodes on Amp'd Mobile.



As you might expect, the broad stereotypically comedic tropes--Cheney's aggression, George's simplicity, George Sr.'s alternate pride and frustration in his son, Condi's devotion to George at all costs--are present in combination with a debt to animations as diverse as Josie and The Pussycats, Scooby Doo, and South Park/Team America. I found it LOL-funny.

But the show--and the general attitude of taking comedic shots at the president--prompts a larger question that we might ponder. This is the second series to poke fun at the figures in the Bush White House (some may remember Comedy Central's "That's My Bush" (2001), which gave South Park's creators their shot at playing with some of the same stereotypes but with live action and a laugh track instead of animation).

Without the second season (oops, I mean presidential term of office) of Bush, it's possible that the Daily Show would have waned in popularity and never have birthed the Colbert Report, which any member of the "Stewart/Colbert 2008" Facebook group would agree would have been a great tragedy for our nation. But is our current president inherently more comical than the ones who came before him? What is it about him that courts laughter? And if poking fun at the president creates a legacy of laughter and derision instead of respect, what is the impact on the mood of our country, and what is the impact on history?

We could ponder that. But most of us will probably just watch (and enjoy) "Lil' Bush," with a chaser of TV Funhouse's "The Ex-Presidents," and a nice gulp of Chevy Chase falling down some stairs as Gerald Ford before saying "Live! From New York! It's Saturday Night!"