Jews and Shoes

Makes more sense if you've seen the original Shoes video.

Feed Me, See More!

After more than two years of blogging using Google's Blogger service, I have finally figured out how to incorporate a Comment Feed and Per-Post Comment Feeds in the ShaBot ShaBlog.

The Comment Feed allows you to subscribe to all the comments people write on this blog with your Atom feed reader.

The Per-Post Comment Feeds, a new one located at the bottom of each Post, allows you to subscribe to the conversation about that specific Post.

These new feeds will make it easier to track discussions on the ShaBlog.

For any FTP-hosted Blogger users out there like me, here is the Blogger Help Group post with instructions on how to implement Comment and Per-Post Comment Feeds on your FTP-hosted Blogger blog:

FEEDS, FTP, COMMENTS, POSTS, ATOM, RSS, LABELS

Is Dan Zanes Jewish?

I suspect he might be, as this local musician is a featured artist in the upcoming September Jewzapalooza concert at Riverside Park in Manhattan. Regardless, Dan Zanes and Friends is also the attraction that got my sister Sandy and her husband Todd to travel up to Brooklyn with my 17 month old niece, Lola!

Lola really digs the music!
It was Lola's first trip to Brooklyn, which was already a special occasion. The Celebrate Brooklyn music series just made the day even more memorable.

Picking up the babes by picking up the babe
Lola and my sister Michelle, back together
Dan Zanes shines as he signs Lola's DVD
More photos on Facebook

Yiddish Carnival, around Fyvush

Friends Isra and Miriam, skittish from the Yiddish
Closer to 4pm Sunday, to be exact, is when Frank London's Yiddish Carnival kicked off at the band shell in Prospect Park as part of this year's Celebrate Brooklyn concert series. As described on the Celebrate Brooklyn 2007 Schedule page:

For this concert of old- and new-school Jewish music, the luminary Frank London-who has played with everyone from John Zorn to They Might Be Giants and LL Cool J-will be joined by New York City's hottest and most diverse group of Yiddish musicians for a radical festival in the park. Performers include the Grammy award winning klezmer band, The Klezmatics; television and theater star Fyvush Finkel; a rare performance by legendary Yiddish rocker Wolf Krakowski; Cuban Jewish percussionist Roberto Rodriguez; Rolling Stone's #1 non-English group of 2006, Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars featuring Brazilian percussionists Maracatú New York; Yiddish divas Joanne Borts and Adrienne Cooper; and the Festival Latin Jewish Carnival Orchestra & Social Justice Sing.

Of particular delight was a comedy and musical performance by the venerable Jewish actor Fyvush Finkel, whose charming act I caught on video and have uploaded for your viewing pleasure:

Aryeh "Boycan" Goldsmith ... as in "Boy can Juggle"!
Aryeh, Matt and Dana

SHAlOM in the Stadium

I try to keep my ShaBot stuff separate from my lowercase L project, they're usually separate worlds. But every now and then, worlds collide. Such is the case with this latest post, featuring a SHAlOM SHAWN shout out from a fan in Shea Stadium to Jewish Mets player Shawn Green. I'm not sure which is more disturbing: that a person would use a lowercase L within the context of otherwise all uppercase letters to compose a sign sending a transliterated Hebrew greeting to a Jewish baseball player, or that I would devote a blog to it.

Think Indifferent

There is at least one thing wrong with the Aish brand "Jewlarious" when it comes to their Jphone video parody of the recent Get a Mac commercials, especially if the word Jewlarious is meant to be a hybrid of Jewish and hilarious. If, however, the -larious suffix is actually derived from malarious, then it makes a bit more sense.

I don't find many things offensive. In fact, usually, the more offensive people find something, the more I like it. But in this case I was offended at the level of cliché and gratuitous "oy vey" humor. I guess this Jphone viral video is so poorly done and unfunny, I am ashamed it has the letter J in front of it.

Frumster, who are a bit more conservative in their humor department, actually managed to pull off a funnier Jewish "Get a Mac" parody than Aish. I think that says a lot.

This is not to say that all of Aish's videos are unfunny. I did like their Boycott Israel video. Maybe there are others.

Holy American Jewry, Batman!

Fellow cartoonist Eli Valley has posted his new comic parody online, Holy American Jewry, Batman! posing the question, "What if the Caped Crusader worked in the American Jewish community?"

Not surprisingly, EV's message reminds me of a cartoon I did for JSU, Where in the World?