Her name is Lola

Mazel Tov! to my sister Sandy and her husband Todd, who had a baby girl, Lola Faye, on Februray 17, 2006. This makes me a first time uncle, too. Sandy and Todd met on JDate, so I guess some good can come out of that site after all.

Lola is named in the memory of our maternal grandparents, survivors Leizer and Pola Sztajnwurcel.

Check out the announcement cartoon I made for them, before they make me take it down, hehe.

Where in the World?

The Jewish Student Union have posted a cartoon I produced for them a few weeks ago, titled "Where in the World?" It is the story of a boy, unsure of what he should do for lunch, when all his options are so unappealing. Lucky for him, JSU is there to help!

All aspects of production, including illustration, animation, music, voiceover, and story, were done by the Jewish Robot.

The cartoon is being mirrored at JSU.com.

Meet Real Members

Like any other day, I started my morning by sifting through a cascade of e-mail spam, trying to get to the good stuff. And just when I had achieved a steady DELETE DELETE DELETE clip, the following e-mail, with Subject "Explicit satisfaction for your-person?" caught my eye:


Nothing too unusual about this solicitation for "18 MILLION ACTIVE MEMBERS REAL SEX NO COMMITMENT", I thought. Except for the photo of Girl #3, buttercore, age 22.

She looked familiar, like someone I'd like to meet. In fact, she looked like a girl I had tried to contact on JDate. So I blew the dust off my stagnant account, pulled up my Favorites Hot List, and lo and behold, there she was, VPCuteJew!


Going back to December, when I had written a brief lamentation about how the girls on JDate never reply to my corny one-liners, one of my lines was for this girl:

To the "Vice President with Looks"

I typically only date Presidents but I would be willing to lower the bar and make an exception here.

Apparently some folks were familiar with this gal's profile. One anonymous bloke commented:

I am not Jdating (yet), but I did take a look and saw the "VP with looks" you mentioned... I think I am in love. She deserves a better line than the one you sent her.

Well, does she deserve better? I think someone is up to some funny business here, and I suspect it is a non-paying member having a little fun with us lonely Jewish boys.

Years ago my buddy Jason became absorbed in a conspiracy theory, believing that JDate posted fake photos of non-existent members, just to lure people into signing up for an account. After several angry e-mails to JDate, he quit the service. And ended up meeting his wife-to-be the old fashioned way: at a party.

I used to think he was wrong, but now I'm curious. Take a look at the photo above of VPCuteJew in red. Notice the Copyright © Picture This Photography watermark on bottom. Makes me wonder if her photos were all ripped from a stock photography set. Or is it TheBestGirlsForYou.com who are to blame? (Go to http://bianco.thebestgirlsforyou.com/donna/ ... see if the ad is still there)

Either way, I think the only way we'll get to the bottom of this is if VPCuteJew contacts me immediately.

Beyond the Book

Young Yoshie and pops Chaim Fruchter performing at Makor
Tonight I had the pleasure of attending the CD release party for father-son duo, Chaim and Yoshie Fruchter, who, together with their band, performed songs from their new album, Beyond the Book: A Musical Journey into the Subconscious of Our Ancestors, at the Makor Café in Manhattan.

In Yoshie's words:

This album is compiled of tunes that we wrote from the perspective of different characters in the Bible, in first person. So Adam writes a song lamenting his expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Sarah sings her excitement at the promised birth of Isaac, even in her old age.

The music was inspiring and fresh, ranging from folksy to full-on rock, and Yoshie and his father sure can sing in harmony! I highly recommend checking out Yoshie's music online, and coming to see him next time he performs.

Yoshie admits he is addicted to tuning
Yoshie and me (the short one)

Scenes from Home

Peter G. Svarzbein and his work, B'nai Zion No. 1
Last Thursday, February 2, my friend, Mimi C. invited me to join her at Plan B, where Heeb staffer and photographer Peter G. Svarzbein was exhibiting his photo collection, titled Scenes from Home. Among the collection were a series of photos of old-school and new-school Jews from B'nai Zion, the synagogue in Svarzbein's hometown of El Paso, Texas.

NB: More info to follow as soon as I hear back from Peter

We Need A Mensch!

I was pleasantly surprised when Frumster.com contacted me to produce a cartoon animation to celebrate their 500th wedding, considering my track record with irreverent Jewish humor, not to mention one or two comic strips they may have come across. Naturally, we toned down the edge for this one, kept it super sweet.

And, being the mensches that they are, Frumster.com also hooked me up with a Premium membership. They promised me that if I am not married within six months, they'll give me an extension :)

For your enjoyment, "We Need A Mensch!"

NB: I only did the animation for this production, Frumster handled the music and script.

Robot the Rabbi

Alyssa from 14th Street Y warned me about a new Jewish robot on the block, Robot the Rabbi! I'm not sure exactly who he is or where he is from, but apparently he is a host or MC with the Kosher Project.

Will Shabot's and Robot the Rabbi's paths cross?

Robot Logic

Peter Kirn pluggin' plug-ins
If you are familiar with the Shabot 6000 animated Flash cartoons on this site, you may wonder what audio production software I use for the music and voiceover, including Shabot's special robot vox. As a robot who prides himself in making sense of a world which sometimes DOES NOT COMPUTE, the logical choice is Apple Logic Pro, of course.

Peter Kirn, friend and author of Real World Digital Audio was the guest speaker at this month's New York Logic Pro Users Group, graciously hosted at Dale Pro Audio in Manhattan. The focus of Kirn's tutorial was on Sculpture, a Logic plug-in that uses component modeling technology to create a wide array of new and organic sounds. I'm looking forward to trying some of the techniques I learned tonight in my next animation.

Award winning composer (Reading Rainbow!) Steve Horlick, NYLPUG president Jonathan Perl, and guest presenter Peter Kirn
Kirn and the Bot
Dale Pro Audio host, Tim Finnegan, and Logic Pro pro Jonathan Perl
WTF?! Threebrain is everywhere! Here seen harassing Peter Kirn with PC audio questions (he doesn't even own a Mac!)

Dewanatron for my Positronic Brain

That's not red-eye ... Leon's and Brian's orbs really do glow when they are MAD.

Last night I went to see my friend and local mad musician, Brian Dewan, perform with his cousin Leon on their homemade electronic instrumental abominations, the Dewanatron, at the Pierogi 2000 gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The audience were treated to a special performance, which featured the acoustic accompaniment of traditional instrumentation, meshed with the space age robot sounds of Dewan's inventions.

The hypnotic tones of the Dewanatron put me and Shana in a trance.

On the walls surrounding the gallery were several functioning Dewanatron models, each sporatically chiming in like broken clockwork with whirrs and beeps, part of the exhibit appropriately named Irregular Hours.

Paul and Sofie, struggling to control their Dewanatron induced brain fever

Special friend Threebrain made a surprise guest appearance and gave Dewanatron two thumbs up! Don't ask where the other thumb is.

Jesus in Threebrain's beer

The Dewanatron exhibit was out of this world, but paled in comparison to Threebrain's discovery of the image of Jesus in his beer! I suggested we sell it to Golden Palace, but it was too late. Threebrain was extremely thirsty.

Caveman Robot

While most of my Shabot 6000 content focuses on the "Shab", we musn't forget the "Bot" in Shabot. This past Sunday I attended the year's first Brick-a-Brac variety show at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, having been personally invited by the guest host, Caveman Robot!

Jason Robert Bell, creator inside of Caveman Robot

The show started off like any normal variety show hosted by a prehistoric robot. The first act was this guy David "The Steak" D'Ostillio giving a dramatic reading while dressed like a steak. His act involved a lot of hesitant pauses and screaming for no apparent reason. I agreed with Caveman Robot on this one: I didn't get it.

Caveman Robot was by far the highlight of the show, standing nearly 9 feet tall, shoulders scraping against the wall as he struggled to squeeze by us little present-day people. At the end of the show, CR went into auto-shutdown mode and collapsed into a heap of servos and steel on stage. That's when I went to introduce myself to him in person, but my camera battery had died.

I hope Shabot and Caveman Robot can one day be friends. Because I wouldn't want to be his enemy.