mag
Heeb Issue #4 : Urban KvetchUrban Kvetch
Jeffrey Bronfman, Vincent Gallo, Sanitized Toilet Rings and more
Jeffrey Bronfman
We were thrilled to find out that among the ranks of the Bronfman family — those whiskey-peddling Canadian gazillionaires who have funded half the Jewish world (including, for the sake of full disclosure, this magazine in its early stages)—was Jeffrey Bronfman, Psychedelic Warrior. Second cousin of Edgar Bronfman, Jr. and grandnephew of big daddy Samuel Bronfman, Jeffrey heads the New Mexico chapter of the O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, a Brazilian religion that “worships spirits in plants and animals and encourages ritualistic vomiting,” according to Canada’s National Post. The group’s activities hinge on the drinking of ayahuasca tea containing the potent hallucinogen DMT, which the trippers among us know ushers you straight to the center of your own subconscious. Last year, a U.S. District Court decided a lawsuit regarding Jeffrey’s use of the tea on religious grounds. The Bronfman family has kept the story of their black sheep hush-hush, but we say … celebrate him! Honor him! This guy is the Jewish Terrance McKenna! Who knew?
AVIVA DANNON
Vincent Gallo
The story of The Brown Bunny —the movie starring everyone’s favorite bug-eyed Republican auteur—is a long, strange journey that ends in a messy tongue-lashing. And we don’t just mean its plot. At its Cannes debut, audiences chewed out Gallo, and he told the New York Post: “I’m sorry I’m not gay or Jewish, so I don’t have a special-interest group of journalists that support me.” Well, on behalf of gays, Jews, special-interest journalists and hack film makers everywhere, we’d like to remind him that legions of movie makers, many of them gay and/or Jewish, have built long and fruitful careers on being reviled by the mainstream. So swallow your pride, Vinny, and wear those spittle stains as a wet badge of courage.
EMILY FROMM
Sanitized Toilet Rings
I don’t feel safe anymore! I feel vulnerable to attack! I yearn for a simpler time, a time when public toilet seats were sanitized for my protection. Growing up, my world was wrapped in a slim paper ribbon, lightly gummed on the end and ringed ’round every motel toilet seat in the nation. My cute little tush was covered. But no more. The rings have vanished. The good spirits have fled. When it comes to toilet hygiene, it’s every man for himself. Honestly, who ya gonna call? Tom Ridge? Frodo? That Tidy-Bowl guy? Forget it. These days I’m kickin’ it old school, bubbe-style. Hovering in fear.
JAIME WOLF
Mayor Bloomberg
I used to dream about you, Mayor Mike. I was your girl. At dinner parties, you’d light my cigarette and feed me expensive red wine. We rode in your helicopter; I sat in your lap. You were my mayor, my sugar daddy. And now, you suck. We elected you because you’d help the city, you were pro-choice, and you seemed to give a shit about repairing the race relations Giuliani stomped on. But look at you now, running the city like a fucking bank — cutting education, arts funding, welfare and health care. Taking our train fare and cigarettes. Honey, it would take millions to get you back into my bed.
NANCY SCHWARTZMAN
Amanda Hesser
This prissy little New York Times food writer has somehow become my mother’s fantasy of the perfect Jewish daughter, and for this, she must be eliminated. In her columns about soufflés and salads, Hesser cloyingly refers to her beau—a New Yorker writer, if you must know—as “Mr. Latte,” which has my mother cooing. Hesser is known to always wear two dainty barrettes, and she prepares her own in-flight meals, which my mother finds charming. And in May, when the Times announced that she and Mr. Latte would be getting married, my mother called me crying with joy. It is clear, therefore, that Amanda Hesser must be fired. Or force-fed some White Castle. Something. Please.
SHANA LIEBMAN
Class Struggle: The Game of Life in Capitalist America
This board game isn’t specifically Jewish, but as people who are bafflingly stereotyped as both left-wing communists and money-grubbing capitalists, we have good cause to enjoy it, regardless of which side we end up on. Are you a malnourished-looking activist with bushy sideburns, thick-rimmed glasses, and an irritating tendency to overuse the word “exploitative”? Or are you a suitster with a stock portfolio who actually dry-cleans your dry-clean-only pants? More to the point, which of these things are you, as a Jew, expected to be? Class Struggle will tell you in one roll of the genetic dice—that is, assuming you can make sense of the directions. Have fun!
GINA KAUFMANN
Theo Epstein
At 28, he’s the youngest general manager in the history of Major League Baseball, and he’s been entrusted to erase the most storied jinx in the history of professional sports—“the curse of the Bambino.” The Red Sox haven’t won the World Series since 1918, two years before they sold a southpaw named George Herman Ruth to the New York Yankees. Ever since then, Red Sox fans have developed a kind of tragi-comic sensibility, looking forward to next season not unlike the way we look forward to next year in Jerusalem. Epstein’s challenge is daunting: Can he lead the Red Sox to the Promised Lan or will he be yet another false Messiah for the Bean Town faithful? We shall see.
I Was a Murder Junkie: The Last Days of GG Allin
We generally reject any use of the term “nice Jewish boy” in these pages since it makes us break out in hives. But how could we resist when Evan Cohen refers to himself as such in his memoir of GG Allin’s 1993 “Terror in America” tour? Allin, known to punks and misfits of the late ’80s and early ’90s as the hell-raising musician whose bodily excrement figured prominently in his shows, recruited Cohen, then a 22-year-old film-school dropout, to roadie for what would be his last tour before overdosing on heroin. Cohen chronicles his efforts to “deal without the familiar cultural accoutrements” of New York, in which he’s far more whiny about not finding a decent cup of hot tea in Louisiana, than waking up with GG’s anus inches above his mouth in a trashed motel room. Cohen laments that “[GG] gave me some idea as to why jerks get laid and nice guys like myself buy Vaseline in bulk.” Pretty hysterical, if you can stomach it. From www.recessrecords.com.
JENNIFER BLEYER
We were thrilled to find out that among the ranks of the Bronfman family — those whiskey-peddling Canadian gazillionaires who have funded half the Jewish world (including, for the sake of full disclosure, this magazine in its early stages)—was Jeffrey Bronfman, Psychedelic Warrior. Second cousin of Edgar Bronfman, Jr. and grandnephew of big daddy Samuel Bronfman, Jeffrey heads the New Mexico chapter of the O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, a Brazilian religion that “worships spirits in plants and animals and encourages ritualistic vomiting,” according to Canada’s National Post. The group’s activities hinge on the drinking of ayahuasca tea containing the potent hallucinogen DMT, which the trippers among us know ushers you straight to the center of your own subconscious. Last year, a U.S. District Court decided a lawsuit regarding Jeffrey’s use of the tea on religious grounds. The Bronfman family has kept the story of their black sheep hush-hush, but we say … celebrate him! Honor him! This guy is the Jewish Terrance McKenna! Who knew?
AVIVA DANNON
Vincent Gallo
The story of The Brown Bunny —the movie starring everyone’s favorite bug-eyed Republican auteur—is a long, strange journey that ends in a messy tongue-lashing. And we don’t just mean its plot. At its Cannes debut, audiences chewed out Gallo, and he told the New York Post: “I’m sorry I’m not gay or Jewish, so I don’t have a special-interest group of journalists that support me.” Well, on behalf of gays, Jews, special-interest journalists and hack film makers everywhere, we’d like to remind him that legions of movie makers, many of them gay and/or Jewish, have built long and fruitful careers on being reviled by the mainstream. So swallow your pride, Vinny, and wear those spittle stains as a wet badge of courage.
EMILY FROMM
Sanitized Toilet Rings
I don’t feel safe anymore! I feel vulnerable to attack! I yearn for a simpler time, a time when public toilet seats were sanitized for my protection. Growing up, my world was wrapped in a slim paper ribbon, lightly gummed on the end and ringed ’round every motel toilet seat in the nation. My cute little tush was covered. But no more. The rings have vanished. The good spirits have fled. When it comes to toilet hygiene, it’s every man for himself. Honestly, who ya gonna call? Tom Ridge? Frodo? That Tidy-Bowl guy? Forget it. These days I’m kickin’ it old school, bubbe-style. Hovering in fear.
JAIME WOLF
Mayor Bloomberg
I used to dream about you, Mayor Mike. I was your girl. At dinner parties, you’d light my cigarette and feed me expensive red wine. We rode in your helicopter; I sat in your lap. You were my mayor, my sugar daddy. And now, you suck. We elected you because you’d help the city, you were pro-choice, and you seemed to give a shit about repairing the race relations Giuliani stomped on. But look at you now, running the city like a fucking bank — cutting education, arts funding, welfare and health care. Taking our train fare and cigarettes. Honey, it would take millions to get you back into my bed.
NANCY SCHWARTZMAN
Amanda Hesser
This prissy little New York Times food writer has somehow become my mother’s fantasy of the perfect Jewish daughter, and for this, she must be eliminated. In her columns about soufflés and salads, Hesser cloyingly refers to her beau—a New Yorker writer, if you must know—as “Mr. Latte,” which has my mother cooing. Hesser is known to always wear two dainty barrettes, and she prepares her own in-flight meals, which my mother finds charming. And in May, when the Times announced that she and Mr. Latte would be getting married, my mother called me crying with joy. It is clear, therefore, that Amanda Hesser must be fired. Or force-fed some White Castle. Something. Please.
SHANA LIEBMAN
Class Struggle: The Game of Life in Capitalist America
This board game isn’t specifically Jewish, but as people who are bafflingly stereotyped as both left-wing communists and money-grubbing capitalists, we have good cause to enjoy it, regardless of which side we end up on. Are you a malnourished-looking activist with bushy sideburns, thick-rimmed glasses, and an irritating tendency to overuse the word “exploitative”? Or are you a suitster with a stock portfolio who actually dry-cleans your dry-clean-only pants? More to the point, which of these things are you, as a Jew, expected to be? Class Struggle will tell you in one roll of the genetic dice—that is, assuming you can make sense of the directions. Have fun!
GINA KAUFMANN
Theo Epstein
At 28, he’s the youngest general manager in the history of Major League Baseball, and he’s been entrusted to erase the most storied jinx in the history of professional sports—“the curse of the Bambino.” The Red Sox haven’t won the World Series since 1918, two years before they sold a southpaw named George Herman Ruth to the New York Yankees. Ever since then, Red Sox fans have developed a kind of tragi-comic sensibility, looking forward to next season not unlike the way we look forward to next year in Jerusalem. Epstein’s challenge is daunting: Can he lead the Red Sox to the Promised Lan or will he be yet another false Messiah for the Bean Town faithful? We shall see.
I Was a Murder Junkie: The Last Days of GG Allin
We generally reject any use of the term “nice Jewish boy” in these pages since it makes us break out in hives. But how could we resist when Evan Cohen refers to himself as such in his memoir of GG Allin’s 1993 “Terror in America” tour? Allin, known to punks and misfits of the late ’80s and early ’90s as the hell-raising musician whose bodily excrement figured prominently in his shows, recruited Cohen, then a 22-year-old film-school dropout, to roadie for what would be his last tour before overdosing on heroin. Cohen chronicles his efforts to “deal without the familiar cultural accoutrements” of New York, in which he’s far more whiny about not finding a decent cup of hot tea in Louisiana, than waking up with GG’s anus inches above his mouth in a trashed motel room. Cohen laments that “[GG] gave me some idea as to why jerks get laid and nice guys like myself buy Vaseline in bulk.” Pretty hysterical, if you can stomach it. From www.recessrecords.com.
JENNIFER BLEYER
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