Being young and (more or less) healthy, and with parents who are reasonably young and reasonably healthy, we confess we know rather little about the vagaries of geriatric medicine. But, still, we have to wonder: Even without the patient remaining in a coma a week and a half later, when an obese 77-year-old has massive stroke and several subsequent surgeries, is that something doctors are typically unconcerned about?
When news broke in the Times last week that the Second Avenue Deli was shuttered, at least temporarily and perhaps more permanently, in a rent dispute, it seemed partially tragic but also partially perhaps just a particularly intense game of real-estate chicken between the hondlers who own the deli and the hondlers who own the building. The latter option seemed increasingly likely when the second-day story revealed that the rent increase sought by the building's new owners was in fact built into the existing lease, negotiated 15 years ago.
While we, like much of the world, hopefully await further developments regarding the health of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister who apparently suffered a major stroke last night, we must also note the odd photo CNN.com chose to illustrate the story this morning.
Let's clear up this whole Hanukkah business before more space is wasted in a major daily. (For crissakes, two-year olds are getting drunk on Long Island way before the summer rental season and that shit doesn't report itself!) Helen Kennedy of the NY Daily News tries to wrap her hands around the ball of candle wax that is the sticky mystery of Hanukkah's accepted spelling. Variations offered are:
War on Christmas? Bah, only among retailers. Jews in Israel are more reflective and celebrate the festive Hanukkah season by welcoming Nazis to the Ben Yehuda street mall in Jerusalem.
It's been far, far too long since this familiar manifestation of naggery has appeared in the lower-right of our screen:
If you're not on the blast email list from The Jerusalem Post — and, jeez, why aren't you? — you're missing out on great spam like this:
Gawker mascot Andrew Krucoff is now, finally, best we can tell, a man. Naturally this process included what appears to be a fifth of vodka.
Last year, if you'll recall, a Rockland County rabbi was going around giving orthodox Jewish babies herpes via a certain kind of circumcision practice that involves the mohel sucking blood from the newly snipped penis with his mouth. That dude's not doing it anymore, but, well, now there's more, according to today's News:
He can't hold down a job and he can barely hold together his everyday life. Yet, it's somehow not at all surprising that within three weeks of arriving in Jerusalem with no previous Hebrew training or Jewish education, beloved mascot Andrew Krucoff has not only decided he's ready for a belated bar mitzvah but has also managed to find a group of people — bloggers, natch — to coordinate it and enticed pervy Dov Charney of American Apparel to sponsor it.
As it turns out, before Daily Show host and fake news darling Jon Stewart was funny, he was a soccer jock. Too gentle for lacrosse and too petite for football, Stewart played kickball at William & Mary from 1981-1983 — until he realized that no Jew should have quadriceps like that.
Krucoff poses with two IDF troops and a heretofore unknown species: a Jewish Abercrombie model.
At this point, most interested parties have seen the horrifying images from Elizabeth Brooks's $10 million bat mitzvah, for which her body-armor-bearing father flew in Aerosmith, Tom Petty, 50 Cent, and Stevie Nicks. We've all had our fair share of retching over the extravagance of the event itself, but we'd like to focus on something else: Elizabeth's dress, pictured above. What is that thing? We don't believe Vera Wang makes gowns for underage brides, which would suggest that Miss Brooks sporting something off-the-rack from the Disney Princess Store. How gauche.
From the National Retail Federation's daily email newsletter today:
Huge news today from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:
It's nearly four days since Gawker mascot and erstwhile Conde Nastie Andrew Krucoff left the Lower East Side for the far holier precincts of Jerusalem, and we were starting to get concerned. Not only is this the longest we've gone in many months without any hectoring email or IMs from him, but, most worrisome, his youngisraelite.com had not been updated since well before he left. Such shpelkis he was giving us!
"Don't wanna close my eyes, I don't wanna fall asleep, 'cause I'd miss you, bat mitzvah girl Elizabeth Brooks, and I wanna say mazel tov."
