Epistemographer

Spent yesterday doing the traditional Christmas festivities: chinese food and a movie, natch! The movie was a particularly appropriate one, The Hebrew Hammer (tagline: “He’s the baaaadest Heeb this side of Tel Aviv”). It’s been billed as a sort of Shaft for Jews, which is appropriate not just in its appropriation of its riffs on Shaft as a movie, but also because the film is in some ways filling the same sort of function: both movies reject assimilation, embracing and foregrounding aspects of a minority subculture. In the case of The Hebrew Hammer, this shows up not just in the ironic fetishism of the Star of David, but in the character of the Hammer himself, who is in fact a badass, if a badass who’s surrounded by strong women and who overintellectualizes everything.

On a tangentially related note, Doug Rushkoff has a great post up about the relationship between Hanukkah and Christmas:

For some Jews, Christmas is where we draw the line of our assimilation. In other words, we might go see Handel’s Messiah, but we won’t decorate a tree, or have one in the living room. (Even though the tree is actually a very pre-Christian pagan German thing, I know.)

That’s why it’s kind of funny that Hannukah is celebrated at this time, too. Not because of the whole ‘oil lamps defy the darkness of solstice’ thing, which I’m sure has its pagan roots, too. No, it’s because Hannukah celebrates a war against assimilation – a moment where religious, country Jews stormed the city and clobbered the Jews who had given up their identity and assimilated into Greek culture, and then forced them all to have circumcisions.

It is often said that without the Hannukah wars, Judaism would have perished.

So it’s kind of fun that this holiday about fighting the pull of assimilation – about drawing the line, and feeling the difference – happens right when America is at its most Christian feeling for many of us.

Read the whole thing, and regardless of whether you were around Christmas lights, Hanukkah lights, Kwanzaa lights, or plain old secular lights, I hope you had a good holiday.

Now, on to New Years Eve…

Happy Holidays to all…I’m down in Florida, adjusting to wearing shorts and sandals while I get some reading done by the pool. Sometime in the next few days, we’ll get a wireless network set up at my father’s place, and then I’ll barely have to come inside at all!

In the meantime, dissertation work proceeds apace – currently I’m fleshing out a bit of chapter 1, about the hobbyist community of VCR owners that formed in the mid-late 1970’s. Toward that end, I’m reading through Kristen Haring‘s dissertation on the technical identity of ham radio operators…I’ll post more as I work through it, but only about 50 pages in I can already tell that it’ll be a rewarding read…

I’ve been wanting to delve more into foodie blogs, and in my first excursion into that world I came across Fuck Corporate Groceries, a Chicago-area blog with a singular mission:

…so i decided to spend the next [while] not shopping at corporate grocery stores, living instead on food purchased at neighborhood places. i figure this way i’ll save money, explore chicago’s independent food sellers, eat better(?) or at least, more interesting food, and i won’t be supporting the man…

Sounds like an appealing idea to me…

Via Wired News:

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday rejected efforts by the recording industry to compel the nation’s Internet providers to turn over names of subscribers suspected of illegally swapping music online.

The ruling from a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was a dramatic setback for the industry’s controversial anti-piracy campaign. It overturned the trial judge’s decision to enforce a type of copyright subpoena from a law that predates the music downloading trend.

The appeals court said the 1998 law doesn’t cover the popular file-sharing networks currently used by tens of millions of Americans to download songs.

Spend a few hours tonight at a positively cutthroat game of holiday bingo organized by my friend Elisa. The drill was straight-up bingo, where every time you won you got to choose from a pile of presents brought by participants or, if you weren’t really feeling the whole 10th commandment thing, steal a gift that someone else has already opened.

Jenny and I walked away with a bunch of great items, several of which are handmade and quite cool, but the one that I couldn’t believe that nobody store from me was a snowball-maker from Restoration Hardware. As the product description says, “Never again experience the frustration of lumpy, icy snowballs and soggy mittens. This wonder tool lightly packs the snow into perfect orbs that fly far and explode spectacularly (and safely) on contact.”

Such a pity I’m going to Florida for a few weeks. Luckily, I’ll be spending tons of time in Ithaca next semester, so I’ll have ample snowball-making opportunities…

Chapters 2 & 3 are in the mail (well, e-mail) to advisors. It’s funny – I know they’re not perfect and need a little more work, but there’s still the same sense of satisfaction when I actually have something good enough to send. Now, here’s hoping that my judgment’s not totally off, and that they are actually good enough to send off for others to read…

On to chapter 4!

Wicked cool wiki (if you’ve never heard of a wiki, here’s more info) – this one’s being used to build a database of restaurant reviews in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and elsewhere…

Non-Widescreen Version Of DVD Received As Hanukkah Gift

Bernie spoke in reference to last year, when the Greenbergs came close to finding a gift Rosenstein would like. The misguided couple gave their nephew the theatrical-release version of Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, instead of the extended version which contains 40 extra minutes of footage—a distinction Rosenstein gently explained to the confused gift-givers.

“If we’d known, we’d have been happy to get him the other version,” Hannah said. “Well, this time we were very careful. There were two versions at the store, and we made sure to get the special one. See, Tyler hates it when they cut out part of the movie.”

Confusion over the misleading term “full-screen” caused his well-meaning relatives to purchase the inferior version of the DVD.

“Why do they call it ‘full-screen’ anyway, when it’s only two-thirds of the stupid movie?” Rosenstein asked. “Fucking bullshit aspect ratio!”

So, Jenny and I are leaving today’s taping of The Daily Show (we were supposed to go a few weeks ago, but wound up too far back in line and had to reschedule our tickets), and as we’re walking out, this absolutely beautiful version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow comes over the studio speaker system – the background is nothing but ukelele strumming, and the singer’s voice is warm and mellow and smiling.

We get home, and I spend a few minutes on KaZaa trying to figure out what song this is – after sampling about a dozen versions of Somewhere Over the Rainbow I find a medley of that song and What a Wonderful World by a guy named Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, who’s apparently the Hawaiian singer of the past fifty years (sadly, I’d had no idea). Judging by the samples online at Amazon, “Iz’s” CDs are just the thing for those winter days when the sky is gray and cold…check them out for yourselves!

A newspaper story:

Flags are still flying along the neat blocks of bungalows on the border of Cleveland and Euclid. Shops still carry signs urging all who pass to “support our troops.”

And for the moment, at least, George Bush seems to be a part of the patriotic tableau, an ominous sign for the Democrats. Even some who yearn for a stiff challenge to President Bush are hard put to name the Democrats who could provide it.

“He stood up for what I would have done,” said Michael Brewer, a 48-year-old technician in Euclid who did not vote for Mr. Bush in the last Presidential election. Cary Wayne, a 42-year-old executive recruiter, a Democrat who voted for both Ronald Reagan and Mr. Bush, said the President “made me very proud to be an American, not that I wasn’t before.”

…

Interviews with about 20 people in this working-class area found an edginess about the faltering economy, but also the expectation that Mr. Bush would now turn his attention to problems at hoe.

Richard Stegh, 33, who was laid off from his job at a fiberglass products factory, said he understood that the war “had to take a front burner.”

But Mr. Stegh, whose house was decorated with one of the larger flags in the neighborhood, said he hoped that now “things are stable enough in the Middle East that he can start in on unemployment and education.” And the father of two children — “I’m playing Mr. Mom,” he said, watching the children while his wife was at work — had nothing but praise for Mr. Bush.

…

The Democrats, Mrs. Barry said, seemed “passive.’

Mike Lynch, a 22-year-old employee of an appliance service shop, said of Mr. Bush: “I think he’s shown his ability to lead. Everything else, I really haven’t thought that much about.”

This is an area where many people are accustomed to voting Democratic in state and local races and Republican for the President. Tim Hagan, a Democrat who is a Cuyahoga County Commissioner, said, “These people are very, very patriotic and would rally to the flag and to the President.” The glow from the war, he said, “has not diminished dramatically.”

…

And many people here voiced the discontent with conditions on the the home front.

Ed Savol, a 40-year-old manager of a Sunoco service station who voted for Mr. Bush, said the allied success left a lot of good feelings here. But he was quick to respond when asked what Mr. Bush should be doing now.

“Take care of his own,” Mr. Savol said. “Take care of his own people. Come up with an educational program, a job program. Take care of the people here.”

This excerpt is from an April 4, 1991 New York Times article, following President George H.W. Bush’s wildly popular military success in the Persian Gulf (thanks, Lexis/Nexis!).

Saddam Hussein’s captured. This is an unqualified Good Thing. However, in no way whatsoever does this mean that George W. Bush is guaranteed four more years in office. Remember what happened twelve years ago, and pay attention to the rumblings as discontent with domestic politics begin once again to crowd in on the administration’s foreign policy successes.