If you don’t know about Reddit’s AMA series, it stands for “Ask Me Anything” and is essentially a real-time interview with a celebrity or interesting person. (My all-time favorite was this one with a New York City subway conductor. In other news, I am so fucking afraid of mole people.) This week, Reddit did an AMA with someone who lives near the Duggar family in Arkansas – offline, a moderator verified his name and identifying details before letting him field... Read more
In this week’s issue of People magazine, Jennie Garth is still talking about her divorce from Peter Facinelli. I was mildly bummed about their breakup but the sheer volume of headlines about this story on People.com (“Jennie: I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” “Jennie: “Well, since you asked, let me talk to you for seven hours”) is making me not care anymore. However, I did pick up one interesting additional detail from the print article: Jennie converted to... Read more
Although Jeff Bridges isn’t actually his character The Dude from The Big Lebowski, there sure are a lot of similarities. One of them is that Bridges, like his character, is pretty chill. So chill, in fact, that he’s cowriting a book about Zen. The book, The Dude and the Zen Master, will be cowritten with Bernie Glassman and published by Penguin’s Blue Rider Press imprint. It reportedly hits stores in November. In the meantime, feel free to tide yourself over... Read more
Lots of famous musicians get their starts doing something else – bartending, working in a record store, teaching kids to play guitar, whatever. But Jesse Cohen, percussionist for the band Tanlines, has a more unusual day job. He works at Yivo, the Institute for Jewish Research, which was originally founded in Vilna, Lithuania, and is now housed in New York City. Cohen told Spin that the job made perfect sense for him. “In college I studied Eastern European History and... Read more
The fourth season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey premiered this week, and it seems like the theme for the season is going to be the entire cast vs Teresa Giudice. In this episode, Teresa dealt with accusations that her husband is cheating on her while also feuding with cast members Melissa, Caroline, Jacqueline, and Kathy, two of whom are related to her. On her Bravo.com blog, she addressed some of these issues: Everyone deals with challenges differently. I... Read more
When I first heard the title of the movie Today’s Special, I thought about that kids’ show from the 90s where the mannequins in a store came to life and hung out at night. Sadly, the movie is actually about Indian food. One that starred comedian and Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi (he’s the one in the Team Mohammed shirt), nonetheless. He spoke to the New York Times about the movie and about his relationship with Islam and his native... Read more
A few weeks ago, Mad Men added its first Jewish regular character, Michael Ginsburg, played by Ben Feldman. Ginsburg is joining Peggy as a member of the creative team, and we’re slowly learning about his backstory. This week, he told Peggy that he had been born in a concentration camp to a woman who eventually died, and that he was raised in a Swedish orphanage until adopted by his father. But Ginsburg turns out not to be the only Jew... Read more
Eliza Dushku was raised in the Mormon church, and although she doesn’t really consider herself a member any more she has some pretty interesting stories about her upbringing. (Fun fact: Eliza’s mom is a well-known feminist and professor at Boston’s Suffolk University, and one of her areas of expertise is the LDS Church in America.) Eliza says that when she was a little girl, Mitt Romney was her bishop (a lay position) when she was growing up in Massachusetts and... Read more
Although the not-that-successful Evan Almighty dealt with a modern man building an Ark, Hollywood clearly thinks there is room for more Noah movies. Darren Aronofsky, who directed Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream, is contracted to direct Noah, about the Biblical story. This movie won’t be a modern retelling – it’ll be a historical epic more in the style of The 10 Commandments, although probably easier on the cheese. Russell Crowe has signed on to play Noah, and Liam... Read more
For some people, “Jew” is an adjective that defines someone’s ethnic or religious identity. For some other people, “Jew” is a slur. Gamal Saber, who was the campaign manager for a now-disqualified candidate for the Egyptian presidency, recently got booted from the set of a popular chat show. The show’s host is a woman named Azza Mustafa. As she was interviewing Saber (who, I guess I should point out for the purposes of this post, is a hardline Muslim), he... Read more
Faith Goes Pop
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