Salon offers an entertaining review of the new film Antarctica. Apparently, the new film is pretty much just a walk onthe wild side for the more or less mainstream audience interested in gay sex in Tel Aviv.

If “The Bubble” worshiped a bit too studiously at the temple of “Sex and the City,” at least until its final and thoroughly implausible turn into tragic darkness, “Antarctica” seems to be a film made by blending “Melrose Place” and Stephen Frears’ 1987 boho sex romp “Sammy and Rosie Get Laid,” turning all the characters gay and Jewish, and setting them loose to hump each other like wild dogs. Admittedly, there have been worse ideas than that. Indeed, with its rampant and impressive displays of naked manflesh in action — perhaps there’s a combination of two male characters in this movie who don’t screw, but I’d need a chart to figure it out — it’s not surprising that “Antarctica” has been a sensation with gay audiences (and attracted a not-insignificant number of female eyeballs as well).

I dunno if it’s exactly the sort of thing I’d go to New York to see, but hey, maybe it’s your cup of tea. Enjoy…

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Okay, well, my yiddish isn’t too good - my parents having spoken it as their first language, have politely never mentioned that I and my sister never learned to speak it, despite their having done their best to get us interested by speaking Yiddish when they didn’t want us to understand what they were saying about us or other family members.
Worse, it’s probably not even because of them that I understand what little Yiddish I do… as we all know, Yiddish has had far reaching effects on the American mamaloshn (can someone who actually speaks yiddish help me out here if I mangle anything?)

BBC radio of all places, has understood this and is doing a piece on the influence of Yiddish on American culture. Of course, Jewish culture in general has had wide effect, as we all know, from the cross-pollination of klezmer and jazz, the Ashkenazi comfort foods now offered in green by fast food restaurants on St. Patrick’s day, the wise-cracking, cynical and/or self-deprecating humor of Seinfeld, Stewart, Bruce and Mason -depending on your generation and tastes- to name the fewest of the few… but we all know when something’s not kosher, stay away - even if you’re the whitest WASP that ever was descended from a Plymouth rock.

Link here to the audio slideshow.
Hattip to BoingBoing

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Parshat Vayetze from g-dcast.com, this week starring blogger-about-town(s) Esther Kustanowitz.

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