NON-FICTION – ESSAY – HUMOROUS: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #144 (3/5/2017): Playboy

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #144 (3/5/17): Playboy

Aired March 4, 2017 on Dave’s Gone By.  Youtube: https://youtu.be/HhgXViF07kA

Shalom Dammit!  This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of March 5, 2017.

Remember New Coke? It was Coca Cola’s attempt to fix something that wasn’t broken. Take a formula that merrily rotted people’s teeth for years, change it for no particular reason, market the hell out of it, and watch customers start drinking Pepsi. The Coke folks realized their error, they reinstituted the classic recipe, and everything went back to normal levels of thirst quenching and obesity.

So who was the latest company to overthink its brand and screw the pooch? None other than Playboy magazine. In a stroke of madness—well, stroke may not be the best word—Playboy changed its whole ethos. Like so many magazines today, Playboy has felt the terrible pinch of the digital era. Circulation is down—and I don’t mean sales, I mean Playboy readers are so old, their bodies have no circulation. Meanwhile, along comes Maxim, also targeting the men’s-lifestyle market, and they eat away at Playboy’s potential younger audience. And unlike Playboy, Penthouse, Juggz, and my favorite, Barely Legal Anal Nurses, Maxim’s photo shoots are scanty but still clothed. The honchos at Playboy must have been scratching their heads, along with their crab lice, and wondering, “For years, men lied about reading us for the articles.  Now there’s this other magazine with articles, and they’re proud to read it for the bikinis. What the what?”

So Playboy made the decision a year ago to eschew nudity. Think of it: Playboy without nudity.  That’s like Auschwitz without Jews in it. This was the magazine that put a naked Marilyn Monroe in its first issue, the magazine that made stars of Dorothy Stratten, Anna Nicole Smith, and many others who died of natural causes; this was the magazine that served as ground zero for the sexual revolution, mainstream pornography, and the worldwide Kleenex shortage of 1967.

But times change, and for three decades now, Playboy has had to compete with digital magazines, cable TV and home video, changing popular tastes, and shifting cultural landscapes. It hasn’t helped that the visionary founder of Playboy, Hugh Hefner, is still alive. If he’d dropped dead years ago, he’d be extolled as an iconic, nostalgic reminder of America throwing off the shackles of the 1950s and embracing a world of new freedoms. But as a 90-year-old coot, Hef just makes people think of airbrushing, exploitation, and Bill Cosby honing his groping skills in the grotto. And what’s with those twins Hef was dating? How sexy is it to have two curvaceous, nymphomaniacal hotties give grampa a reacharound…just to change his ostomy bag.

But back to the nudity, or the removal thereof. When Ringling Brothers, responding to pressure from animal-rights groups, got rid of its elephants two years ago, what did that lead to? That’s right: the end of Ringling Brothers. When Playboy bid bye-bye to boobs and bushes…what happened? Actually, to be honest and surprising, sales went up a bit, especially for a younger demographic. And the magazine was able to be displayed more prominently on more newsstands. But it still wasn’t enough. Readers would look at Playboy, glance at the photos — instead of staring intently at them for several minutes — and then ask themselves, “Why am I still reading this?”

Cooper Hefner, the son of Hef and company COO since his sister stepped down in 2009, admitted putting ponchos over pussies was a mistake. In fact, “Nudity is Normal” is the motto on the cover of the March/April issue—an issue with mega-hot model Elizabeth Elam topless on the cover. Why, Playboy is even bringing back its party jokes, so all is right with the world. Who knows, maybe they’ll even bring back those cartoons with the wrinkly old, sex-crazed granny. I mean, she’s only 80 years older than Hef’s next girlfriend.

So welcome back old-fashioned Playboy. You’re still a dinosaur on the way to the amber yard, but at least along the way, you’ll help a few more teenage boys explore the wonders of gynecology. In a time when our government seems intent on yanking America back to the days of “Father Knows Best,” it’s heartening that once more, Playboy will leave it to beaver.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches, in Great Neck, New York. Show us your tits!

(c) 2017 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

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NON-FICTION – ESSAY – HUMOROUS: Rabbi Sol Solomon’s Rabbinical Reflection #127 (6/21/2015): JENNA JAMESON

RABBI SOL SOLOMON’S RABBINICAL REFLECTION #127 (6/21/2015): Jenna Jameson

(aired June 21, 2015 on Dave’s Gone By.  Youtube clip:

Shalom Dammit! This is Rabbi Sol Solomon with a Rabbinical Reflection for the week of June 21, 2015.

After World War II, the nation of Israel was so depleted that Hitler’s final solution felt most of the way there. But we survived, and at least the way the Orthodox are being fruitful and multiplying, we’re on the right track, and on the welfare track, but still. . . We also must be grateful for converts: people from other religions who are crazy enough to switch from Benson and Hedges to Bernstein and Hedgowitz. Sammy Davis Jr., Elizabeth Taylor, Tom Arnold, Joan Lunden, Helen Reddy, the late Anne Meara–they all put down the rosaries and picked up the rugelach.

Most of them did this for marriage. The nice Jewish boys these women hijacked from their mothers, the boyfriends said, “Look, I’d like to marry you, but the idea of a Christmas tree in the living room, or our baby, Herod, taking communion – it’s just too much. It’s like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof tolerating every obstacle except intermarriage. Jewish boys will date a debutante, they’ll shtup a shikseh (if they’re lucky), and they’ll even co-habitate with a Catholic. But when you bring marriage into it and the continuation of the Jewish race, well, it’s easier for you to give up Jesus than me to swear off Purim.

Now, the issue of who is a Jew–convert or otherwise–has been plaguing the various sects of Judaism for decades. For some, if your mother’s Jewish but your daddy’s not, fine, have a brisket. If your daddy’s Jewish and your mommy’s not, goodbye, get a ham sandwich. If they’re both Jewish, but they like mayonnaise and sailboats, that’s confusing. Talmudists wrangle with all sorts of permutations to ensure the so-called purity of Jewish lineage. I understand the impulse, but from where I stand–which is usually three inches away from the refrigerator–I say we must welcome those who wish to join our people. It’s not as if we have such a surplus of Jews that we can afford to turn away a few hundred. So if converts are willing to abide by the rules–and I don’t even mean kashrut, daily prayers, and the holidays–I just mean no New Testament and, at 68, you have to move to Florida. If you’re willing to be part of our misunderstood, maligned but magnificent people, by all means welcome. Bring pastry.

I mention all this because news broke last week that Jenna Jameson—oh, don’t make believe you never heard of her—Jenna Jameson, the former pornographic actress, will be converting to Judaism. She’s marrying an Israeli Jew, a diamond merchant noch besser, and to make him happy–though I’m sure she makes him happy in other ways–Jenna has begun keeping shabbos, cooking Jewish foods, and doing all the things a Jewish wife does, like . . . bitching and nagging.

Some Jewish feminists are not happy about adding Jenna Jew-ison to the fold. They ask, “How can this woman who’s had so much sex on camera become Jewish, since Jewish women never want sex anywhere?” These ladies find Jameson’s behavior degrading to women, not to mention that her husband to be is a typical Jewish man: instead of going out with dumpy J-Dates, he has the hots for a skinny blonde shikseh.

I object to this objection to Jenna Jameson’s years as a sex object. Who among us, Jewish or not, is without blemish or has no kinky fetishes? Me, I like to dip my testicles in warm borscht while I’m being spanked with a yad. As did Rashi, by the way. Let he who is without sin throw the first stone. The rest of us will enjoy her skin and grow the worst boners.

For even if Jenna Jameson had not retired from the intercourse industry, what’s so terrible and anti-Jewish about her past? She showed off her beauty? She gave men a thrill? She proved that a tuchas could be used for more than constipation and proctology?

I just hope that if she ever goes back into the porn business, she’ll bring some Jewishness into her films and even her film titles. Instead of her famous, “Where the Boys Aren’t,” she could do, “Where the Goys Aren’t.” Instead of “Jenna’s Built for Speed,” she’ll do “Jenna’s Built for Shopping.” Instead of “I Love Lesbians” she could do . . . well, she can still do “I Love Lesbians”; that totally works for me.

So if Jenna Jameson Judaifies, God bless her, literally. If some frummie wummies resent her intrusion into our culture, maybe that isn’t prudishness at all. Maybe they just feel threatened by a woman who made it rich on her own, can whip up a gourmet meal, can boink like a buffalo and is used to faking it, and doesn’t mind putting something in her mouth bigger than a Midol once in awhile. So welcome, Jenna Jameson, and baruch habah, which literally means “blessed is the comer.” You may find it hard at first, and sometimes you’ll blow it, but I hope you can feel me deeply behind you.

This has been a Rabbinical Reflection from Rabbi Sol Solomon, Temple Sons of Bitches in Great Neck, New York.

(c) 2015 TotalTheater. All rights reserved.

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REVIEW – THEATER: Debbie Does Dallas (2003 Broadway)

 

DEBBIE DOES DALLAS

***1/4

reviewed Feb. 2003 by David Lefkowitz

 

Although the stage version of Debbie Does Dallas is in no way pornographic (and has only one brief moment of—alas, male—nudity), we know from the get-go this will be no sanitized satire. One cheerleader palms her crotch as automatically as the others chew gum, while the others end up mimicking pretty much every sexual combination ever conceived.

Despite the overtness of its sexual humor, Debbie is all high-energy laughs in pop-art style, able to acknowledge that the film’s endorsement of trading sex for money is morally problematic but not letting that quash the evening’s indulgent, hedonistic spirit. Well into the run of the show, cast members were still barely suppressing their own giggles, which only added to the fun.

*

Staged by Erica Schmidt, Debbie Does Dallas ran Oct. 29, 2002-Feb. 15, 2003 at off-Broadway’s Jane Street Theater.

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