The New Religion

I've sat through 33 Yom Kipper services and counting. I spent a year studying my haftorah. I even brought a pink Tupperware container of tuna fish to lunch during Passover of my 3rd Grade year (is it any wonder I didn't kiss a girl till high school?). But I never really got this whole Judaism thing. Sure, it's good for a joke. And the girls at college, who must have been from the Midwest or something, seemed to have a little thing for East Coast neurotics like me, at least to a point. But it never really registered for me, this whole religion thing I mean, in any meaningful sense. I was emotionally detached, to say the least.

And then last night my sister and I dined at the thankfully re-opened Second Avenue Deli (now on 3rd Avenue). I felt like Moses on the mount as I communed with my hot corned beef sandwich and matzo ball soup. I'm not sure whether the stuffed cabbage actually spoke to me ala the burning bush...but I swear I think it did. Oh, burning stuffed cabbage, how I doused your flames with my Dr. Brown's cream soda! Did we want gribenes for the table? Did we ever! What are we, a couple of goyim? I think not. (And make that chocolate babka a double.)

It amazes me that you don't have to wear a yarmulke in this place. Or a tallis. If I was ever in the mood to do a little davening, here was the time and the place. This was the first time in my life I actually wished my nose was slightly larger.

Let me explain. I live in a land without Jews. Now, I'm not saying Washington, DC, is Berlin circa 1940 or anything...but, seriously, I have never felt so disconnected to my people. I haven't seen a bagel in 5 months. Deli? What's that? Humor? Never heard of it. New York feels like a comfy blanket. It's bad enough i'm white in DC, I can only imagine what the peeps in my hood would yell at me if they knew I was a Jew (I'm pretty sure they still think Jews have horns and tails down there.)

[DC aside: I'm pretty sure I've blogged about this before, but one of my favorite DC anecdotes is the time I was in the local supermarket and some random black guy told me he thought I was Daniel Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins. In other words: "Hey, you look like that other Jew." Next time I'm grocery shopping in Harlem, I'll be sure and tell someone they look like Magic Johnson.]

But...back to the Second Avenue Deli, and New York City, and life, and diversity, and the warm glow of experiencing something truly, legitimately good. I think that's what I miss most. I love my new house and the trees are nice...but you just don't find many moments like last night at Second Ave. Forty bucks for an unbelievable spread, the hustle and bustle of real city life swirling overhead, case upon case of delicacies....authenticity. My people. The whole 9 yards. That's what I miss the most, the sense that, you know, with very few exceptions, I probably couldn't be experiencing this anywhere else. Ben's Chili Bowl aside, you really don't encounter that in DC. Everything feels nondescript.

Chinese Food

I actually had a decent meal in DC last night. Not only that, but it arrived via delivery! I don't think I've seen food delivered in the 5 months I've been here. Wow, delivery. I forgot about that. Anyway, I was introduced to some authentic Chinese by a friend who lived in China for two years. Now, I'm something of a Chinese food fiend, but this was a pretty new experience. I mean, there were actually like greens on the table, and they weren't deep fried or slathered in General Tso's sauce. They actually looked like vegetables. Who knew? We also had a cold cucumber dish swimming in a fiery red pepper sauce. The cold and hot combo was pretty awesome. As a fellow eater put it, the cucumber starts off all nice and cool in your mouth, then is like, "ok, I'm outta here," leaving you with a little back of the throat pepper burn. Fortunately, beer washed this away quite nicely. There was an equally hot and spicy tofu dish that I mostly avoided, an incredible sweet, sour, and hot shrimp dish, and a comforting platter of chicken and cashews for the newbies like me. Delish!

Let The Ramblings Begin

I was on the phone last night talking about blogging, which, yes, is preposterous in the extreme. But anyway, I was speaking with someone who claims to blog once a week. As a once in a season kind of guy, I couldn't help but exclaim, "What?! But how???" The answer, as it turns out: rambling. Well, in so many words.

I've been laboring under the delusion that in order to blog I needed to have some point to make, or funny story to relate, or some review to dash off. But as it turns out, I can just write whatever the hell I want! Glory be.

OK, here goes: after years of lusting, I finally pulled the trigger on a flat screen TV. It arrived yesterday and it's glorious, it's beautiful, it's like staring into the face of God. I'm sitting next to it right now, and it's not even turned on, and I can't stop gazing at it. I'm in love. I want to take it on vacation. I want to buy it flowers. I want to take it home to meet my mom.

Wow, that was easy.

Finally, or On The Wire and There Will Be Blood

Man, now that's how you end a TV show!

Like, most thinking people, I am totally and passionately on board with The Wire. Best show on TV? I don't watch a ton of TV, but...yes, yes, an unqualified yes. Season 3 of The Wire is, to my mind, the greatest achievement the medium has ever produced. I found the much-heralded Season 4 to be excellent but a bit overrated...still great, but not on par with Season 3. Which brings us to Season 5, the end of The Wire...

Having taken a week to process my thoughts, I'm realizing this last season is a bit tough to get my mind around. I mean, I'm finding my reaction requires all sorts of qualifications. It's not enough to say "I loved it" or "it was great" or "I was really disappointed." All of those things are true, and sifting through them, it's easy to get lost.

Confusing as my reaction to the Wire finale is, one thing that's clear is that it's the exact opposite reaction that I had to There Will Be Blood...another beloved work I find frustratingly unable to summarize in terms of my like or dislike for it. I mean, I like it, I like it a lot, BUT...

Okay, let's take one at a time:

1. Blood: 95% of this movie is probably one of the 5 best things I've ever seen in a movie theater. A stunning, mesmerizing, pitch-perfect, visionary work...that's utterly, completely, and savagely destroyed by its inane final act, which I like to subtitle: The Comedy Stylings of Daniel Plainview. This last act is so off for me, so dreadfully unlike all that precedes it, that I can't help but wonder if the movie actually isn't very good...or, how can I say the movie is so good when it turns so very bad at the end? I've never encountered anything like this in twenty years of serious film watching. It's sort of like if, in the last ten minutes of Manhattan, aliens descend, forcing Woody and Mariel to fight them off with laser guns and save the city. I mean, would Manhattan still be great if this happened, even if the rest of the film remained unchanged? I don't know.

2. The Wire Season 5: until the last 2 episodes, I couldn't believe how far the Wire had fallen. I didn't buy McNultey's serial killer plot for a second. For me, it stank of standard TV show hackdom. Not bad for a couple episodes of CSI: Miami. But for The Wire? Hell, no. The Wire feels so awesomely grounded in reality (or at least in plausibility). That's what's great about the show, and that's the very thing that elevates it so high above other works in the genre. I hated to see it go out like this. It was painful and unconvincing (and most of the stuff at The Sun I just found boring). But then...the last 2 episodes were so outlandishly over-the-top brilliant, that....well, I don't know. Did they make the season great? Do I just forget about the preceding 10 episodes? The final two episodes do rescue the season for me, I suppose. They make me feel great about how the show ends. But I'm not sure I could recommend the season as a whole. It felt like amateur hour, coming from the Wire. And I'm not sure it's any coincidence that the final season only gets good once the serial killer plot peters out. It was hackneyed, awkward and forced.

So how to regard creative works that take a serious U-Tun in the final moments, either for good or for bad? A stroll through the criticism canon might shed some light. I mean, I can't imagine a few minds way more distinguished than my own haven't already tackled this dilemma. Of course, I'm way too lazy to do any such actual reading myself. And so I remain confused.