She's no Father Mulcahy

What is it they say? Be careful what you wish for?

Well, for a long time I've been saying that my dream is that chaplaincy will become so accepted (and expected) by everyday people that no one would dare put together a hospital TV show without having a chaplain in it. Well . . . .

clipped from www.cinemablend.com And the casting news continues! We’ve got Kristen Bell joining Heroes, Janeane Garofalo joining 24, and now a 24 alum is joining ER in its 14th (!) season. TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello reports that Reiko Aylesworth (Michelle Dessler on 24) will be joining ER’s cast as the new chaplain of County General Hospital.

But, in all seriousness. even if the character ends up being not the most stellar representative of spiritual caregivers, I think (on the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" principle) that this will probably be a real plus for the profession. . . . I'm wishing for more TV chaplains!!!

PS For those who don't know, Father Mulcahy was the chaplain in the M*A*S*H movie and TV series.

Goodbye, Mr. Altman

יום שלישי ל' בחשון תשס''ז

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Robert Altman, the caustic and irreverent satirist behind
"M-A-S-H," "Nashville" and "The Player" who made a career out of bucking
Hollywood management and story conventions, died at a Los Angeles Hospital, his
Sandcastle 5 Productions Company said Tuesday. He was 81.

I only really learned to appreciate Altman over the last year or so . . . . At one point, I held my own retrospective, watching nearly every movie of his available on Netflix. . . And I just the other day watched his final film, Prairie Home Companion. . . . What a great way to go out. A wonderful flick and so much classically in his style. . . The constantly (but slowly and gently) moving camera. . . The overlapping dialogue. . . that can feel so amazingly natural and rich and real. . . . I especially loved the scenes with Meryl Streep, Lilly Tomlin and Lindsey Lohan playing an aging couple of singing sisters and one of their (teenage angst ridden) daughters. What beautiful women. What great actresses. Such (deceptively seeming) simple material. . . With the sounds of the radio show shifting in and out between being in the background and in the foreground -- the classic Altman technique of an “overlapping” soundtrack.

I’ll miss him. Nashville. Short Cuts. . . . I think those long flicks with the great multitude of characters and story lines were the richest. But MASH and The Player were awesome, too. . . . . Not my favorite director – Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese are probably my top ones – but a true great . . .. And an American original. . . Thanks, Mr. Altman.

Core texts (having a favorite artist)

One of the best assignments of my final year in Rabbinical School was to come up with a presentation on my "core spiritual texts". That is, the texts that you return to time and time again in your life for meaning, when you're in pain or trouble or in a crisis of doubt.

What was liberating in the assignment was that we were _not_ required to use traditional Jewish texts. We weren't even required to use books.

While I started out my presentation with Heschel, the heart of it was me showing some clips from the final scenes of three movies that have great power for me. Other students played music or read poems that had meaning for them.

I realized today that I have been missing a "core text" in my life, musically, for the last couple of years. . . or, more specifically, I have been missing having a favorite musical artist . . . whose work I return to again and again. . . for comfort . . . for inspiration . . . for joy . . . to help me get centered.

Music has always been an important part of my life and identity, and phases of my life can be marked by who was my favorite artist at the time. But I really haven't had a favorite artist these past couple of years. . . . So, recently (unconsciously, that is), I have been spending some time reviewing some of my favorite artists of old -- especially the jazz-rock greats Steely Dan and Traffic. . . . I don't know what's coming next, but I miss being in love with an artist's work (as I was with the music of Juliana Hatfield for so long; I still like her stuff, but it just doesn't play that central place in my life anymore).

By the way, the full text of the written parts of my Rabbinical School presentation can be found here (apologies for the messed up formatting, but all the important text is readable). It includes the text of the final scenes from the three movies I mentioned . . . . (Which were Crimes and Misdemeanors, Terminator 2 and Fargo . . . . I think I also showed the opening credits for Working Girl.)

Borat

יום שלישי כ''ג בחשון תשס''ז

Yep. I went and saw the controversial mockumentary comedy film , tonight. . . . I didn't like it as much as I had expected (the _practical joke_ kind of humor that is the film is based in is a genre I often find more cruel than funny) . . . . But Sacha Baron Cohen clearly is a great comic talent. . . . And this flick has the most amazing lampooning of anti-Semiticism I have ever seen. I know some people have been offended by it, but the Jew in me felt empowered -- Cohen just brutally exposes how absurd anti-Semetic ideas and images really are.

One thing I noticed -- that I do not recall seeing mentioned in the reviews that I had read -- is that Borat speaks in Hebrew (and Yiddish?) words and phrases for a substantial part of the film. I had been under the impression that the foreign phrases he uses were gibberish, but apparently many of them are Polish in addition to the Hebrew ones. . . . It's part of the brilliance of the thing that Cohen is pretending to be an anti-Semite, while at the same time speaking Jewish language.