Yo, couch potatoes! If you’re in the mood for some light religious comedy (maybe that’s why you’re here; it sure ain’t for the conversation) Saved! is a must-rent. A lampoon of born-again Christian teenagers, it stars teen queen Mandy Moore (who, it turns out, can actually act) as the golden girl who loves Jesus, Jenna Malone as an unwed mother with a gay boyfriend, Macaulay Culkin as a wheelchair-bound rebel and the extremely hot Eva Amurri as the only Jewish kid at a high school where you can’t swing your ponytail without getting thumped by a Bible. It’s balls-out hilarious without being too mean; the message is that self-righteous hypocrites suck and true believers aren’t the ones worried about saving your soul.
(Not that anyone’s tried to save our “Jewish heathen” souls since a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses showed up at the door and we turned them out, hours later, after forcing them to read our poetry from college.)

An interview with best-selling children’s author Daniel Handler in J. reveals that his tsuris-ridden alter ego, Lemony Snicket, is “quite openly Jewish.”
“Like anyone with Jewish ancestry and an over-educated world view, Lemony’s life is rife with misfortune,” Handler deadpans.
Though we’ve yet to start A Series of Unfortunate Events, our favorite 10 year-old assures us there’s “no stupid kid stuff about unicorns or anything.” Actually, the stories about the Baudelaire orphans and their nemesis Count Olaf (to be played by Jim Carrey in the upcoming movie, creepy) might make us fire up our nightlight again.

While away from our shackles this weekend, we read in this months Vanity Fair (our hands smelled like Calvin Klein’s Eternity for days) that Rick Rubin, founder of Def Jam Records and producer extrordinaire of the likes of the Beastie Boys and Jay-Z, had an intense spiritual relationship with the late, great Johnny Cash in the ten years before the Man in Black died. Rubin, who was expelled from Hebrew school as a boy and never looked back, took communion with Cash every day while recording The American Recordings, a ritual that involves crackers and grape juice and Jesus, somehow. If he and Johnny weren’t in the same place they’d do it over the phone, which might seem weird except we’re talking about two eccentric musical geniuses here, so we’ll begrudge them a little long distance genuflecting. Heck, if it would bring Johnny back, we’d offer up our matzah and a slug of Manischewitz.
No word on when Cash’s last album American V (produced by Rubin in Cash’s Nashville home) will be released, but these guys will keep you posted.

Now, we all know the defining physical trait of a Jewish man lays below the belt. Circumcision of a Jewish newborn boy on the eight of life is a mitzvah known as brit milah. Not only is a circumcised dong a holy covenant, it’s now been shown to reduce the risks of STD’s. For those gentlemen who haven’t yet taken the lop of faith, an enterprising company in the Netherlands has invented a handy-dandy plastic school designed for self-circumcision, cleverly called The Smart Klamp.

Through its unique design the SmartKlamp

Please pay your deepest repects to Rodney Dangerfield, who passed on Tuesday at 82 following complications from heart surgery. We’ve said it before, but this tragic clown will go down as one of the funniest comics of all time. May he find kind buds and like-minded nudists wherever he is.
Here’s a list of his classic one-liners or visit his site.

Hallelujah for Simchat Torah! Again, this is one of those holidays that our suburban bagel upbringing doesn’t leave us much to impart, but we truly enjoy delving into online Jewish learning resources for the sake of the cause. This last day of Sukkot is one of the happiest days of the year, when we finish up the last chapter of the Torah and then start right back at the beginning (just like you would a Harry Potter novel, only God’s word is so much better!) The Torah is honored with its own dance party, when congregants joyously boogie with the scrolls to commemorate this precious, definitive gift to the Jews.
We West Coast bloggettes feel pretty darn special to share our 33rd birthday with the Torah this year. So much more fun than our 21st, which fell on Yom Kippur, making our first “official” trip to the bar after sundown a lesson in intestinal etiquette that we’d rather not repeat.
*Painting by Ukrainian artist Arenghauz Boris.

Shoulda posted this with our NYC Lemonade item. Oh well.
But it gives us an idea: After Sukkot, we’ll move the cardboard box out front and make a few bucks off the neighbors.

Although Holland counts famous diarist and Holocaust victim Anne Frank as one of its most valued personalities, she was never officially given Dutch citizenship. Obviously, her family’s German citizenship was revoked under Nazi rule, but even after they fled to the Netherlands, the Franks always expected to return to the Rhineland after the war. She remains, in spite of pressure on Dutch immigration officials, a girl without a country.
If the Dutch can’t figure this out, surely Israel or the U.S. could issue her a posthumous passport, however symbolic?

Jmerica’s official personal trainer, Mark Lebos, just got back from workin’ it in Manhattan’s Central Park to promote his show, FitTV’s Housecalls. After an exhausting morning spent watching the enthusiastic cast of Bombay Dreams lead a Spandex-attired crowd through some Indian aerobics and doing a little shopping for the folks back home, he reports that he was accosted by a couple of non-English-speaking Chabadniks in traditional black-hat dress who asked him if he was Jewish and then shook a “lemon and a palm frond” over his head while davening. Lebos, who forgot that it’s a mitzvah to bless others with the etrog and lulav during Sukkot, thought they were running a Jewish lemonade stand. Now that he’s been enlightened, he’s going to design a special fitness workout using Sukkot’s accoutrements. Etrog crunches and lulav yoga, anyone? Kidding.
Funnily enough, our other favorite Jewish blog Jewlicious reports that Mark’s Chabad encounter was not unique; apparently, these guys were everywhere this week.
(the photo reads: Every Jew Shakes the Lulav and Etrog, It’s Not Too Late! From Shalom New York.
Not too late for you either; just flag down a Chabadmobile!