It looks like everyone’s favorite hobbit Elijah Wood will star in the film adaptation of Everything Is Illuminated. The novel by wunderkind Jonathan Safran Foer follows a young Jewish man looking for his roots among the ruins of an Eastern European village decimated by the Nazis; in spite of that, it’s got some seriously funny moments. It always irks us when juicy Jewish roles are given to non-Jewish actors (no, Elijah’s not Jewish, go figure) but MOT actor Liev Schrieber is directing, so we’re hoping he can provide some kind of authentic perspective.

By the time we post this we’ll be back in Birkenstock country after posing as New Yorkers for the weekend. Before we went to Manhattan and experienced the freedom of shoe shopping at 3am, we were content with our simple little lives; now we are ruined, like the guy in that Dan Bern song who slept with Madonna too soon. Tomorrow we must delve back into work and an odorous pile of dirty laundry, but for now we’ll gaze wistfully at our Manhattan skyline snow globe we bought on Canal Street (along with a Statue of Liberty teddy bear and various other tacky tsotchkes.)

We’re not ashamed to reveal our naïve, nerdy tourist selves by gushing over the Big Apple; New York City is every bit as sophisticated and dizzyingly stimulating as they say. But we also found it to be unexpectedly easy to navigate, full of bargains and brimming with the kindness of strangers. We expected a roachy shoebox when we scored a cheap room in The Murray Hill East Suites and felt like we won a prize when we opened the door. The only reason it rates only two stars is because it doesn’t have a bar or restaurant, but who wants to eat at the hotel when street shwarma awaits? Plus we had a Holly Golightly moment waiting for the old-fashioned elevator while the doorman whistled “Would You Like To Swing On A Star.”

We kept having such moments all over Manhattan. People were just so polite and helpful; holding doors, giving directions, stoking us with local nuggets like a cheap bus ride to the airport instead of a cab. We don’t know if we were just exuding some Pollyanna vibe or what, but it was like Someone tell us to f*ck off already! We never even came close to being mugged in spite of traipsing around alone.

The only thing about the whole trip we can kvetch about are blisters. (But they’re the super gross drippy kind, so that’s something.)

As far as accomplishing our list of “things to do,” we fared quite well except for one: Apparently Barney’s has a 30-day return policy that even our saddest puppy eyes could not budge. Suddenly, the fugly hat we couldn’t wait to exchange is ours forever. But now that it has a story and two cross-country shleps behind it, somehow it’s not quite so ugly anymore.

J Celebrity sighting: Jerry Stiller sitting in the passenger seat of a Town Car on the Upper West Side. He looked like he was yelling.

While checking our e-mail at Starbuck’s we found an invitation to Orgasms: The Play at the Soho Playhouse, a one woman (Kimmie Fadem)/one man (Michael J. Scarpelli, Jr.) show about the amusing aspects of dating and relationships by Dan Israely. We thought it would be edgier, being New York theater and all, but it mostly stayed in the realm of “he never listens/she shops too much.” The bit of Adam naked in Eden stroking a stuffed snake drew laughs and we thought the bed scenes were clever with the bed standing upright and the actors draping the quilt across them (wow! It looks like they’re really lying down!) Orgasms is running a two-for-one deal through May 25; it’s definitely not a first date activity, but established couples might get a kick out of it.

Fulfilled a lifelong dream of owning faux couture by buying a Prada purse in front of Ground Zero from a lovely gentleman from Birkina Faso.

We have more to write about our rendezvous with Esther and our camp reunion, but jet lag and our reentry are causing double vision.

Manhattan has received us with open arms; really, three people actually smiled at us this morning. The hotel room we found on Priceline has a view of the Empire State building. And no one’s tried to steal our purse yet.
Since we’re paying by the minute for our wireless connection at Starbuck’s, we’ll skip the headlines and go right on to making some news of our own. On the agenda for the weekend:
*Shopping. Someone whom we love dearly bought us the fugliest hat ever at Barney’s last fall and we’re hoping to parlay the credit into at least a shirt and a pair of jeans at the Co-op.
*Kibbitzing with New York’s wittiest and most prolific Jewish single writer Esther Kustanowitz, who has granted us an audience and subway advice.
*Eating (we just snarfed a gyro on top of a macchiato; we may have overestimated our iron stomachs.)
*Figuring out where the wild things are at the Maurice Sendak exhibit at the Jewish Museum.
*Gettin’ stupid with two friends from summer camp that we haven’t seen in fifteen years. There may be Maker’s Mark involved as we try to erase the years and wrinkles and try to recall all the words to the Violent Femmes’ Blister In The Sun.
*Sweating to the drums at Youssouf Koumbassa’s West African dance class at City Center. We know there must be a connection between Jews and West Africans otherwise there wouldn’t be so many Jewish girls shaking their boot-ays.
*Attending shul on Saturday because we can walk. We explored the challenges of a small town Shabbat last week (and came up with an itchy tush; it’s all healed up now, thanks) and here we are wishing you a good Shabbos from the Biggest City a week later. Gotta love being Jewish in Jmerica.

As we write this from our faux leather chair aboard Delta flight 1145 from San Francisco, we wish to inform the entire East Coast that Jmerica is heading to New York. But the perky flight attendant insists that we shut down now lest our stunning wireless connection interfere with the pilot’s ability to communicate with the air tower, so we’ll toast to our own safe journey. Posts to come from the other coast…

We were not ready for this before our morning coffee, but now we’re thinking Natalie looks like vulnerable but tough, like Tinkerbell after chemo. (We don’t want to hear your Demi/G.I. Jane b.s., aight?)
Since she’s a serious actress and does not care what you boys think, she shaved her keppe for a film role, but don’t worry, a coupla weeks and a pair of earrings will have her back in your fantasies.
Saw it early and could not deal, but deep bow to My Urban Kvetch anyhow.

When is a good yarn just a big fat lie? Jewish author Michael Chabon (the Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) delivered a series of lectures as part of Nextbook‘s Writers Series called “Golems I Have Known or, Why My Elder Son’s Middle Name is Napoleon” that contained a story about a pulp fiction writer Chabon befriended as a boy. Chabon regaled audiences with the unraveling mysterious identity of the writer, whom he reveals to be a Holocaust survivor penning an account of his incarceration in Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. Chabon asked audience members if perhaps they remember the scandal that followed the publication of Adler’s book, that Adler was in fact not a Jew at all but a Nazi journalist who faked the whole thing, including the number tattoo on his arm. Audiences nodded; yes, they do seem to remember reading about this somewhere, and anyhow, it sounds true.
Problem is, Chabon made it all up. There’s no Adler, no book, no scandal. Of course, that’s what he does—write fiction—but some critics are positively furious, calling it “Michael Chabon’s Holocaust Hoax.”
In defending their site and Chabon, Nextbook’s Matthew Brogan writes that there is a long literary tradition of “fiction masquerading as memoir” and anyone attending a lecture about actual golems an author has known should suspend their disbelief at the door.
We’re torn—we love Chabon. If we’d read this tall tale as part of one of his novels, we would have marveled. But in the context of a lecture of an author addressing his readers, we probably would have believed it actually happened to Chabon—and experienced a sense of betrayal at when our gullibility was revealed to us.

No, this isn’t your androgynous baby cousin’s senior photo. It’s King Tutankhamun, fresh from his makeover by French, American and Egyptian teams who used lots of expensive product to make his 3300 year-old punim look nineteen again. Actually, it’s a model created from 1,700 or so high-resolution photos from CT scans of his mummy to reveal what he looked like the day he died, which, you gotta admit, looks a whole lot like the gold mask found in his tomb.
While he’s a cute kid and all, the CT scans have revealed much more about the death of the Boy Pharoah: it seems he didn’t die of a head wound as previously postulated, but he did suffer a nasty break to his leg just days before his demise that may have caused a deadly infection. How he sustained the injury is the hott subject of certain necro conspiracy theorists who say he fell from a horse or chariot, citing the Talmud as their source.
That’s right, the Jewish Talmud.
Furthermore, they say this links (however thinly) King Tut as the Pharoah from The Book of Exodus (y’know, that pharoah—Moses, plagues, Yul Brenner) which has got to be the craziest solipsistic fantasy we’ve ever heard. But these guys are professors, so let them theorize away while we learn how to Photoshop some hair on this kid.

We packed a couple of Chinese martial arts movies into the last week and as much as we enjoyed Kung Fu Hustle and House of Flying Daggers, we kept thinking What the world needs is more Jews who can somesault through treetops, toss bad guys aside with a fingertip and brandish swords with authority. We dug The Hebrew Hammer and all, but we want some real action.
Our search for kung fu Jews to star in our imaginary production led us to Abir Warrior Arts, a Jerusalem-based school that teaches a form of combative art that supposedly originated with the ancient Israelites but was lost as our ancestors dispersed around the globe.
“Much of the bulk of what was left intact was kept alive by a group of nomadic Jews who roamed the Hejaz desert. Twelve Tribes dance steps and the form and shapes of the Hebrew letters contained deadly martial applications forgotten by virtually the rest of the world’s Jewry.”
Interesting that the aleph bet contains not only the secrets of kabbalah, but also directions for slaying the enemy. With basic bar mitzvah knowledge and some rigorous training from Grandmaster Yehoshua Sofer, we could pull out a killer nun-gimel-hay-shin, aka The Deadly Dreidel. (Fine, we just made that up. But good kung fu movie material, nu?)

If you need a healthy giggle this morning, you must read My Urban Kvetch’s phone transcript of Madonna’s rejection of Britney’s Cheeto-absorbing fetus as possible godchild material. It’s fictional, but it rings oh-so-true.
Britney: “Sigh. I guess I understand. But please promise that you’ll still teach my kid to gyrate to Adon Olam like a brazen hussy, even if it’s a boy.”
Maybe Madonna’s not up for the job of Britney’s or anyone else’s Jewish Fairy Godmother, but we found one who is: YourJewishFairyGodmother.com offers life coaching services, marketing skills and chicken soup recipes on her site, and though she doesn’t mention managing bad press, we’re sure both Britney and the Kabbalah Center could benefit from a wave of her wand.