The only way to watch The Ten Commandments

Drive-ins are a summer ritual. They are reserved for that time of year when life is fun, responsibilities are minimal, and beer floweth. Drive-ins are where 56% of Americans got their first handjo’s. Imagine for one second. It’s a balmy 70 degree evening. You and your 5 best buddies jump into a mini-van and head over to see a double feature at your local drive-in. It costs like 4 bucks a person. For 2 movies. You watch one movie that kinda sucks a little (too mainstream/serious/cliche action movie) and one movie that’s pretty awesome (comedy/animated movie/nostalgically cliche action movie).

Even during the sucky movie, you are entertained. It’s a lot like watching FX at home. You are drinking some PBR, eating Dominoes and/or Doritos, and making as many inappropriate and rude jokes about the movie as possible. Because cinema, like literature, is meant to be enjoyed in a social setting.

There is nothing I hate more than going to movies with people that don’t like to talk or crack a joke here and there. If cinema is meant to be a representation of life, then it should not be taken seriously. Laugh a little, talk a little, make some memories. It’s why I prefer the informal setting of the drive-in.

Porno-turned-regular-drive-in @ Rhode Island

The good news is that Natalie Portman’s baby is popping out of her uterus soon.  Hopefully it doesn’t go down in a Wal-Mart because then it would be the trashiest birth ever by a gorgeous Jewish celebrity.  As Natalie is a gorgeous, awesome, super talented, JILF, we can only assume her baby will be the same way.  I only hope that her son/daughter does not mind marrying young and we can begin the betrothal process to my own unborn Lilly Olivia/Nathaniel Jacob. In conclusion, “YAY!!!!”. Natalie’s having a baby which will be just as beautiful and talented as she.

Look at that Gorgeous Baby Bump!

The bad news is…I’m sorry, its hard to write this because I’m sobbing so mindlessly the tears are drowning my keyboard. SHE’S LEAVING ACTING FOREVER!!! Or at least until her stupid baby is old enough. Yep. Natalie’s going all ortho on us and is being a stay at home mom so she can be really involved in her boring ol’ progeny’s life.

I get it Natalie, you really like Audrey Hepburn and want to be a stay at home madre just like she was. BUT Audrey lived in a different time when people were scared to have nannies from foreign countries. The country has been globalized and your fiance is French. Get with the times.

I don’t know what I will do without my 2 to 3 Natalie movies per year. I worry life will have no meaning.

Charlie Sheen could make watching anything fun. I’d come to his house an watch something shitty like “Good Advice” or even “Major League II”.

Mr. Sheen…you make my heart sing!

So when I hear he got together to watch the second best baseball movie of all time, (#1 is Bad News Bears) Major League I just instantly feel jealous. Watching “Major League” with Charlie Sheen is now a life goal of mine, something I really need get on since Sheen will probably be dead before 50.

In all seriousness, Major League is my 2nd favorite baseball movie. Field of Dreams is boring as shit and has barely any baseball. Bull Durham is the most overrated baseball movie that underutilized the awesome Tim Robbins to allow Kevin Costner’s dumb ass to spout an, inane, borderline batshit crazy monologue that everyone loves despite the fact that it basically stops the movie dead and is something that never would happen in real life. Plus am I really supposed to care about the relationship between a minor league catcher and old baseball whore?

In conclusion Major League rules, Kevin Costner sucks and there ain’t no party like a Charlie Sheen party because a Charlie Sheen party has tons of coke and porn stars…plus Pete Rose.

Steven Spielberg. Roman Polanksi. The Wiensteins. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Paul Newman (half). Adam Goldberg (aka the guy who gets stabbed in Saving Private Ryan). Woody Allen. Judd Apatow. Mel Brooks. Sidney Lumet. Alan Arkin. Stanley Kubrick. The Coen Brothers. David Mamet. Who knows how many producers. The list is virtually endless.

With this many people of one religious background involved in the creation of what is arguably the most popular storytelling medium of the modern world, you’d think we’d all celebrate Yom Kippur (or at least know what it’s about) and be able to tell you all about what a great guy Moses was. But we don’t. Actually, for the most part, Jewish filmmakers have spent most of their time making movies that aren’t about Jewish people (although, it would appear that they’re obligated to do at least one each in their careers).

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the gangster flick genre. The list of films about Italian organized crime is a long one, encompassing a great deal of Martin Scorcese’s career, owning the early 30s and 40s in filmmaking, and then turning Pacino and DeNiro into stars.

But did you know there were Jewish mobsters? And that they were some of the most powerful players in organized crime?

They basically corporatized the hell out of criminal enterprises, taking the Italian model of “trust only Italians, preferably those with family connections” and replacing it with a Board of Directors set-up. They even ran a tight ship for their enforcement/hitman operation, which the media dubbed “Murder, Inc.” Imagine those business cards: “Vice-President for Extortion – Murder, Inc.”

This is one business card no one loses

One would think with all these Jewish movie people running around, and the intense popularity with crime films, we’d get a film about a mafia that didn’t conduct business on the Sabbath.

Funnily enough, that doesn’t seem to have happened. In fact, the story of Jewish crime has been mostly told by the Gentiles. The Coen Brothers could’ve had a shot, in Miller’s Crossing, but instead they made their main character the Irish Gabriel Byrne (by the way, Miller’s Crossing is a great movie, I’m not putting that down).

The movies we’re left with portraying Jewish crime are a grab-bag. Most recently we’ve got Ben Kingsley character “The Rabbi” in Lucky Number Slevin. Kingsley, of course, is not actually Jewish, though he is a ‘Movie Jew’ (spoiler: next week’s phrase). Besides Slevin, he’s been Jewish in Schindler’s List, Elegy, Moses, and lastly, Bugsy.

Bugsy is an interesting film, in that it’s the biopic of famed Jewish gangster and “Father of Las Vegas” Bugsy Siegel, who actually worked for the aforementioned Murder, Inc. However, he is played by Warren Beatty. On a hunch, I thought maybe Mr. Beatty had changed his name from something to hide his ethnic identity, and I learned he had. He was born Henry Warren Beatty. So, while that’s not definitive proof of Hebrewness, it’s pretty darn close, in my opinion.

There are two other movies where Jewish gangsters actually star as main characters, as in Bugsy. They are Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America and Martin Scorsese’s Casino. Both star…drum roll if you please…Robert De Niro! Maybe it’s something about Italian directors liking to work with Italian actors, but this strikes me as odd. Nothing about De Niro strikes me in particular as Jewish looking.

Well, actually, now that I look again, he kinda reminds me of Mel Brooks

You know how when some big Hollywood director goes and films a movie in a different country, and he hires people of a specific background to add authenticity? Why don’t they do that for these movies? Whenever they do an Italian crime movie, all the actors are Italian. There are over five million Jewish people living in the United States today. You’re telling me you can’t find enough guys to act as gangsters? Unbelievable.

Facebook Zooeyganger

Facebook and its week long doppelganger fad have shown me that girls don’t actually like Zooey’s acting or her music. They are gay for Zooey. Full out Lesbos and It all makes sense. She is a horrible actress. If you stop undressing her with your eyes and watch her interact with other characters, you will walk out of the theater. And She & Him? I dare you to listen Boris before you listen to She & Him.

The movies, the music, it’s all bought up by people because they wish they were banging Zooey. HBO knows this. The honorable Zooey Deschanel is going to play a groupie in I’m With the Band‘s tv pilot. That’s right.

Zooey = Groupie = Sex = Viewers = $$

On that note, I realized the other day that materially I do pretty well in relationships. I’m not the type of person to just take and take and take, but for some reason they have historically ended shortly after my birthdays. Therefore, I get a good present every couple years (isn’t love grand?). For instance, in high school I received Weezer’s Pinkerton. I shouldn’t need to mention how influential that album has been on skinny white boys everywhere. Most recently,  I got the book “I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski”. The book is filled with wonderfully useless knowledge that any fanboy needs to know. The Dude abides.

At the same time, this has led me to another revelation: The relationships I have had ended shortly after my birthday. I’ll admit for a while I was a bit melancholy. I couldn’t figure out if it was a causual or direct relationship between my birthday and the breakups, like the relationship between fire and brimstone. I’ll be damned to leave it to coincidence or fate to decide this dilemma.

After a few brief moments of soul searching I (Above: My Second Choice) decided that the only explanation is that my birth was a phenomenal day. So impressive, in fact, that the girls became horribly jealous and petty. They knew deep inside their own hollow caverns of an excuse for a heart that they could never attain the boyish charisma and slight neuroticism that simultaneously makes me god-like and forces me to create these tepid excuses.

I can picture it now, shortly after my birthday, them pacing around a room wildly, like a bear caught in a trap. Considering it a ‘fight or flight’ moment, a royal rumble if you will, they chose to leave before their self esteems fell lower than the Dow Jones afer 9/11.

But man, those gifts were pretty considerate. Thanks again.