All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business By Mel Brooks Ballantine Books, 480 pages, $25 Mel Brooks’ memoir begins with a promise. In a preface, the 95-year-old actor-writer-director vows to make an intimate confession to his reader — one not to be shared with anyone. Then, he thinks a bit more about the…
Rodney Dangerfield has my respect — and continues to inspire my sandwiches. The comedian, who would have turned 100 today, and made a career playing a lovable schlub in films like “Caddyshack” (and once an animated dog version of himself) is not always my cup of tea. His signature jokes about his wife — a…
Americans seem to have a growing obsession with shows about Haredi Jews, whether that’s “Shtisel,” “Unorthodox,” or “My Unorthodox Life,” all on Netflix. Meanwhile, Israeli shows such as “Fauda,” which delves into the violence and drama of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Mossad spies and Hamas bombs, have also been hits. But will that same interest…
In a lengthy essay published in the New York Post, we learn that filmmaker David Zucker was recently asked an inane question at an anniversary screening of his 1980 film “Airplane!” “Could you make ‘Airplane!’ today?” an audience member asked. Zucker’s response was, “Of course, we could. Just without the jokes.” Really? Is there a…
Norm Macdonald, the former Saturday Night Live news anchor and stand-up comic, wasn’t Jewish. But the Canadian-born comedian, who died Tuesday from cancer at the age of 61, left behind two of the greatest Jewish humor moments in recent memory. Macdonald’s stand up made him famous, but his talk show appearances with Howard Stern, Conan…
Jackie Mason, who died on Saturday at age 93, will forever hold a storied place in American comedy for helping introduce to the mainstream a brand of humor that was fearlessly, unapologetically Jewish. But the late comedian’s brazen style of commentary also carries a dark legacy in his history of racist remarks. In 1989, Jewish…
In the middle of the last century, American stand-up comedy became a subsidiary of the Jewish cultural-industrial complex. But the secret of its extraordinary success was that while its practitioners were obviously Jewish, their material was never too overtly Jewish. Except for Jackie Mason. The great names of the stand-up scene — Joan Rivers, Woody…
My dating history has been chaotic; rarely have I dated someone who “made sense” for me. My partners have included a literal shepherd who never finished high school and barely spoke English (but played flute on the beach like an honest-to-god satyr) and a polyamorous medical student who still routinely invites me on international adventures…
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