Vic Thrill and Curly Oxide

I just discovered this amazing story about a hipster glam-rocker from Williamsburg who meets a rebellious Satmar Hassid from down the street and they start a band together.

NPR's This American Life has a really interesting story about it from 2005 which is a hell of a listen. (It starts 6 minutes in) Apparently, Tina Fey heard this episode and it inspired her to write a script for a movie about it which will be coming out in 2009. Lorne Michaels is producing it (so we can expect to see some SNL cameos) and Sacha Baron Cohen is playing Curly Oxide, the hasid.

Here's a sample of what they sound like. It's pretty cool, and this movie is gonna be awesome:

Add One to the List!

At some point I'm going to actually compile a list of my favorite rabbis that, in my opinion, are bringing Judaism into the new millennium in a progressive way that is in line with halachic Judaism.
Today's new addition is Rabbi Steven Greenberg AKA the first gay Orthodox rabbi.
When I came home from school, I found his book, Wrestling With G-d and Men, on my kitchen countertop. My sister had been writing a paper for school on homosexuality in the Jewish tradition. She got it from the Gann Academy library, her high school and my alma mater, which is the type of library that would likely carry that book. It's a pluralistic, liberal Jewish high school, that tries to teach the students every aspect of Judaism so that they can decide for themselves how they want to practice. It's partially responsible for my apostasy from Conservative Judaism into whatever I am now (Orthodox?). I'm not really sure what I consider myself. Labels are for jars.
In the first 15 pages of the book he's mentioned almost every organization that I love and that are on my "links" tab (on the left). He started off by talking about how he became Orthodox (which sounded somewhat similar to my experiences) and how he became interested in the liberal, more modern aspects of it which include egalitarianism (which literally means equal leadership), ahavat olam and ahavat yisrael: respect and dignity for all people no matter what they do, and what it means to change halacha. I recommend this book to anyone reading this blog, because if you find me interesting, you'll find him interesting.