New blog - Tinfoil Yarmulke

My current blog is a set of travel essays and ephemera related to my recent propaganda-tour with Birthright Israel and the two months of Middle East travel that followed.

Tinfoil Yarmulke
www.tinfoilyarmulke.tumblr.com

Cheers!

A Passover Pageant

Jeremy: There are sections of the haggadah that, quite frankly, could use a polish.
Dan: You're gonna do a rewrite on the haggadah?
Jeremy: It's not written in stone, Dan.
Dan: Actually, some of it is.
- Sports Night

I wrote a Passover pageant, for the story-telling portion of my all-Gentiles seder. It went over rather well. Enjoy, and feel free to use/re-post, with credit.

NARRATOR: Previously, in Genesis:

GOD: It sure is dark in here... claps twice Hey, that worked!

ABRAHAM: Man, I can't keep track of all these gods, can't I consolidate all my worship into one easy deity?

GOD: Sure!

ABRAHAM: Yay!

GOD: Although, not so much with the easy. Go kill your son Isaac.

ABRAHAM: What??

GOD: J/k, j/k! Chill out, theologians.

ISAAC: I'm a pretty passive figure, overall. Jacob, Esau, what are you boys doing?

JACOB: Just stealing Esau's birthright, Dad!

ESAU: Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?

RANDOM ANGEL: Me too! I am so not on Team Jacob. Let's wrestle. On a ladder. Just because.

JACOB: Whatever, I am Israel, I can do whatever I want. C'mon, wives, let's get cracking on this “descendants as plentiful as the stars” business, if you know what I mean.

JOSEPH: Hey guys! I had this dream that you were all bundles of grain and you were bowing down to me! Isn't that funny guys? Why are you throwing me in this hole? Did someone take my technicolor dreamcoat? Hey guys? Guys?

POTIPHAR'S WIFE: You there! Slave boy! How you doin'?

JOSEPH: Err...

JOSEPH'S PHAROAH: Man, these weird dreams suck. I wonder if there's anyone locked in my dungeon who can interpret them for me.

JOSEPH: Me! Me me me! So either there's going to be 7 years of plenty and 7 years of famine, or you want to bone your mother. 5 cents, please.

JOSEPH'S PHAROAH: Such low rates!

JOSEPH: For you, I make a deal. Now let's talk royalties.

NARRATOR: And so Joseph became the Pharoah's chief of staff, and invited Jacob, Joseph's asshole brothers, and 70 other free-loading relatives to shlep down to Egypt and settle in the land of Goshen. Several hundred years pass, and the Hebrews, as we are now calling them for some reason, have been fruitful and multiplied. Then there came a pharoah who knew not Joseph...

PHAROAH: I know not Joseph, but I do know that all these pesky Hebrews are really ruining the neighborhood.

ROYAL BUTLER: You can't kick them out, sir; they've got rent control.

PHAROAH: Bah! Might as well make them useful, then. What are they good at?

BUTLER: Nothing very useful, sir. Comedy writing, standardized tests, and kvetching.

PHAROAH: Well, let's give them something to kvetch about. This view of the Nile would look a lot nicer with some big pointy brick things, don't you think?

NARRATOR: So the Hebrews became slaves, which wasn't exactly a picnic, so they just kept on having children so that they'd have someone to complain to.

BUTLER: Sir, the Hebrews still won't go away. They're just packing more children into their huts.

PHAROAH: They'll never give up a nice deal like Goshen as long as they have kids who can inherit it. Tell the midwives Shifrah and Puah to kill every baby boy born to a Hebrew woman.

SHIFRAH: What??

PUAH: This job blows.

SHIFRAH: I so didn't sign up for this.

PUAH: Let's tell Pharoah that the Hebrew women are unnaturally vigorous and give birth before we can get there. The ruling class always likes to hear that the disenfranchised are hardy and animalistic.

SHIFRAH: Sweet.

NARRATOR: Thanks to Shifrah and Puah, a Hebrew woman named Yochevet gave birth to a baby boy and was able to hide him from the authorities. But after a few months he was too big to hide, so with great sadness, she put the baby in a basket and floated it down the Nile. The baby's sister Miriam hid among the bulrushes to see what would happen to her little brother.

PHAROAH'S DAUGHTER: Hey look, a basket! With a baby in it! Aww, can I keep it?

MIRIAM: But you'd have to nurse it and take care of it and stuff.

P's DAUGHTER: Oh. Well, am I a princess or am I a princess? I'll hire someone.

MIRIAM: I know just the woman for the job.

NARRATOR: So Yochevet was hired to nurse her own son, which is a pretty great scam, and though Moses grew up in the court of the pharoah, he never forgot his birth mother's teachings. One day, Moses was slumming it in Goshen, and he saw a slavedriver cruelly whipping a Hebrew.

MOSES: Dude, relax.

SLAVEDRIVER: Relax? I've got production deadlines to meet, and these lazy Hebrews aren't meeting their brick-baking quota, and you're telling me to relax?

MOSES: Maybe if you were a little nicer to them...

SLAVEDRIVER: “Nice” doesn't get you bargain rate pyramids, mister. Or did you never think about where all your fancy papyrus comes from?

NARRATOR: He hadn't, actually, and so Moses did what any privileged young man would do when confronted with the source of his privilege – blamed someone else and killed the slavedriver.

MOSES: Uh oh.

NARRATOR: So he skedaddled the hell out of Egypt and had a nice long wander in the desert, before coming across a lovely shiksa named Zipporah.

ZIPPORAH: Hey, stranger. New to this strange land?

MOSES: Sure am.

NARRATOR: And Moses spent a couple decades chilling with the Bedouins. Meanwhile, things kinda sucked for the Hebrews.

ALL: Grumble grumble grumble grumble

NARRATOR: But God heard their grumbling. One day, Moses was chilling with his sheep at the foot of Mount Sinai, when the mountain went all lightning-y. When Moses reached the summit, he found a bush that burned with flame, yet was not consumed.

MOSES: Awe-some.

GOD: Moses, Moses.

MOSES: Here I am!

GOD: Take off your shoes. I just vacuumed the holy ground.

MOSES: Who are you?

GOD: I want you to go into Egypt and tell Pharoah to let my people go.

MOSES: Okay great, but who are you?

GOD: I Am Who I Am.

MOSES: But who should I tell Pharoah has sent me?

GOD: I Am Who I Am.

MOSES: That's... not very grammatical.

GOD: No, it's tetragrammatical! Zing!

MOSES: Oh god.

GOD: Yes?

MOSES: Listen, can't you get someone else to do this? I'm busy. I have to... shampoo my sheep.

GOD: Moses.

MOSES: No seriously. I am slow of tongue. I mean, sloooww offff toooongggguuuueeee...

GOD: Get your brother Aaron to talk for you. He was always the cute one.

NARRATOR: Moses went back to Egypt and found Aaron, who was in fact the cute one, and they marched in to Pharoah's palace and said:

AARON: Let my people go!

PHAROAH: No.

AARON: Oh. Please?

P's DAUGHTER: Okay!

PHAROAH: No.

MOSES: Psst, Aaron! Try the staff thing.

NARRATOR: Aaron raised his staff over the Nile, and the water turned to blood. Or red like blood. Depending who you ask. Either way, for seven days and nights it was pretty nasty stuff. But the Pharoah's magicians were also able to turn water into red stuff, so Pharoah was unimpressed.

PHAROAH: Moses, Moses, Moses. What else have you got?

NARRATOR: Next, Aaron summoned up a plague of frogs. Hundreds, thousands of frogs, hopping all over Egypt on their little frog legs. But the magicians could pull frogs out of their hat too, and Pharoah's heart was hardened. Next came gnats, which are really gross.

PHAROAH: Ew ew ew! Make them go away! Make them go away and you can leave!

NARRATOR: But God hardened Pharoah's heart, which is one of those problematic translation things that I'm just gonna skip right over, and everyone went back to the drawing board. There were flies, and cattle disease, and boils. Then shit got real. It hailed great big hailstones that burst into flame. Locusts came and nommed all the crops. And Moses stretched out his hand and--

MOSES: claps twice

NARRATOR: --drew a darkness over Egypt for three days.

BUTLER: Okay, sir? I'm covered in boils, there's nothing to eat, and I keep walking into frog carcasses because I can't see where I'm going. Let those people go.

PHAROAH: Sorry, my heart's been hardened. Out of my hands.

AARON: Alright, but listen. This last plague's not going to be pretty.

NARRATOR: God spoke to Moses and Aaron, and gave them a shopping list which has changed little in five thousand years, with the same old bitter herbs and unleavened bread, along with a nice dab of lamb's blood for the doorway so that the angel of death would pass over their house. And at midnight, the angel of death swept through the land of Egypt, and slew the first-born of all the Egyptians.

PHAROAH: Get out! Out out out! Scram! Beat it!

AARON: Kthxbai!

BUTLER: You're not going to harden your heart again, right sir?

PHAROAH: Well... I do have all these annoying unfinished pyramids... And that Sphinx could sure use a nose.

BUTLER: Which you'll want the Israelites for, obviously! ...It's funny because they have big noses.

PHAROAH: To the chariots!

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, the Israelites had reached the Red Sea.

MOSES: Huh.

MIRIAM: This doesn't look good. Do we ford the river?

PHAROAH: I'm coming for you, Israel!

MOSES: I guess we're not waiting to see if conditions improve. Onwards!

NARRATOR: And Moses raised his staff and parted the sea, and the children of Israel walked across on dry land. But when Pharoah's chariots tried to follow, their wheels got stuck in the mud, and when the last Israelite reached the bank the waters came crashing back down, drowning the Egyptians.

MIRIAM: Hurrah! Now what?

MOSES: I have to climb this mountain, brb.

NARRATOR: The Israelites, however, were not very patient.

ISRAELITE 1: Where's Moses?

ISRAELITE 2: I'm bored!

ISRAELITE 3: Can we eat yet?

AARON: Hey guys! You know what would pass the time? Why don't you give me all your gold and jewelry, and I'll build a giant shiny cow!

ISRAELITES: Yaaaaay!

MIRIAM: Why do slaves have gold?

AARON: We looted the Egyptians on our way out.

MIRIAM: Seriously? That doesn't seem very under-doggy of us...

AARON: Listen, do you want to hear one of the lesser-known stories where our guys forcibly circumcise our enemies? Or do you want to make a shiny cow?

MIRIAM: Moo.

MOSES: I am back! I am back and I have brought you these two stone tablets, which contain the – oooh, shiny! [drops the tablets] Uh oh. Hope I saved the receipt...

GOD: [face-palm]

NARRATOR: But God gave the children of Israel another chance and gave the law to Moses again. But as punishment, the corrupted former slaves had to die off before they could enter the Promised Land. Forty years of wandering later, they finally reached their new homeland. Unfortunately some other people lived there already, but that's not a very pleasant story and these four glasses of wine aren't going to drink themselves, so let's just pretend the Israelites made friends with their new neighbors and nothing troublesome or morally squicky ever happened in the land of Israel ever again. The end!

A lesson in graceful writing, from the pens of Joseph Stein and Sheldon Harnick:

Tevye: Is he in bad trouble, that hero of yours?
[Hodel nods]
Tevye: Arrested?
[she nods again]
Tevye: Convicted?
Hodel: Yes. But he did nothing wrong. He cares nothing for himself. Everything he does is for other people.
Tevye: Yes, but if he did nothing wrong, he wouldn't be in trouble.
Hodel: Oh Papa, how can you say that? What wrongs did Joseph do? And Abraham, and Moses? And they had troubles.
Tevye: Yes, but... But why won't you tell me where he is now, this Joseph of yours?
Hodel: It is far, Papa. Terribly far. He is in a settlement in Siberia.
Tevye: Siberia! And he asks you to leave your father and mother, and join him in that frozen wasteland and marry him there?
Hodel: No, Papa. He did not ask me to go. I want to go. I don't want him to be alone. I want to help him in his work.
Tevye: Hodel...
Hodel: Papa.
[sings]
Hodel: How can I hope to make you understand, why I do what I do? Why I must travel to a distant land, far from the home I love. Once I was happily content to be, as I was, where I was. Close to the people who are close to me, here in the home I love. Who could see that a man would come, who would change the shape of my dreams? Helpless now, I stand with him, watching older dreams grow dim. Oh, what a melancholy choice this is, wanting home, wanting him... Closing my heart to every hope but his, leaving the home I love. There where my heart has settled long ago, I must go, I must go. Who could imagine I'd be wandering so far from the home I love. Yet... there with my love, I'm home.
[the train is heard]
Tevye: And who, my child, will there be to perform a marriage there in the wilderness?
Hodel: Papa, I promise you, we will be married under a canopy.
Tevye: Yes, yes. No doubt, a Rabbi or two were also arrested.
[the train pulls in, Tevye lifts Hodel's luggage aboard]
Hodel: [crying and hugging him] Papa! God alone knows when we shall see each other again.
Tevye: Then, we will leave it in His hands.
[he helps her aboard and watches the train pull out]
Tevye: [looking up] Take care of her. See that she dresses warm.

Back from spring break! Back to learning!

Today I learned that in 1933, a Mr. Maxwell J. House* hired a rabbi to say that the coffee bean is more like a berry than a bean, and therefore coffee is kosher for Passover. And thus was born the Maxwell House haggadah, sheepishly tucked into grocery bags by the dozen every Passover by thousands of families who couldn't manage to remember where they stored last year's Maxwell House haggadahs.

Even though my 15 Maxwell House haggadahs - the fruits of my mother's visits to four different supermarkets last weekend - would be enough (dayenu!), I am having an all-Gentile, all-singer seder, and therefore am compiling my own supplement. Thus far it consists of "readings" from Marjorie Morningstar, The King & I, Tony Kushner, and The Nanny. Suggestions for quotes, songs, and other ephemera are quite welcome.

And, typed by hand from Death & Taxes: Hydriotaphia and Other Plays because amazingly this wasn't yet on the internet, I give you the following from Tony Kushner's rambling short "Notes on Akiba":

...And, and look how good my kid is, he... performs, he really performs, he memorizes, he is prepared, a performer, he's four years old he can barely read Green Eggs & Ham and look he has memorized lengthy strings of what are to him nonsense syllables which he will now produce flawlessly on command because he knows like the whole year to follow and his life along with it will be cursed, the crops will fail and Elijah won't come because YOU FORGOT WHAT COMES AFTER MA NISHTANAHA ETCETERA, and like, that's not affliction?

*not really, but the rest of it is true

What I learned in, err, life today:

I can make two dozen delicious blintzes for about two dollars. Also, wrapping an old Christmas tree in pink sheeting is difficult, and Hecate's ring is not in the lockbox that Duncan puts in the second Mrs. DeWinter's suite.

Ahoy vey!

Ahoy Vey!

The story of Rosh Hashana / Talk Like A Pirate Day

(which, to clarify, fell on the same day in 2009)

There was once a tiny shtetl in the old country; so inconsequential that no one bothered to persecute it, so unremarkable that no one gave it a name. And anyway, the elders argued, how can you order a pogrom on a place when you don’t know what to call it? Sure, the mail was always lost, but who wrote to them anyway? Not their good for nothing sons, that’s for sure.

One Rosh Hashanah, the esteemed rabbi of the little town stood in front of the shul. The rabbi’s emotion on the holy days was greatly renowned, and the whole town – from Abram the mostly-honest butcher to Shlomo the skill-less liberal arts major (may your family be spared such indignity!) – packed the shul to witness the rabbi's single dramatic tear as he beseeched the Lord God to forgive his people for not setting foot in His house since the previous Yom Kippur, and would He remind them of the Sisterhood potluck next Shabbos as well?

As the rabbi finished a thinly veiled comparison of the binding of Isaac to the binding of his digestion – thanks to the prune rugelach offered by certain congregants in lieu of membership dues – a commotion was heard outside the shul. People were gathering at the door.

“Uch,” thought Abram, “the lazy-bones are only showing up in time for the Part With The Stuff They Know."

“Uch,” thought Shlomo, “I could have slept later after all.”

“Uch,” thought Carlos the shabbos goy, “I hope they don’t ask me to tear their toilet paper.”

A rough voice outside shouted “amen!,” and “amen,” the congregation hastily assented, with a caterwauled descant provided by Chandleh the thinks-she’s-a-soprano show-off. “Arrrr, men!” repeated the voice with clearer diction, and a strong scent of highly un-kosher grog filled the air as a crew of pirates shoved into the shul.

The pirates were ill-shaven and well-armed, apart from the hook-handed one who was well-shaven and ill-armed, and their captain tottered atop a wooden peg leg.

“Ahoy, me hearties!” said the pirate captain.

“Oy, my heart!” said Ephraim the kvetch.

“We be needin’ some assistence from ye landlubbers. We may be the meanest, dirtiest, ugliest blackguards ever to sail the seven seas,” the pirate said (“You should see my wife,” added Samuel who-thinks-he’s-funny), “but the scurvy czar (may he prosper on someone else’s back) be refusin’ to issue us a general pillaging license.”

He paused for a moment of general tutting and commisseration.

“So we be sailin’ under the radar, pillagin’ only that which the czar don’t bother to pillage himself." The pirate smiled with black teeth. "And we be noticin’ that this speck of barnacle is long overdue for a good pillage.”

There were cries and gasps, and a few of the women in the balcony took the opportunity to get better seats by fainting onto the lower level.

"On to the ship!" cried the pirate. The townsfolk were herded towards the door, though in a moment of highly uncharacteristic bravery, Tevye the milkman took a swing at the pirate, who tripped his attacker with a well-placed peg leg.

“You fight like a dairy farmer,” the pirate spat. “Now come along, so's I can make ye walk the plank.”

But at that moment Mordecai the whittler grabbed the pirate's peg leg.

“You have this peg long?”

“Arr. A mosquito bit me thigh." Mordecai looked up. "It was me first day with me hook."

“You think that’s bad? You should see my goiter,” said Ephraim.

“That peg’s not gonna last long, way it was constructed. Allow me.” And Mordecai grabbed the arm off the end of the pew, and quickly whittled it into a fine new peg leg.

“This be a fine new peg leg,” cried the pirate, dancing a little jig. “But don’t be expectin’ that will save ye from the plank.”

“Oh no,” said Mordecai. “For the Cossacks, sure, a leg will cost an arm and another leg. But for you? For you, I make a deal.” He gestured to the rabbi to come forward.

“This is our rabbi, the wisest scholar in our land. Pose him a riddle. If he cannot answer it to your satisfaction within three days, we will happily offer up our plunder to be pillaged. If the rabbi can solve the puzzle, then we request that you allow us to remain un-pillaged. I’ll even throw in an extra peg leg."

The pirate thought for a moment, but finding himself unaccustomed to such strain, he slapped his knee in consternation and cried "shiver me timbers!"

"We accept!" said Mordecai.

"Huh?" said the esteemed rabbi.

"Wait, that warn't any riddle" protested the pirate, but Mordecai put up a hand.

"Captain, let me offer you some counsel, free of charge. If even you don't know the answer to the "riddle," how can our rabbi hope to solve it?"

The pirate paused. "I accept! Rabbi, ye have three days to shiver me timbers." (The wife of Samuel-who-thinks-he's-funny pre-emptively smacked her husband) "I'll go ready me plank."

The pirate stomped off.

Mordecai turned to the rabbi with a smile, expecting praise for his quick wit and genre savvy. Instead, he was met with several dozen pieces of stale prune rugelach flying at his head.

For three days and three nights, the rabbi prayed. For three days and three nights, the rabbi studied. For three days and three nights, the rabbi fasted, not that his other options were much better. And after three days and three nights, the pirates met the townsfolk at the shul, and awaited the esteemed rabbi's solution.

The rabbi stepped up to the bimah, and began to speak. "The Rambam wrote of the many names of the Lord our God," he began, and proceeded to argue that if "shiver" is broken down into its numerological designation... but we’ll never hear the brilliant conclusion that proved "shiver me timbers" to be the lost fourteenth attribute of Hashem, for by that point all in attendance were fast asleep.

T'kiaaaaah! A loud horn bleat from outside woke congregants, pirate and Jew alike. T'kiaaaaaah!

"What fool is blowing the shofar three days late?" the rabbi muttered, throwing open the doors of the shul to chastise the tardy horn-blower. But when he looked out into the town square, he saw none other than the whittler Mordecai, cheeks blushed scarlet from blowing a strange-looking shofar.

"So this is your plan, Mordecai?" demanded the rabbi. "Lead us into the hands of the pirates while you sound the battle cry on your cheap knock-off shofar?"

"Actually, rabbi, I completely forgot about the riddle. But I was poking around the pirates' ship, looking for lost dubloons, when I saw a beautiful plank of wood just hanging off the edge of the deck."

"Me plank!" cried the pirate. "Me beautiful plank!"

"And I couldn't help myself - I had to whittle it. But look at this beautiful horn I made! It works, too!” T'kiaaaaaaaaaah!

The rabbi was all set to strangle Mordecai with his own payyis, but he was distracted by a strange wheezing sound. Coming from the pirate.

"Hee hee hee," said the pirate.

"Hee hee hee?" asked the rabbi.

"Your Mordecai - he took my plank and he... He shofar'd me timber!"

The resulting mass face-palm was so extraordinary that the descendents of the townfolk have had crooked noses ever since.

And the pirate was so taken by this extraordinarily clumsy and painstakingly set-up pun that he spared the village, asking only that Mordecai continue to entertain gentiles for the rest of his days. And so he and his descendents did, inventing musical theater and running Hollywood and generally ruining every nice social gathering, unto this very day.

The end.

[re-posts okay, with credit]

I bought more underwear. It was cheaper than doing laundry.

Also, Seville has a shocking lack of barbers.

Follow-up: my response

Follow-up to people over thirty shouldn't be allowed on facebook:

I decided that I want to try to bait Eric into saying even more ridiculous things. I drafted a couple replies that were sarcastic "what a great suggestion!" things, and a few attempts to scam him out of money. But I have decided to go the "willful misunderstanding" route, and respond as an Angry Feminist... while getting completely wrong what type of plastic surgery he meant. Hopefully this will both thoroughly embarrass him and force him into awkwardly clarifying. Props to Ben for the concept.

Eric,

That was really out of line.

First of all, I have met you exactly once. You may have a reputation for extreme "honesty" among your friends, but I don't think you quite have the right to count me among them - we just don't know each other very well. And there is no way for a mere acquaintance to justify offering such drastic advice, completely unsolicited.

Secondly, you are a married man. A married man with a baby! I really find it unacceptable and more than a little bit creepy that you have been so closely examining my appearance in my facebook pictures. If you don't like what you see, don't look at it. In fact, just don't look. It's bad enough when men objectify women for their body - you take it to a whole new level by telling me I'm not good enough to be an object.

And the latent anti-Semitism of your remarks is horrifying. You are criticizing my appearance on the basis of it being too Jewish. You latched on to a single joke in my profile - yes, my religious views are listed as "look at me" because I know I have very traditionally Jewish features - and interpreted it as dissatisfaction with my body. What, exactly, makes you think that I'm not perfectly happy with my appearance the way it is? I assure you that most men are quite approving of my figure - and Ashkenazi Jews certainly do not have a monopoly on large busts!

You have issued an unsolicited and completely inappropriate recommendation for a cosmetic, elective version of a procedure that for some people is legitimately medical. You have no way of knowing if I have back pain and the assorted other health problems that sometimes accompany my body type. But your advice was based not on a concern for my health or comfort, but for some imaginary version of my social life. Oh yes, by all means, I should undergo elective surgery to conform with mainstream standards of beauty, within which a b-cup is a small chest and a c-cup is a large one and all other sizes are abnormal. Perhaps if I artificially manipulate my body to look like everyone else's - the way you made your wife and will no doubt make your daughter some day! - then perhaps I will have a chance at a life full of success, happiness, and multiple sexual partners.

I have a fantastic rack, and it ain't going nowhere.

-Liz-

people over thirty shouldn't be allowed on facebook: a case study

An email I received from the founder of the Harvard Pops Orchestra , of which I was the president in college. Eric is mid-30s, married with a kid, and I have met him only once, several years ago.

From: Eric D.
Subject: a random thought

Liz--I'm a very honest and open person, and it takes people a little aback at first, but in the end they accept it about me.

I was looking at your pictures, and, you know something? You're pretty cute. You really are. And you know something else? (Here comes the honesty:) You would look even cuter with just a touch of plastic surgery. My wife had it done, and she's never looked back. Your twenties is a period where you should be dating like crazy, figuring out exactly the type of individual you want to spend the rest of your life with. You deserve to feel self-confident about your looks, not listing yourself in your profile as "Jewish...look at me." I personally think you're an amazing person, so I really do hope you take this the right way. Just know you've got a fan and friend in your corner...you can hit me later.

Sincerely,
Eric


It's like a checklist of offensiveness. Bonus points for anti-Semitism and insulting your own wife!

Any ideas how I can make this guy into one of those internet micro-celebrity douchebags?

Follow-up: my response