The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 8: Zac Efron

I'm going to be bluntly honest and say that I do not enjoy the music of High School Musical. This does not mean that Zac Efron is not utterly beautiful. Zac is Jewish on his father's side, and his surname is the Hebrew word for the lark.





This Hanukkah hottie is also a young prince of literary adaptations. He was in Charlie St. Cloud (a Ben Sherwood novel), The Lorax (a Dr. Seuss classic) and The Lucky One, the Nicholas Sparks favorite which I read in April.

I saw the movie in November. It's not as good as the book, and  I don't think anyone will accuse Zac Efron of being the greatest actor of his generation. He brings a lot of heart to the role of Logan Thibault, opposite Taylor Schilling as Beth Green. They do their best with these characters, but the book versions are simply more powerful. The ending that works so well in print loses much of its suspense on screen.

Zac Efron is also notorious for dropping a condom onto the red carpet at the Lorax premiere.



I saw The Lorax in October. It was a pretty good cartoon, although not Despicable Me good. I didn't love the musical numbers, but I did think it managed not to garble Dr. Seuss' message.

The Hebrew word for the lark also belongs to one of 2012's saddest literary losses, the screenwriter, former journalist, essayist and New York Times best-selling author Nora Ephron. She passed away in June after a battle with leukemia. She was best known for writing the films When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle - neither of which I've seen. The Nora Ephron film I did connect with and thoroughly enjoy was her last, Julie and Julia, about Julia Child and the food blogger Julie Powell.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 7: Patricia Arquette

Look, I'm not saying that I don't like Rosanna Arquette. She's awesome in Pulp Fiction and the David Cronenberg Crash. She is, undoubtedly, a beautiful woman. But for me, when I think of the Hanukkah hotness that is the Arquette family, I can't help but fixate on sister Patricia.

Bonus Hanukkah hottie: Rosanna Arquette. Photo by Rita Molnar, Wikimedia Commons.

Three words:

Stigmata.

True Romance.







Stigmata is a particularly bold choice, in which Arquette played a contemporary, female St. Francis of Assisi, receiving the wounds of Jesus on her body. This happens not because of Frankie's personal holiness - she doesn't even believe in God - but because she's been chosen as the messenger of a dead priest who discovered a suppressed gospel written by Jesus himself. The Church will do anything to keep the hidden gospel hidden, a plotline that anticipates The Da Vinci Code. The subplot is a romance between Frankie and Father Andrew Kiernan, a scientist/priest/investigator of alleged miracles, played by Gabriel Byrne.

If you watch American TV, you may have seen her recently on Law and Order: SVU as a prostitute assisting the SVU team in catching a spree killer who was one of her johns. Like P!nk and Jamie Lee Curtis, Arquette has taken her turn as a horror film vixen, appearing in the third Nightmare on Elm Street film, Dream Warriors.

For me, her most memorable turn as a literary character was her appearance in Holes as the outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow. When I worked in a school, one of the books we read out loud to the 7-12 year olds was Louis Sachar's novel. The Kissin' Kate parts were my favorites, especially her sad romance with Sam the Onion Man.


She has also appeared in the film adaptation of Eric Schlosser's muckraking nonfiction book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.

If you remember Patricia Arquette as a regular from a TV drama, you probably remember her as Allison Dubois on Medium. The TV character was based on the real Allison Dubois, an alleged psychic medium who has written several books about her experiences, including We Are Their Heaven: Why the Dead Never Leave Us.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 6: Jason Segel

Jason Segel, best known as Marshall Eriksen on How I Met Your Mother, is the adorably goofy Jewish dude I'd most like to see lewd (sorry, Ben Stiller). If you want to see a Hanukkah hottie naked, all you have to do is rent/stream Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jason Segel does the Full Monty. Let's just say acting is not his only gift.

He also does a musical puppet show version of Dracula - which is so awesome.











See also: Fuck Yeah Marshall Eriksen on Tumblr.

Jason Segel almost shares his last name with a beloved American Jewish writer, Erich Segal, the author of 1970's Love Story. Erich Segal died in 2010, but his daughter Francesca - an author, literary critic and columnist - is alive and well. They may be distantly related, but I have no way of confirming or disproving this.

Francesca Segal wrote this:

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 5: P!nk

Happy 12-12-12! Tonight's Hebraical hottie is none other than Jewish rock star P!nk herself, a.k.a Alecia Beth Moore. The 33-year-old Pennsylvania native is the daughter of a Catholic father and a Jewish mother.

http://pinterest.com/pin/173529391861632833/

Jewish chicks - rockin' the cat-eyes black eyeliner look since we were slaves in Egypt.

Musically, P!nk had me hooked from her first hit, "There You Go." The grammar is appalling, but you must remember her crashing her motorcycle through her ex's window.

In "Slut Like You" from her 2012 album, P!nk isn't afraid to reclaim the "slut" label from those who would use it as a slur, or to apply it to guys.

For sheer musical girl power, you can hardly do better than the Moulin Rouge collaboration of P!nk with Christina Aguilera, Mya, Lil Kim and Missy Elliot on "Lady Marmalade." This single was like the Spice Girls of the 00s.

In this Pepsi commercial, she must engage in gladiatorial combat - sort of - against Beyonce and Britney Spears.

She was a Weekend Crush once upon a time at Dorothy Surrenders. DS also clued me in to P!nk's collaboration with Peaches, the world's greatest bisexual Canadian rapper/electro musician of Jewish descent. The song is called "Oh My God," and I like to think of it as a sincere prayer as well as a song about women having sex with women.

P!nk is just teasing all the lesbian/bi/pan girls, though; she's a straight girl. She is, however, listed in The Bisexual's Guide to the Universe by Nicole Kristal and Mike Szymanski as having once said, "I'm trisexual. I'll try anything once."



Also, P!nk is in Catacombs, a mind-numbingly stupid 2007 horror film set at a rave in the underground cemeteries of Paris. The film sucks, but props to P!nk for taking her turn as a scream queen, a horror film convention perfected by Hebrew hottie Jamie Lee Curtis.

Hanukkiot Riot

Put on your kippahs - it's time for Hanukkah!



You know what that means - for four nights now, if you've been celebrating the Festival of Lights, you've been lighting your hanukkiah.

I know, I know - everybody calls them menorahs. According to Tamar Fox, to be technically correct, "Menorah" should refer to the original oil-burning lamp, located in the Temple of Jerusalem, that represented Moses' burning bush. In commemoration of the Menorah, we light a hanukkiah - the plural is hanukkiot.







That one was cookies; this one is made out of peanut butter and jelly.



Spiderman, the Hulk, Wonder Woman - not Jewish. Wanna know which superheroes celebrate Hanukkah? See this post.



My personal favorite is the one that's made out of books. I am a little concerned that this may be a fire hazard. (It's the Irish side of my family that has the firefighters, my grandpa and uncle.)



Finally, I give you the Hanukkiah Martini. The pin didn't link directly to the source, but I tracked it down to this page at Knoxville.com. (They call it a Menorah Martini, but you and I know better.) It's vodka, sweet vermouth and blue curacao.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 4: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

My original idea for Night Four was David Duchovny. 

It's been a few years, but once upon a time, I had a huge crush on David Duchovny. Today he may be best known for Californication, but back in the day, the Scottish-Jewish fox was must-see TV as Agent Fox Mulder of The X-Files. 

For David Duchovny, I saw a movie called Playing God in the theater. It's a bad, pulpy crime flick about a drug-addicted doctor who goes to work for a gangster. It did have a rockin' soundtrack, though ("Trigger Hippie" by Morcheeba? Still a great song). It was also the first movie in which I ever saw Angelina Jolie.

Oh yes, and Bree Sharp had a minor pop hit with a song called "David Duchovny:"

But now, I'd much rather do a post about the Hanukkah Hotness that is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. At first, you just thought he was the kid from Third Rock From the Sun.

But then, hubba hubba. Oh, yeah, and isn't he in some kind of Batman movie or something? 

Of course you remember him in 10 Things I Hate About You, right? Based on The Taming of the Shrew, 10 Things ranks among the greatest of near-Shakespeare films, right up there with Hamlet 2 and Were the World Mine. 

It is a science fact that a hot boy is 39% hotter when he is reading a book. 

With short hair or with long hair.

(Fun Hollywood Babylon fact: the book originally referred to Montgomery Clift by the nickname "Princess Tiny Meat," but Clift's lawyers made author Kenneth Anger take out the reference. I think I can say that without getting sued now, because Patricia Bosworth reported it in her biography.)

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 3: Ellen Barkin

Don't be fooled by the rocks that she got; Ellen Barkin's still Ellen from the Bronx. You may know her as the less-than-enlightened Nana on the NBC sitcom The New Normal, but you've gotta admit: at the age of 58, Ellen Barkin makes one hot granny.

Photo: Rosetta Argento, Creative Commons license

The stunning actress did do one thing ass backwards: she split with Gabriel Byrne to get with makeup mogul Ron Perelman. Silly girl - you're supposed to leave the plain guy for the Irish hottie, not the other way around.

Barkin and Byrne met filming Siesta, the second-best movie she's in with Julian Sands. (My Irrelevant friends will recognize Sands as Alistair Wesley on Person of Interest.) The cooler one is Mercy, an erotic thriller in which Barkin's character is bisexual.



As Dorothy Surrenders can tell you, Barkin is internationally world-famous for her salty-tongued Twitter tweets. Check her out: https://twitter.com/#!/EllenBarkin

Unlike her character on The New Normal, she will not put up with any sexist bullshit. When Bret Easton Ellis said this about the Oscar-winning director of The Hurt Locker:

...Barkin fired back with:

Literary adaptations that star Barkin include This Boy's Life, based on the memoir by Tobias Wolff;  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, based on the writings of Hunter S. Thompson; and Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, loosely based on the Fyodor Dostoyevsky classic.

But really, someone should just collect her funniest and sauciest tweets into a book, a la Justin Halpern's Shit My Dad Says. Shit Ellen Barkin Says has definite bestseller potential.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 2: Hank Azaria

Henry Albert (Hank) Azaria is my Sephardic Hanukkah Hottie, 'cause after all, you can't even spell Hanukkah without Hank. Why do I love Hank Azaria? The short answer is, The Simpsons. But he's so much more than the voice of Chief Wiggum, Apu, Comic Book Guy, Frank Grimes, et al.

Though that would be enough.

His literary-leaning accomplishments include:

• Playing the role of Mitch Albom in the TV-movie version of Tuesdays With Morrie
• Reading the role of Allen Ginsberg in voiceover in the PBS documentary Chicago 10
• Playing Walter Plane in Great Expectations (the version with Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow)
• Appeared in a production of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago in London's West End

I like the sound of that last one. 

Of course, when our people actually lived in Egypt, we weren't the pharaohs, we were the slaves.

David Mamet, by the way, is himself an Orthodox Jew. Along with Rabbi David Kushner, he wrote a series of Torah commentaries called Five Cities of Refuge, and he's explored anti-Semitism in works including The Old Religion and The Wicked Son.

My #1 reason for interest in David Mamet, though, is that in 2005 he wrote a screenplay for James Jones' Whistle. See this listing at IonCinema, for example. Apparently it's never been produced. That makes me sad. I want it to be produced, and I want Jim Caviezel to have a small role as, say, the doctor who wants to cut off Prell's leg, or something.

Mamet was a guest star on one episode of The Simpsons. He was supposed to have written the treacly 1980s family sitcom Thicker Than Waters, with which Homer becomes obsessed.

Hanukkah Reflections

Barukh atah adonai, elohaynu melekh ha-olam
Asher kidishanu b'mitzvo-tav
Vi-tzivahnu le-hadlikh ner shel Hanukkah

Praised are You, Oh Lord, our God, ruler of the universe
Who has made us holy through God's commandments and
commanded us to kindle the Hanukkah lights.

--Blessings of the first night of Hanukkah
The Little Book of Hanukkah, Running Press

"Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,
And add each night a luster till afar
An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn;
Chant psalms of victory till the heart takes fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap newborn."

--From The Feast of Lights by Emma Lazarus
The Eight Nights of Hanukkah, Peter Pauper Press



"Hanukkah is remembered not only for the miracle of the lights that burned in the Temple, but for the miracle of bringing light to a darkened world. The days of December in which Hanukkah usually falls are the shortest in daylight and the longest in night of the entire year. On the twenty-fifth night of Kislev, the moon begins to shrink from sight altogether, and at the winter solstice, the sun begins to weaken and sheds least of its warmth on the cold earth. It is a time of year when a little light must go a long way. Running counter to the natural process of diminishing light, the ceremonial candles grow in number, shedding more light with each successive night."

--Becoming a Jew, Maurice Lamm

"Hanukkah is about being Jewish and Hanukkah is about what I'm prepared to fight for as a Jew. Hanukkah is about limits and definition. Hanukkah is about reassessing what is non-negotiable in my life...what I am ready to modify or reformulate in consequence of being a proud and loyal American; what, for me, is not up for grabs, not open to dilution or diminution or cancellation or violation. Hanukkah is about consulting the venerable traditions of our people rather than making autonomous decisions about what stays and what must go."

--Being Jewish in a Gentile World: A Survival Guide by Ronald A. Brauner

"Although America's consumer culture has tried to make Hanukkah into a Jewish version of Christmas, it remains a modest festival of candle-lighting and potato-pancake frying."

--Choosing a Jewish Life by Anita Diamant

"Hanukkah may be twentieth-century Judaism's most popular holiday--surely it is the best known amongst gentiles. Of all the holidays in the entire Jewish calendar, it is the last holiday of the ancient world; it is the only one not based on a biblical narrative; the only one that celebrates a military conquest; the only holiday based on a miracle not instituted by a prophet; the only one not celebrated by a synagogue special service, or by a scroll, or by biblical reference. But, as the Hanukkah lights are increased by one for eight nights, the power, the significance and the popularity of Hanukkah and its message grow ever brighter--from day to day and year to year."

--Becoming a Jew, Maurice Lamm

"Each side of the dreidel has a Hebrew letter. Each letter represents the first letter in each word of the sentence Nais godol hayah sham, which means "A great miracle happened there."

--The Little Book of Hanukkah, Steven Zorn, Running Press

A Hanukkah Treat For Gentiles and Jews Alike

It's that time of year again! Dig in to a delectable winter treat, as warm as a potato pancake on a frosty Hanukkah night!

Caught up in the magic of the Festival of Lights, Gabriella wants everything to be perfect for her holiday with Jared. Jared has very specific tastes-and a slight obsession with teasing the individual flavors out of the aromas of fine wines. Even the kosher wine he chooses for the first night of Hanukkah is subjected to his beloved wine aroma wheel.

But wine is not the only thing that can be tasted, analyzed, and savored. Gabriella and Jared discover new uses for Jared's favorite toy as the Hanukkah candles burn down...

Read "Spicy, Earthy, Sweet" by Erin O'Riordan at Ravenous Romance (update, 2015: Although originally available at RR, the title can now be found on Etsy).

Help out a starving artist for only $1.99! It's a beautiful story (but only for readers 18+)!

Erin O'Riordan, despite what her Irish name may lead you to believe, is of mixed Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Pagan descent. Following the philosophy of Joan Borysenko, she proudly embraces all of her diverse spiritual heritage. Her spiritual-sexual writings include the Pagan-ritual-inspired erotic novel Beltane, from Eternal Press. Visit her home page at www.aeess.com.

Spicy, Earthy, Sweet

Dig in to a delectable winter treat, as warm as a potato pancake on a frosty Hanukkah night!

Caught up in the magic of the Festival of Lights, Gabriella wants everything to be perfect for her holiday with Jared. Jared has very specific tastes-and a slight obsession with teasing the individual flavors out of the aromas of fine wines. Even the kosher wine he chooses for the first night of Hanukkah is subjected to his beloved wine aroma wheel.

But wine is not the only thing that can be tasted, analyzed, and savored. Gabriella and Jared discover new uses for Jared's favorite toy as the Hanukkah candles burn down...

Read "Spicy, Earthy, Sweet" by Erin O'Riordan at http://www.ravenousromance.com/ravenous-rendezvous/spicy-earthy-sweet.php

Erin O'Riordan, despite what her Irish name may lead you to believe, is of mixed Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Pagan descent. Following the philosophy of Joan Borysenko, she proudly embraces all of her diverse spiritual heritage. Her spiritual-sexual writings include the Pagan-ritual-inspired erotic novel Beltane, from Eternal Press. Visit her home page at www.aeess.com .

UPDATE (January 2015): Find "Spicy, Earthy, Sweet" at my Etsy shop, Writer's Brain Has Wings.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/208636827/spicy-earthy-sweet-romance-short-story-e?

Hanukkah Romance: Spicy, Earthy, Sweet

Dig in to a delectable winter treat, as warm as a potato pancake on a frosty Chanukah night.

Caught up in the magic of the Festival of Lights, Gabriella wants everything to be perfect for her holiday with Jared. Jared has very specific tastes—and a slight obsession with teasing the individual flavors out of the aromas of fine wines. Even the kosher wine he chooses for the first night of Chanukah is subjected to his beloved wine aroma wheel.

But wine is not the only thing that can be tasted, analyzed, and savored. Gabriella and Jared discover new uses for Jared’s favorite toy as the Chanukah candles begin to burn down.

"Spicy, Earthy, Sweet," my brand-new short story, is coming Dec. 29th to Ravenous Romance. The site officially launches in December, but visit now for a free story download and a chance to win an iPod!

Congratulations to Becky Senn and Tracey McLeod, the winners of signed copies of The Erotica Anthology by Erin O’Riordan from Bitten By Book’s Haunted Bloggy Carnival!

UPDATE (January 2015): Find "Spicy, Earthy, Sweet" at my Etsy shop, Writer's Brain Has Wings.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/208636827/spicy-earthy-sweet-romance-short-story-e?