Winter Snowflake Wreath Craft

Happy first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere! Here's a little wooden craft project I completed recently.

It's also the seventh night of Hanukkah. I hope everyone who celebrates is having a blessed and peaceful holiday.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/story-of-chanukah-the

My Top 10 Tumblr Posts 2023

My #1 post this year, about the end of Ted Lasso, got 401 notes.

This was my #2 post.

The answer is, Jonathan Crane did earn his degrees at a young age, but he wasn't an M.D. He didn't go to pre-med, medical school, and a psychiatric residency. He was a Ph.D. That's still a lot of years of school, but fewer than the psychiatry track.

My next-most-popular post was about Hanukkah.

Then there were 2 posts stolen from Facebook, followed by a photo I snapped of my neighbor's Barbie-themed Halloween decorations.

My chosen Richard Scarry car is pickle, by the way.

I feel very strongly about the human right to bodily autonomy.

And I also think about Bob Dylan a lot.

Sometimes I read graphic novels.

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My 10th post popular post was: 

...a comparison between this M*A*S*H text post meme and Audra McDonald, Anne Hathaway, and Raul Esparza starring in a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that ran from June-July 2009 in Central Park, part of New York City’s annual Shakespeare in the Park tradition.

Follow me on Tumblr for more literary and pop culture shenanigans.

Hanukkah, Night 8

Roman Bowl Fragments with Menorah, Shofar, and Torah Ark. Public domain.

Hanukkah, Night 7

The Zeiss Model II Star Projector nicknamed "Jake" by staff on display at the Carnegie Science Center, Pittsburgh, Pa. It was employed in 1939-1991 at the Buhl Planetarium. Was built in Germany by Zeiss Optical Works. Among the features: a 1000-watt incandescent bulb; an ability to project the stars at any point in time, from any place on the Earth; more than 1000 planetarium shows were created and distributed worldwide, some of them were narrated by Arthur C. Clarke and Leonard Nimoy.

Hanukkah, Night 6

The Shuttle Enterprise rolls out of the Palmdale manufacturing facilities with Star Trek television cast members in attendance. Public domain.

Hanukkah, Night 5

Public domain. This photo depicts the handprints of Leonard Nimoy in front of The Great Movie Ride at Walt Disney World's Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park.

Hanukkah, Night 4

The Zeiss Model II Star Projector nicknamed "Jake" by staff on display at the Carnegie Science Center, Pittsburgh, Pa. It was employed in 1939-1991 at the Buhl Planetarium. Was built in Germany by Zeiss Optical Works. Among the features: a 1000-watt incandescent bulb; an ability to project the stars at any point in time, from any place on the Earth; more than 1000 planetarium shows were created and distributed worldwide, some of them were narrated by Arthur C. Clarke and Leonard Nimoy. Public domain.

Hanukkah, Night 3

The Shuttle Enterprise rolls out of the Palmdale manufacturing facilities with Star Trek television cast members in attendance. Public domain.

I unironically love Leonard's '70s outfit, with the wide, white bell bottoms and the open collar. Ms. Nichelle Nichols looks lovely. George Takei was, and is, very handsome. These are some of my favorite humans.

Hanukkah, Night 2

Samantha Cristoforetti flashes the Vulcan Salute in the cupola of the International Space Station in honor of the Leonard Nimoy. The actor, famed for his role as Mr. Spock in the Star Trek series, passed away on February 27, 2015 - the day prior to this photo. Public domain.

Hanukkah, Night One

Public domain. This photo depicts the handprints of Leonard Nimoy in front of The Great Movie Ride at Walt Disney World's Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park.

The Woman Who Couldn't Stop Reading 'The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming'

Hanukkah begins at sundown tomorrow, but I (finally) read this book at a really inappropriate time: in mid-March, much closer to Purim than to Hanukkah.

...but I couldn't find any books about screaming hamantaschen, so it had to do.

Actually, I bought it because I got a good deal on a used copy from Better World Books, and it happened to be almost springtime. I'd been wanting to read this for years, and I wasn't disappointed.

Like almost everything Daniel Handler writes as Lemony Snicket, it's laugh-out-loud funny. Some of the best quotes in it are:

1) “Santa Claus has nothing to do with it," the latke said. "Christmas and Hanukkah are completely different things."

"But different things can often blend together," said the pine tree. "Let me tell you a funny story about pagan rituals.”

2) “It is very frustrating not to be understood in this world. If you say one thing and keep being told that you mean something else, it can make you want to scream. But somewhere in the world there is a place for all of us, whether you are an electric form of decoration, peppermint-scented sweet, a source of timber, or a potato pancake.”

One caveat: It did make me crave deep-fried foods.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 8: Zoe Kravitz

Like yesterday's Hanukkah Hottie, Tony Goldwyn, Zoe Isabella Kravitz is in the Divergent movie; she plays Christina.



The first time I noticed her was as Tempest (Angel Salvador) in X-Men: First Class.



For a while, she was dating co-star Michael Fassbender; I'm not sure if they're together or broken up at the moment. Despite playing Jewish mutant Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto in the X-Men films, Fassbender is all European. His dad is German and his mom is Irish.



Zoe Kravitz has some mighty big legends to live up to; she's the daughter of rocker/actor/Cinna Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet (a.k.a. Lilakoi Moon), two bonus Hanukkah hotties.



Lenny Kravitz has a Jewish father and an African-American mother; Bonet is the daughter of a Jewish mom and an African-American dad. Zoe, then, is what I am - Jewish through the motherline. Her mother is Jewish because her mother was Jewish because her mother was Jewish, and on and on back to Sarah the matriarch.



But what is Zoe Kravitz known for more than anything? Style.



Alexander Wang seems to be a special favorite of hers.





Hmmm...maybe Christina really is Cinna's daughter.

My secret wish: that Taraji P. Henson and Jim Caviezel will make a movie together, in which they play a couple, and Zoe could play their daughter. Said movie must, absolutely, have a happy ending, to make up for this nonsense.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night Seven: Tony Goldwyn

Tony Goldwyn is the grandson of Samuel Goldwyn of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) fame, but the family named itself after the studio, not the other way around. I read this story in Bill Bryson's Made in America (a book you will find fascinating if you're any kind of amateur or professional etymologist).

Bryson writes, "Some understandable confusion exists concerning Samuel Goldwyn and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Though his name accounts for the middle initial in MGM, Goldwyn was never part of the company. In 1924, he sold out to the Metro studios and Louis B. Mayer, and was astonished to discover that they took his name with them. But then that was no more than Goldwyn himself had done. The Goldwyn Picture Company was not in fact named for Goldwyn, but rather he for it. His real name was Schmuel [also sometimes spelled Szmuel] Gelbfisz, though for his first thirty years in America he had called himself - perhaps a little unwisely - Samuel Goldfish. Goldwyn was a portmanteau of the names of the studio's two founders: Samuel Goldfish and Edgar Selwyn. It wasn't until 1918, tired of being the butt of endless fishbowl jokes, that he named himself after his corporation. After the MGM takeover, he had to go to court to win permission to continue making movies under the Goldwyn name."

public domain image

Apparently, he won. I can proudly say that the Gelbfisz family came from Warsaw. Poland, the same place as my ancestors, the Templin family. My grandmother's grandmother was named Antonia Templin.

At one time, I knew Tony Gelbfisz/Goldfish/Goldwyn primarily as the villain in the Patrick Swayze-Demi Moore romance Ghost. Now he's playing the U.S. president on Scandal...



...but perhaps (since I don't watch that show) I'd like him even better as Andrew Prior in the film version of Veronica Roth's Divergent.



I'm sorry, Tris Prior, but your dad is a complete DILF.

This is what Tony Goldwyn looks like dressed casually.



This is what he looks like dressed formally.



This is what he looks like with no shirt on.



He's not technically a Jewish Disney prince, but he did provide the voice of Tarzan in the Disney cartoon.



Having a happy Hanukkah so far? Good. There's one more night to go.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night Six: Natalie Portman

Put on your kippahs, it's still time for Hanukkah! Yeah, I prefer the perfectly good Hebrew word kippah to the Greek word yarmulke - no offense to the Greeks. The Greeks aren't exactly the heroes of the Hanukkah story, but we'll let the historians debate over whether the Maccabees' revolt was against the Seleucid Empire led by the Greek king Antiochus IV Epiphanes or against a philosophy within Judaism itself that favored embracing Hellenistic culture.

So, about tonight's Hanukkah hottie:

There are about a million billion reasons to love Natalie Portman.



- She was born in Jerusalem and is a U.S.-Israeli dual citizen. She went to high school in Syosset, New York. I like to say "Syosset" because it sounds like it's in Parseltongue. Outside of her professional life, her family name is Hershlag.

- Her great-grandmother, a Romanian Jew, was a spy for the British during World War II.

- She has a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard.

- She was the producers' first choice to play Juliet in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, but eventually lost the part of Claire Danes because she was too young.



- She played Evey in V For Vendetta.

- She said this awesome feminist thing:

"I want [female characters] to be allowed to be weak and strong and happy and sad - human, basically. The fallacy in Hollywood is that if you're making a 'feminist' story, the woman kicks ass and wins. That's not feminist, that's macho. A movie about a weak, vulnerable woman can be feminist if it shows a real person that we can empathize with." Preach, sister.



Natalie Portman starred with Night 4 Hanukkah Hottie Kat Dennings in Thor and Thor: The Dark World, and with Night 5 Hanukkah Hottie Mila Kunis in Black Swan. (She was also in Your Highness with James Franco, but I didn't see it.)



But honestly, I've been impressed with Portman ever since Luc Besson's Leon, or The Professional. It was her first movie.



The next time I took note of her was as Amidala in the Star Wars prequel. I was obsessed with Star Wars when I was a kid. Now, I was born the same year the original film - Episode Four now - was released, and I was only 6 when The Empire Strikes Back come out, so I probably didn't see any of the movies until later in the '80s, when we got cable and/or a VCR. (Before that, we did have Episode Four on a projector reel, but it didn't have sound.) I do remember my R2D2 Underoos and being jealous of my friend Mark because he had plastic light sabres - we were probably fans of Star Wars without even having seen the movies when we were very young.



By contrast, when my niece Eira was four or so, she told me the entire story of Anakin Skywalker, from his birth to his death. She used to watch a Star Wars movie or two every night while she was falling asleep.



So in 1999, I was excited to see Episode One: The Phantom Menace, more from nostalgia than from anything else. How could it not be great? But then when my brother and I went to see it in the theater - meh, not that great. But that was not Natalie Portman's fault.

At one time, Portman was slated to play Elizabeth Bennett in the film adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but she has since dropped out. :( It is really too bad, because she would have made an awesome ninja Lizzie.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 5: Mila Kunis

Happy December! I hope you're having a lovely winter holiday season so far, whether or not you're observing Hanukkah.

A lot of people don't even realize Mila Kunis is Jewish. My dad thought she was Latina, and keep in mind, my dad is married to an ethnic Jewish woman. But she's from a Ukrainian Jewish family, born in what at the time was the USSR. Her parents tried to raise her as a religious Jew as much as they could in the Soviet Union, where religion was severely repressed.



I'm gonna be brutally honest here: Mila Kunis is here more because I think she's absolutely gorgeous than because I like a whole bunch of the work she's done. Like most people, I remember her mainly from That '70s Show on Fox. It's not one of my all-time favorite shows.



It is, however, kind of fun to imagine that Kunis' character Jackie Burkhart is a more grown-up version of spoiled young Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Kunis played Rachel, the flirtatious hotel receptionist, in Forgetting Sarah Marshall with Jason Segel. Okay, I kinda love that movie. She co-starred with Justin Timberlake in Friends with Benefits, which I found neither very funny nor very romantic.



She was in Oz the Great and Powerful (as a witch) with fellow Hanukkah hottie James Franco. I haven't seen it yet, although I'm guessing my 7-year-old niece has. For a while, she walked around handing everyone notes written on Oz the Great and Powerful stationery from the dollar store, and she suggested we pretend there was an evil witch with flying monkeys, flying dinosaurs, and flying maids and butlers. (The irony is that her father, my brother, was terrified of the flying monkeys as a child and used to hide behind the couch during selected parts of The Wizard of Oz.)



I also remember Kunis from The Book of Eli, a not-particularly-good post-apocalyptic thing with Denzel Washington. She played a small role in the Tina Fey comedy Date Night (again with James Franco, playing characters named Whippit and Taste).



Her next project after that was Black Swan, which is my favorite of her movies. Here she starred opposite fellow Hanukkah hottie (tomorrow) Natalie Portman. (Winona Ryder plays a small role in it as well.)



Jewish women: our relationship with black eyeliner goes back to ancient Egypt.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 4: Kat Dennings

Happy 4th night of Hanukkah! Tonight's Hebrew hottie is Kat Dennings.



(Sometimes I go boy-girl-boy-girl, but this year it's alphabetical by first name).



I won't lie - I love her wisecracking Max on Two Broke Girls. (It's too bad CBS's Two Broke Girls and Fox's Sleepy Hollow compete in the same time slot, because I love both. Fortunately, Fox also reruns Sleepy Hollow on Fridays.)



The first thing I saw her in was Charlie Bartlett, playing Robert Downey Jr.'s daughter, but I didn't pay her much attention until I became a fan of Max's sass. You may remember her from such films as Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (based on the book by Rachel Cohn and David Levitan) and Thor.



Before Charlie Bartlett, Dennings was cast in the pilot for a TV series - unfortunately, never picked up - based on Practical Magic. Dennings' website is called Kat Dennings is Fabulous, and she writes diary entries on there. Which is awesome.



She has a sidebar with some of her favorite books, which include The Phantom Tollbooth, Lolita, Kate Mansfield's short stories, and The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.



On Twitter, she is @OfficialKat, and she says things like this:

Goddamn it, snow peas, I don't want you #wontonsoup
— Kat Dennings (@OfficialKat) October 25, 2013

Her parents, Gerald and Ellen Judith Litwack, are a molecular pharmacology professor and a poet respectively.



On TV, her best friend is played by Beth Behrs (is Beth Behrs Jewish? That I don't know. Her last name sounds German-ish, and German-sounding names sometimes indicate Yiddish-speaking ancestors, but by all means not always), and in real life, one of her best friends is Nikki Reed, the Jewish-American actress best known for playing the gorgeous Rosalie Hale in the Twilight movie adaptations.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 3: The Franco Brothers

Tonight's Hanukkah Hotties are a 2-fer, like the Gyllenhaal sibs: James and Dave Franco. The Francos have a father of Spanish and Portuguese descent, and their mother is the Jewish one. James is the older of the native Californian brothers.



The first time I noticed James Franco was in Spider-Man (2002). He's in all three of the Spiderman films that star Tobey Maguire. I'm not a big fan of the first two, but I do have a certain affection for the third, as I wrote about in "Spiderman's Aunt May is a Goddess."

Lately, you may have seen him and Seth Rogan in "Bound 3," a frame-for-frame remake of Kimye's (Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's) "Bound 2."

By far my favorite James Franco project, though, is Howl, in which he plays Allen Ginsberg (like yesterday's Hanukkah Hottie, Daniel Radcliffe). His other literary projects have included the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's phenomenally popular Eat, Pray, Love (book review here by Mal at Lazy Boleyn blog) and William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.

The latter caused a bit of a flap in September 2013 when a tie-in edition of the classic was released with Franco's face on the cover.

This inspired Minh Le to postulate what might happen if Franco's face were on ALL the book covers.









Okay, so maybe James Franco isn't William Faulkner or Allen Ginsberg, but he does write. As Goodreads will tell you, he's written Actors Anonymous, A California Childhood, and more. He also wrote a foreword to Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Hermann Hesse (translated into English from the German by Damion Searls).



Some scoff at his Renaissance-man literary pretentions, but I think it's rather sexy.



Bonus: James rates his own page in Color Me Swoon, a coloring book for big girls.

Note last year's Hanukkah Hottie Joseph Gordon-Levitt to the left of Channing Tatum on the cover. I may have bought this for myself earlier this month at Barnes and Noble.

Dave is a bit less well-known than his big brother, but he's in one movie I particularly like: Warm Bodies. Unfortunately, his character gets eaten by a zombie. But Dave is still fun to look at.



I couldn't find a picture of him reading, though.



So, which Franco is your favorite Franco?

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 2: Daniel Radcliffe

Happy second night of Hanukkah!

For a long time, I didn't realize Daniel Radcliffe was Jewish. When I found out, I was really excited. Not that there's anything wrong with being non-Middle Eastern. It's just nice to belong to the same tribe as the cool kids.

From Sorceror's Stone and Chamber of Secrets, Daniel Radcliffe was just "that kid who plays Harry Potter." In Prisoner of Azkaban, Daniel Radcliffe became "that cute kid who plays Harry Potter." Then, right around the time of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - right about the time he starred in Equus on London's West End - it became, "Wow, Dan Radcliffe is an actual hot guy."



As I wrote here, I do not mind his vertically-challenged status. Height is not required for hotness.

Grace Norwich published Daniel Radcliffe: No Ordinary Wizard in 2005, when Radcliffe was 15-ish and still in the "cute; I'd be into him if I was in high school" phase. I bought it (at a card shop that also sold books, now out of business) because I was as Potter-obsessed then as I am today, and I read it, too, although the writing is clearly intended for a teen/tween audience.

For your edification, I'll quote a few passages.

"...Dan shares a lot of similarities with the fictional character that has made him a household name. First off, they are both British, and very cute!...'We have curiosity [and] loyalty,' Dan told People magazine...Another similarity that Dan and the fictional wizard seem to share is a level of wisdom and maturity that is beyond their years, which is probably due to the fact that they both had to handle a great deal of responsibility at such a young age."



"Daniel Jacob Radcliffe was born on July 23, 1989, in London, England, to Alan Radcliffe and Marcia Gresham. He grew up in the well-to-do neighborhood of Fulham, in the southwest part of the city. Daniel attended Sussex House, an exclusive all-boys private school in Chelsea, where his favorite classes were gym and science."



On how Dan came to audition for the role of Harry Potter: "One summer Dan went to the theater with his parents to see Stones in His Pockets, a comedy about two extras on a big American movie shooting in Ireland. In the row directly in front of the Radcliffe family were two men who knew his father. And they were behaving oddly. Instead of concentrating on the play in front of them, the men kept turning around to stare at Dan....The two men turned out to be none other than David Heyman and the screenwriter, Steve Kloves."



"More than ten thousand fans gathered to scream and swoon when Dan arrived at the world premiere of Harry Potter in London. At the momentous event, Dan watched the film for the third time. Although he loved the final product, he hated seeing himself on the screen, especially that evening."



"There were a lot of people who would weigh in on this film, but perhaps there was no one more important than J.K. Rowling. She made her firm pronouncement after seeing the film. 'I think Dan nailed it,' she said in a written statement later published by the Toronto Star..."



"Not surprising are Dan's sophisticated tastes. He likes music from bands that broke up way before he was even born. But Dan has been hanging around adults on film sets for a long time now, and has picked up a thing or two. He also is the only child of two very sophisticated parents, who took him to the theater regularly and exposed him to a lot. Dan wasn't going to settle for any Britney Spears or the latest boy band. Instead Dan is into edgier stuff. In fact, with his main musical passion, punk, he doesn't even like the current bands."



"He has a ton of crushes on the leading ladies of rock. He admitted to Radio 1 that he is a sucker for Brody Dalle, the lead singer of the punk band the Distillers, who sports enormous tattoos and thick black eyeliner. 'I'm madly in love with her!' Dan said. He also professed love to Marcie Bolen, the adorable red-head guitarist for another punk band, the Von Bondies."



"When the inevitable time arrives for Dan and Harry to go their separate ways, Dan's future will be wide open and anything is possible. Who knows what he will try next?"



We do! We've already seen him in The Woman in Black. Next up, we'll see him in the adaptation of Joe Hill's horror novel Horns and as Allen Ginsberg (squee! He's my dead gay Jewish boyfriend) in Kill Your Darlings.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 1: Anton Yelchin

Happy first night of Hanukkah! Let's get directly to our first Hanukkah Hottie of 2013: Anton Yelchin.

public domain image

How do I love Anton Yelchin, an American actor of Russian-Jewish descent? Let me count the ways:

1. He's Charlie Bartlett in Charlie Bartlett, an underrated gem of a film. As a bonus, it has two other beautiful Jews: Robert Downey Jr. and Kat Dennings. (More on Kat Dennings to come.)



2. He's Kyle Reese in Terminator Salvation. (See post from earlier today.) It's the one with Christian Bale - not Jewish, as one might guess from his Christian name, but still hot - so double nom.



3. Fright Night. With Colin Farrell as a sexy-ass (but evil) vampire. Double nom again.



By the way, this movie has two pretty cool songs on its soundtrack:

"Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People

"99 Problems" by Hugo

4. Star Trek. I'm not the big Trekkie of the house - that would be Tit Elingtin. My favorite Trek franchise is actually Voyager, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy the latest reboot of the films. It's full of man candy: melted-chocolate-eyed Zachary Quinto, Chris Pine, Karl Urban (love me some Eomer), nerd king Simon Pegg, John Cho's fine ass...but Pavel Andreievich Chekov steals every scene he's in with that accent and Yelchin's curly-headed adorableness.



Yelchin's actually 24 now, but he still looks 18.





This is my favorite one of him. It's a scientific fact that men are hotter when they have books in their hands.



It's a good thing we're The People of the Book. Middle Eastern cultures are some of the oldest literate societies in the world (along with China). The Jewish culture's lengthy history with books totally explains James Franco - but more on that later.

Happy Hanukkah!

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Hanukkah Hotties: The 2011-2012 Recap Post

Prepare for The Holidays to begin: Hanukkah will begin at sundown tomorrow night, falling even earlier than U.S.A. Thanksgiving this year. To prepare you for this year's eight nights of The Hanukkah Hotness (it's a little thing we do here at Pagan Spirits - no big deal), here I recap my Hebraic hotties from 2011 and 2012.

Yep, they're almost always actors, with a few musicians sprinkled in for flavor. As you can read in Louise Berkinow's The American Women's Almanac:

"Powerful Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures refused to groom Judy Holliday for stardom, shouting, 'You're joking! Films are made for Jews and by Jews--not WITH JEWS.'"

...Yet the history of filmdom would suggest that Yiddishkeit and screen time are not antithetical, and The Hanukkah Hotness only provides further evidence of that fact.

2012:

Barbra Streisand



Hank Azaria



Ellen Barkin



Joseph Gordon-Levitt



P!nk



Jason Segel



Patricia Arquette



Zac Efron



2011:

Robert Downey, Jr.



Meital Dohan



Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal



Adam Levine



Scarlett Johansson



Winona Ryder



Adam Lambert



Kat Graham



Who made this year's list? Tune in tomorrow evening to find out. Also, feel free to leave me your suggestions for the 2014 list.

If you need something seasonal to read for Hanukkah, I highly recommend "Spicy, Earthy, Sweet."