Shmuel profile picture

Shmuel

21ST CENTURY SCHIZOID JEW

About Me

Yeah, well, enough about me. These are my friends:
[Get your own friendscroller]

What's playing:

What's bothering me:

What you need to read:

Band I'd most like to see live:

Kep&Co (see their live video below!)

My Interests



Visit my Flickr page




I'd like to meet:


Leonard Cohen

Mike Gravel

Gravel in 2008
G-d

Music:

Johnny Clegg & Savuka. John Prine. Ofra Haza. David Bromberg. Paul Simon/Simon & Garfunkel. Leonard Cohen. James Taylor. 60's Dylan. Sinai Tor. Beethoven (the symphonies, mostly). Joni Mitchell. Nina Simone. Kep&Co. Peter Himmelman. Donovan. Nick Cave. Keb' Mo'. Doc Watson. B.B. King. Buddy Guy. Beatles. Byrds. Doors. Hendrix. Janis. Pink Floyd. Eric Johnson. Paul Desmond. Dave Brubeck. Jade Warrior. Eva Cassidy. Julie Miller. Joe Byrd & the Field Hippies. Pesach Chaim. Aryeh Goldsmith.

Movies:

Amelie. The Seventh Seal. Simon Magus. Lord of the Rings. Kikujiro. Taste of Cherry. King of Masks. Not One Less. Kontroll. Coen Brothers films. Jeunet films. Kurasawa films. Zhang Yimou films. Jarmusch films. An Inconvenient Truth. Run Lola Run. V for Vendetta. Spirited Away. Donnie Darko. Brothers Quay/Jan Svenkmajer animations. The Graduate. Best in Show. Office Space. A Prairie Home Companion. Fantasia. Uzumaki. Stories that take place entirely at night (or underground).

Television:

The Wire. Deadwood. The Daily Show. Real Time with Bill Maher. The Colbert Report. Dream On. Northern Exposure. Twin Peaks. M*A*S*H. The Prisoner. The Twilight Zone. Watercolor instruction shows. But TV will never be as good as National Public Radio.

Books:

Tanya. Shomer Emunim (R. Yosef Ergas). Chassidus Mevueres. Georges Simenon. Leonard Cohen. Nathan Englander. Garrison Keillor. Michael Chabon. Edward Gorey. Arturo Perez Reverte. Bruno Schulz. Boris Vian. Joann Sfar. James Stevenson. Iain Pears. Alexander McCall Smith. J.R.R. Tolkien. Umberto Eco. Haruki Murakami. Zadie Smith. Arthur Conan Doyle.

Periodicals Guilt & Pleasure. B&W. Focus. Wired. Rolling Stone. Newsweek. The Huffington Post. Acoustic Guitar. Seed. National Geographic. Juxtapoz.

Heroes:

The Lubavitcher Rebbe zy"a and his predecessors. Adin Steinsaltz. Natan Sharansky. Martin Luther King, Jr. Robert F. Kennedy. Mahatma Gandhi. Nelson Mandela. Studs Terkel. Al Gore. Bob Geldof. Count Pierre Buzukov. David Plowden.

My Website 21st Century Schizoid Jew (under construction)

My Blog

The Great Iraq Swindle

"Follow the money."It was good advice when Deep Throat voiced it, in a different context, to help Woodward and Bernstein investigate the tangled web that was Watergate. And it's good advice today for ...
Posted by Shmuel on Thu, 30 Aug 2007 03:15:00 PST

Bunnies interview Peter Himmelman

...
Posted by Shmuel on Fri, 24 Aug 2007 01:49:00 PST

A few thoughts about G-d

The human mind cannot comprehend G-d. In certain circumstances, it may be possible to "experience" G-d, but that experience cannot be described in words, because there are no words into which that exp...
Posted by Shmuel on Tue, 19 Jun 2007 05:48:00 PST

The eBay Game - No. 4

Time for a quick round of eBay!You might think that if you searched eBay with the term "crap," your search results would comprise about 90% of everything that's for sale there. Not so. In fact, it onl...
Posted by Shmuel on Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:45:00 PST

The hole in the desk

In my blog entry of April 24, 2007, entitled "A formative experience," I told how Rabbi Mayefsky kicked me out of class when I was twelve, for having my hair combed down over my forehead. The Beatles ...
Posted by Shmuel on Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:11:00 PST

Who needs Charlie Chaplin?

A true story of what can happen when you put on airs:Back in the Eighties, I still worked at a downtown Chicago law firm. Most days, I had to take public transportation -- a bus and an elevated train ...
Posted by Shmuel on Fri, 08 Jun 2007 07:37:00 PST

What hope for the Middle-East?

The following are links to a British-made documentary entitled Blaming the Jews: Hate in Islamic Culture. The video has been split into four segments, and I urge you to watch all of them, in order, at...
Posted by Shmuel on Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:00:00 PST

The eBay Game - DIY Edition

I see no reason why I should do all the work, so here's an opportunity for you to play the eBay game yourself. (If you find anything worth sharing, please let me know!) ...
Posted by Shmuel on Fri, 01 Jun 2007 01:20:00 PST

How I got bounced from the library

I was thrown out of my local library several years ago, and I haven't been back there since.I had taken out my cell phone in order to listen to a voicemail message. And then:Librarian: "You can't use ...
Posted by Shmuel on Fri, 01 Jun 2007 08:55:00 PST

The aquarium

[Maybe because it's so sunny and dry in Chicago today, I felt the need to do something with this piece, which I wrote during a very different season.]Being a rainy day in Autumn, the light outside has...
Posted by Shmuel on Mon, 28 May 2007 01:21:00 PST