Pixies and Magical Miniature Butlers

Here's where I get all confessional: I kind of hate New York City.

Don't get me wrong--I love living near a zillion cousins-in-law and a gabillion kosher restaurants. But you know how people say that, in L.A., people say "thank you" but mean "f-- you" and in New York, they say "f-- you" but mean "thank you"? Well, I'd rather people hated my guts but were still polite about it.

The Village Voice just came up with their list of 50 things to love about New York. And, fresh off another shift at the Park Slope Food Coop, I fell in love in particular with #25:

25. Except in select 'hoods like Park Slope and perhaps the Upper West Side, children are viewed as mysterious beings, rarely sighted and only occasionally understood, like pixies or magical small butlers. Until they scream, in which case, they are banished from the palace.

Admittedly, we sometimes are not very good about that (example: seeing Scott Pilgrim in midtown, when our infant was totally quiet for an hour and 25 minutes and then screamed her head off during the last fight scene. (I know, go figure.) But in all other instances: yes.

I really do live in two worlds. At home in Brooklyn, everyone has kids -- often 5, 7, 12 or more. When I'm at work, or hanging out with my non-Hasidic friends in the city, though, my kids are like aliens. (Friendly, curious Gizmo-like aliens; not like Alien aliens.) They are treated with curiosity, amazement (childlike amazement, you might say) and utter wonder, the kind given to roadshow zoos and Times Square subway dancers: Do these things really exist? Can people be that cute without the assistance of Japanese animators?

In general, I prefer the Brooklyn side of things. We live there. We don't have to watch what we say, translating every Hasidic idiom we drop and making sure we don't talk about our kids too much. But the other thing about kids is they wear you out. You have other things on your mind that have nothing to do with them (job, bills, the Buffy season you're in the middle of watching), but the things that they have on their mind (food! peeing!) always involve you.

And therefore, it's a relief -- sometimes a huge one -- to remember that the island of Manhattan exists, to jump on a subway and watch your hipster friends fawning and E.T.-ing over your miniature heirs. Oh, you will say to yourself,they really ARE wonderful and miraculous -- and you'll be right.

Of course, there are limits. Whilst hanging out with my friends Jason and Emily a few weeks ago, I casually mentioned how it's hard to find a good babysitter -- whereupon they jumped at the opportunity. "Call us!" they raved. "We love kids! We won't even charge you!" You do realize, I asked them, that we get babysitters at night, when our kids are asleep? "Oh," they said, shuffling their feet. "Never mind." And then they bought me a beer -- as a consolation prize, I guess.

Mayim Bialik: From Blossom to Brachot

A few months back, my friend Lisa Klug introduced me to the illimitable joy that is Mayim Bialik. Descendant of the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik, neuroscientist, and former child star, she's going through a whole revolution now. With the birth of her second child and the emergence of her interest in Orthodox Judaism, she's wild and thoughtful and funny. (She's also doing a G-dcast for us, so stay tuned in the coming weeks for that.)

And, oh yeah, she starred in Blossom.

I was a child of the '80s in name only. I never watched Blossom when it first came out. I was aware of it only as - and, the few times that I did, it both intrigued me and turned me off: some too-cool kid who was two or three years older than me (at the time, a vast gap) who wore wild vintage-store outfits, used unnecessarily long vocabulary, and had a penchant for confessional D.I.Y. films about 2 decades before YouTube was even conceived of....It made me feel more than a little protective. This was my subculture they were stealing. She couldn't possibly be doing it right.

Little did I know, for its time - and even for ours - Blossom was completely transcendent. In the pilot episode, The Cosby Show's Phylicia Rashad, wearing a retro-'50s polka-dot dress, drew a map of the human ovaries on a sheet cake with a tube of icing in order to explain to 14-year-old Blossom Russo how her period worked. Subsequent episodes made pretty profound statements on puberty, body image, premarital sex and divorce and parental responsibility. The endings were always sugar-coated, but the TV show itself (which has just been released on DVD) was meaty and unafraid in ways that make current sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and The Office feel positively sanitized.

As much of a travesty as grouping Blossom together with tepid '80s sitcoms such as Full House might be, mentioning the Mayim Bialik's name together with the name of the television show might be an even more audacious generalization.

In the decades since she stopped playing Blossom Russo, Bialik has not sat still. She's earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience and has undertaken cutting-edge studies at UCLA as one of the top researchers of Prader-Willi Syndrome in the field. (Read more about the disorder here, or sift through Bialik's blog to find out about her work.) She's also testing the waters of going back into acting, with recent appearances on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Bones. And she's also in the middle of another big revival: she's experimenting with being an observant Jew.

What first motivated you to start researching the causes of Prader-Willi Syndrome? Are you still?

I always had an interest in working with kids with special needs, and in the neuroscience department at UCLA, you generally meet a lot of professors and then drop into a project that suits you. There's been a lot of genetic research on Prader-Willi, and there's been a lot of behavioral research, but there isn't a lot of research combining the two..and that's what I thought I could bring to it.

I got my doctorate last year, so my research was my thesis. Since then, I've done some writing for organizations that raise money for Prader-Willi research. In the meantime, I've started acting again, and we just had our second child, so I've had my hands pretty full, taking care of him and doing auditions.

Have you been auditioning a lot?

Yes, actually! Far more than I thought I would be. I'm auditioning for all sorts of things. I'm actually filming an episode of Bones tomorrow. I've auditioned for comedy, drama, movies -- anything they send my way.

Is it mostly one way or the other -- dramatic roles, films, or ironic stuff? Are you being selective about which roles you take?

Not really. I don't think I can afford to be selective. I'm just seeing what's out there, and whatever I do get, like Bones, is great practice to get into the swing of things again.

Have you tried connecting your Prader-Willi research to non-Prader-Willi patients -- that is, once you've discovered the impulse that makes people with Prader-Willi insatiably hungry, can you theoretically control that impulse in people who don't have PWS?



It actually depends on the mechanism itself. There's a lot of reasons that people with Prader-Willi can't control their hunger. Regulating the hypothalamus is difficult, because it connects to the brain and there's a lot of sources in the brain that control every function. There's a theory that the hunger you can explore, there are several different sources for, and we'll never be sure exactly what causes it. You can try and narrow down a little more...but also, the reasons are different. So it's difficult to pinpoint it down to one thing, for sure.

I remember reading a few years ago - you know, the way rumors spread between Jews - that you were active at UCLA Hillel, and that you'd started getting more observant. Um, are you?

My mother was raised Orthodox, and my grandparents are immigrants from Eastern Europe. I was raised in a Reform household, but with a lot of remnants of Orthodoxy. We lit candles. We had two sets of dishes, but my mom never told me why. I thought it was breakfast dishes and dinner dishes. There was no emphasis on halacha and learning. Totally not to disparage my parents; it just wasn't their thing.

When I went to college, I didn't have a lot of friends. Blossom had ended two years before. I'd always gone away to Jewish camps for the summer, and so I kind of ended up at Hillel and I started learning with the rabbi, and it kind of took off from there.

I'm hesitant to label myself or call myself Orthodox because people will be like, "Celebrity Mayim Bialik says she does X, but I saw her doing Y" - I guess, to be safe, I would say I'm Conservative, but in reality, I'd say Conservadox. But my husband and I have definitely increased our observance over the years, and we're always trying to grow.

We kinda do the Big Three [Shabbos, keeping kosher, and family purity], but it's hard. I mean, it's hard for everyone to classify themselves, but it's a whole new level of hard when people are watching you. Like, I pretty much eat a vegan diet, but I eat eggs if they're in things. What I say is, I eat a mostly vegan diet, and that's kind of how it is with Judaism. We keep Shabbos, we keep kosher, and I don't know if people want to hear about the Mikveh, but, um, yeah.

And now that you're acting again, that whole "celebrity Mayim Bialik" factor is coming back into play. Is it weird to get back into the arena after you've been away so long? What sort of gigs are you looking for? What sort of gigs are you getting?

When I was younger, things came in and I got offered things a lot. Now it's my manager saying it's the girl who played Blossom, which has its own attractiveness, and its own stigma.

And then I have projects that I want to do. I just optioned the Rashi's Daughters books. I love that I can do something like that in the first place, and I'd love to get it made into a film. But I don't have the kind of star power to say, I'm ready to talk to Steven Spielberg next weekend....

Do you ever watch old episodes of Blossom? Would you ever show them to your kids, or is it kind of something you want to keep in the past?

No! I stopped watching in the middle of the first season, and I would kind of watch the last half and part of the second season. But I literally have never watched the last three seasons. So, needless to say, my kids haven't, either.

What was your life like during Blossom? Did you have much contact with the outside world?

Yeah. It was actually pretty normal - we would work for three weeks, then I would go to school on my week off. I had tutors on the rest of the set. We got there two hours early than everyone else - me, Joey, and Michael each had our own tutors, and our lessons started at 7:00 and lasted until everyone showed up at 9. I was on the show from when I was 14 years old until when I was 19. At a certain point, I was very recognizable-I'm a pretty normal person, I was always a pretty normal person. I wasn't motivated by fame or money. I just wanted to act.

Were you doing anything Jewish at the time?

Not so much. We filmed on Friday nights. The local Bureau of Jewish Education used to have programs for beyond-bar-mitzvah-age kids, which was helpful. I went on retreats like Shabbatons, and that actually really cemented my Jewish identity. When my parents weren't doing Jewish stuff anymore, I still had a place to pray and live Jewishly. But it wasn't until UCLA that I really fully realized my Jewish identity.

And that was where you started doing chazzanut and leading services, right?

I haven't done that for about 2 years. It's in conflict with some of what I've been learning, but it's also in line with a lot of what I do as a performer. It's a great honor to daven, and to daven on behalf of a community. My grandfather was a chazzan in San Diego and the Bronx, and I inherited his voice. It takes a lot of learning, and it takes a lot of kavanah [concentration], but it's complicated, as anyone in this line knows.

And there's a reason that, in traditional Jewish circles, women don't lead services. I've been pregnant twice in the past three years. Going to shul has been incredibly different after having one child, and then having, thank God, two children, it's been even more different, and Judaism kind of knows that.

How has your Jewish life changed with the birth of your sons? Are you taking them along?

At this point, my oldest son's not yet in preschool. Religiously, my husband and I are both still growing. We're not quite ready for day school yet - we don't feel like it's quite our niche - but a Conservative day school wouldn't meet our needs at this point. Kosher home, but you get into all sorts of conflicts about other things....You have to find the right place; it's very important to find the right place. At this point, he knows all the holidays, and we've started studying Torah, and he knows all the brachos, and he doesn't know the English alphabet but he knows the Hebrew alphabet.

I grew up speaking Yiddish, and I'm trying to do the same thing with my son. He has a large vocabulary - well, for a 3-year-old, at any rate.

Are you still working?

No, it's just me. All day. With both of them. That's how it is most of the time -- I'm filming tomorrow.

Is it true that you're related to Chaim Nachman Bialik?

Yes, I am. I'm from his brother's line; he was my great-great-grandfather's uncle. My grandfather met him when he came to America. My grandfather was young, and Chaim Nachman Bialik passed away young as well, so they didn't have a chance to know each other well. We do get in free to the Bialik Museum in Tel Aviv. We have some nice collections of books, and we carry that heritage.

But all the Bialiks have been extraordinary people. I'm very proud -- especially in Israel -- to carry his name.

What do you have planned next, after Bones? How far are you into Rashi's Daughters; do you have a screenwriter or anything lined up?

I optioned it. So I'm looking to have it written as a movie or a miniseries. I'm kind of a classic actress-performer: I like to be given a script, and then I try to make you laugh or cry. This is the first project that I found that I'm really inspired by, inspired to get involved in the production of. There's a good story there, a meaningful story. But what I'm interested in emphasizing is the beauty of Orthodoxy, and the dimension and depth of women's relationship with study. It's a wonderful story that shows a lot of facets of Judaism that I think want to be appreciated.

Other than that, I'm just auditioning and taking care of my kids.

Which can pretty much fill up your time, just that.

And I learn once a week. My mentor lives in New York -- we were paired up totally accidentally, and it's been amazing. Her name is Allison Josephs, and she runs a YouTube series about Jewish topics. She was a Blossom fan, and wanted to study with me, and I called an organization and they paired her with me. She couldn't believe it, that she found me after all that time. She's my Jewish instructor and my guru. We study melachos of Shabbos and tznius and stuff, but even when my son had a bris, I go to her for moral support.

What are your favorite things to learn?

I didn't grow up with a strong sense of halacha, and I have family who are religious Zionists, but I never really knew about halacha. I'm a nitty-gritty person. I love that our tradition encourages debate, and a lot of what I love to learn is practical -- how to kasher things for Pesach, what legally constitutes bishul. My husband calls it my Jewish book club. It's more than that, though. We read a Soloveitchik book. I read Rivka Slonim's book Bread and Fire, which I've gained so much from. We're making our way through our lives with whatever we come up with.

Jennifer Blowdryer: How to Write the Great American Novel on Food Stamps

On Jewcy, I interview Jennifer Blowdryer, who might be my favorite person in the world who ever made me inadvertently homeless. Two days before I was supposed to get to New York City and rent her (swoon) East Village apartment for two months -- a block from the Bowery Poetry Club, two from ABC No Rio, and right down the street from the most amazing graffiti in the country -- she told me that some Long Island girl in a bar had offered to pay her five times the going cost.

Somehow, with her writing and her sense of humor, I was okay with that. Eventually.

Okay enough to cover her new and hilarious short novel, The Laziest Secretary in the World, for Jewcy:

Jennifer Blowdryer revels in those truths about ourselves that we'd rather not hear. While that is ostensibly the job of every writer, few do it with such grace, aplomb, and lack of restraint. Part Emily Post and part Morton Downey, Jr., Blowdryer's subjects are punk-rock Artful Dodgers and Malcom MacLaren-worthy bastards, lovable and loathable in equal doses, people who take a free drink when they're given one and scam one when they're not.

The protagonist of her latest book, The Laziest Secretary in the World, is named Latoya (she's white). She's alternately pathetic and brilliant, a powerhouse at drinking, social analysis, and anything that involves the bottom-most echelon of pop culture. Latoya could write for McSweeney's but instead makes fun of tabloid celebrities. She daydreams of the limitless variety of frozen dinners, having an unlimited cash flow, and of being interviewed on a daytime talk show, answering difficult questions with, "Merv, even if I had a million dollars, I would still buy Butterfingers and M&Ms. I mean, what could possibly replace them?"

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Jazz Is the New Klezmer

I know, I know -- I talk about Yoshie Fruchter a lot. But he's worth it -- and he's doing so much stuff that it would be hard not to talk about him.

On Jewcy today, I talk to him about his new band, his new album, and why his parents are so damn cool:

Yoshie Fruchter gets around. Besides being a member of half a dozen bands, from the children's parody band Shlock Rock to guesting with Pharaoh's Daughter, he's made a name for himself in the few short years since he moved to Brooklyn from his hometown of Silver Spring, MD.

It's easy to chalk Yoshie's existence until that point up to the classic story of small-town-boy-makes-it-big. But between the lines, Fruchter has a lot of stories--his mother is a full-time arts educator in the yeshiva system, and his father is a versatile musician who, among his own accolades, was babysat by Elvis as a child.

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candy, cooking, and what not to do at parties

before i forget, let me tell you that Candy in Action is signed, sealed, on its way to the printers, and you can pre-order it from me or from amazon through that link there. if you order through on amazon by clicking through my page, i get a very tiny percentage, so yes, it's cool if you do that. if you order through me, of course, mention if you'd like to have me write anything special.

a mere few hours before shabbos, and we are both in the kitchen cooking up a mad storm. as if there were any other kind of storm, especially in cooking. we have carrots so big, i almost stabbed itta's stomach with one. no hard feat, of course, since it's getting bigger than christmas, and hard to avoid, especially when carrying armfuls of spices with names like Pottery Barn colors.

last night at the Jewcy party, i spent a good deal of the night getting drunk with marty from ROI 120, and having him introduce me to people in the most abrupt of ways:

MARTY: "Hey, this is Izzy. She's the one who pays you and tells you when your stuff is shit."
ME: Oh. (pause) Was it?
IZZY: (longer pause) Erm, what was your name again?
ME: Matthue. Matthue Roth.
IZZY: Oh, no. Mostly not, anyway.
Me: (sigh of mostly relief)

toward the end of the night, i pitched them what i remember as being a sequel to my memoir in maybe a hundred and fifty columns. i remember being really excited about it, but i wasn't the person whose reactions i should have been watching.