Debbie Nathan

Sex pol, borders, Mexico, Yiddish, my camera

Archive for September, 2007

Sex Angst Monthly Roundup

It’s been awhile since I hit the sex-panic button on this blog … been playing hooky from newspapers and the internet cave to hit sidewalks and neighborhoods during September’s Indian summer. As usual, though, much is happening back in Terror & Loathing land — a place densely populated with out-of-control minors, who appear mostly to [...]

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Sylvia’s: Way Honky for NYC?

“It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there… And there wasn’t any kind of craziness at all.”
So said Bill O’Reilly last week of Sylvia’s, a venerable soul-food restaurant in Harlem. He’d eaten there after being invited by Al Sharpton. Later, [...]

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Kosher Food Porn

Yom Kippur is past and now we are into the five days’ preparation for Sukkot. It’s a harvest fest that also commemorates the 40 years of wandering post-Exodus, with the Jews living in temporary huts in the Sinai while God waited for everyone to die who’d picked up slave mentalities in Egypt.
Nice story, [...]

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Engagement paparazzi of Queens

I’ve been busy this week! Sorry for not posting till now.

Story in the NY Times today about yuppie males in the city who want pix taken of themselves proposing marriage to their girlfriends in Soho. They pay $500 for this service — to people like an ex-photojournalist featured in the article. The Times published [...]

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Ave Novena/11 in the kishkes of NYC

For three or four years after 9/11/2001, working-class New York abounded with a new take on old Christian symbols. From the tourist shops of Canal Street to street vendor tables near Chambers, and on to shlock stores in the Bronx’s Marble Hill and Elmhurst in Queens — then to restaurant and barber shop exteriors [...]

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“No Jewish whores” at the NY Times online, but what about in print?

Fascinating article in today’s Times about Israeli unease over a closeted genre of 1960s-era porn novels – stuff so outré that it even seems to have spooked editors in New York.
Stalags, the porn is called. It first appeared around the time of the Eichmann trial. It was inspired by the testimony and work of [...]

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Immigrant Eye for the Native Guy

Orale! (Translation: “Dude!”) Seth B. is winner of last week’s T-shirt design contest. He’s shown here in the shirt I made after he submitted the prize acronym for “Gringo.” Seth is now catwalk ready for his next demonstration or protest march. Felicidades!

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Idle Americans and American Idols: Kid Nation v. Mexico as Answer to our Slave-labor shortage

In an episode from the late 1950s or early 60s, Alan Funt approached people outside an employment agency and described the most disgusting, ill-paid work imaginable – he called it something like “The Job from Hell.” It involved shoveling offal in a “flaming pit,” with sweltering temperatures, deadly germs, and a salary of $60 [...]

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