Actor Charlie Sheen has been fired from his hit CBS sitcom in the wake of a rant against the show\’s executive producer that was called \”borderline anti-Semitism.\” Sheen was fired Monday, effective immediately, from \”Two and a Half Men,\” for which he was paid $2 million per episode. The series was not canceled, however.
One of Italy\’s most prominent Jewish figures is at the center of the latest round of scandals surrounding Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Journalist, author and TV personality Gad Lerner, host of a popular late-night Italian TV talk show called \”The Infidel\” on the independent La7 channel, was berated live on air by the premier earlier this week. Late Monday night, a furious Berlusconi called in to the show and let loose a barrage of insults against Lerner and the program, which had centered on Berlusconi\’s allegedly improper relations with underage women. He blasted the show as \”a disgusting program with vile, obscene, repugnant presentation. A bawdy-house.”
“I hate lying,” Jon Lovitz, the comedian, actor and comedy club owner, said without a touch of humor in his voice. “I just can’t stand it. I don’t see the advantage of it. It makes me physically ill.” It’s the reason, he said, that he has become something of a specialist in portraying characters who are truth-challenged, or, in his words, “sleazy.” He was Tommy Flanagan, president of Pathological Liars Anonymous, on “Saturday Night Live”; the guy on “Seinfeld” who fibs about having cancer, then dies in a car crash; a loudmouth baseball scout who steals scenes from Tom Hanks in “A League of Their Own”; the voice of an obnoxious movie reviewer in the animated series “The Critic”; and the father, in the film “Rat Race,” who tells his family they are on a minivan “vacation” when he is actually trying to win $2 million in a cross-country dash.
They might not have Kurt Hummel or Rachel Berry among their members, but Magevet, Yale University’s Jewish a cappella group, exudes plenty of “glee.” Round them up at a Jewish historical site and they’re liable to belt out a spirited tune. They’ve serenaded passersby on the streets of New York, the beaches of Florida and in the Jewish Quarter in Prague. In fact, there are few places where the New Haven, Conn., group isn’t prone to spontaneous fits of crooning. “We all love to sing, especially with each other, so we burst into song rather often,” Daniel Olson, the club’s student manager, explained.
Oscar the Grouch and Moishe Oofnik, his Israeli cousin who lives in a recycling bin on Rechov Sumsum in Tel Aviv, opened up what would turn out to be the most explosive plenary session at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America.
A young woman with long auburn hair sits surrounded by friends and family in her mother’s living room while holding a tiny baby on a pillow in her lap.
Following last year’s cancellation of the original New York version of the series after a venerable 20-year run — a record matched in drama only by the classic Western “Gunsmoke” — a new spawn will appear this fall: “Law & Order: Los Angeles.”
The first Orthodox Jew to appear as a contestant on the reality show \”Big Brother\” has been sent packing.
After his liberation from Auschwitz, Italian writer and scientist Primo Levi observed, “To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one. It has not been easy or quick, but the Germans have succeeded.”
An hour before the start of Jeff Garlin’s recent stand-up show at Upright Citizens Brigade in Hollywood, a huge line had formed around the block on Franklin Avenue, obstructing the entrances to adjacent cafes and a clothing store.\n
