For anyone driving past the consulate\’s Wilshire Boulevard headquarters, the Crusade protest is a familiar sight.Every morning, marchers circle, carrying signs broadcasting messages like \”Germany says YES to a police state.\”
If anyone was preordained to be a rabbi, it was Jackie Mason. Born in Sheboygan, Wis., in 1937, the Yiddish-accented comedian comes from four generations of rabbis. All three of his brothers are rabbis. And, once upon a time, Mason himself was a rabbi, teaching Talmud in far-out places like Lathrop, Pa., and Walden, N.C.
\”He\’s a nice Jewish boy,\” Michal Finkelstein says of her son Shimon. \”He likes to sing in shul, he\’s an A student…. He never uses his strength or skills to bully others.\”\n\nExcept on the wrestling mat.
It all started because of the theft of my automobile. One sunny morning, while waiting for my car pool, I noticed something in a storefront window across the street, just behind some citizens standing at a bus stop. It was a monkey. In a diaper.
A woman in a fancy hat approaches Bert Dragin at Spago. She wantsto know if he is an actor, someone from \”Dallas\” or \”Falcon Crest.\”\n\nActually, the distinguished, sixtyish Dragin is not an actor; he\’sa film producer who sold his Cleveland-based furniture business andmoved out here to get into the movies in 1981. But he is \”doinglunch\” at Spago to talk about his latest, very non-Hollywood project:directing Paddy Chayefsky\’s \”The Tenth Man\” at the West Valley JewishCommunity Center.
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