2/5 Stork Club: Maldroid

Yes, I am well aware that this review is two months late. I insist on posting it, though, because of the sheer awesomeness that is Maldroid. Maldroid began as a band of robots making music, directed by Ryan Divine. At some point he acquired a number of human musicians. The music video for “He Said, She Said” gained so much attention that the band made an appearance on “Good Morning America” before they played an actual show. Many Maldroid fans are hold-overs from the Solemite and K.G.B days (some members of which are part of Maldroid,) but the band has a solid drunken fan base. Their songs are hilarious, sarcastic, and gosh-darn danceable. Their music videos are brilliant and will enhance your understanding of the essence of Maldroid.

You may have noticed (or not) that this show took place the same day as the last Vermillion Lies show I reviewed. Like Vermillion Lies, Maldroid was also doing a residency in February, playing each Thursday of that month. Yes, I did go to two shows in one night. Since Maldroid are usually too busy drinking to start their shows on time, I only missed the first band. The second band was the Soft White Sixties. I have seen them (or missed them) a number of times, and I continue to be unimpressed. Half of their members were in the venerable bands Link 80 and DESA. However, they fail to deliver in this endeavor. Yes, they do in fact sound like music, but there is very little to distinguish them from any other band which seeks to “embody the energy of Rock and Roll,” as they claim on their MySpace page. I wouldn’t judge someone for liking them, but I could never see myself standing around for an entire set of theirs. They exist, but it’s not exactly clear why.

Maldroid, on the other hand, never fails to impress. Ryan’s inappropriate sexual advances keep the crowd on their toes, and there are always a number of attractive young women dancing. This set was held together with such classics as “Heck No (I’ll never listen to techno)” and “You Wanna Touch It,” while adding in newer tracks like “Almost Pleasurable.” While I am normally thick-skinned, that last song makes me downright uncomfortable. For the full Maldroid experience, I recommend seeing them at the Stork Club while drunk, and buying Ryan a shot. This will gain you extra attention from him, and—trust me—you want that. The Stork Club is a bar in Oakland, and it is the natural habitat of Maldroid. Despite the fact that Ryan is married, he will come onto you. Don’t take it personally. Other highlights of this show (and most others) are Ryan’s frilly shirts and his on-stage fights with his wife. Classic.

Cultural Learnings 3.0

I went on a few adventures over the past two weeks. I really like Yafo, and I got to go there three times. The first time was on a tour. While we were there army helicopters and planes were flying north over our heads-- they had just come from an operation in Gaza. That, more than anything else, brought the Situation home to me. Sure enough, pictures of smoke rising from the Gaza skyline graced the pages of the next day's papers.

The second trip to Yafo was with my Ulpan class. Our teacher was amazing. Our whole class got shakshuka. This is how you make shakshuka: put oil, spices, and tomato sauce into a skillet. Drop in two eggs. Cook for like 3 minutes over foot-high flames. Don't die.


The third trip to Yafo was on a Shabbos walk with some friends. On the way back we kept running into people we know. It was very pleasant, except that in some parts of the path people were riding motorscooters. I still can't get over that. I showed my friends the hanging orange tree, which is one of my favorite things. It is suspended from three buildings in a giant fake seed. There is usually a permanent haze over Israel, but in the spring it's much clearer. From Yafo we can see all the buildings of Tel Aviv lining the beach.


Purim was just another excuse to party in Tel Aviv. Bakeries had homenatshen, and every store was selling masks or wings or wands. Thousands of people descended into the Florentine neighborhood. An Israeli friend commented that it's fun if you live here and can run into old friends. I was happy to escape. I bought a pink Sleeping Beauty child's dress in the shuk for 50 n"s (about $12.) I wore black and white striped tights and did my make up to look strung-out. I found it charming. There were surprisingly few women wearing leotards and animal ears. A group of four girls were the Ninja Turtles, a group of three were well-painted fish, and a pair were jocks wearing running shorts and baseball socks. I hold nothing against the Ninja Turtles or fish, but I do find it peculiar when girls dress up together. When two boys dressed up as babies (including real adult diapers), it was obvious that one copied the idea from the other because he couldn't think of anything else, or one convinced the other because he wasn't brave enough to do it by himself. In middle school I felt a sense of belonging when I was one of the mock Spice Girls. (I was Hoochy Spice. The others were Anorexic Spice, Chunky Spice, Very Scary Spice, and Ghetto Spice. I can't believe I remember that.) It never occurred to me to share a costume. I feel that doing so projects some kind of insecurity, but I really have no way of backing that up. My favorite costume was of an arse. Arsim in Israel are skeezy men with greased-up hair who have outrageous come-on lines. My friend wore pants so tight I'm pretty sure adoption is now his only means of having a family, a tight printed shirt high enough to reveal an underwear band, a large Jewish Star, big reflective glasses, earrings, hair gel, and a behind-the-ear cigarette. This amazing outfit was coupled with wildly cheesy come-ons, and everyone was delighted. The night after Purim a number of us went to a dance club. Three girls we were with ended up making out with Israelis, which basically completed the holiday.


My program took a trip to the Negev, which is the desert comprising 60% of Israel. We first visited the Ramon Crater, which is not a crater at all but rather a makhtesh. We visited an unrecognized Bedouin village. The living conditions were deplorable. Small children speaking Hebrew showed off for us as we made the trek from the road. We also were accompanied by a crying baby camel. The children were so cute and friendly, and I think we all felt sadness and awe as we watched them scramble about barefoot through the rocky desert. We were given tea in a tent made of corrugated metal. The 62 year old father of the family offered us some insight into their lives. The mother was 34 and came from Gaza. She wore a scarf over her nose and mouth, which they don't usually do in Gaza. She knew some English, but spoke to us in Hebrew. She seemed very intelligent, and we could somewhat pick out the things she was not saying in front of her husband. She said it was very hard to move from Gaza to the village. No kidding. This is not the Kosher Bedouin tent they take birthright participants to. This is a real village where real Bedouins live, though they are lacking many of the conveniences of modern life because Israel has not recognized the village. They pay taxes and for water, but mostly live off government assistance. Some of the kids go to school, some go to the army, and some stay in the village. I was really touched by their hospitality, and angered by the fact that such an intelligent woman would become the second wife of a Bedouin. (While I take no offense at women who want to marry Bedouins, this woman gave hints that becoming the second wife of a Bedouin twice her age was not what she was expecting.) She said she hadn't gone back to Gaza to see her family in 5 (?) years.


We spent the weekend in Sde Boker, which sits at the edge of an enormous canyon. I was surprised how beautiful the desert could be, and how much life it holds. (If you can make out a darker and a lighter dot at the rim of that round platform, you are seeing two people.) Lastly we visited a town made up of people who want to settle the Negev. They are idealistic and living in the 50's. The very though of living in the Negev makes me crawl with boredom. But such places exist.


The people who are working in Jerusalem moved there, and we began our internships. I lived over 5 weeks out of my suitcases. I was so delighted to find shoes and shirts I had forgotten about. I was excited to have a new place to explore, but I still went back to Tel Aviv for the weekend because I missed my friends, and I was invited to a cabaret party. In spite of the fact that some people think Israel is some sort of theocracy, stripping is still a legal vocation.

Cultural Learnings 2.0

This is a random collection of thoughts from my second two weeks in Israel.

In America, I am a minority as a Jew. One of the main reasons that I practice Judaism (more than people would expect me to) is because I am asserting my Jewish identity in a place where it’s easiest to assimilate. Here in Israel it’s normal to be Jewish. People will actually know what you’re talking about if you ask if something is parve. When I took a cab on Friday afternoon, the driver argued that I should pay more because it’s erev Shabbat. How many cabbies in San Francisco know what erev Shabbat is? It’s nice to not be a minority, but it’s an adjustment.

There are bats in Tel Aviv, and I greatly enjoy watching them fly between the trees when I am walking alone at night. They fly low, and sometimes they chase each other.

I have been taking intensive Hebrew classes, called Ulpan. Because Israel is a country of immigrants from across the globe, a system of learning Hebrew was developed which maximizes output, in a manner of speaking. I adore our teacher. She speaks to us in Hebrew, but can understand our English questions. People speak Hebrew as best they can, and she validates them without correction. She has been unable to come to a few classes, and our substitute-- though she seems like a really cool person—reminds me of why I learned almost no Hebrew after 9 years of day school. She speaks so fast, and asks us to orally recite conjugations, which I just can’t do! I can do it on my own at my own pace, but hearing my classmates do it is rather discouraging. She drew a number of verb charts, since Hebrew conjugates its verbs according to a template. Of course it makes sense when she draws it out, but getting accustomed to what sounds right is more important than mentally scrolling through a pattern each time I want to say a verb. I definitely feel my Hebrew has improved, and I’ve also seen effective and ineffective language teaching, which is directly relevant to my upcoming internship.

My Ulpan class is held in a gay community center. There is a giant pink penguin outside, rainbow flags fly on the roof, and there are a surprising number of rainbow and anti-HIV items around. It made me homesick. It’s not just a safe place for gays, but also for families. New moms meet up with each other, people sit with their dogs. I haven’t been here long enough to say much about the subject, but it seems like the gay subculture here is quite strong. One evening I looked interesting in torn stockings and a hand-made cadet jacket. I passed a group of punks in studded jackets and Doc Martins, and they stared back at me, vaguely smiling. I was never really into it before, but the graffiti here says a lot about who lives here. No matter where you go, young people are restless.

If you enter “Ben Yehuda & Ben Gurion, Tel Aviv, Israel” into GoogleMaps, it will ask you if you meant something in Hebrew. Click on that, and you can see where I live. It is about 300 meters from the Mediterranean shore. The location is great, even though the rest of the participants in my program are about 25 minutes away. I am sharing a studio with three other girls. I am going to go ahead and call it a fail. The pictures featured on the apartment’s website show luxury living with modern furniture and appliances. Our studio is short. I saw someone five feet tall touch the ceiling in the bathroom. Our windows are about 3 feet tall. We are on top of a glasses store, and the noise from the traffic softens between the hours of 11 pm and 6 am, sort of. The motorscooters can be quite loud, despite the fact that we have two windows, with about 6 inches between them. There are bars between the windows, and the door only opens if it is unlocked with a key. That is a crazy fire hazard!

In many American bathrooms one can find a toilet plunger for unclogging the toilet, and a round brush for removing mildew or traces of last night’s dinner. In Israel, a surprising number of bathrooms have brushes, but people seem to use them as plungers. You can see them with dried toilet paper stuck to them, or worn down to half their size. People: it is disgusting to unclog a toilet using a short bristled brush.

I had a craving for waffles on my first day in Jerusalem, and I was in for a few surprises when we finally found a waffle bar. The first was that there are waffle bars. Next was the stingy amount of syrup I got. And most surprising of all was that they were served on two sheets of paperboard. I have experienced this phenomenon a number of times since then, and I have mixed feelings about it. First, if syrup is involved, real plates are recommended. However, paperboard for takeaway pizza is brilliant, and I fully support it. On the other hand, it is wasteful. I’m not sure if it can be recycled, but it doesn’t matter because no one freaking recycles here.

There are bakeries on every block full of rugelach, croissants, and fresh rolls. Even little markets have fresh baked goods. There is no sourdough to be had. So far I have been enjoying trying new things, but get the feeling that at some point I am going to want something predictable and safe.

Synecdoche: a term used when a part is used to refer to a whole. For instance, “wheels” for “car,” and “Washington” for “USA.” News sources regularly use capitals to refer to the governments of countries. Al Jazeera in English online refers to Israel as “Tel Aviv,” contrary to the fact that the capital of Israel is Jerusalem. They do this because many in the Arab feel that Jerusalem is the rightful capital of Palestine, and that Israel has no claim to it. But imagine what this does to people who don’t know all the political implications behind this: they just think that Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel.

While listening to my flatmate’s conversations on Skype, I have heard her say “life here is so hard” a number of times. To back up this assertion, she describes how her sister essentially lives hand-to-mouth, and how bad customer service is, and how certain things are impossible, difficult, or expensive to acquire. More than complaints about Israel, I am hearing her privilege when she talks. Life here is not that hard. This is a first-world country. There are universities and hospitals and due process under the law. There is toilet paper, cell phones, and Ben & Jerry’s. What she is describing is shock at not living at the level of comfort she is used to. Her sister is a teacher and barely makes enough money to pay the bills. Is this shocking? Has she not seen how most Americans live? Worse, most Americans live on credit rather than subsisting on what they earn.

Tel Aviv is loud and busy, and its people are rude and sexy. I don’t want to leave!

2/5 Climate Theater: Vermillion Lies

The Climate Theater in San Francisco is a living room with a small curtained platform and speakers. About 30 people attended this show on February 5th. Vermillion Lies were doing a residency, playing a show there every Thursday in February. The homey ambiance really added to the magic of Vermillion Lies. Their guard was down, and the stage banter was absolutely phenomenal. Kim Vermillion was feeling particularly punchy, and it was absolutely delightful to watch Zoe Vermillion try to keep the show moving. Despite the fact that Vermillion Lies’ songs are about dead circuses, heart surgery, and global warming, they are terribly wholesome. There really is no way to express how this show felt like hugging a giant cupcake. The only way I can come close is with the videos that my friend took. Blogger.com has a way of chewing up videos and pictures, and for that I apologize. Warning: you may fall in love.

Circus Fish


Bonnie and Clyde


Found Myself


3 Inches Wide