Benny in search of a bright future

Plastic is sexy!

Today I went to see Surrogates, and I kind of liked it, but not really. It's the kind of movie that makes you wish there were more movies like it, more sci-fi thrillers, so maybe some of them could actually be good. It's enjoyable enough, but there's very little originality to it. The basic concept of mechanical human surrogates is pretty interesting, if a little silly (everybody can afford life-size robots? Really?). It's been done much better in David Brin's Kiln People and many other books, with much more depth and much more interesting ideas. There are a few moments in this movie that make you think there could be more to it than pretty shiny robots, like the look Bruce Willis' wife (in her surrogate) gets when she bumps into the real him in the hallway, and takes a second to realize it's not his surrogate, but most of it doesn't stray too far from the old sci-fi-whodunit formula. They did a really good job with the surrogates, a really pretty mix of makeup and CGI that truly makes them look like perfectly designed constructs. They even got rid of Radha Mitchell's signature mole, the one on the bridge of her now, between her eyes. And then there was the "real" her, and for those brief scenes they managed to make her "ugly", which in Movie World means that her skin looks like a regular person's skin, her teeth look normal, not straightened, her hair doesn't look like she just stepped out of a hair salon, and her posture is just as crappy as everyone else's. Real people really are horribly disgusting. When they finally start making and selling robot-girlfriends that are lifelike enough to take out on dates and bring home to meet you parents and stuff I'm totally going to be first in line. And the weirdest thing about the movie? The gorgeous (and Jewish, sort of) Elizabeth Banks gets an executive producer credit in the opening titles! I wouldn't mind getting a robo-girlfriend who looks like her, if you know what I mean. And I do mean that I'd like to put my peepee in an animatronic puppet constructed of metal and latex that sort of resembles the lovely Miss Banks. Oh yeah. That's pretty damn hot.

Bruce Willis' new plastic face

In other news, I've finally started reading a new book, after a really long time I've been too lazy to pick one up. Since July I've only read three books! Lazy Ben. So today I started reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and so far it's pretty good. I hate getting reader's block. There's this short story I've read once in an old sci-fi magazine about a guy whose job is to give book recommendations. This woman comes to him and says she has serious reader's block, that nothing can hold her attention anymore. So he gives her this Stephen King book, and she really doesn't like the idea. A few days later she calls him up and tells him that it was one of the stupidest things she's ever read, but the point was that she actually read it. So maybe this tale of a Jewish comic book duo can help me get to some heavier stuff later on. And by heavier stuff I mean KW Jeter's Glass Hammer. Only 615 more pages to go!

Benny in search of lost time

Beats any friggin' boy-peepee in the world

Today I watched Trainspotting on DVD, the first time I've watched in a long time and also the first I've seen it in widescreen since I saw it at the movies when it came out back in '96. It's still pretty good, and not as depressing as I remembered it, though watching any movie on VHS can be a pretty depressing experience. I remember how before I went out to see it my dad asked me which movie I was about to see so he could check the synopsis in the paper, and that he really didn't like the idea of his 16 year old son going to a movie about junkies. Different times, I guess. I like it how everything about the movie looks so ugly and dirty, and living in Israel I know a thing or two about dirty ugly places. Scotland looks like the crappiest little shithole ever in this movie. Even those great big green hills look completely oppressive, the kind of view only shooting sweet junk up your veins can help you forget. The actors have that sort of quality too, looking more like real people than movie stars, but I guess that's sort of my problem for watching too much American stuff. Ewan McGregor being the exception, of course. For some reason he very much reminds me of a young Alec Guinness. Can't imagine why. Kelly Macdonald is an old teenage fantasy of mine, despite having a rather oddly shaped nose. Too bad her role is so tiny here, way smaller than I remembered. I really like the dead baby puppet, not the one crawling on the ceiling, the greenish one in the crib. Very realistic. The music in the movie is still pretty great, and it was really nice to hear all those cool songs again after so many years. Kind of reminded me of all that time I spent in high school sitting in class, listening to the Trainspotting soundtrack (and later the second one) on my portable CD player and trying to ignore everybody around me. Good times. I've been trying to find a copy of the book for years now at this used book store I like in Tel-Aviv, without much luck so far. Maybe some day.

Kelly Macdonald, not humping Obi-Wan

Maxx update: I've finally found the entire TV series available for download in near-DVD quality! It says it was sourced from a VHS cassette, but there's just now way, the quality is just too good. It's also divided into 13 full episodes, the way it was first broadcast (the version that came out on VHS was cut down and the episodes were bunched together) so the whole thing is a mystery to me, but an extremely happy one at that. If the buttholes who own the rights for the show don't want my money, this should do just fine. Yaaaaaayyyy!!!!!

Benny in search of facial hygiene

I'm afraid I couldn't quite figure out how to translate the following comic strip, but I think it's sort of entertaining even if you can't read it. So here it is anyway! Enjoy!

A-tone-of crap is more like it

Well, Yom-Kippur (aka The Day of Atonement) is finally over. This year is was mostly about taking naps and reading Sam Kieth's Zero Girl - Full Circle, the second Zero Girl book. The Zero Girl books are all about how circles are good, squares are bad, and 15 year old girls shouldn't fall in love with grownups, and this one was really really really good, just like the first one. Thank Jebus for teenage lesbos. Sam Kieth is my all time favorite comic book writer/artist, and has been so since I first watched The Maxx TV serial on MTV's Oddities (MTV used to be so cool in the '90s, wasn't it? There was Beavis and Butthead, Æon Flux, The Head, Daria, Liquid Television... not to mention some actual music. It sure has come a long way since then, into the wasteland of nothingness it is today), based of the first 13 issues of The Maxx, way before I had even read one page. The Maxx tells the story of a big purple homeless guy and the social worker who looks after him, but it's also about the other world, Pangea, where Maxx is a superhero who protects his jungle queen, while the evil Mr. Gone is being a total asshole. The TV show absolutely blew my mind. Absolutely nothing on TV or anywhere else was better than or as good as The Maxx. The Maxx was a god to me. The problem was, it was the mid-'90s, and the whole internet thing was just getting started over here, not to mention any actual comic book stores. So I did what I could and ordered issue #1 of Friends of Maxx (a spin-off of The Maxx) from this weird catalog-based operation in Jerusalem, I think, and then forgot about the whole thing for a couple of years, until the entire series came out in TPB format and the first comic book store was opened in Tel-Aviv. I couldn't be more excited to be the proud daddy of all five Maxx TPBs. The Maxx is truely the awesomest comic book series ever. Kieth's art is extremely original, mixing several styles and techniques flawlessly, never lacking that unique Kiethian magic I'm so in love with. And the stories are absolutely fantastic, almost like a very emotional version of Philip K. Dick on LSD (PKD was never that big a druggy, in contrast to popular belief). Then there were the Zero Girl books, and Four Women, and Ojo, and a couple of Batman serials, and more recently My Inner Bimbo, all truely great stuff. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

The sounds in my head have started again. Good.

And here's a fun fact: David Feiss (creator of Cow and Chicken) and Sam Kieth are cousins! Feiss even did a weird little story (in rhymes!) in one of the first Maxx issues. Now if someone could please just put the Maxx TV show of DVD (it was animated digitally, so no remastering is needed) then I could finally die happy.

Benny in search of emotional growth

You know what's the best thing about Sodom?

Today I watched Year One, and it was the first time I've ever watched a movie at home in 720p (I don't currently have the equipment to play anything higher than that). It was pretty good for what it is, meaning one of the many Apatow-type comedies that seem to come out all the time these days. Jack Black does his usual schtick (man, that guy must get TONS of ass. I mean, for a chubby little dude) and Michael Cera is as hilarious as ever, even though he too plays the same basic character he always does. I very much enjoyed the many biblical references, especially the dick-chopping Abraham. Poor little Hebrew peepees. Like most Apatow-type movies there's very little depth to Year One (poop eating, anyone?) but it's the absolute perfect thing for a relaxed booze night at home. It was supposed to come out to theaters here in Israel a few months ago (I even saw a couple of posters in Hebrew here and there), but for some reason they decided not to show it here after all. Film distributors here are dumb. Or maybe it's the local audience. The most successful movies in Israeli theaters are kids movies and romantic comedies. Barf. With HD movie sharing and how most theaters in the cities are only getting worse and worse, it's no wonder that they're losing money. Downloading files in standard definition was no match for going to the movies, but today, if I can either go to see a movie in a crappy theater with a tiny screen and an out-of-focus projector and noisy people and ushers who don't know how to do their job, or wait a month or two until the Bluray comes out so it's available for download, then I'm probably going to stay home. Being a long time DVD collector I was never that big a fan of movie downloads, but I can't really blame anyone for doing it. And file sharing isn't piracy, as long as no one's making any money from it. After all, the internet was created in order to let people share information. Digital information. And because any sort of recorded media can be reformatted into easily transferable digital data, the only was to stop people from sharing copyrighted material (or any other certain kinds of information) is to shut down the whole internet, or cripple it in a way that's just as bad as shutting it down. And that's just evil. China-evil. Iran-evil. North Korea-evil. And nobody wants that, right? Right??

Sexiest man alive

This evening Yom-Kippur starts, so if any of you feel like I've hurt you in some way this year, all I can say is fuck you too, I never liked you anyway!

And the answer to the question in the title: why, it's the sodomy, of course.

Benny in search of the hairy veil

Latex is scary

Yesterday I watched The Last Starfighter, and it was the first time I have ever watched it from start to finish. When I was a kid they used to show it on TV all the time, but I never got past the first 20-30 minutes. See, when I was a kid I was a gigantic movie-pussy. Special makeup and creature effects used to give me the worst nightmares, and walking out of theaters in the middle of the movie became sort of a habit (The Neverending Story sequel, Gremlins 2 and Batman Returns come to mind. or was it just a fear of sequels?) I guess that's part of why I like that kind of movies today. Weird makeup and creature effects used to creep me out as a kid, and some of them still sort of creep me out now, only as an adult I just love being creeped out. It's probably my favorite thing ever. So back then I tried watching The Last Starfighter on several occasions, and that scene where that old guy literally wipes his face off to reveal his alien face was usually where I'd cover my eyes and go to the other room, but even when I somehow managed to get through that part somehow there was still that shot of the jelly covered robot/clone before it's fully formed that warped my little mind in ways I guess I couldn't handle. Years went by, and I never really bothered to come back to it. I just figured it was yet another cheesy '80s kids movie, and I was never a big fan of those, not even during the '80s. So yesterday I finally sat down and watched it for the first time, and guess what? It really is basically just another cheesy '80s kids movie, but a pretty enjoyable one, with slightly cooler creature effects and a whole lot of primitive '80s CGI. That part was a pretty weird surprise for me. Some of it is pretty good for its time (the hero's spaceship in particular) but the rest is just Tron-bad, looking more like an '80s video game than a movie. I don't really see the point of an '80s sci-fi/fantasy movie without any miniature sets and models. lately I've been slowly learning how to like certain aspects of that doomed decade, especially some of the music, but I can't help feeling like there was a good reason why I hated it so much in real time.

Creeeeeeeepy!

Also, hot '80s chicks just weren't all that hot. It's a miracle how I managed to live through most of that decade and come out sort of straight.

Benny in search of long lost relatives

Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Last night I watched Dante 01, directed by Marc Caro (half of the team that made Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children) and starring that French dude from the Matrix sequels. I don't remember all that much about the movie, as I was pretty drunk when I was watching it, but I'll try to do my best anyway. Dante 01 is a space station at the end of the universe where a small group of scientists performs experiments on the criminally insane, and they all speak French. As the the film begins the station's members get two new additions, a scientist and a prisoner/patient. The scientist is Asian-looking and she has pretty nice boobs, which we get to see right away (gotta love that new nude cryosleep technology). The new crazy guy is Lambert Wilson, and he doesn't talk much and can cure people of their illnesses by eating these big tentacly parasites he finds in their bodies using his X-Ray vision. That's about it, as far as I could tell. People get hurt, people get cured, and there's lots of running around the station, but the story is pretty much non-existent. All the prisoners have religious-type names like Lazare and Moloch and Buddha, and I guess it's supposed to mean something. There's plenty of religious undertones and symbolism in the movie, but it's safe to say that most of them went right over my head. It sure is pretty movie though. The place where the scientists live is always purple, while the prisoners live in yellow-green surroundings. Very color coordinated. I think there's a 2001: A Space Odyssey ripoff near the ending, but by then I didn't really pay much attention. It's the kind of movie that you can tell that it's a really good movie, that it looks really cool and that the directing is excellent, but it's just not interesting at all, not one bit. I've had a similar experience with Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, which were directed by Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. They are both very impressive and original works of cinema, but I didn't find myself connecting with them in any way, emotionally or otherwise. I don't know. Maybe it's the language. I find it very hard to connect with movies in languages I don't understand. I think there's something very wrong about watching a movie with translation subtitles, because you can never get the full picture from reading these little lines of text at the bottom of your screen. Because language can't be disconnected from culture, and a literal translation that is cut down and compressed tightly enough so that it would fit into your screen and give you enough time to read it before the next line of dialog comes up just can't deliver the full meaning of any scene. Whenever I watch a movie in a language that I don't understand I always get this feeling that yes, I know what these people here on the screen are doing, and I have a general idea of what they're saying to each other, but I have no idea what's going on, not really. I know what they're saying, but I can't really understand what they mean, not in the way that I do when I hear people speaking English or Hebrew. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just dumb. Or maybe I shouldn't watch foreign movies late at night when I'm drunk. And yes, when Israelis talk about 'foreign movies' they usually mean movies that aren't in either Hebrew or English.

On the other hand, before Dante 01 I watched a movie called Wieners. Now there's an adequate movie for drunken viewing! They really should have more movies like that on TV on booze nights.

Benny in search of a cold shoulder

Curve this

Today I watched Wanted, directed by the crazy and talented Timur Bekmambetov and starring the unnaturally hot Angelina Jolie and some dude who played a guy with goat legs in some kids movie. I wasn't going to see Wanted when it came out last year. The trailer looked cool enough, but there was one part of it that horrified me. Why would anyone want to shoot wings off flies? What did those cute little CGI flies ever do to anybody? Removing wings from insects is not cool. It's the insect equivalence to chopping a person's limbs off and leaving them to die from blood loss in a ditch somewhere. Not nice. So I was going to ignore the film completely and try real hard not to think about it. One day, a few weeks after the movie came out here, I got really bored at home, so I went to see it anyway. I'm weak, I know. As it turned out, Wanted is actually an extremely fun movie, despite its obvious moral flaws regarding cute animals. Sure, you get mutilated CGI flies, exploding CGI rats, a bunch of dead pigs and a side of beef or two, but most of the human animals in it have an equally hard time, getting beat up and stabbed and shot in the brains. So I guess it's sort of OK, but I still think that Mr. Bekmambetov should get some help, as thinking too much about hurting small animals can be a sign of much, much bigger problems. I kind of liked the Luke/Vader bit and the Fight Clubby vibe in the first few scenes as well as the final one. I thought it was a nice touch that adds a little tiny speck of depth to a movie that's basically a dumb and violent fun ride (it's not me! it's the Loom of Fate!). Wanted was shot in Prague, which gives it a lovely and very European look, despite the fact that the plot takes place in Chicago. Morgan Freeman is as cool as ever, but I didn't buy Angelina Jolie's character for one second. I don't know, Maybe she's a really good actress. The thing is, I can't really tell. She's just so incredibly gorgeous and has such an instantly recognizable look that whenever she's on screen all I can see is her, not the character she's supposed to be playing. Maybe some day, when she finally decides to grow old a little and stop being so crazy-hot, I'll start taking her seriously as an actress.

Does this look like a real person to you?

And now I get to read the little comic book that came with the DVD. Angie's character seems to have cat ears in it! I guess they're supposed to be fox ears. The scene with the poor little flies is in there too. Poor baby flies. I'm sure there's lots and lots of delicious CGI poop for them to feed on in CGI heaven.

Benny in search of the bite of death

The most hilarious family in America

Last night I watched The Most Hated Family in America, a documentary by Louis Theroux from 2007. I really like Louis Theroux. He's cool and dorky and Jewish-looking and doesn't mind getting himself into extremely awkward situations. This particular piece was about the Westboro Baptist Church, possibly the craziest church in existence today. Founded in 1955, the church has about 70 members, most of them belong to one family, who are led by the family's archpatriarch, an old geezer known as "Gramps". As you may or may not have guessed by now, the WBC is all about hate. God hates you. God hates homosexuals. Anyone engaged in any sort of sexual activity that isn't a married man and woman in a bed is a homosexual, so that probably means you too. God hates America. God hates Sweden. God hates Italy. God hates Catholics. God hates Muslims. God hates Jews. Anyone who gets killed has died because he was a sinner. It is also common knowledge that homosexuals eat poop. That one cracked me up! When interviewed by Theroux, Gramps pretty much admits that anyone who doesn't belong to his church is going to burn in hell. The church is really big on picketing with all kinds of weird signs. Did you know that Barack Obama is the Antichrist? I knew there was something funny about him. They also like to picket next to funerals of war casualties, because American soldiers are homosexuals. Cults are funny. It makes you realize how far you can go by brainwashing children into becoming utterly insane as adults. One of the girls, a 21 year old law student who is also one of Gramps' granddaughters, looks especially disturbed. She's always smiling and running around and she always acts real nice, talking about how happily she dedicates her life to God and how she's not planning on ever getting married (because the end is nigh or something), but you can tell just by looking at her that she's desperately starving for some man meat. That part was sort of sad. You could see a couple of WBC members in Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno, and now that I know more about the church it makes that scene even more hilarious. In my opinion, the mystery behind the church is pretty simple. Gramps is completely out of his mind, that much is obvious, but anyone can see that he would love to get it up the bum himself. Self hating homosexuals make the best homophobes.

But we're so cute and cuddly!

The thing I don't get about the whole "ideology" behind the church is something I don't understand about all the monotheistic religions. If God himself has created the world, why would he create things in it that he doesn't like? If sins are so bad, why would he create the concept of sin? Why would he create Satan, for that matter? I've always found it really weird that people talk about a war between heaven and hell. Wouldn't that be like a man battling with his own paper-mâché creations? How can you seriously fight or hate anything you've created yourself, especially if you're God and think you're all good and almighty and stuff? I could direct that question to some religious people I know, but I don't really want to. Religious people tend to give you boring answers that don't make much sense unless you believe in the same stuff they do.

Benny in search of the unholy beast

At least you bastards can spell

Today I watched Quel maledetto treno blindato (aka Counterfeit, aka Commandos, aka Deadly Mission, aka G.I. Bro, aka Hell's Heroes, aka The Dirty Bastard, aka The Inglorious Bastards) from 1978, directed by the Italian Enzo G. Castellari and starring the very cool Fred Williamson (From Dusk till Dawn) and a bunch of other guys I've never heard of and probably never will again. It's supposed to be the movie that inspired Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, so naturally I was curious. I guess 'inspired' is the right word, as the two movies have very little in common, plot-wise. What they do share is this: they both take place in Nazi-occupied France during the 1940's, and they're both about a group of American badasses who fight Nazis. Only the badasses here are a bunch of prisoners (murderers, thieves and deserters) that escape after their transit is attacked and find themselves supporting the war effort anyway by taking over a secret Nazi train. So is Quel maledetto treno blindato a good movie? Of course it isn't, but I guess that's not the point here. This movie is all about the kind of good old fashioned exploitation cinema that certain Italian directors used to specilize in during the '70s. I'm not a fan of military flicks in any way, but I have to admit that I somewhat enjoyed this one. The characters aren't very original, but there were enough explosions and guns (and gun wounds) to keep me interested. The budget was obviously pretty low, but they did go for a couple of cool matte shots and some miniature sets, which was nice.

Go ahead sweetheart, blow my brains out

The coolest scene, however, was the one in which our bastards come across a group of German girls skinny dipping in a lake. The bastards jump in and join them, and the friendly young ladies seem pretty hospitable at first, but as soon as they realize that their guests are Americans all hell breaks loose, and as we all know naked chicks + machine guns = big fun. Planet Terror had the right idea (the smoking hot Rose McGowan with a gun for a leg), but where was the much needed nudity? What's the point of having a nice young lady using a great big gun if she's got clothes on? Modern filmmakers can be such pussies sometimes.

Benny in search of true friendship

You basterds!

Today I went to see Inglourious Basterds, and I actually really really liked it. I was never a huge Tarantino fan. Sure, I was mildly obsessed with Pulp Fiction as a teenager, but weren't we all? I know most of my classmates at the Yeshiva were. Every Friday night as we sat around the Shabbat table we used to mask the opening music from the movie as a harmless Shabbat song, while the rabbis were completely oblivious to what it was all about. I don't remember much about Reservoir Dogs, other than the "Like a Virgin" bit and how some dude gets his ear cut off. I've never seen Jackie Brown. I really like From Dusk till Dawn, but that one was directed by Robert Rodriguez (QT just wrote and starred in it). Death Proof was just OK, and it was completely overshadowed by the vastly superior Planet Terror. The first part of Kill Bill sort of blew my mind, but the second part was a bit of a let down, which ruined the whole thing for me. Mr. Tarantino needs a good editor by his side, which is true this time around too, if to a lesser degree. Basically it's two hours and a half of Jews killing Nazis, and it is simply a delight to behold, even if you're not a member of a certain chosen people. When Tarantino was here in Israel last week some reporters kept asking him weird questions about his attitude toward the Holocaust or whatever, but that was just dumb. Inglourious Basterds isn't a Holocaust movie, it's the opposite of a Holocaust movie. A bunch of American Jews led by Brad Pit running around Europe scalping Nazis, while a hot Jewish-French chick is planning to burn up an entire theater full of high ranking Nazi officials. This isn't about the suffering of the Jewish people, we've had quite enough of that, thank you very much. This isn't about belittling the memory of the Holocaust either, not by a long shot. This is a modern historical-revenge fantasy film, and it should be taken as just that. It is also a Quentin Tarantino film, so you can't really expect it to be much more than very cool, very campy fun. There really aren't enough WWII movies out there with some Bowie in the soundtrack. I want to kill some Nazis too! Let us all go out and kill a big stinkin' bunch of them!! Weeeeeee!!!

Mélanie Laurent. Cute, French and Jewish. Awesome!

I didn't realize that I was going to see a movie that is mostly in German and French, and I'm not really used to reading subtitles at the movies (I like to sit way too close to the screen for that) but the movie was enjoyable enough so that I didn't really mind. My German is crap, but I did notice how when this Nazi was trying to get this chick into his Nazimobile and the Hebrew subtitles said "Get in the car", what he was actually saying in German was "Get your ass in the car". Foreign languages are fun!

On the bus back home this little Asian-looking chick sat down next to me and started reading from a little manga book in what looked to me like Japanese. I thought that was very cool. Almost made me feel like I live in a normal country.

Benny in search of some attention

The Duck is here!

Dudu Geva was the most incredible Israeli cartoonist who ever lived, and also the coolest Israeli. He was a total god for me, and a huge influence on probably anything I've ever done comics-wise. I was introduced to his work at a way too early age, as most of it (or at least his 80s stuff) was very adult-oriented, through books my parents had around the house for some reason. Neither of them has ever displayed any signs of the kind of sense of humor required to enjoy that sort of books, so the whole thing has always been a complete mystery to me. Divine intervention issues aside, the books were there, and my fate was sealed. Over the years I've been following his work almost religiously, and when he died of a sudden heart attack in 2005 at the age of 54 I was absolutely crushed.

The Duck!

His most famous character in the last decade or so of his life was The Duck, the lovable Tel-Avivian loser and his constantly failing quest to bang sensitive blonde chicks. Yesterday a statue of The Duck was unveiled at Masaryk square in Tel-Aviv, where it shall remain for all eternity and bring joy to children and adults alike.

Rubber duckies in the water fountain

The Mayor of Tel-Aviv

Dudu Geva's children

Everybody loves the Duck!

I must have read some of his books dozens of times, not including his many publications in newspapers and magazines. I have always fantasized about meeting him in person and showing him some of my stuff and basically basking in his almighty glory. That probably won't ever happen now. Sigh.

Some of my Dudu Geva books

Oh, and, also: HELP! I'm being stalked by side characters from Mehubarot! I saw one of the girls' mom there, and she even sat down next to me on a bench. Now, Tel-Aviv is full of local "famous" people, and it's extremely uncool to note any such encounter with one of them, but the people I've been mentioning here are such minor "celebs" that the whole thing goes way past uncool and onto freakishly-hilarious, which brings us right back to cool, sort of.

This evening it's the Jewish new years eve, and so I leave you with this, in hope of a better, less retarded year:

Pusta in a box!

Benny in search of a little self-respect

Benny in search of a second opinion

Big colorful things are cool

The flowers for the flower carpet at Rabin square in Tel-Aviv have arrived yesterday afternoon from Belgium, after being held up at the airport in Brussels for 12 hours. It was supposed to be ready yesterday at 19:00, but I was there today at noon and they were just finishing up. Sure is pretty though!

Most of the designs were based on elements from Tel-Aviv's history and ones that were found in the homes of the first residents of the city. Or at least that's what the sign said. Whatever. I just like the purdy colors.

Foreground: a camel!
Background: a giant bottle of vodka!








Tel-Aviv, 1909-2009


The city's symbol


City hall. Isn't it byoootiful??

And guess what I found tied to a fence next to the Rabin memorial!

Funny puppy!!!