The song Open Season was originally written as lyrics for the debut album by the same published by my friend Oded Zukerman.

I think it’s high tim I republished it here as well

Open Season

Grandpa Box and Grandma Bag,
you battered prune you barren hag.
Cash in your bottles and get a gun.
It’s open season it’s time for fun.

Save up on anger and reload hate.
They had it coming it’s only fate.
Slay that fucker and kill that bitch.
It’s open season so let’s hunt the rich.

“Molesto” Molly and “Hot-Pants” Tom,
you got kicked out by dear Dad and Mom.
You work your ass and you pout your lip.
Now get a chain saw and bring your whip.

Save up on anger and reload hate.
They had it coming it’s only fate.
Slay that fucker and kill that bitch.
It’s open season so let’s hunt the rich.

Listen to Open Season.

Mike
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The header for this post is a quote from Napoleon Bonaparte, and indeed who could be more fitting to choose as my source of inspiration for a post dealing in fame and the pursuit of it, than this diminutive man, whose ego pushed him to conquer the world he knew, only to lose it. My experiences in the past 24 hours led me to think more closely about the current culture of celebrity worship. This blog post is an attempt to structure these thoughts in an ordered fashion, however I’m not really sure I’ve been too successful. Anyway, here goes…

We are all familiar with the Andy Warhol quotation from 1968:

“In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes“.

It is my opinion that we are currently living in that future. On the one hand the reality genre is intimating us daily with new paragons of the celebrity cult, while on the other hand ever growing numbers of us are using social networking websites to embark on personal journeys of self aggrandizement, touting our minutest accomplishments for all the denizens of the web to acknowledge.

It seems to me quite obvious that both our ever growing need to identify with the extraneous, and our pursuit for recognition, vary to reflect our personalities, intelligence, cultural background, social status, education, etc:

While the exhibitionist impulse drives some to suffer any form of degradation in the hope of gaining even momentary notoriety, others choose far more subtle and discreet methods to build up their following, but regardless of the means it appears to me that we are all aiming for the same end: FAME. Tragically, in our squabble for 15 minutes of fame, it appears that we have forgotten that there was once a time when fame was the prize given to the worthy for the substance of their deeds and accomplishments.

As we gradually all converge on the stage claiming our right to our part in the action, who remains in the audience to award us with recognition and cheers? Furthermore, as was suggested to me by one of my twitter friends: “If all the world is a stage, then where is the audience sitting?”.

Who knows? Maybe there is no audience anymore?

Maybe we’re all just wannabe-actors parading our talent (or lack of) before an ever growing circle of our peers, all compelled by fear of vengeance, to support our performance, no matter how absurd or banal. But woe be it to any that break the circle and dare to cry “The Emperor is naked!”. The herd’s retribution is swift and excommunication and ostracizing it’s ultimate form of punishment. Indeed in a world were popularity is the ultimate prize what penalty could be more terrible than a forced anonymity?

Interestingly Andy himself predicted for us the next evolution as well. In 1979 he is quoted as referring to his former quip by saying:

“I’m bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous“.

A simple analysis of our current situation proves that this is indeed fast becoming the case, and for good reason to.

It’s basic supply and demand.

We’re all currently displaying a very obvious demand for fame, and our demand is constantly being supplied by those savvy enough to capitalize on it.

The problem is that the laws of supply and demand also come into play as a check for saturated markets.
As our culture becomes saturated with celebrities their value must drop.
Even now we are witnessing this effect. Yesterday’s reality heroes quickly become the laughing stock of today, or even worse, simply sink back into obscurity, their fame, for which they sacrificed dignity and effort, becomes no more than a fleeting episode that only serves to highlight the drudgery of their commonplace lives.

I offer that we are fast approaching “The Post Celebrity Age“.

Fame, as defined by mass peer recognition, will lose much of it’s value, and will come to be viewed as something distasteful, worthy only of contempt. We will return to a culture where one’s substance, deeds, and accomplishments are the measure of one’s success. This current phase that celebrates hedonistic boorishness, so blatantly championed by the Paris Hiltons of the world, will be discarded in favor of a Neo-Renaissance whose heroes are already gaining recognition through the good efforts of ventures like TED.com and others.

Frankly - I can hardly wait…

“Presentense” - a Jewish magazine, put out a call on their facebook group for submissions relating to the topic of “Food and the Jews”. They were looking for artists and photographers that would help them capture this theme and its meaning for young Jews around the world today.

I thought that this would be a good opportunity to reconnect with my Jewish roots because I felt that since my last trip to the US I had been neglecting this side of my creative endeavors in favor of the hyper and cooler political-pop stuff. The concept I thought of, as I was driving to Jerusalem on my scooter (great thinking time that ride…), was to try and see if I could come up with my own little food related Yiddish idiom.

For those of you not familiar with Yiddish it is the language spoken by European Jews in former centuries and is a hodge-podge mix of German, Polish, Hebrew and bits and pieces of other languages as well. Yiddish is the language that has given the world the words: Meshugana, Putz and Oy-Vey, and is famous for it’s juicy, often humorous idioms; Idioms that best express the true character of European Jewry in all it’s splendor and misery.

I chose the lowly bagel as the topic of my piece, because of all Jewish foods it has gained the widest international acceptance. Sadly the bagel’s fame came at a price. As the bagel moved out of the Kosher neighborhood deli and into the Gentile global chains it had to obscure it’s Jewish past in order to fit in, to the point that today most of the world’s bagel eating population is entirely unaware of this pastry’s humble Jewish origins.

Somehow this seems to me to have relevance that goes beyond foodstuffs. The simple fact is that Jews in the diaspora have been losing touch with their heritage for very similar reasons. Their urge to fit-in and gain acceptance in the Gentile societies they live in, and perhaps especially in the USA, has led to a gradual but relentless attrition of their Jewish identities. Although this phenomenon is not unique to Jews, and is well documented in all immigrant societies, somehow it seems as if we Jews have been particularly willing to give up our heritage in favor of acceptance from our surroundings…

The idiom below came to me in a flash of inspiration and at least to my ears it seems to resound with Shtetl wisdom, where the humblest of metaphors often alludes to the most sublime principles of being”

“The black hole you see is nothing but the middle of the sweet bagel G-d has baked for you”

…and in Yiddish: דער שווארצער לאך וואס דוא גייסט איז נאר דער מיטעל פון דעם זיסען בייגל וואס ג-ט האט געבאקען פאר דיר

…transliterated: Der schwartze lach was du geist is nar der mitle fon dem zisen beygale was Gott hat gebaken far dir

Special thanks for the translation are due to my friend Ruth Levine, whose Yiddish cabaret “Der Blaaue Ketz” recreates the atmosphere and vibe of the type of entertainment enjoyed by German Jewry (my ancestry). The art of Jewish Cabaret was just one more thing humanity lost in the ovens at Auschwitz…

A while ago a gentleman emailed me asking if I planned a print in response to the financial situation. Two days ago, that crisis hit home when the firm I’ve been working for “downsized” half it’s workforce in a single day, causing me, and 14 other unfortunates, to become unemployed.

I don’t know if it was getting laid off (for the 1st time in my life) that did it, but today as I was driving up to Jerusalem the creative block dissolved and I got a vision for my response. The paradigm I was facing was how to be critical of those I perceive as being responsible for the crisis, without being too blatantly offensive (as I am prone to be). I also wanted to offer a vision of hope, rather than one of gloom and doom. Ever since Ahmadinejad’s Daughter I feel like I need to balance out some of the negativity and today, after Obama’s victory, seemed like a great day to do it.

I think I’d like to make a print based on a classic “Lot’s Wife ” piece where I would retain the composition but replace the unfortunate and disobedient Lot’s wife with a banker type character looking over his shoulder.

Instead of Sodom and Gemoroh I would have the crumbling bastions of capitalism represented by a skyscraper skyline. At the foreground, or maybe on the side, I would have a group of people fleeing the catastrophe towards a safer, greener, simpler existence.

I guess I’d try and capture the Utopian vision that Bill Gates has for a post-capitalist society, mix it up with a vision of a more ecologically friendly world, and offer it as a new Eden.

Last night I went out to the “Block” in Tel Aviv to hear Jake Fairley, AKA Fairmont, play at a party organized by my friends from N-Factorial and Pacotek.

Fairmont was HUGE, and judging by the standing ovation he received when it was finally time for him to leave the DJ’s stand, I’m far from being the only person who feels that way. Except for a slightly disappointing set by Move D, yesterday was a great display of electronic music at it’s finest with Pacotek’s Anna doing a great job on the pick up after Jake.

I’m not as young as I used to be and I can no longer do the things I used to do to keep myself alert and awake at parties. My priorities now in my mid 30’s are very different from the ones I had in my mid 20’s. The drugs and hype are for me a thing of the past, and have been for many a year, so when I find myself hopping about at night for 5 hours straight and leaving a party in the full light of day I’m pretty sure that I must have a had a really grand time and that the music must have been fucking great.

Another indicator for me that last night was something special were some of the faces I caught in the crowd. I bumped into Yiftach and Rei, who together with Pacotek’s Tsachi, and a whole bunch of other fine souls led by Danny Zarzewski, pretty much kicked off the Israeli Techno scene about a decade ago. They launched the party producing cooperative “100 Meter’s Underground” that has the distinction of being the only one, out of a bunch of similar operations here in Israel, whose activities received academic recognition.

It feels like only yesterday we were all raving in the caves outside Jerusalem, listening to Danny spinning vinyl 100 meters underground, but as the years go by less and less of “the tribe” show up at the parties. People get old, tired, boring, married and dead…

Pactoek to me are “the new kid on the block” but they’ll be celebrating their 5th birthday next week (with Carsten Jost, Yay!). Fact is they’ve already lasted much longer than “100 meter’s”, “Hazofe”, and all the other techno coops that I have seen come and go, ever did.

I was a club owner for four and a half years.
I’ve heard electronic music on four continents.
I’ve been to the full moon and half moon on Koh Phangan and heard Trance played in the mountains around the Kullu valley. I heard Dimitri at the Escape and was selector at the gate when Digweed and Oakenfold played in Jerusalem.

I don’t go to parties far away from home anymore because I’m no longer willing to take the long drives there and back. If I can’t take a taxi to a venue I ain’t going (I’ve become way too lazy…). My days eating dust and dancing on uneven surfaces at underground parties located in godforsaken locations are probably over. I no longer go to parties hoping to get laid because I’m happy with what I’ve got waiting for me at home…

I still love the scene, the music and the few people I still recognize at the clubs. I’m 34 years old and I’ve never felt more committed to the music I love. I wonder how old I’ll be when I go to my last party…