Top 5 with The Very Hot Jews

Give me 5 reasons to be hopeful in these dark times.

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This question is for everyone, but The Very Hot Jews will answer it first today. Who are The Very Hot Jews? I cannot possibly define their comedy, or advice-giving, or where they cross that line of political correctness, or where they take a surprise turn and melt your heart. So after you play Top 5 with them, go have a look at their blog and see for yourself. They’re on MySpace, too. But first, here are Simon and Sera:

5 reasons to be hopeful in these dark times

1. Love! Don’t crinkle up your face like that – we’re not going to lay some Age of Aquarius doo-dah on your ass. We’re talking about the transformative power of everyday love. What’s really incredible is that when you look for it, as the theme to The Mary Tyler Moore Show helpfully points out, love is all around. See the way that guy brushed his girlfriend’s arm so tenderly, or the way that lady tousled her child’s hair without seeming to think about it? Witnessing tiny gestures of affection and kindness (as opposed to the idealistic but poorly conceived “random acts” of a thousand mid-90s bumper stickers) is a sterling reminder that we’re defined by goodness, no matter what celebretard-worshipping gossip sites and humiliation-based reality shows would have you believe.

2. The Internet! Not because of aforementioned 24/7 Britneywatch dot coms, or even because you can find a Major Matt Mason action figure mint in box. But because self-publishing is creating a new wave of influential voices who can find their own audiences without begging Knopf, Sony or Bravo for a break. Because citizen activists are increasingly making the shithead pundits of DC completely irrelevant. Because a few keystrokes can put you in touch with communities of people who are just as freaky as you are, and in more or less the same way. Because our moms can read our blog and tell us exactly what they don’t like about it. ¡Viva la revolución!

3. Bacon! So crispy. So chewy. So salty. So divine in color, so succulent in texture, so rapturous in flavor. We are enjoined by religious tradition to eschew the flesh of the pig, but – how to put this delicately? Fuck that. Is it wrong to love a meat so much that you write poems about it? If it is, we don’t want to be right.

4. The Out of Doors! Have you checked it out? Seriously, if you step away from your desk and walk through a door or two, you’ll find yourself in this crazy place where there’s, like, flowers and birds and trees and stuff. Unbelievable! Pretty! Of course, if you have a laptop, you can take it outside and stay safely connected while the sun shines on your face and the wind plays in your hair. Come to think of it, easing yourself in like that could be less overwhelming.

5. Comedy! Look, we know you love to laugh – there’s no need to put that in your Bebo profile, any more than “I love to come” or “I love to be handed large stacks of non-sequential banknotes.” But we’re duty bound to commend the best comics for taking the piss out of pomposity and helping us weather the abounding absurdity, ignominious indignity and dictatorial despair of modern times. Because given the landscape we’re facing right now, you can either curl up and die or laugh and carry on. It’s not exactly a new choice for us Jews, so we already know which way we’re gonna go.

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Simon Glickman is half of the award-seeking blogger team known as Very Hot Jews. The San Fernando Valley native grew up besotted with Groucho Marx, Woody Allen, monster movies, Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles. Tossing his financial future to the winds by majoring in English, he earned a Doctorate from Oxford University (with a dissertation on Herman Melville and fancy-schmancy French theory). He later served as Senior Editor at the music-industry trade magazine/cesspool known as HITS, briefly managed a major-label recording act and worked as a consultant. In 2005 he and his lovely wife, Julia Rubiner, co-founded the copywriting and branding consultancy Editorial Emergency, LLC. Simon is also co-ringleader of The Classic Rock Singalong. He lives in Los Angeles.

Sera Gamble leads the charmed life of a writer in Los Angeles. She is a Writer/Producer for the television show Supernatural and one-half of the internationally known blogging duo the Very Hot Jews. Her fiction was, for two years running, included in The Best American Erotica anthology series; it has also appeared on nerve.com and in literary journals such as Washington Square. Sera especially enjoys hanging out by the beach with her blindingly handsome French bulldog, Mojo.