What's On in Israel

I was at Shuk Carmel earlier in the week and I decided to buy a kilo of Mystery Fruit, since everyone else was buying them with great enthusiasm, and I've always believed that when a big group of people is doing something, you should follow suit without any questions.

Once I got home, I dumped them into THE colander to wash and inspect them. My findings: they're about the size of a nectarine, with similarly smooth and shiny skin. But their color is more of a pink-red blush with scattered saffron-colored freckles, and it has a stem like an apple or a pear. So, I was thinking, alright, it must be a very pretty variation from the peach-nectarine family. But, once I bit into it, the flesh was just like an apple—crisp and white and a little mealy. But the taste of that apple-like flesh was more like a mixture of melon and plum. And once you get to the core, the fruit has a stone pit, not seeds, and the pit is surrounded by a beautiful red corona of flesh, just like a peach!

Well, obviously, I was disgusted.

Make up your mind, Mystery Fruit! Maybe all the Israelis are always telling you how special and delicious you are, but from where I stand you just look like you're terrible at making decisions! You can't please everyone, Mystery Fruit.

Anyway, remember my 8 channels of shamefully pirated Israeli cable? Well, the shame is waning in inverse proportion to my delight over the weirdness of the programming choices. There's actually a ton of American TV, but it's sort of like playing Roulette every time you turn to the two English channels. It must have been a pretty Faustian licensing deal on the Israeli side of things. I think all the American network heads banded together and were like,“Oh, sure, HOT! (yes, that's the name of the main cable provider), you can show reruns of “Mad Men” and “House” and “The Office” and “Family Guy.” What's that? You want to show “Ugly Betty” too? No problem, we'll even throw in “Gilmore Girls.” at. Go ahead and sign that contract. Terrific!”
(Ten seconds later, with ink still wet on contract)
What? Ohhhh, that paragraph in tiny type at the end just states that you also have to buy up the syndication rights for “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “Dr. Phil,” “King of Queens,” a few NBC and ABC shows that were canceled after one season [Ed: “Swingtown,” anyone? Exactly.] , and some CourtTV shows from the O.J. Era. And, best of all, a daily 4-hour block of selections from the Hallmark Channel [Ed: comprised mostly of the sort of truly execrable made-for-tv woman-in-distress movies that make the programs of its rival channel, Lifetime (home to “Not Without My Daughters!” and “Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?” ) look like flippin' Shakespeare]. Also, Israelis like Tae-Bo still, right? Well, I hope so, because, you've also agreed to air hours of early morning Billy Blanks workout videos

Yeah. Mwah-ha-ha.

(Chorus of evil laughter swells as the American network heads disappear in a cloud of smoke. The Hot! executives weep)

The Israeli channels are way better anyway. “In Practice,” that HBO show about a therapist and his clients, is actually based on the Israeli show of the title, and you can still catch it in reruns here. And Israeli kids' shows are basically geared to my language level, so I've actually been watching those, though there's only so many times where you can sing along with a talking cartoon bear about all the different colors in the rainbow before you feel like a real horse's ass.

I guess “Shalom Sesame” (the, you guessed it, Israeli version of “Sesame Street”) is also really popular though I haven't seen it. I did read in the paper that they just finished filming on-site segments for an upcoming kids special about the peace process and Jewish-Israeli/Arab-Israeli conflicts. Elmo and a film crew visited the Kotel (the “Western Wall”) for it. Can you imagine? Say,you're a devout Orthodox Jew, and you're, like praying the mourner's kaddish at the wall, or something else incredibly sacred and serious, and when you finish and turn your head, there's a flippin' MUPPET next to you, talking in the third person (“Elmo loves davening! Yay!”), trying to hug you with its furry, floppy limbs and basically making light of everything you hold dear, and oh PS also there are two grown men attached to this thing and they're crouching o at your feet with their hand up his butt. And PPS someone is filming all of this.

I'm surprised there wasn't a Haredi Riot. (Not as fun or colorful as a “Zoot Suit Riot,” by the way).

There's also this very popular reality show everyone in Israel watches about 4 women of different ages, with different backgrounds, who videotape their own lives with little camcorders, then turn over the raw footage to be edited by the show's producers. I mostly have no idea what the fuck is going on during the episodes, and the camera-work leaves much to be desired (haha) but there's a lot of crying and yelling and soulful monologues into the camera plus some very educational Hebrew swearing.

Oh, and there's this evening soap opera that stars the Israeli heartthrob of the moment, Yehuda Levi (only in Israel can a heartthrob have a name like “Yehuda”). He's either a former pro soccer star in real life who's playing an international underwear model in the show, or a former international underwear model in real life playing a pro soccer star on the show. Same difference, right? And I guess he has this rival (a blonde dude, ya know, so you can tell them apart) who used to be his friend but now they hate each others guts, and they like to steal each others girlfriends. And one of the only Anglo character on the show is Yehuda's crusty British doctor, who had this very dramatic scene with him in the last episode, totally in English, where he brandishes (brandishes!) a full (full!) specimen cup at Yehuda while denouncing him for “pumping [him]self full of damned steroids!” [Dah-duh-DAAAH! Dramatic cliffhanger music surges as camera pans to Yehuda who is trying to look defiant yet contrite but sort of just looks constipated!] Also, everyone says “fuck” a lot, even though the show airs from 6:00-7:00 at night, Sunday-Thursday. Also, they show boobs.

OH! And the opening credits are amazing.Yehuda and the blonde guy are standing on this pitch black soccer pitch with a thunderstorm raging around them, and they do some arty primal screaming before beating the shit out of each other in the rain while remaining very handsome-looking. And just to make things absolutely perfect, the super-dramatic, sort-of-strained male vocals of the show's opening credit song are provided by. . . you guessed it! Yehuda Levi! He's the classic triple-threat: real underwear model/fake soccer player/delusional pop musician.

And I haven't even mentioned the two Russian TV channels (both mostly featuring movies from no earlier than 1970 that have clearly not been archived properly since tthey're all grainy and scratchy, and their colors are kind of faded and distorted. Or maybe that' was just the style of the U.S.S.R. cineastes back then? (“In Israel, you watch television. In Soviet Russia, television watches you!”)

There's also an all-French public television-type programming on channel 12 (lots of classical music performances and hour-long specials about endangered species, like the somehow hilariously titled “Apparaciones Despuetre: Le Panda Rouge”--a special about the (admittedly sad) plight of the Red Panda (neither red nor a panda, by the way). It also shows classic movies late at night, but they're all badly dubbed into French, regardless of their nation of origin, with Hebrew and Russian subtitles flashing every two seconds on the bottom of the screen. It lends a really surreal air to, say, “Chinatown,” which I still ended up watching for a half hour or so (how do you say “She's my sister and my daughter” in French? Anyone?)


I need to spend more time with my Hebrew flashcards and less time with the television.