Spies Like Us: The Jews’ Answer to Bond
Mounted on the dashboard of my black convertible there are two plastic switches, “Grenade Launcher” and “Ejector Seat.” They amuse friends and concern wary parking lot attendants. I own high-tech gadgets ranging from a big-screen television that can do virtually everything except hover, to an IBM laptop with a Celeron processor, to the George Foreman Grill, which can broil a steak in eight minutes. But I have never disarmed a thermonuclear device with seven seconds left to detonation and I have never killed or otherwise disabled a dozen enemy agents while skiing backward down the Swiss Alps. I have never devised a creative escape from a windowless room as two spike-laden walls closed in on me, and I have never enjoyed even one archenemy with plans for world conquest.
Friars Honor (and Skewer) Jerry Lewis
On June 9, comedy legend Jerry Lewis was named abbot of the Friars Club and was honored in true Friar fashion — with a roast.“You just got a lifetime contract at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas,” joked comedian Stewie Stone in one of the night’s many cracks about Lewis’s age, “and the over and under is Thursday.”“How is it
A Postwar Everyman, Comedy’s King Perfected Voice of Middle-Class Angst
This week, the country lost one of its greatest spokesmen: Alan King, who, over six decades, perfected the voice of the frustrated American dealing with inefficient institutions.“The other day my house caught fire. The insurance agent said, ‘Shouldn’t be a problem. What kind of coverage do you have?’ I said, ‘Fire and theft.’ The