Saturday, September 4th, 1999

It's now official. I've been living in NY for 6 months now. Appropriately, this is my sixth issue of "The Barak Ori Times". So consider this a Special Semi-Annual edition, although this is probably the only special thing you'll find about it.

As the days pass, I discover strange things about this place. Some might be good, and some might be bad. It's very subjective. I've decided to share with you a few of these things. You can decide for yourself if they're good or bad (not that I'll try to hide my opinion on the matters).

The picture to the right has nothing to do with what I'm going to talk about. I just thought it's a nice picture. I was walking on 16th street, and as I crossed 7th Avenue I saw this crane, and decided that it looks nice enough to take a picture.

Almost all of the TV channels here have commercials in them. A lot of commercials. That's not news, and actually, I didn't want to talk about commercials in general. I wanted to talk about drug commercials. In Israel you can spot once in a while a commercial for headache pills or for something that presumably will make the winter easier for you. Here, there are drug commercials all the time.

In both countries, if you advertise cigarettes in a newspaper, you have to include a warning about smoking hazards. Similarly, in the drug commercials, you see wonderful fields and flowers, hear a voiceover saying why you should buy the product and then, honestly yet still very calmly, going over all the things that are bad about this product. I guess there's law forcing them to specify the side effects of the medicine in the commercial. Not in small letters. They must be said out loud. This is so funny. The end of every such commercial is a list of symptoms that really scares you away. Don't believe me?  Well.. reading is believing. Here's the transcript of a commercial. Word by word, as it appears on TV. I just cut the first 2 sentences:

"If you have urinary symptoms and are diagnosed with an enlarged prostate, ask your doctor about FloMax - a prescription medicine specifically designed to help relieve these symptoms. Call now for your free educational booklet, plus a $5 rebate offer. The most common side effects of FloMax are a decrease of semen, stuffy nose and dizziness. Also, a sudden decrease in blood pressure could occur upon standing, resulting in rare instances of fainting. So when starting FloMax, avoid situations where injuries could result. Ask your doctor about possible drug interactions. FloMax - specifically designed  to help relieve symptoms of an enlarged prostate. See your doctor for product information or call 1-888-721-8899."

I'm not joking. Call the number. It's real (I just gave them free "advertisement"!!!)

Just think you'd have to do the same in the elections commercials: "Vote for Bibi, a strong leader for a strong nation. Warning, voting for this man may cause severe economic and political problems in Israel and the middle east."

A few decades ago, an Israeli committee had to choose if foreign films would be dubbed to Hebrew or subtitled. We all know what was their decision, and I think we're all happy with that. I know for a fact that in "advanced" countries, like Germany and France, films are dubbed. It's amazing that people in these countries never heard Samuel L. Jackson "quoting" from the Bible in Pulp Fiction, or Robert De-Niro asking "Are you talking to me?". The voice is such a big part of the actor and his/her acting.

I always thought that they're smarter here in the US. I never saw that they dubbed films to English. Enters Roberto Benigni with his movie "Life is Beautiful". The movie did very well in theaters here in the US about half a year ago. Actually it was the highest grossing foreign film ever. Now they're showing it again. In English. They're dubbing Roberto now. Needless to say, I will not see this version of the movie.

When I was young, I remember hearing that in the US you can do almost anything. As long as you don't hurt others, you can probably do it. Well, I don't know what's the definition of hurting others, but here's a list of some things you're not allowed to do. I don't know if these are Federal laws, State laws or even city laws, I simply know that the following things are not included in the opportunities this great land has to offer:

• If you're under 17, you cannot go to a movie that is rated R (Restricted) without an accompanying adult. For your information, virtually any action movie is rated R because of violence scenes. Movie theaters really enforce this one! I saw an article in a newspaper in which they were asking famous people what was the first R rated movie they saw. They all remembered. I'm sure you don't know what was the first R rated movie you saw. No one cares about this in Israel.
• You cannot walk in the streets holding an alcoholic bottle. If you do, it must be in a bag so that it's not visible. Needless to say, you're not allowed to drink something alcoholic on the street.
• We went on a weekend trip, and decided to buy some things for the road. A friend took a six-pack to the cashier, but she wouldn't let him buy it. It turns out that on Sundays, you're not allowed to buy alcoholic drinks (including beer) before noon. You can't buy it!

You know I'm not a drinker, and I know there's a drinking problem in this country, but this seems just a bit too much. Oh, and since I'm on the subject, I really like the T-Shirt here that says: Take me drunk, I'm home.

There are so many Magazines here. You can either buy them at full price (Usually $2-$5) in stores, or wait until someone sells them on the street for a Dollar or less. You'd probably do none of these. They have magazines for every subject. 10 different magazines for fishing in sweet water, 15 on home gardening, and of course, 7000 fashion magazines and a section of porn magazines from "hot" Europe.

In Israel we have women's magazines like AT and LA'ISHA. I don't think there are magazines for men. Here there are quite a few of those. When I visited the US, a bit more than a year ago, I bought such a magazine. I think it had an article about Seinfeld (It was around the time the last episode of the show was out). Reading this magazine was very funny, so when I came back to NY, I decided to buy it once in a while. I usually don't read a lot of it, but when I do, I must say it's quite amusing, and sometimes even interesting.

Why am I telling you all this, if I dont even bother to read magazines regularly? Well... whenever I go to the basement of my building to do my laundry, I pass by the recycling bins and see an enormous amount of magazines. I guess reading them is very popular here. Consequently, this seems a significant enough "strange thing", I feel obligated to report about.

The magazine I'm talking about is called Maxim. On the cover it always says two things:

1. Sex * Sports * Beer * Gadgets * Clothes * Fitness
2. The best thing that happened to men since women.

While you will never see a breast in this magazine, and I've never seen any fitness article (except for one telling you how to incorporate some working out while drinking in a bar), there's a nice gadget section (including an article about the digital camera I proudly own) and a section about clothes, which I always skip. Actually, that's not what's important. The important thing is that the writing style is very funny. The pictures with the white text in them, that are scattered around on this page, were taken from this magazine, most of them from an article about a "Strongest man in the world" contest.

An example of a funny article? Shirtless Man. A rather chubby man doing shopping in the city without a shirt. Most stores say no food, no drinks and no bare feet, but they don't say no shirt. It seems obvious. Allow me to quote: "On the test drive, my skin started sticking to the vinyl interior."

Another article was called 100 things every man must know. Some of the 100 items included sub-items. Here's one of the 100 called 10 things we don't have to tell you:

• Dance lessons are for girls
• You can have long hair, you can have a mustache, and you can wear a pink shirt, but not all three at the same time.
• Eggs, corned-beef hash, and Tabasco sauce is the breakfast of the gods.
• The Godfather and The Godfather Part II were glorious and magnificent; The Godfather Part III reeked like a burning house made of chicken shit and stuffed with dead dogs.
• The button on the fly of your boxer shorts is just for show.
• When smashing a beer can on your forehead, don't forget to pinch the sides before making contact. Otherwise you'll end up with an embarrassing "reverse coaster" on your noggin that will outlast the hangover.
• You flip a steak one time - and one time only.
• Don't help a woman knock your pals. Ever.
• In reality, Godzilla would beat King Kong's butt six ways to Sunday. No questions, no contest, just a brutal, one-sided hairy-ass-kicking.
• Protect your testicles.

Yes. Six months. A lot has changed during this time, and more remained the same. Is this the part I need to get emotional? Forget it. I just thought it would be nice to compare what was then, and what is now.

Try to find at least 6 differences between the images. Just for orientation, the second picture (current) was taken standing where the right window in the first picture (taken 9 months ago) is.

In the right picture you see Maya and Yonatan today. Compare Yonatan (left) to a picture taken when I just came to NY. Oh, and ignore the father, I just didn't have time to clear him from the picture. The old pictures were taken from the March issue of The Barak Ori Times.

You probably didn't notice it, but The Barak Ori Times has moved to a nicer, faster, and greener web space. GeoCities was a nice place, but since Yahoo! took over it, things have changed. The main issue is that they wouldn't let us send e-mails using our GeoCities account. Only receive e-mails.

As a protest I'm now officially closing all my business relations with GeoCities and Yahoo!. If you have an e-mail address at Yahoo, I'd be happy if you vote against them, and stop using their services. They are bad bad people.

My new e-mail address is undisclosed. Do you want to know more?