The first time I saw Oded Fehr was in The Mummy, when he sweeps in from the desert swathed in black, with smoldering eyes and facial tattoos. I can’t remember anything else about the movie, but I stuck around for the credits to learn his name. I thought “Now that is a movie star.”

He’s been muddling around these past years with supporting roles in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (in which he displays some true comic timing and appears in nothing but a towel in several scenes) and Resident Evil, and I’ve been waiting for him to hit it.

Looks like I’ll have to keep waiting. He’ll be starring in “Sleeper Cell” on Showtime, as an Arab terrorist posing as a Jew.

He told Charmed magazine:

I am the bad guy, but the way the show is written he’s a guy you almost love to hate, or hate to love. He’s a regular Joe. He’s friendly and nice, but he does these awful things. It’s probably the hardest role I could have chosen to play, to try to understand, to try to portray that. I’m Israeli-Jewish. It’s a very powerful show.”

Yeah, but unless he’s building weapons naked I’m not likely to watch a show about suicide bombers. Somebody get this guy a leading role!

The birth of Britney Spears’ baby boy is all over the place today, and My Urban Kvetch reports that his name will either be “London Preston Federline” or “Preston Michael Spears Federline.” Wha’s up, Kabbalah Girl, no Mordecai, no Moshe, no Zev?

Though there are few details of the blessed event, Britney (c)opted out of the planned mystical water birth and went for, in my humble opinion, the lamest birth option available:

In the October issue of Elle magazine, Spears said she’d prefer to have a C-section, and if that wasn’t an option, “I’ll be like, ‘Epidural, please!’ … I don’t want to go through the pain.”

Certainly, Cesarean sections are an option as an emergency measure to save a baby’s or mother’s life, but using it to avoid the divine pain of childbirth seems to go directly against the teachings of Kabbalah Britney claims to follow. Then again, she might’ve been holding the Zohar upside-down all this time, anyway.

Snippy, self-righteous judgments aside, a hearty mazel tov to the new parents. Hopefully, there’ll be news of a brit milah next week.
If not, this topic is no longer bloggable by our by-laws.

Posted at ChronWatch.com:

A Jewish Mother by Anonymous

Hi, Mom. Can I leave the kids with you tonight?

You’re going out?

Yes.

With whom?

With a friend.

I don’t know why you left your husband. He is such a good man.

I didn’t leave him. He left me!

You let him leave you, and now you go out with anybody and nobody.

I do not go out with anybody. Can I bring over the kids?

I never left you to go out with anybody except your father.

There are lots of things that you did and I don’t.

What are you hinting at?

Nothing. I just want to know if I can bring the kids over tonight.

You’re going to stay the night with him? What will your husband say if he finds out?

My EX husband. I don’t think he would be bothered. From the day he left me, he probably never slept alone!

So you’re going to sleep over at this loser’s place?

He’s not a loser.

A man who goes out with a divorced woman with children is a loser and a parasite.

I don’t want to argue. Should I bring over the kids or not?

Poor children with such a mother.

Such as what?

With no stability. No wonder your husband left you.

ENOUGH!

Don’t scream at me. You probably scream at this loser too!

Now you’re worried about the loser?

Ah, so you see that he’s a loser. I spotted him immediately.

Goodbye, mother.

Wait! Don’t hang up! When are you bringing them over?

I’m not bringing them over! I’m not going out!

If you never go out, how do you expect to meet anyone?

Who knew a sacred religious object could rock a party like this? The things I never learned in college because I was, uh, attending class…
c/o the funny folks Bangitout.com, who have amassed a fine collection of alcohol-themed Judaica for your amusement.

Egyptian journalist Hayam Dorbek has rocked the Islamic world by suggesting that a man who takes multiple wives promotes women’s rights. She calls polygamy “a license from God to stabilize society and solve its problems.”

Islam allows men to marry up to four women, though such practice is less common Egypt than in other countries like Saudi Arabia.

Of course, Judaism makes no such allowances. When us Jewish women find our Jewish princes, we tend to be quite possessive of them. But I’ve been married seven years now, and frankly, the thought of sharing the husband with another woman seems a small price to pay for more free time, shared chores, a live-in babysitter…listen, I’m a working mother. I wake up at 6am and am on my feet tending to kids, picking up Husband’s towels and cooking three meals a day until I sit down at my desk and work until midnight. As Number One Wife, I could leave all the crap details like laundry and making p.b.&j.’s to Second Wife (or maybe Third!?) and reserve the prime Saturday date night slot. What modern Jewish mother wouldn’t at least consider it in the name of “stabilizing the home and solving its problems”?

Any takers, single women? We live in an 800 square-foot house, you could have a cot in the mud room. Husband is cute but talks too much. You must be fairly unattractive so as not to threaten Number One Wife’s fragile self-esteem and be impeturbable to whining.

(Illustration c/o The Curt Jester.)