A lightbulb attraction
Filed under: Business, design, General, Israeliness, Pop Culture
Israeli advertising can be pretty weak on the creative front, which is surprising given the amazingly sharp minds that abound in all sorts of Sabras. Maybe it’s the pay?
But whoever came up with the latest Sylvania Israel lightbulb ad was truly struck by comic genius and a ‘lightbulb’ of a concept. I spotted it at a local lighting store, just behind the counter. It has a picture of the familiar-looking Oren Zarif, a ‘therapist of the subconscious’, with the quote, “Abuya, go over to Sylvania and the pain will pass.”
Zarif has fabulously cheesy advertising all over the Israeli press each week. Each ad features a picture of Zarif, always dressed in white with his straight black hair tucked behind his ears with and bolts of lightning in the background, followed by a series of pictures of Zarif with his ‘patients’, their thumbs up, proclaiming: “The surgery on my leg was cancelled!” — Zehava; “My chronic dizziness disappeared” — Aaron C.; “I was spared surgery on my gums” — Veronica B. And so on.
With eight clinics countrywide, Zarif is clearly doing something right, at least on the business front. He’s convinced that he inherited his powers from his Bukharan great-grandfather, enlightened Torah scholar Rabbi Pinhas Hacohen, writes Ruthie Blum in the Jerusalem Post.
All I know is, Sylvania definitely convinced me to buy their bulbs.
Israeli fashion designer Azrouel likes Katie Lee just the way she is
A photo that appeared in GQ of Katie Lee and Yigal Azrouel at a party in New York in February
Lee, apparently, has settled on someone closer to her own age, and he’s Israeli -36-year-old celebrity fashion designer Yigal Azrouel. As expected, with a three-way celebrity thing going, the gossip columns are in heaven, and everyone is pointing to Azrouel as the dark, handsome lothario who has stolen Lee’s heart.
According to the NY Daily News, which was first to break the story, Lee, the first host of Bravo’s “Top Chef,” has been spotted out regularly with Azrouel. The two were seen dancing closely in Miami earlier this year and sources told the paper the designer has called Lee, “my girlfriend.”
However, a rep for the Joels said that Azrouel had no role in the separation. “Their breakup has nothing to do with Yigal,” Joel’s spokeswoman, Claire Mercuri, told the NY Daily News. “Their decision to separate was absolutely unrelated to Yigal.”
So, who is Azrouel? According to a 2006 feature on the designer in ISRAEL21c, everyone from Natalie Portman to Sarah Jessica Parker to Lenny Kravitz (and Katie Lee) have stepped out in Azrouel’s body-contouring creations, and magazines like Vogue, Interview, and Harper’s Bazaar regularly splash his designs across their pages.
Not bad for an Ashdod boy. Azrouel did not attend design school or enroll in formal education back in his hometown, but instead, taught himself.
“I bought a sewing machine and a mannequin and I started de-constructing garments and then I’d make new pieces for myself, my sisters and my friends. I would drape the mannequin with a de-constructed jacket I had made and then I would make a new one,” Azrouel told ISRAEL21c.
In the late 90s, he left his sewing machine in southern Israel and headed for Manhattan’s trendy, meat packing district. Almost instantaneously Barney’s, Oxygene and Joyce Hong Kong snatched up his wears. Nowadays, Azrouel’s name is tossed around alongside Calvin Klein’s and Anna Sui’s.
Despite his rapid ascent as a favorite of the jet set, Azrouel maintains close ties to his roots and his family in Israel – parents, five brothers and two sisters all residing in Israel – one sister living elsewhere.
“My best friends in the world are in Israel and so is my family. I visit about four times a year and family and friends meet me when I’m traveling around the world,” he shares. “I love Israel. It’s a very emotional place for me. I can live anywhere in the world but Israel is always home.”
He attributes his success to his background and upbringing. A sense of independence, confidence and willingness to follow an un-paved road are consistent with his Israeli roots.
As is apparently his ability to woo beautiful woman like Lee. I interviewed 1980s pop soulster Paul Young a few months back, and his wife had also left him for an Israeli living in London. It looks like the Israeli Zohan charm is rubbing off around the globe.
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems goes from Bollywood to Paris
Just four months ago, co-blogger Nicky wrote about the abhorrent video that Rafael Advanced Defense Systems made for Aero India 2009. It’s a gem of a video and not to be missed. However, what was maliciously maligned in blogosphere was apparently fairly popular with the Indians. According to a comment on Wired’s Danger Room:
Regarding the “beyond-awful Bollywood-themed music video” …A friend of mine who works in Refael told me that the people from India Govt loved that clip, every minute of it. Nobody was offended. Refael presenters handed CD copies of the clip in a weapons show and everybody took one. I guess it served it’s cause but some other people around the world decided to get offended for India.
Thankfully Rafael listened to their clients and not to anonymous commenters in the blogosphere and have once again produced a much anticipated follow-up which made it’s premiere at the Paris Air Show. Unfortunately this one does not include a French troubadour singing sad French songs about chemical warfare, but rather a mime. Yes, a mime. A MISSILE DODGING MIME. The mime has a hard time dodging falling missiles (projected on the screen behind her), but thankfully Multi-Layered Air Defense Umbrella (in this case and actually umbrella) is used to protect herself from the projectiles. Not only does she protect her self, she openly mocks the missiles. Classic.
In a trance on the beach
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Travel
When Israelis go camping, they tend to keep things as close to home life as possible. Meaning they’re right on top of you.
I try to go camping on the beach with my kids at least once a year, and last weekend we packed up the tent and mangal and headed to Palmachim beach, just south of Rishon Leziyon with two other dads and kids (for an inexplicable reason, some wives prefer to stay in the solitude of a lone house rather than with their family in a cramped tent).
Palmachim is an ideal destination because there’s a spacious grass/dirt area just a few yards away from the beach, enabling you to pitch a tent and cook without sand getting everywhere, but still close to run right in the Mediterranean whenever you want. As a bonus, the entrance fee is only NIS 20 per car (about $5 for a weekend in the sun).
One of the families with us knew the drill from previous excursions, but the other family, veterans of numerous camping trips in their native US, were making their first foray into the sport of Israeli camping. There are differences.
First of all, you need to have certain expectations, or more specifically, lack of them. Don’t expect to get any sleep – if you think you’re going to have a restful night, stay at home.
There are no ‘norms’ about shutting off the music and turning in at midnight. There are parties all night, and it’s not just boom boxes.
Israelis bring sound systems on their camping trips, booming PAs that can simulate a high speed drill or a jackhammer. On the plus side, you can look at it as a sociological experience. Camping in Israel provides a microcosm into Israeli society like no other.
Down on the beach, there was typical rave, with droning, pounding noise disguised as music, and a dozen ecstatic 20-somethings undoubtedly spurred on by some ‘ecstacy’ of their own. Unfortunately, they didn’t pass any around to the rest of us.
But no matter, because over 30 yards or so in the grove of trees near the public bathrooms was a group of also 20-something Ethiopian Israelis camping and they were playing native music at equally ear splitting levels and dancing in an exotic, sensual manner – men and women inches from each other in a hypnotizing form of chicken dance. We couldn’t take our eyes off them. That is, until a group of boisterous campers from Georgia (the country, not the US state) began doing their own ethnic dances and songs.
By around 2 am, our third family couldn’t take it any more and packed their stuff and went home. The dad had enough of the noise, the smoke from other grills wafting into his tent, the proximity of the other campers – in short the Israeli camping experience.
But I wasn’t perturbed at all by the shenanigans around me. I had gone for a moonlight midnight swim in the balmy sea with my children. We laughed, jumped on each other, and hugged, untethered by schedules, computers, TV, work and school. I didn’t hear a thing.
Liev and Naomi’s Israeli vacation
Liev, Sacha, Naomi and baby Samuel under a diaper
The itinerary was planned by KKL-JNF, “caretakers of the land of Israel for more than 107 years,” and the family’s first official stop was planting a tree up north in the Galilee. According to the JNF spokesperson, Naomi read the tree planting blessing, while Liev looked to place the pistachio sapling in the ground but first had to remove his two-year-old son Sacha who had placed himself in the hole.
Schreiber said his grandfather was a strong Zionist who had always begged him to go to Israel. His grandfather died before he could make that happen, so this trip resonates for him. It may also have additional meaning following his most recent role as Zus Bielski in “Defiance,” the Holocaust movie recounting the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who lived and rebelled against the Nazis from a Bellarussian forest with a band of fellow refugees.
I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York, and I’m half-Jewish. Anything that has resonance for me about my family history, because I don’t know much about it, I’m drawn to. That’s part of why I think I choose projects like this. Less because I’m right for them, but because I want to know if I’m right for them.”
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