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A cheesy metaphor

More about food. Sort of.

In this clever, tongue-in-cheek video by second-year film students at Hebrew University’s Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, the faces of an assortment of familiar Israeli and imported food products — the Gerber baby, the Gad cheese grandfather, the Kinder chocolate child, the Quaker men — talk amongst themselves in the fridge and cabinet about the smelly Gad tzafatit cheese in their midst. I found it amusing that they chose tzfatit — such a quintessential Israeli cheese, at least to me, that was once sold in salty, crumbly chunks, sliced off a large, damp mound from the corner makolet — as the smelly culprit of the fridge.

As their ‘owner’ removes the cheese, tastes it and proceeds to throw it out, he moves around a very Israeli kitchen, from the pullout drawer of oils and vinegars to the floor laid with classic Persian carpet tiles.

But the point of the video, says one commentator, is to recognize the metaphor of the movie. The peak in life, is not necessarily the refrigerator shelf, where it appears that everyone should be situated. But rather, the garbage pail, which may represent the margins of society or a greater mix of products, may offer more self-expression, and, more happiness.

It’s good to get the inner meaning, but you can just appreciate the clever aspects of this student project that has already been viewed more than 30,000 times.

Nostalgia Sunday – Old Israeli songs

Last week was a busy one in the world of Israeli musical nostalgia. David Sela, a prolific online archivist and proprietor of the wonderful Nostal site, launched his latest labor of love: Radio Nostalgia an online music channel playing Israeli hits of yesteryear, 24/7.

In an interview with Israel Hayom, Sela stated that he and music editor Yoram Siman-Tov, had selected a library of about 4,500 Israeli oldies going back at least 25 years — 25 being the cut-off date (or is that the starting point?) for being considered an “oldie”. Each year, the station plans to add another year’s worth of old songs to the database.

Sela also said he was reviewing several proposals for radio broadcasts as well.

The Nostal website itself houses tens of thousands of images, some 1,000 videos, hundreds of audio clips, as well as scanned newspapers, magazines, posters, postcards, books, toys, trinkets and other ephemera. Sela stated that the site had visitors from 132 countries and estimated that 19 percent of users are Israelis living abroad.

Another great source of old Israeli songs is the YouTube channel called, not surprisingly, OldIsraeliSongs. It’s run by record company NMC United Entertaiment, which holds the rights to the old Hed Arzi music catalog.

The 90s may be less than 25 years away, though not by much, but enough time has elapsed to give music aficionados some historical perspective. Radio host and pop music historian Yoav Kutner has deemed that decade the most important in Israeli rock and produced a five-part series for Channel 8, The Albums, about five seminal works: Simanei Hulsha by Berry Sakharov, Plonter by Rami Fortis, Zman Sukar by Eifo Ha-Yeled, and the debut albums of Ziknei Tsfat and Eviatar Banai.

Following is a Ynet report on the series which features period clips as well as interviews from the launch party with Israeli rockers like Aviv Geffen (“We all lived on Sheinkin Street… there was a Sixties vibe in the air”), Gilad Segev (“I was most influenced recently by Berry Sakharov in working on my latest album”), Chemi Rudner (“Being unfashionable is the most fun”), and performances by Rudner and by a now-religious Eviatar Banai.

All agree that what happened at that time can’t be replicated — they cite commercial hype and the reality-TV-ization of the music industry, and that includes Geffen who is currently one of the judges on the Israeli version of The Voice.

But, as Rudner says, there’s still a place for artists who create for the love of it.

NOTE: If you can’t see the embedded video, click here to view.

Foto Friday – Tal Menkes’ Dreadful Delights

Tal Menkes is a copywriter at advertising agency Mccann Erickson, Tel-Aviv, Israel. In addition to his day job of penning award-winning ads, Menkes’ fevered brain works overtime several times a week to create Mutzar Ayom, a photoblog of seemingly useful yet cheerfully useless objects.

The name takes the hackneyed shopping channel phrase mutzar ha-yom, “product of the day”, and replaces it with the word ayom, meaning “horrible”. And indeed, many of the products are in fact, delightfully dreadful examples of visual wordplay.

Some of the ideas are universal in nature — others are unmistakably Israeli, for example, this toy soldier armed with mother’s cooking…

Water concentrate, as opposed to the ubiquitous sugary red mitz petel, so ingrained in the Israeli child’s psyche — and the Israeli child’s teeth!

A reversed three-fer electric adaptor…

A floor squeegee that actually gets into corners…

And my personal favorite, the real and original dubon coat.

Menkes also runs a Mutzar Ayom Facebook page in which followers are invited to comment on recent postings and share their own imaginary product ideas. Who knows, some might even make it into production — after all, if the Crembox can be an actual product fulfilling an actual need, then anything’s possible.

Footwear PR

I’ve written before about Kobi Levi‘s ironic, iconic and clever shoe designs, possibly about platforms, but was pleased to see him garnering some publicity for himself through more unusual efforts.

Check out his shoe calendar, via the UK Calendar Club, with a 2012 wall calendar that features 12 Kobi Levi shoe designs.

He also recently collaborated with Image Comics’ Vescell storyline, integrating his shoe designs for one of the characters, Machi, a fairy protector.

Keep on spreading the word. Or the shoes.

Nostalgia Sunday – Yaffa Yarkoni

It would be remiss of me if I did not mention the death of singer Yaffa Yarkoni at the age of 86 last week.

The papers, both local and international, reported on her passing — she was indeed the symbol of the War of Independence generation and a singer of some of Israel’s most beloved songs.

But she was also loved for being a fixture on the Israel Song Festival and Children’s Song Festival circuits, in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively.

For many years, she was an unofficial cultural ambassador for Israel, who charmed visiting international celebrities like Sean Connery, Cliff Richard and Sammy Davis Junior.

Like many women performers with a strong personality and powerful stage presence she, like fellow diva Shoshana Damari, inspired a generation of local drag queens.

Most of all, Yarkoni was a dyed-in-the-wool performer who was born to be onstage. In later years, she came out strongly as a member of Israel’s peace camp. In this interview, she covers topics ranging from cataloging her gowns, (so that she would never wear the same dress twice to a given venue), to face lifts (she didn’t have one and shows the back of her ears to prove it). She also describes the time she went down to Sinai to perform for the troops and ended up giving an impromptu performance to an onlooker who happened to be an Egyptian soldier on the other side of the line. “On the way back, I said to myself, ya allah, maybe we can end this war simply with song?”

 

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