On this new edition of the 3rd & Fairfax podcast from the Writers Guild of America, we have an interview with Josh Safran, the creator and showrunner of Quantico.  Also included Hilliard is an interview with Michelle Amor, the co-chair of WGA's Black Writers Committee.

A month ago, I posted here an elaborate video put together with the cast members of the very long-running British TV soap opera, EastEnders. It was done for the annual telethon, Children in Need, is apparently these videos are a sort of tradition that the EastEnder folks do for the charity.

Here's another one.  This is a Sgt. Pepper medley for the Children in Need 2007 broadcast.  Obviously, if you don't know the EastEnders show, as I don't..., you don't get the same fun of seeing your favorite soap actors out of their comfort zone, doing their best trying some song and dance.  But it's still fun.

(Though the video shows its running time as over nine minutes, the production number is only seven -- there's a couple minutes after when the cast comes on stage.)

After posting that piece this morning about my friend Rabbi Jack Moline being named president of the acclaimed Interfaith Alliance, I realized that what I wrote didn't do my admiration justice.  I've said here on this site that Jack is my friend, but it's important to put that in perspective.  After all, I live in Los Angeles, a city where if you met someone two years earlier, many people call that an "old friend."

In fact, I met Jack back in high school, at New Trier East in Winnetka, Illnois, a northern suburb of Chicago. (I wrote about the school about and its many illustrious alumni here.)  Among other things, he and I did a comedy radio show together on the school station WNTH.  We also put together an extensive radio documentary, "What Makes People Laugh," that included interviews we did in Chicago one day at the National Association of Broadcasters convention, among them one of the guest speakers, Joan Rivers.  Also, for inexplicable reasons, he cast me in a tiny role in the student-written musical, Lagniappe (for which I wrote the lyrics), perhaps one of the few glaring mistakes in his life, despite it being a non-speaking part.  I recall him having the hardest time getting me to hold my arm out properly during the big reveal during the finale -- that's how talented I was at acting -- until he got SO frustrated that he finally ran up on stage, grabbed my arm, thrust it out, and snapped, "Like this!!"

And we also went to college together at the beloved Northwestern.  In fact, it was thanks to Jack and a bizarre mix-up that I got to live on campus.  Being local, I didn't initially get campus housing my freshman year. I was talking with Jack during the summer before classes started, and he suggested I get on the waiting list, like he had, since you never knew who would drop out.  As good fortune had it, I ended up getting a dorm room by the first day, but the joke was that I'm pretty certain that the housing office screwed up -- because when I ran into Jack the first week classes, he was amazed to find out that I already had a room.  Since he was still on the waiting list! Obviously there was a screw-up, since by all rights he should have gotten a dorm room long before I did.  But apparently that was his first religious lesson -- that All Good Things Comes to Those Who Wait, Even If It's Because of a Screw-Up....

It was while at Northwestern that Jack and I took a class together in interpersonal communication.  (Obviously, this held him in good stead later on.)  The way things worked out, we teamed up for a big class project and resurrected our old "What Makes People Laugh" documentary, and updated it with actual research.  This included a live presentation, which culminated in one of my fond college memories.  If I can be immodest even after all these years, we magnificently constructed the "finale."   Near the end of the 15-20 minute talk, Jack begin to wind things up with our summation -- this conclusion was a long monologue, explaining (with great scholarship and detailed facts) our findings after studying the history of comedy as to why people today are so sophisticated that we therefore don't laugh at slapstick anymore...as I stood silently next to him.  All the while he was talking, though, he was filling up a pie tin with shaving cream.  During this, you could hear the large class begin to titter and see them squirming in their seats, turning to one another, not quit believing that he would actually hit me with a pie in class.  And still Jack droned on with eloquence, continuing to fill the tin higher, as I just blithely ignored it all and stared out.impassively.  The anticipation grew and grew, and the titters built to chuckles.  And it all led to the final moment when, with great emphasis, Jack concluded his talk.  "And that is why," he said, "people today will no longer laugh at slapstick."  And he just stood there.  As did I.  Both unmoving, just looking out into the large room.  Remaining there for about eight seconds.  The anticipation grew to a pitch, along with the uncertainty.  Simply waiting.  Until at just the right moment-- WHAM!! -- he thwacked me in the face with the pie.  And the room exploded with laughter.

Yes, this is the new president of the Interfaith Alliance.  He always had great comic timing.  (My only quibble is that we used shaving cream.  Note to prospective Borscht-belt comics: use whipped cream...)

In fact, it was Jack (er, sorry, the eminent Rabbi Moline...) who by chance helped give me a leg up into the movie industry.  We were both living in Los Angeles at the time -- me, right after getting my Masters degree from UCLA film school, and Jack with his wife Ann, going to Hebrew College here (or whatever it was called), studying to be a rabbi.  As I wrote on the pages a few years ago --

Jack, alas, eventually moved away from Los Angeles, choosing to continue to pursue religion as a career, as opposed to sticking with the glamour of tourguiding, and he and Ann eventually ended up in Alexandria, Virginia, raising their family and him serving as rabbi of Agudas Achim Congregation, where he was later named by Newsweek ​magazine as one of the 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America.  (No doubt, they'd heard about the pie throwing.)

His temple was conservative, but that only made one of my favorite stories from Rabbi Moline (er, sorry, Jack) all the more notable.  He was giving his sermon on Yom Kippur, the most holy day of the year in the Jewish religion.  A day of fasting and devout reflection.  And at one point during this sermon, he reached under the podium, brought out a Big Mac Double Bacon Cheeseburger, and said to his congregation, "What would you people do if I ate this right now?"

Hey, I told you about his sense of timing.  I suspect most people would love to practice their religion in a house of worship like that.  And if they did, it would probably be a more peaceful, loving world.

Make no mistake, Jack Moline he is a very serious, thoughtful, profoundly decent, nurturing, smart, devout religious leader.  And make no mistake, he has always -- always -- had a wonderful sense of humor.  I suspect that's clear at this point.  I remember him wandering around his apartment in L.A. smoking a cigar while wearing his George Burns t-shirt. A decade or so later, when an accomplished rabbi, he was one of the "public figures" who was interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine about why they watched the TV nighttime soap, Melrose Place, at the height of its huge popularity.  Jack's answer was simple, "Two words.  Heather Locklear."  He also wrote one of the funniest books on religion I've ever come across. Growing Up Jewish: or Why is This Book Different from All Other Books, for Viking Press.  (It included a guide for selecting a college for your child, and wanting to know how many other Jewish students should also attend the school, so that it wouldn't be too many or too few.  "The number is six," he wrote.)  I believe the book is out-of-print, but you can find it here

And now he's president of the Interfaith Alliance.  They're really lucky to have him.  But then, I think everyone is lucky.  We are all better off for it.  By a lot.

And now he can add that to his resume which includes Senor Vice-President, Telecommunications, for Elisberg Industries.  And okay, he's lucky for that, since at the time there was only one opening on the corporate board.  For that matter, there's still only one opening.  He sets a high standard to follow.

And that's what I left out mentioning before.  How it slipped my mind is beyond me.

​At least I said he was a big Cubs fan.

As many of you may know, we have an impressive if limited collection Corporate Officers on the Elisberg Industries Board of Directors.  "Impressive" in that it includes Rabbi Jack Moline, "limited" in that it only includes Rabbi Jack Moline.  But we look to expand the list daily.  We just haven't yet found anyone who meets our high standards, or who will agree to serve.

You can read about our Board of Directors under the "About Elisberg Industries" link above.  But I thought it was appropriate to mention some awfully nice news about Rabbi Jack.  For many years, he was the rabbi at Agudas Achim Congregation outside of Washington, D.C., in Virginia.  But he left last year to become the Executive Director of the Interfaith Alliance.  However, now -- well, let the organization tell you themselves in their Facebook post.  (I'm not sure if the full release will load, but if not, just click the "more" link at the end.)

A huge congratulations to our Senior Vice-President, Telecommunications. All the more so given how religion has become such an important and divisive issue in today's politics and presidential race

Hey, we may not have many Corporate Officers, but what we have is choice..

Besides which, he's a big Chicago Cubs fan...

A couple weeks ago, I posted a remarkable music video by OK Go, with them performing weightless.  I included a link to an article here by Phil Plait in Slate that described the science of how it was all done.  In that article, he referred to several of his other favorite (and particularly amazing) OK Go music videos, several of which I had already posted.  One though that I hadn't was their "optical illusion" video.

So, to rectify that, here it is.  

Most of the OK Go music videos are done in one take.  In full disclosure, this is not.  Though it looks like it is, which is part of the optical illusion.  

Here then is "The Writing's on the Wall."

Or is it?

And that happy, giggling sound you may hear wafting through the stratosphere is that of the eminent Nell Minow, our resident OK Go geek fan, who is beside herself whenever anything even remotely OK Go-related is presented....

I have a feeling that most, if not all the points I wrote this morning were probably spot on, about why leaking that Nevada's Republican governor Brian Sandoval was being vetted for the Supreme Court was such a smart thing to do by the White House.  I say that because this afternoon, Mr. Sandoval contacted the White House and withdrew his name from consideration.

From his public statement, it doesn't appear that Gov. Sandoval doesn't want to be a Supreme Court justice.  In fact, he said, " The notion of being considered for a seat on the highest court in the land is beyond humbling and I am incredibly grateful to have been mentioned."  And there was nothing beyond that about any reasons why it was wrong for him.  I suspect he either got some calls from Senate Republicans that said, "You have to withdraw because we've made public statements which, and so you know you'll never, ever get confirmed and this is really, really incredibly embarrassing for us" -- or he figured that out on his own.