Luke Ford

Jackie D writes: "You should ask your LF.net London bureau chief (I believe a promotion from mere correspondent was granted) for more scoops. She hob-knobs with these people all the time."

Jackie replies: "YAY! Forget the month long holiday with the family I haven't seen in over a year -- this is the best Christmas present I could ever wish for. I can't wait to see what I get for my birthday..."

With full puffy lips... I'm the furthest thing from the Jack Nicholson character in the 1971 movie Carnal Knowledge. I'm a romantic. When it comes to women, I impute more to reality than is justified. Is it so wrong of me to seek some happiness in my old age? After all I've done for humanity.

Dr Ruth, My Moral Leader and Me

Luke says: So this crew from Britain's Channel 5 drives up at 4:30PM Wednesday. I see a beautiful woman behind the wheel. Two schlumpy guys get out. I help them bring their equipment into the hovel. I loosen up the producer with a few questions about the nature of his past relations with black women. He's nonplussed and wants to know if I ask all my interviewers these questions. Did I ask Steve Kroft? No.

It turns out he's never dated a hispanic, which I find deplorable. Then I talk about the black women I've dated.

I ask where's the beautiful woman who drove up? It turns out that was Simon, the very male cameraman, and not beautiful at that.

Jackie writes: "Could your latent homosexuality get any more obvious? You should have asked Simon if you could call him Simone, then taken him out for a tofu scramble."

Dear Sarah, I’m writing this from a lonely fishing lodge up in Montana. The past few weeks have been so empty and hollow with us not together.

I know the counselor said we shouldn’t contact each other during our 'cooling off' period, but I couldn’t wait anymore. The day you left, I swore I’d never talk to you again. But that was just the wounded little boy in me talking. Still, I never wanted to be the first one to make contact. In my fantasies it was always you who would come crawling back to me. I guess my pride needed that. But now I see that my pride’s cost me a lot of things. I’m tired of pretending I don’t miss you. I don’t care about looking bad anymore. I don’t care who makes the first move as long as one of us does. Maybe it’s time we let our hearts speak as loudly as our hurt. And this is what my heart says… "There’s no one like you, Sarah."

I look for you in the eyes of every woman I see, but they’re not you. They’re not even close. Two weeks ago I met this woman at Young Israel and brought her home with me. I don’t say this to hurt you, but just to illustrate the depth of my desperation. She was young, Sarah, maybe 19, with one of those perfect moral characters that only youth and maybe a childhood spent ice skating and praying can give you. I mean, just a perfect soul. Kindness you wouldn’t believe and a purity like a tortoise shell and skin like baby powder rubbed on a soft inflated balloon. Every man’s dream, right? But as I sat on the couch praying with this coed I thought, look at the stuff we’ve made important in our lives. It’s all so superficial. What does a perfect soul mean? Does it make her better in shul? Well, in this case, yes.

But you see what I’m getting at? Does it make her a better person? Does she have a better heart than my moderately attractive Sarah? I doubt it. And I’d never really thought of that before. I don’t know, maybe I’m growing up a little.

Later, after we'd studied this week's Torah portion, I found myself thinking. "Why do I feel so drained and empty?" It wasn’t just her flawless technique or her shameless hunger for my insights, but something else. Some niggling feeling of loss. Why did it feel so incomplete? And then it hit me. It didn’t feel the same because you weren’t there, Sarah, to watch. Do you know what I mean? Nothing feels the same without you, baby. My God, Sarah, I’m just going crazy without you. And everything I do just reminds me of you.

Do you remember Rivkah, that single mom we met at Beth Jacob? Well, she drops by last week with a pan of kosher lasagna. She said she figured I wasn’t eating right without a woman around. I didn’t know what she meant until later, but that’s not the real story. Anyway, we have a few glasses of wine and the next thing you know we’re studying Torah. And this lady’s a total scholar. She’s giving me everything, you know like a real woman does when she’s not hung up her career and whether the kids can hear us.

What happened to our spontaneity? You get so caught up in the routine of a marriage you just lose sight of each other. And then you lose yourself. That’s the saddest part of all for me. But I keep thinking we can get it back. I know we can, because I only want this stuff with you.

Shabbos, your sister drops by with my copy of the restraining order. I mean, Rachel’s just a kid and all, but she’s got a pretty good head on her shoulders. She’s been a real friend to me during this painful time. She’s given me lots of good counsel about you and about women in general. (She’s pulling for us to get back together, Sarah. She really is.) So we’re drinking wine in the hot tub and talking about happier times. Here’s this unselfish girl with the same DNA as you (although, let’s face it, she got an extra helping of the compassion gene) and all I can do is think of how much she looks like you when you were 20. And that just about makes me cry. And then it turns out Rachel’s really into the Chafetz Haim and that gets me to thinking about how many times I pressured you about trying it and how that probably fueled some of the bitterness between us. But do you see how even then, when I’m studying the greatest texts of our tradition, all I can do is think of you? It’s true baby. In your heart you know it.

Don’t you think we could start over? Just wipe out all the grievances and start fresh? I think we can. I keep thinking that I think if you’d just try it, I wouldn’t have to pressure you so much. Because who needs all that bitterness, Sarah. It just tears us apart and I can’t be apart from you. In a few weeks when I am back from fishing we should do our best to meet and talk about it. Because I love you.

Luke says: It was floating around on the Net. I just had to Judaize it for my readers so they could better understand.

I first remember seeing Lesie Cheung in the homosexual-themed Farewell, My Concubine.

3PM. Sunday. Regent Showcase Theater at 614 N. La Brea. My stomach is in my pants, not just because I have a growing gut, but because of the Eagles thrashing of the Dallas Cowboys 36-10 and the prospect of sitting through another homo film.

I make some sarcastic remarks about these wonderful Leslie Cheung films, drawing the attention of an earnest Chinese woman who hitches on to my date and insists on exchanging contact info so they can communicate about how wonderful Leslie was before he offed himself a few months ago.

Sitting down, I spot a big bald head which reminds me of David Aaron Clark. "I think that's a friend of mine," I say.

So I walk down and it is indeed Clark, who worked on the Rutgers student newspaper with Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason magazine. Three seats over from Clark is our friend Charlie, an underground filmmaker from New York and San Francisco (same locations for David, they moved to LA together but they're not gay).

"I see your pact with the devil still stands," says Charlie. "You haven't aged a bit." It's been five years since we've seen each other.

A montage of Cheung's career Saturday night (beginning with a 1976 television performance of "America Pie") left Clark in tears. He watched six Cheung movies this weekend.

Happy Together begins. It's worse than I thought. It opens with fuzzy color photos of the protagonists.

"Chinks. They all look the same thought." That horrible racist thought runs across my mind. I don't condone such racist thinking. I'm just mention it so you better understand my moral struggles.

Happy Together transitions to a grody grunting and groaning sex scene. I immediately clap my hands over my eyes. Who knows what watching such material might do to my orientation?

My date fears I'm about to walk out. She must be reading my mind. I'm cursing myself for coming to this smut.

I open my fingers a crack when I can no longer hear grunting and groaning. The two leads are struggling with a car that looks like my van.

Leslie Cheung came out as a homosexual during the filming of this movie. The other lead in the film is putatively heterosexual and according to Clark, you can see the strain at times as he tries to act gay. He convinced me.

I don't sympathize for either character. They are sodomites. They are drunks. They're irresponsible. They litter. They fight. They break things. They argue over childish matters. They lead self-centered hedonistic lives not in line with Biblical teachings.

I constantly have to cover my eyes to avoid looking at the hot man-on-man action.

The cinematographer for the film was an Australian drunk who lives in Hong Kong and worked on the remake of Psycho.

I enjoy the scenic shots of a waterfall (symbolizes the emptiness of man, says Clark) and the southern most point of South America.

Then the last shots are happy ones of Hong Kong while The Turtles song "Happy Together" plays loudly. That makes me happy. Movie over. Thank God.

Walking out of the theater, I run into David and Charlie again. Introduce them to my friend. Then off the two of us go to a quick dinner at Puran.

We're back at the theater for a wholesome heterosexual film at 6PM -- Viva Erotica.

KB says: "You're dating more than me. It's amazing what a few shekels will do for a yid's social life."

Will writes: "I think you are attending the homo movies to vent hostility through the use of words like chinks and faggots. Somehow it would be hard to use such words at the Sound of Music, unless of course you think Julie Andrews is really Jules Andreas - then at least you could mentally scream "faggot.""

Skippy McButter writes Luke: "There is too much racism on your site. It is getting so bad that I'm ashamed to be seen in public with you. That's why I'm not knocking on your door right now."

So a friend asked me to see a romantic film Happy Together by homosexual director Leslie Cheung who killed himself a few months ago. I say OK. Now I find out this nice romance is between two men.

I don't know how many times I've rented "sexy" or "romantic" films to find out that the sex and romance occurs between men. There should be warning labels on this stuff. Many of the boxcovers don't even mention that it is gay.

Dave Deutsch writes Luke: "The Air Supply. The refusal to perform cunnilingus. The "coincidental" viewing of gay romance films. Luke, for god's sake, this isn't an after school special--if you're trying to come out, just do it, already. Do you really think anybody will think any less of you than they already do?"

Jackie writes: "It's no coincidence you keep ending up watching gay sex films. I've never even seen one in my life, and I don't think the difference is that you're 11 years older; you're just drawn to this stuff. Gay love is your magnet. What can one conclude from this?"

Heather MacDonald writes from New York: "Outside my apartment is the constant wwwhhhreeee, wwhreee of tires spinning futiley in the snow, and the krrttcchhh krrttcchhh kkkrrtticchh of people scraping at their windshields with little trowels. How pathetic! How ridiculous! BUT! I don't have a car, thank heavens, so I can kick up my heels at the foot of snow dumped this weekend, already turned into wet brown pastry dough at every intersection, and go cross-country skiing in Central Park. There, in the ball fields where no one had yet entered as of this morning, it is soft dry powder, with a slight crust of windswept ice on it, bright white in the sun, and slightly bluish in teh shadows of the bare bracnhes of trees. And yet, I still can't drive out of my head the obsessive image of the sky as you drive towards Newport Beach from Irvine, an aurora of light over the ocean with a garland of bouganvillia down below. California chases me whereever I go. So enjoy."

I get this question frequently on first dates. At the last one, I said I was womanizer. Bad answer. She doesn't want to date me again.

Skippy suggests: "Until very recently, I was gay. Then I learned that Torah forbids this, so I became straight. Only recently did it occur to me that I could use a vagina much the same way I used to use the male rectum. Imagine my surprise!"

* I've met women I wanted to marry but they didn't want me. Women who wanted me, I didn't want.

"Here is what I want, ready? Fertile (should have at least ten safe fertile years left in her), tall, white, mentally and physically healthy, intelligent, optimistic about life, gets along well with parents and siblings. Is that so much to ask for? Not under the care of a shrink (because she does not need to be). Not a smoker or a heavy drinker. No drugs. Not fat. Not a prude, but not a slut."

Will writes: "Women who fit this description are already married to men who left the starting blocks years before you got into them. You tell him Luke. I can't bear to."

So I'm piously running home from shul Saturday evening. I see two dogs charging towards me. I stop. I see they are on a very long leash. An attractive asian woman is chatting on her cell phone while giving her dogs about 20 feet of leash. I stay frozen.

When she gets off her cell phone, she yells, "Dude, why did you stop? You freaked them out."

I'm angry that I get hassled by people's badly behaved dogs when I go on my walks and the rude owners don't do enough to control their untrained animals.

If I could have another chance to answer the girl, I'd ask, "How do you want to react when two dogs I don't know charge me out of the dark while their owner chats on her cell phone and gives the enough leash to attack me?"

Yaakov writes: "If the asian girl was attractive, why didn't you let the dogs attack you and then you could have her nurse you back to health."

I like to talk to Bernard during Friday evening prayers. He looks about 50 years old. He's tall, solidly built, with golden hair. He's distinguished, perhaps handsome. He dresses in black and white.

He says he grew up in Manhattan and moved to Los Angeles in 1962. He works as a lawyer.

Tonight he talks to me about anti-Semitism. "Fifty years ago," he says, "people were proud to be anti-Semitic. Now they hide it. They're just as anti-Semitic."

I ask him the question Dennis Prager often asks: "Have you ever experienced anti-Semitism?"

He thinks for a minute. "When I was six years old, I bought an ice-cream. A big kid, about 15, knocked my icecream to the ground and stepped in it. He said Jews shouldn't have icecream."

He talks on for a few minutes. "In some towns, Jews weren't allowed to buy bread."

Bernard: "They rounded us all up, put us in ghettos, marched us, put us in camps."

Next time I ask a Holocaust survivor if he's ever experienced anti-Semitism, please kick me.

"That's not a turn-on," is the most frequent response I get from women, whether they're reading my memoirs or receiving my witty repartee over dinner.

LOS ANGELES, CA—Nearly 10,000 of LA's 10,200 Orthodox Jews gathered at the Museum of Tolerance Monday morning to dedicate a statue of the late writer Levi Ben Avraham (nee Luke Ford), who lived miserably in the community from 1994-2004. "Although no one could stand his art while he lived here, Mr. Ben Avraham has touched us all through his national fame," said Rabbi Gadol, who went to Daf Yomi with Levi and frequently referred to him as "that Levi faggot." "Though he was the object of our derision for many years, Levi is truly our favorite son." Examples of Levi's work, on display at the Guggenheim, will be reproduced and sold in postcard form at Negillas Pizza behind which he was once beaten up.

Luke, Please Forgive Us

This is a long, boring post -- even more boring than usual. If you can think of something more entertaining to do with yourselves (poking pins into your eyes, for example) we suggest you do so. At the very least we know Mr Ford will not steal this entry and stick it on his utterly derivative website.

You may have noticed that we are back to being the Luke Ford Fan Blog again. This was not altogether our choice. We were thrilled, initially, to have Prof D.H. Leahy us our replacement moral and intellectual leader. Things started off promisingly enough. Prof Leahy seemed genuinely surprised and flattered that we would look to him for guidance. We emailed him many questions about the ultimate nature of existence, knowledge, beauty, and goodness. At first he responded patiently, lecturing us on the equivocal predication of the outside of the absolute exterior. Not wanting to appear dumb we went along with this for a few days. But when we mistakenly claimed that self-identity was released in and by otherness predicated on the darkness of the other-self he angrily told us we were all wrong and asked "are you people morons?" We said "not that we are aware of, sir." We promised to redouble our efforts (we lied) and the next day we claimed (just to piss him off) that the darkness of the other-self was predicated on the release in and by the otherness of unequivocal self-identity. At this point, Dr Leahy asked "are you mocking me" (duh!) we said "no, sir" (we lied). He stopped responding to our emails.

But our thirst for knowledge was not yet quenched. So we decided to telephone him, first at his office and then at his home. Perhaps being repeatedly awoken in the middle of the night to answer questions like: "is the real exteriority of the absolute outside absolutely predicated on the darkness?" or "is it the shining of the light univocally predicated on the limit of the absolute exterior?" would annoy you too. Prof Leahy started swearing at us (Commie Girl-style) and said that if we phoned him one more time he would contact the police. Unfortunately we couldn't resist. So the next day, bright and early at 5:00 am we called and told him that he was a "f**king idiot." Big mistake. To cut a long story somewhat less long we agreed with the local police department that we would make sure to take our meds in their proper dosages at the proper times and to never contact Prof Leahy again, in return for keeping our asses out of jail.

Now completely lacking moral leadership of any kind we started to explore the seven deadly sins with wild abandon. We sat around the Luke Ford ex-fan building and refused to update our blog for days [sloth] except to come up with bogus schemes (Luke Ford autobiography, Luke Ford gay cruise, etc.) to defraud naive Luke Ford fans out of their hard earned money [greed]. We surfed to LukeFord.com (no relation whatsoever, of course, to LukeFord.net) and looked at pictures of women in various states of undress [lust] for hours on end [gluttony] and noticed that our fat, disgusting wives and girlfriends don't look anything like pornstars [envy]. This pissed us off [anger] especially considering that we all look just like Brad Pitt [vanity].

This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves. And then we went looking for more pictures of nekkid women. This won't do we told ourselves.

Feeling empty (spiritually) at this point we decided to search for a new moral leader. Unfortunately we had left it too late to ask Rebecca "Commie Girl" Schoenkopf. She was no longer answering our emails (whether this was our doing [admittedly we can be rather obsessively persistently annoying at times] or the fault of Cecile DuBois -- who in a fit of teenage anger attempted to reveal our identities but only managed to confuse matters, leading Beccalou to think that the Luke Ford ex-Fan Blog headquarters was located in New York City (huh?) -- we don't know. But we are certainly not going to blame Cecile lest she have another scary temper tantrum like last time).

So we got to thinking, there is only one person who still answers our emails: Luke Ford. We used to email him constantly asking: "Leader, what is the meaning of life?" Every time he would answer: "Sex!" This didn't really satisfy us, after all what kind of moral leadership is this? Especially when you consider that our wives and girlfriends don't look like pornstars. (See above.) But at least he responded to our emails in a timely manner. When you're as needy as we are you really can't be too choosy.

We made this decision last Tuesday. As fate would have it this was the day that Mr Ford wrote the following (we excerpt):

I've been told I'm good. I have thick lips like a black man, not cold narrow Caucasian lips (said my first lover). I'm a jungle bunny in bed .... They don't call me "60 Minutes Man" for nothing. I play offense and defense, both sides of the field, for the full game. I'm the Deon Sanders of lovers.

After throwing up repeatedly, we got to thinking: maybe Luke is right; maybe he really is an extraordinary lover. Perhaps this is precisely the type of leadership we need. Who better to offer love advice than Luke Ford AKA "the Aussie Love God"?

So Luke Ford is back as our "moral" leader -- but not Our Moral Leader. We no longer look to him to enlighten us on the ultimate nature of existence, knowledge, beauty, and goodness. Instead all we really want to know is how do we get to meet (and have cheap, meaningless sex with) hot porn chicks like Kendra Jade. Please, oh wise one, show us the way.

From the NYT: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation is analyzing several hate-mail letters received by prominent African-American men, including N.F.L. players, civic leaders and entertainers..."

I don't understand why law enforcement is investigating this. As the recipient of dozens of specific death threats over the years (none of which were investigated by anybody), I do not understand how law enforcement and the news media go about deciding to investigate something like this (and the Anita Busch case). It seems that it is only when women and minorities are threatened that there is any investigation.

I know many people in law enforcement. I've never appealed to any of them for help with various death threats I've received (Jeff Wald, Dave Robb for instance) though I have discussed some of the threats with the officers. They've recommended filing police reports. Perhaps that is the key. I've never filed any reports on these matters.

I've always felt it was unmanly to go to the police on these matters. I figured one should just suck it up and deal with it on your own.

I was assaulted publicly in July 1999 by Marc Star, brother of TV producer Darren Star. I wanted the police to press charges against him but it never occurred to me to sue him for "battery, intentional infliction of emotion distress" and the other crap Neuwirth is pursuing. The police did not bother with the case.

My friend David Poland says the new movie, The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, is racist because it pictures a white man showing the Japanese how to do things. This interests me. I don't accept the dominant view that anything "racist" is necessarily bad. Sometimes racism, like lookism or ageism or sexism, is wrong and sometimes it is right. For instance, I will only marry an observant Jew about my age or younger who turns me on. You could call that racism, sexism, ageism and lookism.

Dave Deutsch writes: "I won't judge The Last Samurai as art, having not seen it, but you may inform David Poland that if he wants to blame anyone for the "racism" of having white men showing the Japanese how to fight, he should blame the Japanese, since, after all, they are the ones who brought Europeans over to teach them how to fight. In their efforts to modernize and avoid the fate of China (known as the "Punk Bitch of Asia" at the time), they brought the best the West had to offer to modernize their industry, government, and military. The Royal Navy was brought in to build up their fleet (and rather well, considering how well they did in the Russo-Japanese war). As for the army, the French were the first choice, but after the Franco-Prussian war, Germans were brought in. If anything, the film is anti-German, since it depicts an American doing the work actually done primarily by the Germans. This sort of thing won't be happening in the new California."

David Poland writes: "Kinda makes my bigger point... the movie is uninterested in any of the real complexities of history."

In 2001, Dennis Prager sent his eldest son David off to Israel for a year to study Torah.

In 2002, Dennis took his talkshow to Israel and broadcast live three hours a day for five days. He also made a documentary which I watched Thursday night -- Israel In A Time Of Terror.

It held a particular power over me because my friend flew to Israel today for two weeks. I tremble.

Luke's Ghost Writer writes: So far the dog and the little boy are the best part of the simple life I cant believe cathy enjoyed the simple life. The show is about girls who don't care about responsibility and enjoy doing jobs poorly and not on time. If Cecile acted this way, what would you do to her? You were like "I can't imagine ever missing a deadline." These girls are all about the opposite of this. the best part of the show was the little kid taking care of the dog. He's innocent and sweet and just gives of himself.

Dr Ruth, My Moral Leader and Me

Luke, Please Forgive Us

What Else Are You Thinking About?