shmear

Then there's Einstein's 800-calorie Crispy Chicken & Tater Breakfast Sandwich--an egg, fried chicken, and country-pepper shmear on a "potato bagel" with hash browns melted into place with six different cheeses ...

A brioche ($3) comes sliced in half lengthwise, with a thick shmear of cream filling the space in between.

The jokes vary: Some reference questionable local customs (like rolling through the nearly back-to-back stop signs in residential Beverly Hills), others spin current events (clarifying that Matisyahu the musician had shaved his beard, not Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon), while still others contain irreverent puns based on obscure bits of Hebrew vocabulary or Jewish law (like changing Shir HaMaalot, a "song of the steps," to Shmear HaMaalot, a cream cheese that's a step above the rest).

"One of the reasons it's so expensive is because you have to shmear (pay others) all the time," he was quoted on tape as saying.

It feels like everything's going on here: incredible activist work by local organizations and communities, a staggering amount of music-making and cultural work, not to mention an unbeatable bagel with shmear. It's also always so cool to us to be able to build relationships with other Brooklyn- and New York-area bands who care about bringing a passionate politic to their music.

As she revealed in a 1999 column, Brody was herself raised on a high-carb, low-fat diet of "shredded wheat, oatmeal, challah, Jewish rye, and bagels," the latter presumably unblemished by the customary shmear of cream cheese.