Oopsies, that's too bad

I just read over some of my blog entries to try and remember what it is that I've been doing the past few weeks.

In the process, I've realized that a lot of what I write doesn't make any sense, to me anyway.

This Is Sooo 5 Minutes Ago, But...

Did I ever tell you about how, on voting day, I voted at my old Israeli elementary school? The government apparently hadn't updated my address from ELEVEN YEARS AGO. What a mindfuck! Gal, if you're reading this, the mifletzet is still there and in tact. Hurray!

In other circumstances, I would've gotten all emotional about going to my old school, but lots of hail and rain started hitting me as soon as I got off the bus to Nof-Yam, and it kind of ruined the mood. I was wearing flats and didn't have an umbrella. It hurt, and I got all wet. Thankfully, some dude stopped his car for me and took me to the school so that I wouldn't have to be hit by mini-balls of ice. But it was still raining when I got to the school so I couldn't go around to look for gogoim behind the building.

Everyone at the school looked vaguely familiar. I went up to some lady and asked which room I'm supposed to go into. She looked at my ID card, looked up my name, and said "you're from Ha'Gefen Street? Go to room 84." Bwahaha, my 11-year-old self's old street. Shablam. She then looked up the room number for this girl and her mom. Girl-and-mom combo told the lady their names. The names sounded vaguely familiar and the girl looked extremely familiar as well.

Later, I asked my mom if we know them and she said "Yeah, that girl was in your grade and you were friends. But you didn't like her. She was clingy and you were always annoyed." Ha!

Anyways, I don't know. This Childhood 2.0 stuff is as trippy as the Pacman/Tetris-inspired tile in my new apartment (more on that later).

Apropos Old Socialist Dinosaurs...

I went to the kibbutz last weekend, and my great aunt gave me these babies:
Kibbutz house shoes! They are super hip, and no one even makes them anymore. Only old kibbutznikim have them. I told my dad that I wear these around now, and he said: "Yes, those used to be very fashionable. We wore them with jeans, a t-shirt, and an open button-down shirt." Pahaha. I just love that this was his response.

For some reason, I feel like these shoos could totes be the next big thing in Austin. I must start marketing them!

It would have been befitting for me to wear these when I voted Meretz on Tuesday. We got three seats in the Knesset. Even less than Chadash. Wow, we suck.

Politics and Me

14-year-old who lives upstairs: "Why is no one voting for the Green Leaf [pot legalization] party?"

Me: "I met some kibbutznikim this weekend who are voting Green Leaf. "

14-year-old: "Really? I thought kibbutznikim only get high on cow shit."

Eshkol Nevo, Ice Cube you are not

After a few weeks of teeth-gnashing, I am finally done with the novel that I bought that one day on Shenkin: Eshkol Nevo's Homesick (which in Hebrew is called Four Houses, and Yearning--translation, a celebration, I suppose).

This book kept pissing me off but I finished it anyway. Now that it's done with, I am a little fond of it. Homesick for it, perhaps? Paha.

The thing that pissed me off most about the book was that the author kept rhyming his sentences. I kept rolling my eyes and cursing audibly while reading on the bus because of this. Who rhymes their sentences? For paragraphs on end? In a novel? Jesus Christ! I. Could. Not. Handle. It. It was beginning to give me physical symptoms and at one point I almost threw up because it was so dizzying.

And Nevo is way fond of cliches. I know, I'm the one to talk, but he doesn't even play around with these cliches or does anything interesting with them. His books feel like Israeli talking points at times. For example, his character's insistence that there are three types of existences--soldierhood, citizenhood, and trekkinghood. This sentence is the literary cliche equivalent of writing a story about four Israeli dudes who have been BFFs since kindergarten. Oh wait, he wrote that book too. It's called One Wish to the Right. I read it in Jersey.

But the worst part is that he always has his characters trash Tel-Aviv (in speech only and not with actual trash, even though that would be more interesting). This bitch character who I never liked anyway was going on and on about how in Tel-Aviv "everyone's gay, or lesbian, or in touch with their bisexuality. And left-wing, of course. As if there's no other way. As if a political opinion is just another outfit, another trend you have to follow, and not something personal . . . There's something comfortable about [this city]. Comfortable like marrying your first high school boyfriend. No one threatens you too much here. No one would throw a rock at you if you drive on Shabbat; they won't say the Oslo agreements are a gamble, and you probably won't see real Arabs in front of your face . . ." (bold mine).

Aaah, she said "real Arabs" WTF. So many dumb stereotypes about Austin-TX-I-mean-Tel-Aviv. You'd think the author would find something a little more nuanced to say about such a multifaceted city. This author is reinforcing a narrative of "Tel-Aviv = rich white people, everyone else in Israel = ethnic poor people." He's writing the Israeli version of the tv show Friends. Let's pretend everyone is white and rich and wholesome LOL. Gah shuttup.

I guess I like Nevo's books enough to keep reading them. We all know that I am a sucker for Israeli cliches at the end of the day. It is embarrassing but I can't help it.

I'm just glad that the rhyming bonanza is over for now.

Tel Aviv, you make my heart sing

I had black coffee today ("black coffee" is a Hebrew term--I think it's called Turkish coffee in English, meh) and got super happy/creative/jittery. I get in these moods a lot when coffee is involved.

I walked around Tel Aviv and felt so happy. It was like the Cleveland 30 Rock episode when Liz and Floyd see a chic older lady walking down the street and triumphantly yelling "oh, how I love New York in the spring" and then someone pushes her into some trash. Except in my case, there was no shoving-into-trash involved! And then I did some vintage shopping, which made me even happier. When I was living in Jersey for a couple of months right before I moved to Jew World, I bought so many boring, Eema-approved clothes so that I could look professional when I started working in Israel, blah blah blah. And I've felt like the biggest Gap-clad loser ever since. I mean, I am M.F.; I wear only shiny purple flowery shit. I should not look like I work at the mall!

So today's xtreme vintage shopping brought a little non-Eema magic back to my life. I got mustard/turquoise flats with bright yellow trim. I got white/black checkered-looking sneakers (not Hot Topicky-looking, I swear). I also got a big vaguely pastel sweater and a black velvet purse with gold trim. Sha. Blam. I'll be looking like some Austin douche in no time!

Tel-Aviv life rules. It's like being in Austin but the bars are all closer to my house. The bars here play amazing music. I thought that in Israel, I'd be knee-deep in bad techno all the time, but everywhere I go I hear lots of ridic 90's stuff and adorbs Hebrew classics. The other day, I went to a bar that played the rap from Space Jam, and last night, this one bar played one of my favorite songs from Ha'Lehaka:

It gets good at 1:56 or so.

And, to top off this post of happiness, AVIV AND I FOUND AN APARTMENT! In the neighborhood where only pretty people live in Tel-Aviv. Our apartment is beautiful. I will post pix when I move in, which will only be in a few weeks. But damn, it is really nice and renovated and we have TWO balconies, and our floors have pretty drawings on them, and I will be fulfilling my childhood dream of living in Tel-Aviv. OMG. The most adorable part of the whole thing is that I'll be living pretty close to my baby apartment, i.e. the apartment I lived in as a baby/toddler.

My only problem these days is that I'm not sure who to vote for in the elections. I'm thinking of writing in Barack Obama.

May Favorite Blogs

Note: I want to change the URL/title of this blog due to sheer Googleability. I haven't been writing about so many things because of Google. I'll figure it out and let you readers know if I decide to change it.

In other news, I just read a fabulous article about Chadash Party in this Orthodox lefty college professor's blog (whaaa??). He said Meretz "exists as a club for some Tel-Aviv secularists and some kibbutznikim who became dinosaurs long ago." (This is, embarrassingly enough, a dead-on description of me, especially when I'm in velociraptor mode--i.e. making hand-claws in photographs).

Guess what? That quote was a lead-in for me to talk about my favorite Israel blogs! Even before I moved to this here country, I was on the lookout for lefty Israeli blogs in English to make me feel better when times are rough (i.e. when I'm not in my happy Tel-Aviv bubble). At first, I found jack shit, but little by little I have accumulated some interwebs treasures.

1. www.falsedichotomies.com: This blog always manages to provide me with insightful political commentary. It's more of a center-left blog, but breaks down arguments logically and in great detail. I wish I could write like that about politics, but I tend to just cover up political talk with pictures of unicorns and puppehs. This was the first lefty blog I found and it makes me happy, damn it.

2. olahadasha.typepad.com: Leila's blog is, well, way more than a blog. It is book material. It's filled with detailed sensory impressions of Israel from "the other side," which means usually incorporating a Palestinian/Palestinian-Israeli perspective, and of course Leila's perspective being an "ola chadasha." She actually lives in London most of the time, though, I think. This woman is passionate about minority voices in Israel. Her blog is heartbreaking most of the time but it's the kind of stuff you just need to read. Again, the kind of stuff I wish I could write, if only I could stare the truth in the face.

Also, thank you Leila for telling me about that protest even though I got lost on the way and ended up signing a five-year-old's petition to build a preschool in his neighborhood. Sigh.

3. nizos.blogspot.com: This blog belongs to a hilarious Palestinian guy who lives in Montreal. I am obsessed. His posts include topics like running off to have sex with some Norweigan guy instead of attending the Gaza protest, and he also posts beautiful pictures of his stamp collection. I love super-crude humor and people who make light of everything while remaining intelligent. It's hard to find this tone in Middle Eastern blogs, but Nizo nails it.

4. themagneszionist.blogspot.com: I just discovered this blog today, and it is the blog I quoted in the beginning of this post. It's another strong, unabashed lefty voice. I need to find out more about the Orthodox left. It is a mysterious part of Israeli society to me.

Hope you visit these favorites. If you can think of other blogs that should be mentioned, let me know.