One of the best bumper stickers I have ever seen

It would be better if it was on a store front, but I'll accept it.

Has it really been four days since I blogged?
Yes, it has.

Let me give you a recap on what I have been up to. I would also like you to continue to send you press conference questions. I would like to convene the media sometime this weekend. Please get your questions in.

If you have already read about my press conference idea, skip to the next paragraph. If not, continue reading (wow, this is like a choose-your-own-ending novel). In my two years working for the Michigan Daily, few things have fascinated me as much as the press conference setting. Plus, it allows the person conducting the interview to answer questions about anything the media wants to know (or avoid questions about anything the media wants to know). As part of living my dream and providing you with the information you want to know, I will periodically hold a press conference. I need a few more questions before I have enough to hold a presser. Send you questions here..

For the past four days, I have been pretty busy and all over town. Let me give you the highlighhts.

On Monday night, I had my first Burger's Bar (est. 1999[I find it weird that they already have it written on the back of their shirts]) experience. I went with my Burger's Bar tour guide Ilana (you might remember her from Pistons games). Burger's Bar is a Jerusalem-based burger joint that serves up not-undelicious burgers and fries at not-unfriendly prices in a not-unpleasant atmosphere (I also ate there yesterday morning and set a record for the earliest burger I have ever eaten [11:30]. There is something about eating meat before noon that I have never really understood.)


Speaking of unpleasant, I watched the U.S. Soccer team decide not show up in Gelsinkirchen while eating my burger. At least I was eating delicious food while watching 6-8 power forward Jan Koller find the back of the net five minutes into the game instead of sitting somewhere without a burger in front of me.


Tuesday morning I did some work at the SPNI office before heading off to the Hebrew Book Week Festival at the old train station. Unfortunately, the book festival was an evening-only affair. So we decided to head down the street to the Menachem Begin Heritage Center to go through the Begin musuem. Unfortunately, you need to make a reservation to go to the museum.


With a few hours to kill, I decided to show Ari one of the gardens that I work at. On the way, we each picked up a quarter of a watermelon from a corner fruit stand. It was 2:30 in the afternoon at this time and the guy working the store was wrapping tefillin (phylacteries [oh so phylacteries doesn't help you understand what tefillin are, that's weird]).

We sat on a bench across the street from the Belgian Consulate and endulged in some watermelony goodness. Miraculously, I did not make a mess on myself.




On the subject of the book fair and Begin Center, redemption was but a few hours away.

We returned to the Hebrew Book Week Festival. The place was packed with the who's who of the Hebrew publishing scene. We circumnavigated the whole show, and it took us (Ian and two friends) two hours — and almost all of the books were in Hebrew. I think we would still be there if the books were all in English. I would say that of the books that were available in English, we bought about ten percent of them.


I bought a book about Jewish gangsters in America called "But He Was Good to His Mother," one about the Entebbe raid by Iddo Netanyahu, and a book about the Jewish Agency's role in the immigration of Jews from the Soviet Union and Ethiopia (Ian, your appetite for knowledge is about as big as your appetitie for apricots).

On Wednesday morning, I went with Ari to catch the 9:30 tour at the Begin Center. Begin might have been your grandfather's favorite knesset member, but this is not your grandfather's museum (unless, of course, your grandfather owns the museum or is technologically adept). The museum is a tour through the life of the former Israeli prime minister's life from his birth and childhood in Brisk and as a member of Beitar, through his time in a Russian work camp in Siberia, his time in the Irgun, his time as opposition leader in the Knesset, and as prime minister. One of the rooms in the museum was moved piece by piece from his apartment in Tel Aviv. If you have an hour and fifteen minutes in Jerusalem (and know about this free time beforehand), the Begin Center is a great idea.