spike

Here’s a little bit more about my New York adventure this weekend. We arrived in the city at about 11:00 in the morning. It was a little later than we wanted to, so Stavey and Jen cound’t meet up with us unfortunately. We found the TKTS booth and stood in line for about a half an hour until we found out that you can only get mattinee tickets at that time; to buy tickets to evening Broadway shows, you have to wait until 3:00.

So we headed into Toys ‘R Us to shop and play.

We went back to the TKTS booth pretty early to make sure we were toward the head of the line.

After purchasing tickets for Sweet Smell of Success (with John Lithgow), we took the subway into Queens for dinner.

After dinner, we headed back into Manhattan for the show.

That’s about it.

I finished looking through more of my junk that has been in storage to decide what to throw out and what to keep. It’s interesting the types of things that you find, especially when you’re not the type of person who throws anything out. In my case, I found a card that was given to me years ago by someone, as you might guess by reading the card (which I considered typing in for therapeutic reasons, but then realized it’s probably not my decision to do so), was in love with me. I was in love with her, too. What a nice feeling that was.

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This one’s going to be quick because I’m tired. Last night I saw Human Nature (official website here), a strange film about civilization. Today I spent the day in New York, eventually seeing Sweet Smell of Success on Broadway.

First Manuscript Of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony Up For Auction

Well, at least it’s Sotheby’s and not ebay. In any case, it would be interesting to see this score or hear a performance of it, knowing how Ludwig van Beethoven liked to write and rewrite his scores over and over before publication, and continue to rewrite them after they were published.

A while back, it was “discovered” that LvB left behind sketches from an incomplete Tenth Symphony. A contemporary composer took it upon himself to put together a piece using these sketches that he felt would be what Beethoven would have penned. You can hear the scherzo here. You can compare the original sketches with the conjectured work at the composer’s website.

Unfortunately, I was hoping for something a little better for a symphony following Number 9. I’d have to imagine that if Beethoven ever finished it, it would be much more inspiring than the one composed here.

The Big Game Lottery (the link blocked by my company’s proxy server) is up to $220 million today. So, a bunch of us in the office decided to buy into the scam. I purchased two lottery tickets, so my odds of winning the grand prize are one in 38 million. (How do they determine these odds without knowing how many lottery tickets will be sold?) I guess we’ll find out how special I really am.

Tonight I found the missing first few weeks of Blogger entries for my journal here and imported them. You can read them using the archive links on the right side of the page. I also created an about Spike page, including an semi-updated list of the concerts and shows I’ve attended.

In addition, if you look closely, you will see that you can now email my entries to your friends (undoubtedly with the purpose of making fun), and if there are comments for an entry, the last commentator is listed.

For those who are curious, here is more information on Israeli/Hebrew current events and modern history. Check the archives, there’s a lot of good stuff there. The entries in this weblog will give readers a better idea of what’s going on in the Middle East than the information you get from some of the US press.

Bush has declared that he will veto any bill allowing any kind of medical research regarding cloning including non-reproductive cloning. While I can understand some people’s position in being against reproductive cloning (breeding humans to be used for body parts and creating “designer children”) but for him to get in the way of medical research that could save thousands of lives is ludicrous.

Did I ever mention I don’t like politics? I think I have.

When I have some more time, I want to check this site out more.

When it comes to what’s going on right now in the Middle East, my views are based on what I learned growing up in a Jewish society. I’m sure if I grew up going to Arabic School instead of Hebrew School, I would have learned things with a different perspective.

I’m not saying I have any realistic solution as to how to bring peace to the Middle East, but I believe that if people stop justifying things by saying, “My God told me it’s true, and since my God is the real God and yours is not (because He told me so), I am right and you should die for believing otherwise,” and by trying to determine boundaries based on religious beliefs (like in the Middle East and Southeast Europe), people might be able to better live in harmony.

Today is (arbitrarily) the ten-year anniversary of the day I began using my signature emoticon (known at the time as a “smiley”):

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