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Isn’t it great how people who drive SUVs feel they don’t
need to be aware of what’s going around them? It must be so nice to drive a vehicle and not
worry about other cars. I mean, the SUV is just so big that other cars will just have to
get out of its way. So why should the driver care about other traffic? I want to be an SUV driver
and have the freedom to drive carelessly, because, hey, in an SUV, it doesn’t matter.

Well, I’ve decided to revamp my thoughts page — again — and this time I’m going with Blogger. Apparently, there’s a huge community of people who use this on their website. It’s a nice free utility.

So, there’s been some stuff on my mind… some recently, some tonight… First of all, Alissa’s grandmother is in the hospital. She had a massive brain hemorrhage and is now in a coma. The last I heard, they’re planning on taking away life support later today. This makes me sad, and I wish I could be up in New York with Alissa.

Also, I just got back from Dinner and a Movie with [DELETED]. We went to a diner, then went back to Darren’s house to watch Election. It was a strange movie. But even stranger is how it feels to be around these people. Darren’s my best friend, of course, and he and I know pretty much what the other is thinking all the time. No problems there. But, when I’m [DELETED] vibrations of my personality reflecting off other people. And everybody I contact has this. The more “in synch” I am with a person, the more my outward vibes and the reflections cancel each other out. Like Darren. He and I are so in synch with each other, I feel no vibes. The same with Alissa. But with some people, there is definitely interference in the reflection. [DELETED] They all reflect the vibes in a different way, and just being around them feels so much different. It almost makes me frustrated sometimes. [DELETED] Occasionally I meet a person where the reflection is stronger than what I’m sending out, almost like an amplifier will do to a music signal. That’s when I feel quite good about myself. Usually, there is a lot of eye contact, a lot of smiling, and maybe even laughing. When the vibes cancel out, like two opposite signals (what I send and its reflection), I am most relaxed. When there’s interference, I get tense and unsure of myself. I feel like people think I’m a jerk. But I’m not, at least I don’t think I am.

Well, I think this new web page is ready to go up. I hope you agree. It’s taken a long time mostly because I’ve been working on other projects — ones that I’m getting paid to do — but I figured I would take one evening and just finish this off and get it out of the way. :>

The other night I saw Dar Williams and Cheryl Wheeler. I enjoyed the concert, in fact, here’s a picture:

Last Tuesday, I went to a Harry Connick, Jr. concert in New Brunswick. It was a really fun show. The only annoying thing about it was the two girls sitting in front of us. Obviously, they had a crush on the guy and would sing through the songs. Apparently they thought they had something going with him by the way they were making faces at him.

The music was very good, and his big band was great. His arrangements of some of the charts were very original; he ever tried a couple of new ones on the audience which everyone seemed to like. I think I might have to pick up his new album at some point.

Well, we’ve made it to the year 2000 without any major computer glitches, airplane crashes or terrorist attacks. I guess the next test won’t come until May 5th, when the Earth, Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter will all be aligned within 5 degrees of each other. If nothing else, the tides will probably be affected.

New Year’s Eve was spent with Alissa, Darren, Bryan, Michelle, Ali, Pete, Devon, Becky and Rich.

I’ve also been having many dreams recently, which I can’t seem to get into my Recent Dreams area of the web page. I’ll try harder.

Earlier tonight, I saw the movie, Man on the Moon, about Andy Kaufman. It’s hard to form an opinion about this guy. He was obviously on to something. He knew his audience so well — to a point. He was able to make them hate him. He was able to make them love. Andy knew exactly how to manipulate people. Everything was unexpected.

But he was on to something beyond that. The way he viewed life and existence really captured me. Everything Andy did was incredibly clever. He enjoyed what he did, and towards the end of the life, he enjoyed making everyone around him incredibly happy. There’s something very honorable in that.

On another note, the full moon tonight was incredibly bright, in fact it’s the brightest it has been ion a hundred years, due to the close positioning of the moon and the Earth. After I drove home from the movie, I was able to just look at it lighting up the sky for a minute or so. It made me think about the purpose of people on this planet. I had been convinced that there really is no purpose to life, and that it was okay to not have a purpose. Now I’m thinking that there’s more to it than that.

I grew up Jewish. It wasn’t necessarily in my household, except for Hanukkah (though we still received Christmas gifts as well as Hanukkah gifts). I did go to Hebrew School all the way up to the high school level, and I enjoyed it. I had a wonderful Bar-Mitzvah where I led the entire service. But if you were to ask me about my beliefs at this point, I would say that I don’t believe in a God the way it is presented in the Judeo-Christian tradition. I don’t think I believe in the concept of “body and soul.” I do believe in well-being and the need to be at peace with one’s self. However, I also don’t believe in Zen as it has been presented to me.

I do believe in meditation and other methods to attempt to achieve a different (not necessarily higher) level of “consciousness” (whatever consciousness is). I think that sometimes the world needs to slow down to really gain an understanding of the processes of life. I do believe that each person needs to enjoy what they do, otherwise do something else that’s more enjoyable.

Now, I’m not out on a mission to try to convince people to share my beliefs. Quite the contrary, actually, I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts, where they are similar or different. If you’ve got any thoughts on life, don’t hesitate to email them to me.

Wednesday, Dec. 1. Philadelphia Airport. Well, there was a little bit of smoke coming out of the engine. They called the airplane back after taxiing up to the runway so they could check it out. It wouldn’t start. So they threw all of us off the plane. After about a minute back inside the gate, they told us to get back on — the airplane was fine. I was a bit skeptical. We got back on, and sure enough, the engine started. It also started to give off a huge amount of smoke. No announcement from the pilot this time, we were clear to take off. Everyone was a bit nervous at this point. The captain eventually announced that there was a little excess fuel in the engine. The rest of the flight continued and we didn’t crash.

Alissa and I arrived in Los Angeles and Mom and Bill were there to greet us. We drove back to their house in Simi Valley. During the drive, Alissa and I were taught everything you need to know about California, including the phenomenon of slow car chases, and lots of information about O.J. When we got back to the house, we went out to eat at El Patio, a nice Mexican restaurant with Diego, a friendly waiter. We watched the sunset, went back to the house, and hung out together watching movies for the rest of the evening.

Thursday, Dec. 2. Simi Valley. We woke up, and got an early start for the day by getting out of the house at 1:00 pm. We went to Los Angeles to see some sights, including the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Mann’s Chinese Theater, and the Guitar Center. The next stop was the La Brea tar pits, which ended up being a pond with some methane bubbles and a bad stench. We looked for the mountain with “HOLLYWOOD” written on its side, but there were some buildings in the way. We did pass O.J.’s house, my mom thinks. We drove to Malibu, to catch the sunset on the beach, but missed it by five minutes. However, we were just in time to qualify for the fifteen minute early-bird special at a really good restaurant, the name of which escapes me. And after dinner, back home to Simi Valley. The area around there is quite beautiful, you’re in mountains and valleys… and nothing on the East Coast looks anything like it. Plus the weather there is great. After getting back, Alissa and I took off for San Diego to visit Heather. We arrived at Heather’s house about 10:45 or so, and spent the rest of the evening meeting her roommates and talking. Heather is on a one-year mission for the Mercy Corps, and shares living space with nuns.

Friday, Dec. 3. San Diego. Alissa, Heather and I started off the day going to Balboa Park. Some things were closed due to some Christmas Festival they were planning to have within the park, but we did see the Japanese Garden, an area full of exotic plants and flowers, and pretty much every other area of the park except for the zoo, which we were saving for Saturday. After walking around the park for quite a bit, we dropped Heather off at her rehearsal, and Alissa and I continued off to La Jolla. (For some reason, those wacky Californians call it La Hoya.) We found a vista point to have a good look at the seals on the rock and the sunset over the water. (Hopefully, the pictures will come out, and I’ll have some up here soon.) We then walked around the town, which was a very nice little place with lots of cute restaurants. After a few hours, we decided to head back to San Diego. When we arrived, we decided we were hungry, so we stopped off at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown San Diego. This was the first time I had eaten at a Hard Rock Cafe. It was pretty good. After dinner, we headed back to Heather’s house for a bit of socialization and sleep.

Saturday, Dec. 4. San Diego. The three of us got a real early start and got over to the World-Famous San Diego Zoo at about 11:00 am. We saw hundreds of birds, a bunch of kangaroos, a lot of deer-like animals, some meerkats, some koalas, and a panda. No, we didn’t get to see the new baby panda, or her mother… since they won’t be let out into the public until January or February. However, you can take a live peek at Hua Mei my visiting the San Diego Zoo’s PandaCam. We also saw some elephants, more birds, a couple of zebras, and many, many other animals. By the time the zoo was closing, we still hadn’t seen everything we wanted to see. We headed back to Heather’s, then walked downtown to get some dinner. We stopped at the “Toungue Thai Foon” restaurant… and it was delicious. After dinner, we said our goodbyes, and by 8:00 pm., Alissa and I were back on the road to Simi Valley. We arrived at my mom’s house with just enough time for dessert, and for Alissa and I to start getting colds. We were informed by my mother that someone was murdered, and she thought it might have been O.J. But then someone on the news said that O.J. walked over to take a look at the crime scene, so it wasn’t him. Alissa and I then went to sleep in Bill’s son’s waterbed, which didn’t seem to want to heat up.

Sunday, Dec. 5. Simi Valley. Alissa and I woke up, both not feeling very well, but managed to eat breakfast with Bill and my mother. Then in the afternoon, they drove us to the Los Angeles airport where we caught our flight home. Same plane, no smoke.

I moved to New Jersey the summer before I entered the fourth grade, almost fifteen years ago now. It was tough for me since I found myself meeting all new people and needing to make friends. Even though I had been in similar situations before, it was particularly stressful for me this time. New Jersey was weird. Especially at school, where there were no classrooms, only open space.
I was a pretty intelligent kid, and I was not particularly inclined to keep my mouth shut when I knew information during school. On top of that, in fourth grade I wasn’t as socially svelte as I am now. Needless to say, I didn’t make an excessive amount of friends too quickly at this strange NJ school. I was picked on by the boys and picked on by the girls, I think. Well, they didn’t like me as far as I could tell, but I didn’t make myself too likeable. There were always girls I had crushes on — since Kindergarten — and the only way for me to communicate my feelings was by teasing and maybe being a little mean.
In any case, I felt very unliked by this one girl, B., but I thought she was smart and nice, so I teased her. But she didn’t like it and we became very competitive. I remember one concert in fifth grade — we both played clarinet — where at the end of the night she gave me the report of the number of times I squeaked on the instrument.

This “friendly” rivalry lasted into middle school as well, where I was always at least a seat ahead of her in band. She would challenge me to a playing contest (where the better player gets to keep the better seat) but we’d always tie, which means I’d keep my seat.

Now B. had lots of friends in middle school. By this point there were enough people that we each had our own “clique.” I never made an effort to speak to her or her friends, because I just sort of lumped them all together as “those girls who don’t like me.”

Maybe I was wrong. At the last eighth grade dance, K., a member of B.’s clique, asked me if I’d like to dance. I was sure it had to be a trick! This was one of those girls who doesn’t like me. Maybe it wasn’t a trick. Maybe she honestly wanted to spend some time with me. It’s a shame I was closed-minded at the time.

I went through pretty much all of high school not attempting to talk to any of “them;” I felt perhaps they still didn’t like me. But I never really gave them a chance to, since my original attempt in fourth grade, and it was a completely different set of people by the end of high school. But also, by the end of high school, I had my own set of well-established friends and was less concerned about people’s opinions of me than I was in fourth grade. Yet I was still closed to many possibilities of friendships due to the way I viewed some of them eight years previous.

Why do I do it? Apparently I’m not motivated by the money, since there really isn’t much of that (but I’m not complaining). I think it’s because of the look on their faces when they enter the place for the Big Show. Maybe it’s because of the emotion I can see when they’ve put their heart — and more — into their big performance. Maybe it’s the tears of exhaustion and wonder running down their cheeks as they return their horns to port with such authority after the last note has been played. Maybe it’s the energy and confidence that flows from the field as the young people entertain and attempt to be the most magnificent they can be. It could be the excitement and wonder in the drum major’s and captains’ expressions when they are rewarded for their hard work, dedication, passion, showmanship and musicality. But there is something about that stadium, something that makes it different from the other venues…