Real Madrid 3 - Manchester United 1

I'm in Tel Aviv. I'm not entirely sure why.

Let me back up.

For the past week, I've been trying to track down a mobile/cellular internet card for my laptop, as there is zero internet in my apartment. I finally found a company that covers Bethlehem, but they won't deliver there. Nor will they deliver to the LWF compound in Jerusalem. I guess that was my initial excuse for taking a day trip to Tel Aviv, so that I could give them a "safe" address.

What's the real reason? I guess I missed 'civilization', at least as I've come to know it.

So, I hopped the #21 from Bethlehem, did the dance at the checkpoint (everybody off the bus, stand in line, passports out, checked one at a time), and made my way to Jerusalem. Off at Damascus Gate, pay way too much for a taxi to the train station, all the way assuring the cab driver that, no, I did not feel like paying 300 NIS to have him drive me to Tel Aviv.

Onto the train, and no sleeping, because none of the announcements are in English, so I have to crane my neck to find the one sign on each platform that had the stop's name in English.

Arrive in Tel Aviv, wander around for fifteen minutes, finally find the right bus. The bus driver claims the stop I want isn't a real stop. I get on anyway..what's the worst that could happen? Get lost in a strange city halfway across the world wherein I speak neither of the languages spoken?

I could deal with that.

Fast forward, I didn't get lost, and I'm at a bar across from the US Embassy called "Mike's Place." The real reason I came...to sit at a bar, eat a burger, have a beer and talk to a bartender in fluent, unbroken American English. My bartender's name is Elad. We talk a little, small talk, the usual. I'm from DC, he's from Israel, by way of New York. It explains his accent, or rather, lack thereof. He asks if I'm with Birthright, I explain I'm Christian. Conversation continues. I hide my disgust at hearing the name "Birthright," and he hides his distrust of anyone who will be spending a large amount of time in the West Bank. We bury our real emotions underneath the veneer of barroom camaraderie...either that, or we honestly just get along despite our differences. One and a half weeks here and I've already started to default to assuming that everyone is secretly disapproving of everyone else. Welcome to the Holy Lands, eh?

I sit, and drink my Paulaner. I was excited to find it on draft..but this tastes like a hefeweizen rather than a helles. I have my burger. It's huge, and the kitchen understands what a real 'rare' burger looks like. I watch soccer (football...oy) on the television. Real Madrid vs. Manchester United. About twenty minutes in, Beckham's name flashes by on a red jersey, and I realize I must be watching the Israeli equivalent of ESPN Classics. I continue to watch anyway.

I catch myself staring at the Red Bull sign, written in Hebrew, and hearing the mix of Hebrew and English pass around me. Burger's done, and beer's gone. I pay out and leave. Halfway home, I realize I'm walking feet from the beach (and the Atlantic), underneath exotic trees in a country halfway around the world, and I'm not even paying attention. In Tel Aviv it is all to easy to forget you're not home..it looks so normal. So real, so modern. And yet, there's something nagging. Something that's been nagging since the bar.

I'd manufactured this trip. I wanted to replicate what, at home, would've been just another night, but here, had to go two hours and half a country out of my way. As comforting as it might feel for a moment, it catches up to me, and it is all the more apparent just how fabricated it all has been.

To anyone who's worked with me on a show, or seen one of my shows, since about 2001, I apologize, but my "ridiculous obsession with love the real" has yet to subside. It makes for an interesting study in this land; a land where (I believe) the Great Real became even more real, and yet, now, everything -- from the Western makeup of the "secular city," to the charade of security at checkpoints, to the 'friendship' for an American, from impoverished storekeepers and cab drivers in an occupied country -- everything has a glossy shine of falsehood.