The World According to Inez

RIP Mr. Curtis

2010-09-30T18:08:00.000+02:00

One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies . . .

Living My Life Like It's Golden

2010-09-29T00:19:00.000+02:00

It's official: I'm a half century old.

How on earth did that happen?

The obvious answer is, of course, that I just kept living. But beyond the fact that I'm still here, I've tried to live my life as fully as possible (and I've got the stories to prove it). I guess that's why this song resonates with me so strongly. The way I see it, I only have two choices: I can let growing older bring me down or I can try to keep living a life that's full of good friends and good times. Sometimes the choices really are that simple.

In any case . . . HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

I have the distinct feeling that my fifties are going to be even more interesting than my forties . . .

My Sympathies are with the Bull . . .

2010-08-20T12:15:00.000+02:00

The leap into the crowd was simply spectacular.

A Tale of Two Women

2010-08-11T22:32:00.004+02:00

A recent Letter to the Editor in a German women's magazine drew my attention to the fact that this magazine has recently featured a few articles about cheating. One, which I had read, was a kind of how-to cheat on your partner based on how old you were. Apparently, at my age, I should forget about younger men (they'll make me feel old) and older men (they're looking for younger women). In fact, I'm pretty sure the advice was to just wait until something fell in my lap, and then to be happy about it. Most recently, there was a piece, which I hadn't read until the letter brought it to my attention, which was actually a tie-in to a newly released (in Germany) film starring Laura Linney, Liam Neeson, and Antonio Banderas. You can see the trailer here, but the chick that introduces it was so annoying that I couldn't post it. Sorry.

In any case, the article included a couple of those "we've changed the names to protect the innocent" accounts of a story "similar" to the one in the film. In the first one, a woman took a younger lover in response to her husband's infidelity (also with a younger partner). When the husband decided he'd had enough (or more likely, when the younger chick decided that she'd had enough of him), he went back to his wife, convinced her to give up her lover, and they all lived happily ever after. Well, the wife did at least, since after a year, she got back together with her lover. According to the wife, the husband only suspects, and she has worked it out so that she doesn't sleep with her husband anymore. The lies, it seems, are enough to deal with.

Reading this article makes me think of what Orhan Pamuk, in his book Istanbul: Memories and the City, refers to as the "life lottery." You know you've won it when you're a woman committing adultery in Germany and not in Iran.

So yeah, I have been thinking about Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani a lot lately, and even more since the absurd dichotomy of women's lives in Germany and Iran seemed to manifest itself in a women's magazine that offered tips on cheating.

The life lottery sucks.

For information on the peculiarities of the Iranian judicial system with respect to women, please read this. There's a particularly odious bit about men who have been caught committing adultery being given the right to "temporary marriages." Seriously, James Brown must have had these guys in mind when he wrote, "It's a Man's World." For an exclusive interview with Ms. Ashtiani, please read here. And to sign a petition that may help to save her life, please go here.

Thanks Andreas for forwarding the petition to me.

Eva Herman

2010-07-27T08:40:00.004+02:00

Na toll, mit Eva Hermann hat Deutschland seinen eigenen Pat Robertson gefunden.

Diese xxxxxx xxx.

Es wäre doch toll, wenn ihr aktuellster Artikel . . .

Für die Zukunft wurden jedoch Weichen gestellt: Denn das amtliche Ende der »geilsten Party der Welt«, der Loveparade, dürfte mit dem gestrigen Tag besiegelt worden sein! Eventuell haben hier ja auch ganz andere Mächte mit eingegriffen, um dem schamlosen Treiben endlich ein Ende zu setzen. Was das angeht, kann man nur erleichtert aufatmen! Grauenhaft allerdings, dass es erst zu einem solchen Unglück kommen musste.

. . . auch ihr letzter wäre . . . im Sinne von es soll der Anfang des Endes ihre jounalistische "Karriere" sein.

Sunday Morning Sadness

2010-07-25T10:07:00.001+02:00

Sometimes the world sucks, according to me . . . and this morning it sucks big time.

My thoughts are with the victims of the Love Parade disaster in Duisburg yesterday. The story is particularly difficult for me because I suffer from an acute fear of crowds, and the injuries and loss of life at what should have been a happy and carefree event strike me as particularly meaningless. Although it may seem a bit silly to get worked up over people that I don't know, I'd like to think that's what makes me human.

In any case, Simon and Garfunkel are my go to guys when it comes to stuff like this. The marriage of lyrics and music in this song is perfect. So whenever the world gets too heavy, I play this song, close my eyes, and pretend like Art is singing to me.

It helps.

Janelle Monáe . . .

2010-07-23T20:20:00.000+02:00

. . . has single-handedly restored my faith in the music industry . . . which is a HUGE exaggeration, I know. The music industry still sucks, but I think you get the point. In any case, I thought Ms. Monáe's "Tightrope" video was cool, but "Many Moons" is stunning!

That horse made me think of Santogold, though . . .

Thanks for the link babe!

The "Other" Diversity

2010-07-20T11:20:00.002+02:00

Ross Douthat has an op-ed piece in The New York Times, titled "The Roots of White Anxiety," in which the central thesis is that elite colleges and universities in the United States could do a bit more to stem the tide of "white anxiety" by recognizing that diversity isn't just a matter of skin color or ethnic background.

This cultural divide has been widening for years, and bridging it is beyond any institution’s power. But it’s a problem admissions officers at top-tier colleges might want to keep in mind when they’re assembling their freshman classes.

If such universities are trying to create an elite as diverse as the nation it inhabits, they should remember that there’s more to diversity than skin color — and that both their school and their country might be better off if they admitted a few more R.O.T.C. cadets, and a few more aspiring farmers.

Yeah, perhaps the US would be better off if Glenn Beck* and Sarah Palin had gone to Harvard . . . though I doubt it.

I was accused by one of my high school classmates of having been accepted to UNC-Chapel Hill (in 1978) because of affirmative action. It didn't matter to him that my SAT scores, grade point average, extracurricular activities, etc., fit the requirements for acceptance. For him, I was black and that must have been the only reason. He was white, and I had taken "his" place.

So it is with a certain sort of resistance that I read pieces like Douthat's, which may have a legitimate point to make, but in fact take me right back to my homeroom class at John T. Hoggard High School and an asshole in the R.O.T.C. who blamed me for ruining his life.

Whatever, dude.

*He apparently dropped out of Yale after one theology class.

Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66

2010-07-17T15:42:00.003+02:00

While I appreciate the sentiment behind "whistle while you work,"

I can't whistle . . . at all . . . which is very sad, but we'll save that topic for another day. Not being able to pucker up and blow something tuneful is hardly a problem, however, thanks to my wacky iTunes library . . . also a topic for another day.

In any case, I am in a Bossa Nova mood today, which may or may not have something to do with my neighbor who appears to be in a techno mood EVERYDAY. No worries. I've been rocking the bossa nova for the past two hours, so either he has gone out to play or he has succumbed to the power of the mighty Brazilian cool, because now it's all quiet from the courtyard. Yeah, baby!!

So, I'm going back to work now, but leaving this musical offering to let you know that being chained to my desk does not suck.

Happy Saturday, y'all!

Bonus feature: a VERY HOT Eartha Kitt introducing the band.

Booze Bra

2010-07-16T19:30:00.001+02:00

Okay, it's officially called The WineRack, but everybody's calling it the Booze Bra so I feel no need to buck a trend here. Nomenclature aside, however, let's cut the crap and get to the point:

What the F**k?

No, really. What the F**k??!!

*sigh*

Apparently, it only comes in Small and Medium, and that's actually quite practical since it increases the bust two cup sizes once it has been filled (it holds 750 ml—a full bottle of wine) and Large girls don't need those extra inches/centimeters anyway.

The market here would seem to be the kind of folks who . . . aw hell, it doesn't matter does it? I'm sure this is a further sign of the decline of Western civilization and would much rather see Booze Bras banned than burkas . . . the mere mention of which has led (of course) to the completely inappropriate (but normal given my brain) visual of the Booze Bra under the burka.

Whatever.

I'll just blame it on the heat.

Apropros of Absoulutely Nothing . . .

2010-07-16T02:06:00.000+02:00

And You Think Your Job Sucks . . .

2010-07-13T18:15:00.000+02:00

Pity the poor guys sent down to clean out the "four-foot wall of solid fat" in the London sewer under Leicester Square. Quite literally a shit job, if I ever heard one. Story here.

Lemonade

2010-07-12T21:10:00.000+02:00

I'm from the South, which means (among other things) that I believe in the healing powers of homemade lemonade when it's hot . . . and it is currently very hot in Berlin. Now don't get me wrong, after that whupass winter we had, I'm not complaining about the heat, just looking for ways to get through it until it passes.

I bought some lovely looking lemons last week, and I'm not sure what I wanted to do with them, but today they were practically begging to sacrifice themselves. So here's a lemonade recipe for anybody else out there who might also be in need.

Squeeze the juice of four large lemons and set aside. Put one cup (226 g) of sugar in a saucepan on the stove, add one cup (240 ml) of water and bring to a boil, stirring regularly to dissolve the sugar. Once the syrup has boiled let it cool to room temperature and then chill in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Once the syrup has chilled, add it to a pitcher with five cups (1,2 L) of water and the lemon juice. Stir. Fill a big glass with ice, add lemonade, and enjoy!

Makes 6 cups or 1,4 liters

Respect.de

2010-07-10T17:31:00.001+02:00

I saw this poster in a subway station recently:

Roughly translated, the text reads, "What story is hiding behind your clothes?" The campaign was part of an action by respect.de.

Whatever you may think about the imagery, the poster is a provocative way of delivering the Fair Trade message, or at the very least of making us think about we wear.

Well done!

Qwitter

2010-07-08T09:39:00.000+02:00

Rob Fitzpatrick has a piece in today's Guardian about Qwitter, a service that will notify Twitter users when they are unfollowed. [Note: If you were expecting me to blog about the match last night, I can't—it's just too soon.] I don't have the faintest idea about Twitter, but this article is amusing enough. What is particularly silly, is that Fitzpatrick has no qualms himself about unfollowing people, but seems to be genuinely confused when he in turn is unfollowed.

Social networking has indeed "come full circle" as one of the article's commenters says. I'm catching a visual of a guy at a 1960s-era cocktail party (the high point of cocktail parties in my opinion*). He's standing in the middle of a circle of smartly dressed people clutching martinis and Old Fashioneds (do people even drink Old Fashions anymore?) and just as he's about to reach the punch line of the joke he's telling, everyone turns their back to him, striking up conversations with each other. That must be what Qwitter is like.

I'm glad, no really glad, a similar service didn't exist for Facebook. Or at least not while I was on Facebook.

At some point, I need to address Facebook in depth, I realize this. In the meantime, let's just say how awful I think it would have been to receive daily emails with the headline: "See Who Unfriended You!!" or "These People Don't Like You Anymore!"

Seriously, who could resist that?

*This is perhaps also related to the fact that I'm reading a William Trevor collection at the moment . . .

Paul, the Octupus Oracle

2010-07-07T11:46:00.000+02:00

Here's hoping that stupid octopus is wrong about tonight's Germany vs. Spain match . . . If not, he could end up like this:

Ready to be chopped and turned into a lovely salad.

Eggplants aka Oil Sponges

2010-07-06T18:38:00.001+02:00

Last Friday, I made Nigel Slater's wonderful classic ratatouille recipe. It looked like this before it went into the oven:

And all I can say is that the camera was the last thing on my mind when it came out . . .

According to Mr. Slater, the trick is to handle each vegetable separately, rather than throwing them all together like a stew. So each one has to be cooked lightly in olive and then transferred to the baking dish.

Which brings me to the problem of eggplants. If anybody out there (and yeah, I'm looking at you Ed Ward) knows a trick for preparing sliced eggplants so that they don't immediately suck up all the oil the minute they hit the pan, I'd like to hear it . . . or read it. I tried the "drenching in salt and letting stand for an hour and then rinsing them off and patting dry" method, but I wasn't too terribly impressed with the results.

What say you, cooks out there??

Oh, and I served the ratatouille with this. Delicious!!

Happy Belated Birthday USofA!

2010-07-06T09:16:00.000+02:00

As my Grandma used to say, keep living, one day you'll get your shit together . . . Okay, my Grandma didn't say "shit," but I'll bet she thought it really loudly. She, who refused to use the "Colored" toilet whenever she had to go to the courthouse to take care of business related to the farm.

In any case, here's a belated greeting to you for your 234th birthday from Jimi:

It is sent with the hope that you keep trying to live up to the promise of your potential, despite the crap that the bad guys continue throwing at you.

In which our Heroine decides that they can ditch Bond as long as Daniel Craig promises to keep making movies . . .

2010-07-05T23:21:00.000+02:00

My first reaction to this story was "Hell no!" But aside from making me chuckle, in the end I found the reasons for ditching the Bond series compelling enough.

They ignored, however, the worst part of Quantum of Solace: the unbelievably awful duet by Jack White and Alicia Keys for the title sequence. I'm laying the blame for that one on Amy Winehouse's doorstep, though. She and Mark Ronson would have come up with something decidedly better—granted, worse would have been musically impossible—had she not been going through her . . . um . . . whatever it was she was going through back then. In any case, the White/Keys combo, which I heard on the radio a few weeks before the film was released and thought was a joke, represents what sometimes happens when really cool people hook up to work: nothing.

But back to Mr. Craig. He doesn't have to be Bond. He just has to not get fat and weird. And yes, scruffy is perfectly okay:

And indeed, Mr. X also suits me just fine:

Yeah, come to think of it, who needs Bond?

Neo-Nazis and the German National Football Team

2010-07-05T13:44:00.001+02:00

Apparently they hate it. And not just Özil, Cacau, and Boateng, etc., but the Polish contingent (Podolski and Klose), too.

Mesut Özil and Lukas Podolski (image courtesy of dpa)

This is very good news. For while I am cheering for Germany to go all the way, as far as I'm concerned they've already won, if for no other reason than illustrating that Germany is a lot more diverse than people (and not just the assclowns on the far right) realize.

Well done!

Congratulations Germany!!!

2010-07-03T18:13:00.000+02:00

This post is dedicated to Germans citizens with migrant backgrounds who have been harassed by anarchists for flying the German flag in support of the German national football team currently kicking ass in South Africa. What a miserable case of damned if you do and damned if you don't: not German enough for the fascists and too German for the anarchists. More about it here.

Whatever.

To that idiocy, I say this:

Go ahead and wave your flags y'all!!

Ryanair Sucks

2010-07-01T20:38:00.001+02:00

Whether they get away with this or not . . .

Ryanair itself admits both ideas – for standing room and paid-for toilets – were in the "very early stages". It first mooted the plans a few months ago when it was in talks with Boeing over a new order for planes. The order didn't come off, said a spokesman for the airline, but it is now in talks with the aircraft manufacturer over the idea again.

. . . they should be boycotted for even thinking about it. Guardian article here.

Ayobaness! The Sound of South African House

2010-07-01T13:51:00.005+02:00

While this World Cup has certainly been entertaining, here's another reason to pay attention to South Africa:

I was given a copy of the CD today (thanks babe!) and it's a brilliant collection, combining house and hip hop (rapped in Shangan, Zulu, and Zhosa). Details here.

This could very well turn out to be the sound of my summer . . .

A Woman's Nature . . .

2010-06-30T18:40:00.003+02:00

I came across this passage today. It's from "The Fullness of Life," a short story by Edith Wharton . . .

But I have sometimes thought that a woman’s nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes going in and out; the drawing room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they like; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.

How very true . . . and beautiful.

World Cup Lego Style

2010-06-30T09:45:00.000+02:00

I've been watching these videos on the Guardian website, but there's a great interview on The Local today with the young German man who has been making them. His entire archive can be found here. Here's a clip of the Germany vs England match on Sunday:

Hilarious!!

And yes, FIFA needs to get with the program on goal-line technology . . . and better referees while they're at it.

No More Facebook

2010-06-29T23:36:00.000+02:00

The so-called Queen of Facebook has abdicated her throne . . .

Hallefuckinglujah!

I take no personal credit for this. Some weird shit is going on with the planets, according to my former astrologist.

Whatever works is all I have to say about that.

It's not that I'm lazy . . .

2010-01-11T17:47:00.002+01:00

I'm just a bit busy with work these days, which for a freelancer is a glorious thing. So for those of you who show up here regularly, have a look at this . . .

Thanks Philipp . . . and don't worry, now I'm going back to work!

The Unicorn in the Garden by James Thurber

2010-01-08T12:08:00.002+01:00

Enjoy!

It was a Moondog kinda year. . .

2010-01-06T14:23:00.003+01:00

2009 did not suck.

In many ways it was quite spectacular, and yes I'm speaking on a very personal level here. Around the world, the suckiness factor threatened to go off of the proverbial charts, but I suspect that moving beyond the disasters and other mediated madness we were fed in 2009, there was a lot of quiet non-suckiness going on. People fell in love, got married, had babies, had more babies, finished school, started school, cooked, ate, made new friends, held on to old ones, got new jobs, kept old jobs, took walks, read books, wrote books, had sex, traveled far, traveled wide, and stayed their happy asses at home.

I have no complaints about the year that was. It was full of good times, good food, good friends, new love, and Moondog . . . to whom I was introduced by my new love. I've been given a lot of music by my new man, as he attempts to help us find some common ground between soulless computer-generated electro noise and ear-numbing guitar wailing rock.

With Moondog, he hit the jackpot.

So as I say goodbye to 2009 and throw my arms open to 2010, I'd like to feature my favorite Moondog track. Okay, it's not my absolute favorite, but somehow it fits for this year-end/year-begin phase. I consider these lyrics words to live by and am doing my best to do so.

Happy New Year Y'all. May it be full of all of the stuff that makes you joyful!!

Do Your Thing

Do your thing!
Be fancy-free to call the tune you sing.
Don't give up!
That's not the way to win a loving cup.
Do your best,
and opportunity will do the rest.
Don't give in!
Capitulation is the greatest sin.
Do what's right,
what's right for you, to do with all your might.
Don't regret!
What might have been, you might as well forget.
Stand your ground,
and while you're standing there, be duty-bound.
Learn to wait,
and while you're waiting, learn to concentrate.
Make amends!
All enemies I call potential friends,
Calm your fears,
and hope to cope at least a hundred years.
Make your mark!
If need be, even make it in the dark.
Mum's the word!
My sage advice, pretend you haven't heard.

The Book People

2009-10-08T22:40:00.002+02:00

Well it's that time again . . . time for the Frankfurt Book Fair. I can't wait to hang out with The Book People and be reminded that there are indeed a lot of people who still care about books, despite what the doomsayers would have us believe about the demise of the printed word.

So with that in mind, here's my tribute to book lovers everywhere--one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written for film. It's the finale to Bernard Herrmann's score for Fahrenheit 451. The music accompanies the scene in which Montag has finally found his way to The Book People and begins the task of committing to memory Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe. Oh and in case you're wondering, my book would be The Bone People by Keri Hulme . . . and if you don't know what I'm on about then read Bradbury or see Truffaut's adaptation.

Okay, if that doesn't grab you, try this one!

Blogging will resume in about two weeks . . .

29 Settembre (Updated)

2009-10-03T12:26:00.002+02:00

Thanks to my friend Dario, I now have an actual translation of the Lucio Battisti song, "29 Settembre." After reading the lyrics, I can only wonder why my dear friend in Florence misled me about the true nature of the song. Because yeah, the guy meets a beautiful girl in a cafe and has a wonderful time with her, but my friend neglected to mention that the guy already had a girlfriend. Ah well, perhaps the fact I consider this an issue just means that I am a little prude born and raised in the US . . .

Whatever.

It's still a beautiful song . . . see I am becoming Europeanized . . .

Many thanks Dario!! This was a lovely birthday gift.

Original Italian lyrics:

29 Settembre (Battisti, Mogol 67)

Seduto in quel caffe'
io non pensavo a te....
Guardavo il mondo che
girava intorno a me...
Poi d'improvviso lei
sorrise
e ancora prima di capire
mi trovai sottobraccio a lei
stretto come se
non ci fosse che lei.
Vedevo solo lei
e non pensavo a te...
E tutta la citta'
correva incontro a noi.
Il buio ci trovo'
vicini
un ristorante e poi
di corsa a ballar sottobraccio a lei
stretto verso casa abbracciato a lei
quasi come se non ci fosse che,
quasi come se non ci fosse che lei.
Mi son svegliato e
e sto pensando a te.
Ricordo solo che,
che ieri non eri con me...
Il sole ha cancellato tutto
di colpo volo giu' dal letto
e corro li' al telefono
parlo, rido e tu.. tu non sai perche'
t'amo, t'amo e tu, tu non sai perche'
parlo, rido e tu, tu non sai perche'
t'amo t'amo e tu, tu non sai perche'
parlo, rido e tu, tu non sai perche'
t'amo, t'amo tu, tu non sai perche'.

Dario's English translation:

29th of September

I was sitting down at that Cafè…
I wasn’t thinking of you
Only looking the world going
around me
Then she suddenly
smiled
and even before to understand
I was “with my arm under her arm”
walking close as she
was the only.
I saw her only
and I didn’t think of you…
And all the city around
ran to meet us.
The dark surprised us
so close
A restaurant and then
fast to dance “with my arm under her arm”
embraced going home
as she was the only
as she was the only one.
I woke up and
and now I think of you.
I only recall that
yesterday you weren’t with me…
The sun erased everything
and I suddenly jump out the bed
and I run there at the telephone
I speak, smile and you…you don’t know why
I love you, I love you and you…you don’t know why
I speak, smile and you…you don’t know why
I love you, I love you and you…you don’t know why
I speak, smile and you…you don’t know why
I love you, I love you and you…you don’t know why

[Literally: “be with my arm under her arm”, it means to have an intimate relation of friendship or love with a person in Italian.]

29 Settembre, Daydreams, and Marty

2009-09-29T01:06:00.006+02:00

In 1998, I was lucky enough to wake up in Florence, Italy on my birthday. The friends who hosted me during that trip gave me a CD, which was a collection of Lucio Battisti's greatest hits. They picked this gift because of "29 Settembre," a song Battisti recorded in 1969. As far as I understand it, the song is about a young man meeting a pretty girl in a cafe. It's a lovely song and I enjoyed the other tracks on the CD as well. Unfortunately, there are no videos on YouTube which feature live performances of this song, but there are some nice photos in this tribute.

Released by the Loving Spoonfuls in 1966, "Daydream" was my absolute favorite song when I was a little kid . . . well, at least until "I Want You Back" was released a few years later in 1969. In any case, I'll never forget sitting at the breakfast table one morning before school and hearing "Daydream" dedicated to me on the radio. The dedication came from my mom, who sent birthday greetings to me that the entire city could hear if they were listening. What an incredible feeling, what a great song, and a very nice video from Hullabaloo.

And to wrap up this little musical musing on birthdays past, I can't forget last year, when I woke up with the music in me. Unfortunately, the video is no longer available due to copyright claims, but what does remain from that post is my dear friend Marty, who found my blog after Googling the New Young Radicals, thus beginning a transatlantic, southern folk, meeting of the minds. Marty, thanks for all of your stories, comments, and advice. Keep fighting the good fight for justice and equality, which is so desperately needed in the world.

This one is for you my friend.

On the use of the word "Nazi"

2009-08-26T14:04:00.008+02:00

For me, it began with Seinfeld and the Soup Nazi.

While I found the character hilarious, I never understood why the word "Nazi" was being used to describe the soup guy's psychotic behavior. Soon, however, it seemed that Nazi became an acceptable adjective to describe a range of ailments, and since the Seinfeld days I've heard or read the term Shoe Nazi, Food Nazi, Club Nazi, and the ubiquitous: "God, you're such a fucking Nazi," which when translated means, you have a different opinion.

Moreover, the term has been dusted off and used in a non-humorous (?) context to describe the President of the United States. And while that may be hilarious in what it reveals about the complete batshittiness of what's left of the Republican Party, it's still a disturbing misappropriation of a word whose referent should remain clear and undiluted.

Perhaps I'm sensitive because I live in Germany, but each time I hear or read the word Nazi to describe someone who doesn't have anything to do with real Nazis, I get a bit stabby.

To be clear, here are some Nazis:

Humiliation of an elderly Jew in Poland
(Courtesy of www.isurvived.org)

And here is some more of the shit they did:

I fail to see the humor here and so I'm calling bullshit on the use of that term in a humorous context. In fact, I'm calling bullshit on its use in a non-humorous context as well if it doesn't have anything to do with the fucking Fascists for whom the term was coined.

Für Dich

2009-08-22T12:52:00.003+02:00

Was man so braucht . . .

Man braucht nur eine Insel
allein im weiten Meer.
Man braucht nur einen Menschen,
den aber braucht man sehr.

Mascha Kaléko

The Green Party Posters . . .

2009-08-14T17:19:00.004+02:00

. . . that I was bitching about on Tuesday, have been removed according to this article in The Local.

Yippee!!

The way to the heart

2009-08-14T12:04:00.007+02:00

I've been living like a princess the past few weeks, having been fortunate enough to meet someone special who loves to cook. Alas, it was eventually my turn to rock the pots and so I returned to an old favorite, which I hoped would do just a little bit to impress a food "snob."

Herb, Garlic, and Lemon Roast Chicken

4 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
Minced zest of two lemons
5 or 6 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
3 Tbsp minced fresh thyme, or 1 Tbsp dried thyme, finely crumbled
2 Tbsp minced fresh rosemary, or 2 Tsp dried rosemary, finely crumbled
2 Tbsp minced fresh sage, or 2 Tsp dried sage, finely crumbled
5 to 6 pound roaster or capon
About 2 Tbsp soy sauce
salt
freshly ground black pepper
garnish

Preheat oven to 375º F.

In a small bowl combine the butter, lemon zest, garlic, thyme, rosemary, and sage; blend well. Reserve.

Wash the chicken and dry thoroughly, inside and out, with paper toweling. Beginning with neck opening, slip your fingers between the chicken skin on one side of the breast, leaving the skin attached at the cavity opening, Using your fingers in the same way, work under the skin of the thigh and leg, leaving the skin attached at the end of the leg. Loosen the skin on the other side of the chicken in the same way.

Insert most of the lemon-and-herb butter under the skin with one hand, using the other hand to distribute the butter evenly from the outside. Rub the remaining flavored butter inside the cavity. Pull the skin at the neck over the opening and skewer it or sew it with heavy kitchen thread to the back of the chicken. Tie the legs together with cotton string.

Rub the entire outside surface of the chicken with soy sauce, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place on a rack in a roasting pan and roast, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350º and cook, basting with pan drippings every 15 minutes, until the juices run clear when the thickest part of the thigh is pierced, about 1 hour and 20 minutes to 1 hour and 40 minutes (or 20 minutes per pound) total cooking time. Remove the string, stuff the cavity with fresh herbs, and serve hot or at room temperature.

With this I served garlic mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli tossed with lemon juice and butter.

I was a bit disappointed with my wacky oven, which has a very uneven heating pattern. This meant that I had to adjust the cooking time and temperature and pay closer attention to the process than I usually do.

Whatever, HE seemed to enjoy the finished results . . . and I did, too, for that matter.

Okay, so now I can go back to being a princess for the next week or so. Hmmmm . . . I wonder what's for dinner on Sunday.

Darling??

Dr. DJ

2009-08-13T15:57:00.002+02:00

My dear friend Pedro recently had the opportunity to act out his John Peel radio fantasies, and the results were fantastic. Pedro is from Portugal, so unless you can understand Portuguese the lovely DJ banter will be lost on you. That said, Portuguese is a beautiful language so it doesn't matter really whether you understand it or not.

Okay, it doesn't matter to me.

Pedro, if that academic career doesn't pan out the way you'd like, I see a future for you in radio . . .

In any case, the set can be downloaded here. Enjoy!

Playlist

The National: "All the Wine"
Why?: "Good Friday"
Sufjan Stevens: "Decatur"... Read More
Sleater-Kinney: "You're No Rock 'N Roll Fun"
The Chameleons: "Swamp Thing"
Triffids: "Blinded By The Hour"
João Coração: "Muda Que Muda"
Gilberto Gil: "Domingo No Parque"
Animal Collective: "Summertime Clothes"
XTC: "Greenman"
cLOUDDEAD: "Dead Dogs Two"
Guided By Voices: "Tractor Rape Chain"
Thin White Rope: "Ahr Skidar"
Yo La Tengo: "Pablo And Andrea"
Sérgio Godinho: "Horas Extraordinárias"

Operation Optimism!

2009-08-11T18:23:00.006+02:00

Well the day began nicely enough. I read an article on the BBC website that claims women who are optimistic live longer. According to the article,

The research on nearly 100,000 women, published in the journal Circulation, found pessimists had higher blood pressure and cholesterol.
Even taking these risk factors into account, attitude alone altered risks.
Optimistic women had a 9% lower risk of developing heart disease and a 14% lower risk of dying from any cause after more than eight years of follow-up.

I already have high blood pressure, but the last time I had my cholesterol checked it was fine. Okay, that was two years ago, so who knows what state it's currently in. Details aside, however, after reading this article, I thought seriously about my Weltanschauung and what I could do to improve it and increase my chances of living past my next birthday.

Then I went to the Huffington Post.

While there, I came to the conclusion that the only thing that can improve both my outlook on life and increase my longevity is to stop using the Internet. I guess it had something to do with that piece on health care reform and the sign I saw calling President Obama "The Anus of America."

But then I had a nice lunch with my dear friend Silke and all was well with me and the world . . . until I returned home, logged into Facebook, and read a message from my friend Marc about the assification of Germany's Green Party.

Image courtesy of www.gruene-kaarst.de

*sigh*

For my non-German-speaking readers, it says "The only reason to vote Black." Here black refers to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats . . . and the woman of course.

*sigh*

*sigh*

And then I went back to the Huffington Post and saw this, too.

Image courtesy of www.huffingtonpost.com

I guess he was working in the corn fields the week his history class covered World War II.

*sigh*

But then Susanna sent me this and I laughed out loud and felt instantly better. So all of this negative shit notwithstanding, I think I'll be okay. Unlike the women who harbor hostile thoughts and feelings, which eventually kill them, I release mine through the wonder of Web 2.0.*

So, to those of you who do not want to live in a country that provides basic health coverage to all of its citizens,

Fuck you.

To Green Party members who are either too naive or too stupid to understand why some people find this campaign poster offensive,

Fuck you, too.

And now I will get ready to meet my dear friend Lars for a drink and enjoy the end of what has been a wonderful day.

So don't worry Stefan, I'm fine!

*yeah, the same Web 2.0 that's making me crazy in the first place. Whatever.

In which our heroine discovers that life often imitates urban myth

2009-08-04T14:57:00.003+02:00

When I was an undergraduate (early 1980s) there was a rumor* going around about some guy whose wife or girlfriend had superglued his penis to his thigh because he had been cheating on her. One of my roommates even swore that she knew somebody who knew the couple. When I challenged her on the story, she became quite angry, as folks do when you call them on being witnesses to bullshit stories.

In any case, there seemed to be an epidemic of penis gluing back then, but none of these stories was ever confirmed to my satisfaction. See, this is what we did before the internet. We just screamed back and forth at each other:

Bullshit!
No it's not, I know them personally!!
Liar! You are so full of shit!!

Alas, now friends of Therese Ziemann, Michelle Belliveau, Wendy Sewell, Tracy Hood-Davis, and Donessa Davis will be able to scream, "I know some women who glued this guy's penis!!" or "I know a guy who got his penis glued!" and their silly stories will be instantly verifiable. I'll save you the trouble of the Google search, though. You can find the story and pics of the women in the Independent.

And now I'm left wondering if people just go to the Snopes.com in search of myths they can turn into fact. At this point, I'm willing to believe anything.

*sigh*

*The term urban myth had not yet been coined.

You can have Mr. Darcy . . .

2009-07-28T11:52:00.003+02:00

I'll take Captain Wentworth from Persuasion. I'm all set to read it again after finding the 1995 film version (the best in my opinion) on YouTube recently.

And yeah, this is the final scene, so here's your warning: spoiler alert. But seriously, if you've neither read or seen it, shame on you.

Who knew . . .

2009-07-19T17:38:00.001+02:00

. . . that Buzz Aldrin was so cool??

Making of Buzz Aldrin's Rocket Experience w/ Snoop Dogg and Talib Kweli from Buzz Aldrin

Update: Broken link to YouTube video replaced with the link to Funny or Die.

Buttermilk Blueberry Pancakes

2009-07-19T14:04:00.004+02:00

There are some things that are just wrong.

Pre-cooked, shrink-wrapped pancakes are an excellent example. If you don't have time to make some batter (10 minutes?) and drop it in the pan, eat something else. No, seriously, eat something else. In German, pancakes are called Pfannkuchen and when they're freshly prepared they're wonderful. The pre-cooked version that you heat in the skillet? An unlimited residency/work permit couldn't persuade me to eat them again.

Okay, that's probably a lie, but you get the point.

In any case, I spotted what appeared to be nice blueberries yesterday when I went shopping, and so I bought them along with some vanilla yogurt for Sunday breakfast.

. . . and so good for you, too!

As fate would have it, my flatmate also spotted blueberries when she went shopping and having heard me go on and on about how my pancakes were much better than those pre-cooked Pfannkuchen things--especially my blueberry pancakes--she bought a tub of blueberries, too. When I got home from the market, she suggested that I make blueberry pancakes for Sunday breakfast.

Now it's time for a small confession.

Previously, I had only ever used Bisquick to make my pancakes. I'm not referring to the shake and pour stuff I just saw on the Betty Crocker website, but the pancake and baking mix. Okay, not a huge difference, but still! In any case, I recently had another experience with forgoing stuff out of a box I had grown up with and learning to make that stuff from scratch, and now I can truly say goodbye forever to Jiffy's Cornbread mix, because my own cornbread is superb. With that experience behind me, I was definitely ready for the no-Bisquick pancake challenge.

So, after scouring the web for a Buttermilk Blueberry Pancake recipe that made sense and didn't involve beating egg whites, I ended up with this one from Elise at her Simply Recipes blog. The only tweak I had to make was to add a bit more milk. A good tip I got from Elise was to drop the blueberries in the skillet on top of the batter, rather than mixing them into the batter itself. This prevents the blueberries bleeding and turning the batter completely purple. No big deal, but I liked the way they turned out. It also certainly helps that one of the few things I always insist on bringing with me when I move back and forth from the US to Europe is a standard set of measuring equipment for US recipes. A half a teaspoon of baking powder? A cup of milk? No problem.*

Nick, my flatmate's nine-year-old son, was all the proof I needed that the pre-cooked Pfannkuchen debate had been positively decided in my favor. After the first bite, he gave me the look every cook wants to see after trying something new, and then exclaimed how delicious they were.

*sigh*

Before they were drenched in maple syrup

With all of that leftover buttermilk, perhaps it's time to try some homemade ranch dressing. Who needs you Hidden Valley?

*And yeah, I learned this the hard way.

Supermarket Assclown

2009-07-11T20:26:00.007+02:00

Okay, you know how it is:

You're waiting patiently in a long line in the grocery store. You're in the middle of the line just behind the barrier that separates one line from the next. You're chilling and thinking about how grocery stores are practically the same all over the place, since the line immediately to the right is empty and with that many people waiting why don't they open it up. Suddenly it does open up and the cashier beckons for people in your line to move over to her.

Joy!

But before you can take a step, some assclown from the very back of the line runs up and starts putting his stuff down on the belt.

What to do, what to do?

Well, in the little story that just unfolded in my neighborhood supermarket, the guy in front of me calmly walked over and put his stuff down on the belt in front of the assclown's stuff . . . To which the assclown graciously replied, "Sure, go ahead."

I was already behind the guy in front of me (and way the hell in front of the guy from the back of the line), so I placed my things on the belt behind the guy who was in front of me and in front of the assclown . . . To which the assclown not-so graciously replied, "I didn't mean you, but go ahead."

Ah Berliners, famous throughout Germany for their politeness . . .

What to do, what to do?

Well, first I gave him "The Smile." Then I replied, "But since I was already ahead of you I don't actually need your permission, do I?"

Flawless delivery . . . Goethe Institute style, baby . . . yeah!

Stunned, he could only nod and utter a weak, "Ach so . . ."

"Ach so" my ass . . .

You clown.

For Julie!

2009-07-11T11:24:00.002+02:00

Midlife Crisis on a Budget

2009-07-03T12:09:00.010+02:00

After jokingly using the term "midlife crisis" yesterday on Facebook (I was wondering if rearranging the furniture was the extent to mine) an interesting discussion ensued about hot convertibles and steaming twenty-three-year-old toy boys. And as I pondered the madness of middle-aged people losing themselves in conspicuous consumption and meaningless sex in order to escape the inevitable decline that comes with aging, I decided that I'm just not having it.

According to that fount of all human knowledge, Wikipedia, I am not alone.

There is a fair amount of skepticism associated with the idea of a midlife crisis. As typically defined, however, it is a period of transition, let's call it, for people who are between thirty and sixty and experiencing "self-doubt . . . as a result of sensing the passing of youth and the imminence of old age." Okay, the lower figure strikes me as a bit silly . . . as does the upper one, but I'm not going to judge anybody. Hey, if you're thirty and experiencing the imminence of old age, my condolences. And if you're sixty and just catching on that your youth is passing, my respect. More interesting though, is that according to Wikipedia, only 10 percent of middle-aged adults actually go through midlife crises.

Really?

As I considered how it's possible that only 10 percent go through it, but EVERYBODY accepts it as a normal passage, it occurred to me that its relative "fame" is related to the segment of the population that has overwhelmingly come to define the 10 percent. In other words, if the general association with midlife crisis is fancy cars and much younger sex partners then clearly a bunch of affluent men have convinced us that midlife crisis-ing is as much a part of our experience as human beings as puberty.

Right.

Interestingly, the Wikipedia piece also acknowledges the extent to which midlife crises are cultural constructs, offering that this phenomenon is not apparent all over the world:

Some studies indicate that some cultures may be more sensitive to this phenomenon than others. One study found that there is little evidence that people undergo midlife crises in Japanese and Indian cultures, raising the question of whether a midlife crises is mainly a cultural construct. The authors hypothesized that the "culture of youth" in Western societies accounts for the popularity of the midlife crisis concept there.

Now I don't mean to suggest that there aren't serious issues involved with aging. My own head is full of questions, doubts, and fears . . . mostly related to menopause and when the hell will it finally get here. So it's important to point out that midlife crises in women are generally different than those in men. Whether or not there are also differences based on race was not discussed, nor was the issue of social class, but I am inclined to think that a broke black woman is going to have a different midlife crisis than an affluent white male.

Is that even fair?

Yes and hallelujah!

It is probably a good thing that I don't have money or else I might be rolling through Berlin in something like this:

With something like this in the passenger seat:

So yeah, I'm like totally happy that my midlife crisis will consist primarily in reading up on hot flashes and screaming at people for no apparent reason.

*sigh*

And to the affluent guys out there, I just stopped judging you.

Happy 20th Birthday DTRT!!

2009-07-01T16:05:00.002+02:00

It's hard to believe that twenty have passed since Do the Right Thing slammed into movie theaters across the United States. Whether you loved it or hated it, you damn sure couldn't ignore it.

For the crazy-ass dialogue about race it forced on an unwilling public, I salute Spike Lee for his masterpiece.

The infamous race rant

And no, this post would not be complete without Public Enemy's contribution to the film. "Fight the Power" came to define both the film and the summer of 1989.

Word.

I was 9, he was 11. It was love at first sight.

2009-06-29T12:56:00.005+02:00

The selection of YouTube videos I've been watching since Thursday night when I learned that Michael Jackson had died, is indeed quite telling. With one exception, "They Don't Really Care About Us," the choices I made tended to be from either the Jackson 5/Jacksons era, or from MJ's solo career up to the Bad album. After Bad, MJ's physical transformation made it difficult for me to connect with his music. Or perhaps I had simply outgrown him. Or perhaps the music just wasn't as compelling for me as it had been.

In any case, this post isn't about why I stopped listening to MJ, but rather about how I started listening to MJ. In order to create some sort of context for what follows, I offer:

Um . . . yeah, that's me in the middle

This photograph was taken either during the summer of 1970 or 1971 at Our Lady of the Hills Catholic Summer Camp in the mountains of North Carolina. My mother sent me to this camp two years in a row, so that I would have proper "exposure" to white people. To give my mother the credit she is due, it important to point out that at this time I was attending a segregated public school, but everyone knew that integration was on the way. My mom wanted to get a jump on things and make sure white folks had been demystified enough so that when I finally ended up in school with them, there would be no problems, in terms of an inferiority complex or something similar.

So yeah, this is how I grew up, with race a critical factor in trying to determine who I was and where I belonged. This isn't necessarily the best way to grow up, but whatever extra stress the issue of skin color meant for me during my childhood, was more than compensated for with the music of the time.

I was a very lucky little girl.

Not only did I grow up during the heyday of Motown and the emergence of rock music, but I grew up in a household where great music was simply a fact of everyday life. Being only twenty years older than I am, and a music lover her whole life, my mother always had good music in the house. In fact, one of my earliest childhood memories is riding with my mom in her blue Rambler station wagon with the windows down and both of us singing along with Mick Jagger at the top of our voices to "I Can't Get no Satisfaction." Like many little girls, the hairbrush was my microphone around the house, but unlike the rest I knew all the words to everything Aretha Franklin ever thought about singing. As we had no classical music, I would come home from ballet class and use the handle of the oven door as the barre and practice my plies to James Brown.

Wonderful.

I remember my mom taking me to see Marvin Gaye at Brogden Hall at New Hanover High School when I was little, and traveling with her to the Fort Eustis jazz festival with her and my even littler brothers. I was allowed to go to the daytime shows, which included Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, but was banned from the really cool stuff like Sly and the Family Stone because my mother was sure that I would get high from all the pot smoke wafting through the air at the nighttime shows. Um . . . Mom??

So I had musical idols when I was a little girl, but they were all grownups. Cool, but grownups.

Until the night that I saw the Jackson 5 perform "I Want You Back" on television. Now the conventional wisdom says that the first performance of this song on American TV was on the Ed Sullivan Show, which we watched religiously, but my memory is from the Andy Williams Show. Whatever. The point is that I saw the show, saw them perform, and fell in love. Instantly, madly, crazily in love.

Finally, someone around my age, and my color. Hallelujah!

[Yeah, I know what you're thinking: what about that little black boy on Julia? And the answer is that he NEVER did if for me. I may have been little, but I had a notion of sex appeal and Corey had none.]

Then began the work of being a fan. There were 45s to be purchased, and when there was enough money, albums, too, with their covers drawn on with the standard "Inez and Michael FOREVER" enclosed in a heart drawn around his picture. There were also dance routines to be choreographed, mastered, and performed with my girlfriends for the family. I swear I still remember a couple moves from "The Love You Save" and "Lookin' Through the Windows."

No shit.

Prospective boyfriends were judged on their likeness to MJ or at least his hair, with "He likes you and he looks like Michael Jackson," being the ultimate compliment I could have received back then. Of course, I knew how to bring the drama as well. On April Fool's Day in the fifth grade, one of my classmates told me that MJ had died of a drug overdose. I walked home after school and helped myself to some Flintstone Vitamins with Iron so that I could follow him. Taking four Flintsone Vitamins with Iron won't kill you, but they will make you constipated, so yeah, I suffered for my love.

When I was 12 going on 13 and visiting my cousin for the summer in New Jersey, her husband took me to Madison Square Garden to see the Ohio Players open up for the Jackson 5. It was August 1973 and Stevie Wonder had just released Innervisions, which I had on repeat play. I didn't think it was possible for a musical experience to be cooler than that.

I was wrong.

That night in Madison Square Garden (where I was too prim to move a couple rows closer to some empty seats because I thought people might come back and be angry thereby thoroughly pissing off my cousin's husband) I gave myself completely over to the power of excellent music performed live. I was already a fan of The Ohio Players and the heart-drawing object of my affection here was the drummer, Diamond. The combination of Diamond and MJ in the same evening just about killed me. If I had known anything about sex then, I would have been able to make some sort of comparison. But I didn't, so all I could do was grin and laugh and cry and hang on to my Jackson 5 comemorative magazine like a crazy person when some kid on the subway ride home asked to see it.

As. fucking. if . . .

By then I was already in an integrated school where one of the big lunchtime arguments was based on who was in fact better: the Jackson 5 or the Osmond Brothers. And while I dug the hell out of Down by the Lazy River--a fact that I had to keep to myself--there was just no comparison. Even the Jackson 5's Saturday cartoon was better than the Osmonds' cartoon.

*sigh*

I was lucky enough to see The Jacksons again when I was an undergrad at Carolina. They played in Greensboro and a bunch of us drove over for a night of "sunshine, moonlight, and the boogie." Foxy opened up for them and the show was excellent. I was surrounded by close friends and good music, two factors that continue to define happiness for me. Then later after the show, we all got into a huge fight in some stupid bar over whether the US should boycott the Soviet Union for shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007. It was the fight that ended my friendship with Joanna and I still miss her.

In any case, these were the memories that came flooding back on Thursday night when I learned of MJ's death. The tears I shed were not only for a tragic figure whose life in later years seemed to be one continuous WTF, but for my own life, too; the good times, the music, the friends, but most of all the childhood that never seemed as cool to me then as it does right now.

For the role he played in my childhood, I thank Michael Jackson unreservedly. May he finally rest in peace.

The Jackson 5 perform "The Love you Save" on the Diana Ross Show

USA vs Spain: 2-0 . . . WTF???

2009-06-25T16:05:00.003+02:00

Congratulation to the USA football team for an amazingly fantastic win over Spain in the Confederation Cup semi-final match last night.

If only I had seen it . . .

In any case, here's a clip of the goals . . . in Portuguese, also known as the language of football. ;-)

2006: The year that was . . .

2009-06-24T19:46:00.003+02:00

Each time I take a peek at the archive list for this blog, I am always a bit perplexed when I see that there are no entries for 2006. Not one. Not a single one. There's not even a draft copy of some nonsense that might have been one.

What the hell is that about? What was I doing in 2006 that was so important that I couldn't be bothered to say anything at all?

As I attempt to look back at 2006 to see what was going on behind the scenes, so to speak, I come up empty handed. It was no more or less stressful than 2005 or 2007. And bloody hell, I finished my PhD in 2006 and attended the graduation ceremony where I was capped by Diana Rigg, who was the Chancellor of my university at that time.

But maybe that's the problem. Perhaps I was suffering from some sort of post-PhD blues. Simon (my advisor) had told me that there would be a big letdown after the project was finished. I laughed and told him to lay off the crack pipe. I was going to be absolutely thrilled when my thesis was finished and I could finally get on with my life.

What the hell did I know?

My identity had been so tied up in my research project and just trying to get everything right, but above all get it written, that I never stopped to think about what the project had meant to me and how it had changed my life forever. For four years, I was a doctoral candidate in the Stirling Media Research Institute and that was fine with me. I traveled here and there giving papers at conferences in the US and Europe, fully funded by my generous department. I was lucky to have great friends and professors whose support and encouragement I could always rely on and who seemed genuinely interested in the work I was doing, and whose work I admired and respected.

Geez, of course I was miserable when it was over.

I had, and continue to have to be honest, the nagging feeling that I didn't enjoy it enough when it was happening; that I didn't take seriously enough what those four years really meant in terms of my personal growth and development. And while there was a lot of work and frustration and heartache and you name it associated with that time, in fact, it was incredibly special.

So I suppose that's getting close to explaining the absence of a single blog entry in 2006 . . . which was apparently one hell of a year.

Okan Frei

2009-06-20T14:39:00.006+02:00

The Institute for Cultural Dimplomacy (ICD) recently sponsored German-Turkish Week, which was observed with a series of events held in Amerika Haus. I was there last Friday and caught the end of what appeared to have been a very provocative panel discussion on integration. More about that in another post.

I was lucky enough, however, to catch the full performance of Okan Frei and his band. I have seen a lot of concerts in my life and aside from the music, I think the factor that distinguishes a great performance from a bland or shitty one is the extent to which I am convinced that the performer actually enjoys what he or she is doing. I was really curious about how this particular set would go down, since Amerika Haus isn't really a concert venue and just a few minutes before, that room had been used for a serious discussion on identity, place, and belonging with respect to Germans with Turkish heritage.

I would have waved a sage stick around first, if you know what I mean.

In any case, the performance and the reception by the extremely mixed crowd proves that, like football, music really can bring people together . . . at least for a little while. Okan was so incredibly charming, engaging, and talented, that it was impossible not to have felt a connection with him and his music, as well as with everyone else who was enjoying it. So yeah, people were on their feet singing along if they knew the words, or just dancing along if they didn't.

What a wonderful way to end the evening's event.

And no, the attached video doesn't come close to capturing the energy of a live show, but I was too busy dancing to be bothered with trying to record the performance myself.

Soul Man Okan Frei with rapper Essa

I hope he got an "A"

2009-06-19T15:13:00.001+02:00

So this was Bang-yao Liu's senior project and I'm guessing he aced it. Well done!

People have the power?

2009-06-19T10:43:00.007+02:00

The power to dream, to rule,
To wrestle the earth from fools
When it's decreed the people rule
When it's decreed the people rule

Listen I believe everything we dream
Can come to pass through our union
We can turn the world around
We can turn the earth's revolution

We have the power . . .

I'm not sure if this is a universal truth, but it's a great song so here it is. Inspired by the protests in Iran, I dedicate it to people around the world who are struggling for justice and freedom.

For the record

2009-06-18T23:10:00.005+02:00

I am fond of letting people know that I've lived in fifteen different cities and four different countries . . . okay five countries if we observe Scottish independence. At least twice in the last two weeks, however, I have been challenged to name them. That I do so quite easily seems to settle it, but I do think it's interesting that both times the requests came from German men of a "certain" age.

In any case, this blog post certainly won't replace me rattling my life off, but here it is anyway:

Rocky Mount, NC
Wilmington, NC
Chapel Hill, NC*
Big Spring, TX
Austin, TX*
Atlanta, GA
Sunnyvale, CA
San Francisco, CA*
Vienna, Austria
Frankfurt, Germany
Brooklyn, NY
Birmingham, England
Bridge of Allan, Scotland*
Washington, DC
Berlin, Germany*

I could have made this really complicated and done it in precise chronological order (e.g., I moved to Vienna from San Francisco, and after Frankfurt back to SF), but I'm not preparing my CV here, just naming the cities. And now I am embarrassed to admit that I have actually lived in SIXTEEN cities. Between Vienna and Frankfurt, there was Essen. I would erase Vienna and insert Essen, but I need to get proper credit for living there during the fall of 1994. This was when Jörg Haider first scored significantly at the polls, capturing about 25% of the vote in Vienna . . . all of them my neighbors I'm sure, as I recall the way I was treated.

Okay, so it's sixteen. The ones with asterisks represent the top five and they were/are truly amazing.

And yeah, that's a lot of moving and stress and good-byes and hellos and what in the hell am I doing here and why the hell didn't I just stay there and oh god why did I sell [something I now love more than life itself] and where the fuck do I buy [insert something I think I need desperately] and why don't people here just [insert something cool from the previous city].

But I believe it's been worth it. For whatever the tortured path my life seems to represent, it means that right now I am sitting at my desk in my lovely apartment listening to Roberta Flack in my favorite city on the planet and I'd hate to think that anything I could have done differently would mean that this wouldn't be so.

Home is where the heart is . . .

Don't ask if you don't want to know

2009-06-18T13:24:00.006+02:00

I've been single for several years now and have probably reached that point where I'm too old and too independent to be a good relationship candidate. In fact, it's become so obvious that I'm kind of losing track of what I used to be like in relationships. That was clear last night as I watched Sophie, a Danish short film on Arte. In the film, Thomas and his pregnant wife Sophie are on their way to the movies and chatting about friends of theirs who have recently had a child and who are no longer apparently interested in sex. Okay, the husband is, but after ten months the wife still isn't. Suddenly, Sophie asks Thomas if he has ever been with a prostitute. His truthful answer to her question leads to a rather bizarre reaction.

As her anger mounts, it seems that it doesn't matter that Thomas' visit to a prostitute happened long before he met her or that it only happened once. It mattered a great deal, however that the prostitute was black. As they continue walking, they pass by a live sex show establishment and Sophie demands that they go in. Don't worry, I won't spoil this one for you!

Sophie describing the scene to Thomas

Watching the film, I was outraged by Sophie's behavior . . . as if I had never been that stupid. Last night and years ago from being vulnerable and in love, I was convinced that I would never have been dumb enough to ask a question whose answer might break my heart.

And then I went to bed . . . and woke up.

What a difference the light of day makes. Good grief, I think I was the champion of these silly-ass questions and skillfully used them to create the drama that would eventually help me ease out of relationships that weren't working. And no, I'm not talking about "Does this dress make me look fat?" No, these beauties were asinine creations like, "If you didn't know me, but somehow met my best friend would you want to go out with her?" Or, "Do you ever think about your ex girlfriend when I'm in the room or in the apartment somewhere?" The reluctance to answer these questions is of course a given. But finally, after much pleading and promising ("No, I won't get mad, I promise"), the poor fellow would give in, and I would slowly heat to boiling.

Oh the shame, the shame!

There's a lot to be said for growing up. In my case, though, I think there's a lot more to be said for being single.

When films make me buy books

2009-06-15T17:52:00.005+02:00

It has happened to me only once before that a film was so bad I had to buy the book to see if it was remotely related to what the author wrote. The film/book was The Human Stain by Philip Roth. I'm such a huge fan of Roth, I was steadfast in my belief that the horrible film starring Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman had nothing to do with his work.

Well it was complicated.

The Human Stain was not my favorite Roth novel, nevertheless it was good enough to give me the feeling of self-righteousness I had been seeking. In retrospect, the film itself wasn't really that bad; it suffered primarily from atrocious casting. There was no way in hell I was buying Sir Hopkins as a black man who had been passing himself off as Jewish his whole life; nor was I able to take Nicole Kidman seriously as a janitor in the local post office. There was a redeeming factor though, and his name is Wentworth Miller.

*sigh*

Okay, now it has happened again with Der Liebeswunsch, a 2006 film based on a novel by Dieter Wellershoff published in 2000. The English title, Impossibly Yours, represents one of those rare instances in which the new title works better than either a direct translation OR the original German title. Go figure.

In any case, be warned: this post is one big spoiler so if you're interested in seeing the film don't read anything beyond the trailer.

Okay, here's the story:

A married couple (Marlene and Jan) engages a young graduate student (Anja) to look after their house while they are away on vacation. While they are giving her a tour of the place, the couple's best friend (Leonhard) comes by for a brief visit and ends up giving Anja a ride home. He returns a few days later bearing flowers and a basket full of goodies. He finds the Anja dancing seductively to Jim Croce's Time in a Bottle . . . wearing a tiny bikini, of course. She changes clothes, they have dinner, and as he is leaving he asks her if she could imagine being his wife. Shortly afterward they get married, they have a son, and she gets bored. In the meantime, Anja has also become close to Marlene and Jan. She learns that Marlene was once married to Leonhard, and that Jan left his wife and that Marlene left Leonard in order to get married.

Only Europeans can do this kind of shit and still be best friends.

In any case, Anja's boredom increases and her son suffers a terrible accident because she wasn't paying attention to him. Leonhard blames her, she takes refuge with Marlene and Jan. Marlene leaves them alone together to go to work, and Anja and Jan hook up. Duh. Jan buys a flat where they can continue hooking up, Anja develops a drinking problem, Leonhard is fed up, and Marlene discovers the truth. Jan doesn't want to lose Marlene, so he breaks it off with Anja, who doesn't take rejection well. Leonhard, who is a judge, types up his own divorce papers and leaves them for her to sign. She tries to see Leonhard, but he's not having it. He ultimately seeks refuge with Marlene who has left Jan. Marlene, however, cares about Anja, who lives in a grimy little flat after being kicked out by Leonhard. Marlene breaks into the flat (with paramedics in tow) and saves Anja, who is on the verge of death from alcohol poisoning. Anja checks into a clinic to recover from her alcoholism, but then runs away to a hotel on an isolated beach where she continues to drink too much and listen to Jim Croce on repeat play. Finally, sitting on the balcony railing, she leans too far back and plummets to the parking lot below. The film opens with Jan staying in the hotel room where Anja threw herself off the balcony.

I have never read Dieter Wellershoff, but I'm willing to bet that's not really what he wrote. Did Marlene never really reflect on the fact that she was no better than Anja or Jan, or was taking care of Anja near the end her way of doing so? Is it really possible to ask someone to marry you if you've known them for a day and a half and don't know too much about them except the title of their thesis and how they look in a bikini? Did Leonhard really not ever take any responsibility? And do guys really buy flats in which to screw their "bits on the side"? When Anja ran away from the clinic she didn't even take a sweater. Where did all the LPs in that hotel room come from?

What in the world did Wellershoff write?

Perhaps this is precisely what he wrote, but somehow I doubt it. If I'm wrong, I'll buy the film and force myself to watch it every night for a week. That'll teach me!

For Saeed and the demonstrators in Iran

2009-06-13T20:43:00.003+02:00

With enormous respect for Saeed Valadbaygi who is blogging about the violent demonstrations in Tehran.

Respect the Hammer, YO!

2009-06-12T10:02:00.000+02:00

In the Mood for Love . . .

2009-06-11T23:31:00.001+02:00

Simply perfect.

Victoria Park

2009-06-06T14:21:00.012+02:00

I live across the street from Victoria Park, which makes me a very lucky person. What makes me stupid is that I've been in this apartment since February 15 and only managed to take a stroll in the park for the first time on April 30 . . . and that was at the urging of friends from out of town. Somehow I had convinced myself that I was experiencing the best the park had to offer with the spectacular view my apartment offers.

Okay, like I said I'm stupid.

Fortunately, this has been remedied and the park has become my urban oasis.

The view from my bedroom.

Gorgeous, isn't it?

. . . And now a word about Robert Mugabe

2009-06-05T17:56:00.001+02:00

Hate

God looks after babies and fools, I look after drunk people.

2009-06-05T00:44:00.007+02:00

Call me crazy, but when I leave the house headed to an event for which I've paid my hard-earned money, I like to have an idea of where I'm going . . . unless of course I'm traveling by taxi, in which case I do still need an address to give to the driver. Even then I still need an idea of where I'm supposed to be going so I'll know if the driver is trying to rip me off.

But that's me.

Apparently leaving the house with tickets in hand but only some vague idea of a venue's location, suffices for people who have already had way too much to drink. But then again, why do they need to know where they're going, when I'm around to help them sort things out?

Thursday evening, for instance, I was buying a ticket in the U6 Mehringdamm station, when the guy in the ticket machine next to me said in German, "You look like you know what you're doing, can you tell me how to get to Pariserstraße?" Pariser Platz I knew, but I had no idea where Pariserstraße was. To which he replied, "Okay then how do I get to Pariser Platz?"

It was then that I noticed the half full/empty bottle of champagne in his hand and caught a whiff of everything that had been consumed before he went upscale with his liquor choice.

"Well I could tell you how to get to Pariser Platz, but is that really where you want to go?" I asked.

"I need to get to a cabaret," came the slurred reply.

Yeah you and Sally Bowles, I thought to myself, but answered, "Do you have an address?"

"Here," he said, giving me his tickets, which unfortunately had no address printed on them.

Then his date appeared from somewhere behind him. Unfortunately she was in no better condition than he was. "I think it's the street you said before," was her contribution to the discussion.

"Okay, Pariser Platz then."

"Yes."

"Okay, then take the U6 to Friedrichstraße, then transfer to the SBahn and go one stop to Unter den Linden. When you exit the station, just head for the Brandenburg Gate."

"Thanks a lot," they said walking away. Two seconds later they turned around and came back to me asking, "Which U6? Alt-Tegel or Alt-Mariendorf?"

"Alt-Tegel." For which I was thanked again. Watching them walk away, however, I became concerned that I was sending them to the wrong place. So I called after them and asked if I should show them on the large station map where they were going.

"You're really nice," said the young woman.

I'm really stupid, I thought to myself.

As it turns out, in addition to Pariser Platz, there are two Pariserstraßen. So without the actual address of the venue, I couldn't really be sure. I was just about to offer to call information to get a telephone number for the place, when I snapped out of whatever reverie I had been in that had allowed me to spend so much time worrying about their evening.

Convinced that I had been right in the first place, they stumbled off to wait for the train. I stood there watching them go down the steps to the platform wondering who in the hell doesn't use online maps or get addresses or whatever to figure out where they're going before they leave the house?? But I suppose the more important question is this: what the hell does it mean to look like you know what you're doing when all you're doing is dropping coins in a machine??

He might have been drunk, but he was still smart enough to know how to hook me. Respect.

No worries drunk people, I got your backs.

Where you goin city boy?

2009-06-03T19:00:00.007+02:00

Directed by John Boorman and released in 1972, Deliverance is an American classic and one of the scariest films ever made. It boasts no vampires, aliens, monsters, or any other such supernatural beings. No, Deliverance uses one of the most effective horror techniques available: scaring the shit out of people with the mundane. What is more mundane, for instance, than heading off for the weekend to go camping? Not many things, surely. As it typically goes, a group of friends looks for someplace secluded to hang out, tell stories, play music, cook, hike, and sleep rough. In this case, it was a group of business men from Atlanta who wanted to go canoeing and experience the glory of the river before it was to be dammed up. They just wanted to have fun and hang out. If they had been smart, however, they would have stayed in Atlanta and gone to the club to play golf instead. Because what those city boys never imagined, was being terrorized by hillbillies.

I don't mean terrorized in some highly stylized Wes Craven fashion, because this was 1972; budgets were low and naturalism was in. I mean terrorized by people who had really bad teeth and even worse dispositions. People who really didn't care whether you were a woman, man, or pig as long as there was a suitable orifice.

Original theatrical trailer

My refusal to go camping since 1972 is based solely on this film. In response to camping invitations, my argument has always been, "Look, if four white guys can go into the woods and get fucked with like that, what on earth would happen to me??" That argument has worked on everyone who has seen the film, and for those who haven't seen it, I describe it in detail, lingering over the "Squeal like a pig" bit to drive my point home . . . so to speak.

Still, a trip to the back woods might have been worth it had I been guaranteed a musical performance like this one:

Dueling Banjos, Grammy winner in 1974
for Best Country Instrumental Performance

Right, who am I kidding? That's one of the best scenes in film history, and if I were promised something like that if I would just agree to go on a camping trip, I'd still have to decline. That's what movies are for . . . oh, and YouTube.

For the record, my refusal to go camping is not restricted to the United States. I recently turned down an offer to go camping somewhere near the Swiss border. In my mind, camping sites spontaneously generate hillbillies. I'm also convinced that hillbillies dwell in those spaces where no cell phone signals are possible (hence no emergency calls to police). Using this logic, it would be safe to bet that the Alps would have an even scarier version (mountainbillies?) since those are proper mountains and not hills.

No thanks.

I suppose I should qualify all of this by saying that I'm sure some hillbillies are lovely people. In fact, most of them probably are. I just think that it would be better not to test this assumption. They gave those Deliverance city boys hell, and I'm even willing to concede that with their condescending city-folk ways, they might have deserved some of what they got. But certainly not all of it. So I'll just keep my black ass in the city and leave camping to my amazingly brave friends.

Deal?

They call this a beach??

2009-06-02T12:58:00.005+02:00

Full disclosure: I haven't been to the beach since April 2002. This is a problem. In fact, I can honestly say that this is a HUGE problem. I grew up on the coast of North Carolina, and if I had known then that access to the beach would become such an issue later in my life, I would have spent much less time in that 7th period Chemistry class my senior year in high school, and lot more time frolicking in the waves than I did.

It doesn't help matters that the last beach I visited was in Barbados, where I had a three-bedroom house all to myself situated on a rise above one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen. The house was located in the southern part of the island where the the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea met. The colors were spectacular and I would sit on my veranda in the evenings just watching the turquoise-blue of the Caribbean merge with the blue-gray of the Atlantic. To get to the beach I only had to walk the short path that began at the front garden and in five minutes I was relaxing on a fairly empty and gorgeous sandy beach. In short, it was the polar opposite of this:

A beach somewhere in Spain (Photo courtesy of DPA)

Seriously, what is the point of this? How on earth could this be fun? Do people who work hard all year in stressful jobs really have some sort of inner dialogue like this?

Well of course I could go somewhere peaceful and quiet, but I am European and I have a bajillion vacation days anyway, so I might as well waste some of them on an overcrowded beach so that I can go back to work as exhausted as I was when I left . . .

Okay, yeah because that makes loads of sense.

Responses to the Mixed Tape Post from Marty and Wei

2009-06-01T13:48:00.003+02:00

Okay, so I wasn't the only one who thought that the cassette/USB stick combo was the coolest thing since sliced bread. I was flattered that Wei used this post as a point of departure for his own experience with mixed tapes. His post can be found here.

Marty, who is a sound engineer, gave me an education into why vinyl just sounds better, and NO it's not just because I'm old and nostalgic. His comments are quoted here in full:

Love the photos.

Yes mix tapes were a difficult music to assemble. For me it was always getting the spacing between songs uniform through out the Cassette tape. I actually think that it was more difficult than pro tape in having to cut and splice tape to assemble a bumper reel for a show. Watching a pro cut and splice tape in the studio on the fly was an art.

Doing all that work was something special when you gave it away. Its that gap between handy craft of “see what I baked or built for you.” It was the first real technology you could make yourself. And give away. It also represented a lot about you in your taste in music. Like the generation before us old people. You would go to someone’s library to look at what books they liked and collected to understand the type person you were encountering. Upon completion you generally knew if you would be interested, and what type activity from the book titles alone, i.e., do not discuss politics or religion, but this could be good sex.

So it was with my generation with Albums. First encounter with someone and you really couldn't wait to see what albums they had. You could sit and share your music with someone and in the sharing know the type of relationship you could expect from the conversation and selection. There were always surprises. Like, “Oh Broadway show tunes how uh unique.” Yes, I had both versions of Jesus Christ Superstar—Movie and Musical. Still today one of my favorite music scores. Of course Tommy and Hair. Listing to an album today you can hear the warmth of the music we could listen for hours. You would never get tired of music. This brings me to my point finally.

Digital Music. Without getting too technical. Humans can hear in the frequency range of 20Hz to 20,000Khz count from 20 all the way up to 20,000 and you cover the bass up threw mid and to the high treble Freq. Digital music is sampled at 48 or 44 Khz on DVD and CD. Your speakers are reproducing these sampling Freq, Digital Hash, and you are being bombarded by them as you listen. Famous English sound console designer Rupert Neve said these sampling Freq were bad and dangerous to listen to music with. If you remember Punk Rock started about the same time. He related the sampling Freq to a whole generation of angry youth. I noticed it one day in how quickly i was fatigued when listening to a CD and how quickly I tired and stopped listing. I attributed it to age but I remember listing to albums all night and then again the next day.

I now put music on the computer and record it and listen back at 96Khz high enough I do not think my speakers can reproduce Sampling Freq. I can listen longer and enjoy the experience more. Listen to an album, yes pop and clicks but I never tire of the warmth and smooth sound of vinyl.

Isn't that what you share with a friend? George Massenburg said again recently we may in the future, look back at this period in music and wonder. No wonder music was lost in this 44K /48K MP-3 period. Its just terrible to listen to. He is a big advocate of bringing quality back to recording sampling in the 192K 24 bit and above range. Its expensive but it’s what I remember about why I enjoyed recorded music.

Thanks Wei and Marty!

The Mixed Tape Grows Up

2009-05-28T11:33:00.008+02:00

I was at a party last week and had a hilarious discussion with a bunch of music lovers who were all old enough to have fond memories of mixed tapes. And yes, I know that CD compilations and iTunes playlists serve the same function. Symbolically, however, when it comes to the blood, sweat, and tears involved in using music to pour out your soul to the object of your affections, the digital versions pale in comparison. It used to take hours, if not days, to put a proper tape together. Stacks of LPs and 45s at the ready, along with a notebook to jot down possibilities in terms of tracks and to note tape counters so that "The Song" could be found easily when that special someone wanted to play it over and over and over again . . . Of course, I do not mean to suggest that selecting songs for a CD compilation or an iTunes playlist is a straightforward matter,* but the act of putting the mixed tape together--beyond the selection of the songs--was quite a bit of work.

I have received quite a few excellent compilation CDs and digital playlists over the past few years, but they were gifts from friends who were keen on introducing me to new music, for which I am always very grateful. It's been a long time, however, since anyone made me a mixed tape. And even if they did, what would I do with it? I haven't had a tape deck in ages. And to be honest, most of the guys I've dated recently are happy to just buy CDs for me, for which I am also grateful. So it's been a long time since I've experienced that giddy feeling I used to get when a guy reached into his pocket and pulled out 90 minutes of affection that took him forever to get just right . . .

. . . until Monday:

Now seriously, how fucking cool is that?

So yeah, it's still digital, but what it lacks in the effort involved in actually putting the music onto the USB stick is more than made up for in the design. Oh, and the music selection is fantastic, too. Okay, it's slightly stalkerish, but fantastic nevertheless.

Naja, falls Du irgendwann hier landest, nochmals vielen Dank.

*I'll give everyone the benefit of the doubt and just ignore iTune's Genius ;-)

September 26, 1983

2009-05-21T11:25:00.003+02:00

Aside from the fact that this was three days before my 23rd birthday, more importantly, it was the day that an all-out nuclear war was narrowly avoided.

We are all familiar with the images--from comic books and films--of the superhero calmly diffusing a situation that threatens to destroy life on planet Earth. This is the stuff science fiction thrillers are made of, with "fiction" being the operative word here.

Well meet Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov.

Faced with satellite warnings that the Soviet Union was under nuclear attack from the United States, Petrov--with precious little time to react--decided that the warnings were some sort of malfunction and did not escalate the situation, which would have resulted in the Soviets counterattacking. The story of this frighteningly unbelievable day can be heard here until May 27.

Obviously, this story isn't new, but I had never heard Petrov discuss it in his own words. Warning: this 30-minute piece is not for the faint-hearted. While listening, I realized that there were a lot of things being discussed that I really didn't want to know. This includes the speculation, for instance, that one of the reasons that Ronald Reagan moved to towards more open discussions about existing nuclear arsenals, was due to another close call (perhaps initiated by the US), which remains classified. He was also concerned that the more technologically sophisticated the weapons delivery systems become, the more room there is for error.

In short, the fewer opportunities there are for men like Petrov to say, "No. Do not launch."

Congratulations Luke!!

2009-05-17T10:51:00.005+02:00

Remember this guy?

Well yesterday he graduated from Colgate University. So here's a shout out to one of the coolest and smartest guys I know:

YOU ROCK DUDE! WELL DONE!!

Luke, since I'm not there to buy you a dozen drinks or sing obscure funk tunes from 1973, I'm sending 22 seconds of our 7th floor past instead, as a little reminder of some of the silliness we used to get up to.

Luke hard at work . . . checking out YouTube

Looking forward to more silliness in Berlin ;-)

Enjoy your celebration!!

WTF??

2009-05-15T02:54:00.002+02:00

You know how it is . . . you're up late working on a project. You're home alone for the weekend because your flatmate is in France and her son is with his dad. Determined to finish your work before going to bed, you head into the kitchen for a cup of tea, glance up at the clock, and see THIS:

Now, I don't know about you, but I've never seen a clock do that . . . except in a horror flick. And that goes extra double for a German clock, which must be second only to a Swiss clock in precision and all that shit. Soooo, that leaves me with two choices:

The Mercury Retrograde is a lot stranger than I have ever imagined.
There are some crazy-ass German poltergeists loose in my flat.

I'm going to assume the answer is #1. However, just to be on the safe side, I have come up with a strategy for dealing with number #2. Being the brave lass that I am, I made a deal with the spirit of the clock: I'll stay out of the kitchen tonight, if it stays out of my bedroom. I put on some Ella Fitzgerald, followed by some Feist for good measure, just in case it found that Thom Yorke tune (Black Swan) offensive . . . well, you never know, spirits have feelings, too. At least, I can imagine they do. Okay, screw it, all I know about ghosts came from that Patrick Swayze film.

Okay, I did finish my work and I am going to bed. I am even going to turn the lights off (aren't I brave!) and pretend like this is just another normal night, which means that Jeff Buckley will now sing me to sleep. I think a ghost would enjoy that as well.

See you in the morning!!

A room with a view

2009-05-12T20:47:00.003+02:00

Victoria Park

I finally made it into the park a couple weeks ago, which is absurd I grant you. Still, there's something to be said for experiencing it like this . . .

Mercedes-Benz Telling the Future

2009-04-16T10:44:00.005+02:00

Having moved more times than I care to remember, I am always amazed by the curious things I've managed to hang on to. Random postcards, clippings, rocks, candle holders . . . you get the idea. Some of the clippings are collected in a small file folder that travels with me from place to place, giving me a sense of permanence and a tangible past in whatever new surroundings I may find myself.

So it was this sense of stamping my new place with some sort of "This space belongs to Inez" that led me to go to the folder once again.* It was there that I found an ad I had torn out of a magazine in the early 1990s:

Der zukünftige Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten?

It was a pull-out ad that unfolds into a poster. The images were a series of of children and questions about what they might grow up to be. The image above was the centerfold and the question is, "Future President of the United States?"

I remember laughing when I saw it, with a kind of "as if" attitude, but then on closer inspection being deeply moved on many levels. That this child is so precious and tugged at my heartstrings is probably clear. Beyond that, however, lies the fact that as recently as last year, I would never in my wildest dreams have imagined that I would live to see a black president of the United States, much less as far back as the early 1990s. So this ad became a symbol of America's failure to live up to its potential; and for black children whose dreams were restricted by the world in which they live.

Happily, it has now has become a symbol for something else entirely and I think it's about time I put it in a frame.

If all their subsequent ads have been crap I haven't noticed and don't care. Mercedes-Benz gets a life-pass from me for this one. Well done!

*I had skipped this ritual on Bürknerstraße, as if I knew when I moved in that I wouldn't be staying.

La Nouvelle Smooth

2009-03-24T11:56:00.010+01:00

A few weeks ago I posted a Stella ad (the one with the ice skating priests) on Facebook and then spent hours on YouTube checking out some of their other ads. I've always found their commercials extremely witty and clever, which makes me very happy because I love their beer. Now, however, they have exceeded all of my expectations with their new campaign, La Nouvelle Smooth, which reimagines La Nouvelle Vague directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Francoise Truffaut shooting 24, 8 Mile, and Die Hard. More information can be found in this article on the Guardian website.

The video featured in the Guardian article is a hilarious "what if" Godard directed 24. It uses characters based on those from Pierrot le Fou and gives our hero, Jaques Bauder, the task of saving St. Tropez in 24 hours or else . . .

Saving the world is so . . . Bourgeois.

I thought that was hilarious, but then I went to the campaign's website to check out the other two.

Truly hysterical is a reworking of 8 Mile, here called 8 Kilometre, in which a pair of poets battle it out in a jazz club.

Monte Carlo in the house??!

Finally, in Dial Hard, a mysterious woman sends our hero (Inspector Jean Meqlaine) to a telephone booth across the street to answer riddles.

I have holes in my top and bottom, and in the middle, but I still hold water. What am I? Call me in four minutes with the answer or die.

The campaign was created by the agency Mother London and is worth every pound of their undoubtedly ridiculous fee.

And now excuse me while I go off to buy some beer.

Shame on you Mr. Helg Sgarbi!

2009-03-11T11:45:00.005+01:00

The extenuating circumstances of Mr. Sgarbi's attempt to extort millions of euros from BMW heiress Susanne Klatten make for fascinating reading. Was he really trying to exact revenge for the fact that his father, a Polish Jew, languished as a slave laborer in a BMW factory as this article in the The Independent suggests? If so, being paid €49 million is still a hell of a lot of money to collect for the suffering of someone who has long since died.

The point here, however, is not to examine the ins and outs of what type of revenge (if any) is appropriate in these circumstances--I'll leave that to the ethicists. No, the point here is to publicly chastise Mr. Sgarbi for screwing up the perfectly formed image of the gigolo I have carried with me since 1980, which would be this:

and definitely not this:

Image courtesy of ITN

No offense intended, but this guy looks my banker and not a gigolo. But then again, perhaps looking ridiculously hot is only important for an American Gigolo.

Meggings

2009-03-09T09:41:00.004+01:00

Nope, fashion is not one the topics usually dealt with on this blog. There are some stories, however, that are just too shocking to pass up . . . like the piece on the Guardian website this morning about men's leggings, or meggings as they are now called.

Image courtesy of the Guardian

Well in a way I'm relieved to see that men can also be manipulated into becoming fashion victims. Perhaps because their victimhood is relatively new, however, they appear more tragic. But I say, "Right on Fashion Industry!" because if a guy is lame enough to buy "meggings" and think that that makes him cool, then I'm left with the hope that the industry will now turn more of its attention to making men--rather than women--look ridiculous.

That must be some kind of victory for women . . . right?

RIP Horton Foote

2009-03-08T12:22:00.002+01:00

Given that he was working with such great material, it is perhaps not surprising that Horton Foote created such a wonderful screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird. That said, the experience of viewing a film adapted from a beloved novel can be so very painful, that I am inclined to give proper credit where credit is due.

Mr. Foote was a genius.

Trailer

The High Noon Moment

While it is of course true that he was helped by a brilliant cast and one of the most beautiful film scores ever composed, Mr. Foote's contribution to the film can not be overstated.

It's not for nothing that To Kill a Mockingbird is quite simply my favorite film.

Thank you sir.

Marty's Response to the "Slavery Memorial" Post

2009-02-26T15:25:00.002+01:00

Thanks Marty for taking the time to visit my blog and for always leaving such thoughtful comments. Thanks also for giving me permission to feature your comments in a separate post. I have to admit that you are a bit more optimistic about the future than I am. I think that greed is an extremely powerful force, so I'm not sure that this resort won't eventually go ahead as planned. I am glad, however, that your optimism--grounded in personal experience--exists. Perhaps it will rub off on me. ;-)

So my cyberfriend, keep fighting the good fight in Nashville and beyond!!

It does appear and to me feels like someone trying to trivialize the most heart breaking and tragic period in the history of the human species.

Let us not forget that it was pure unadulterated greed in the desire for profit and riches of the few that forced the many into slavery.

Does that not sound like the same battle we are approaching in the coming economic disaster? The battle being currently fought in America is one of wealth.

The Republican plan was to continue to remove all taxes from the rich and tax the poor into the streets to beg. Taking what's left of the treasury and giving it to the banks and the wealthy. At that point you would have near slavery. Everyone would work for what ever money was offered.

That would have worked if it weren't for our President Obama. It has shocked the wealthy in this country that Black Americans and working class Whites carried an election by banding together to achieve a goal something few in this country ever thought would happen. But WE were successful.

That's the past and looking at the future Republicans and wealthy America one thing is coming. Note who the Republicans just made the chairperson.

In 2002 it was noted that Blacks in America had reached a threshold that the next generation of Black Americans were situated to inherit the the largest amount of money ever seen in this country.

Inez you have just seen and recognized how the Republicans plan to get power back to the rich. Nice Work....

How do you break the ties with the Democratic party Blacks have had since rich White American gave up slavery? Tell them you going to tax the first inheritance many have ever seen.

They are banking that wealthy Blacks will be a greedy and self-centered as Wealthy whites.

Your outrage Inez may be the deciding factor.

All people. Let me say that again. All Humans on the face of the Earth were descended from two Black people out of Africa.
Whites we are genetic mutants of
million's of years of evolution.

To say you know the pain of the Black race is impossible if you do not have the genetics to back it up. My mother brought her Black boyfriend to my high school functions. Yes in the South that was a painful experience for me. But one now that made me the person I am today. I didn't fully understand at the time but it changed many people for the better, me as well.

Why will the Jacksons in Nigeria and the Republicans in America fail in their endeavors to separate the Black race like they have the White, one in to wealthy the other average working class.

They fail to take in to consideration of the millions of years of the Black race of tribes and families and community in the face of overwhelming pain and suffering have made them not only Different race but dare I say a genetically superior one. Tune in in 100 years to find out.

For now, continue to look for the signs of the attempt to divide the Black Race into have and have not.

My personal opinion is this Jacksonville in Nigeria will fail for the very reason stated above. My hope the Black race will continue to say what they have said through history. Its not about sipping champagne and re-writing history at a golf course in Nigeria. Its about community and family helping your neighbors.

My mother would say to me. "Feel privileged that you are accepted with open arms in the Black community, people I have always prided myself in knowing. For it was your Grandfather that denied the basic rights deserving of all humans to the Black community in this County."

I was privileged and still am. Please God I pray for one thing: never again divide us By race color creed sexuality or national origin.

Moreover by Separating us by Greed for the riches of wealth.

marty

Loking for love and getting dead chickens

2009-02-19T08:51:00.005+01:00

There's another one of those bizarre "woman goes looking for love and finds creepiness instead" stories in The Local today. After being "wooed" online by a man she believed to be a 33 year-old PhD student, a German woman set off for New Zealand to begin a new life. Rather than being met at the airport by the intellectual dreamboy with whom she had been corresponding since October, however, she was greeted by "old man" who lived in a "horror house."

Okay, first three things:

"54" is not old. "84" or "94" perhaps, but not "54." Who writes this stuff anyway, teenagers?
Moving to NZ after a four-month virtual relationship? Seriously?
She's crazy.

Finding love on the internet is possible; I know people who've done it and are now married and living happily ever after. The problem is NOT the internet itself, but critical thinking skills that are needed whether you're hunting at the neighborhood bar or on MySpace.

The decision to remain in the "horror house" and sleep in a "filthy bed" with her host for six days--despite having had many opportunities to escape--because she was "fascinated," suggests to me that she's a woman who makes seriously bad choices.

I don't think we can blame the Internet for that.

Luckily, she was "rescued" after a guy she met on the plane raised the alarm when she didn't show up for a date they had planned. Wow. She hadn't even met her fake PhD student and she was already planning to hook up with yet another stranger. Okay, it was a long flight.

I wonder if she went back to Leipzig (perhaps too embarrassing) or if she decided to stay in New Zealand with Bachelor #2. Seriously, I'm pulling for this pairing. I want them to get married and tell their children the story of how they met:

"Daddy met Mommy on a plane. She was on her way to meet a man. But he was a bad man and his house was full of dead chickens, so Daddy rescued her."

Lovely.

Marlon Jackson's $3.4 Billion Slavery "Memorial"

2009-02-16T08:34:00.002+01:00

I have long since given up on the notion that the world can't get any more ridiculous. Yes, despite everything, I am sometimes still quite naive. In any case, another story always comes along to remind me that the growth rate for ridiculousness is apparently exponential and I should just abandon whatever shreds of naiveté I have left.

Case in point . . .

There is an article this morning on the BBC website about Marlon Jackson's plans to build a $3.4 billion slavery "memorial" in Nigeria. This story is disgusting on so many levels . . . but i'll pick one:

Visitors will be able to see the route their ancestors walked, shackled together as they were whipped toward the 'point of no-return.'

They can then retire to their five-star hotel to drink cocktails by the pool.

Because heaven knows after seeing the route my ancestors walked, I'd certainly need a fucking drink in a fucking 5-star hotel.

Of course, this is being marketed as both providing jobs in Nigeria and connecting African-Americans with their history. Both of those things may indeed be true, which doesn't make the project any less reprehensible.

If Marlon Jackson truly wants to go down in history as an assclown who was eager to profit from one of the most painful chapters in world history--and in such a crass 5-star fashion--then by all means he should proceed as planned. Alternatively, he could take that $3.4 billion and use it to fight modern-day slavery as it continues to be practiced in Africa and elsewhere in the world.

But then again, perhaps the world does need another golf course and its first Jackson Five museum:

Visitors will be able to pay their respects at the site of a mass grave for those who died before boarding ships across the Atlantic Ocean.
And then travel a few yards in a buggy to play a round of golf.
They can visit a replica slave ship to see the conditions Africans suffered, before visiting the world's only museum dedicated to the memory of the Jackson Five.*

Like I said before, disgusting . . . truly disgusting.

*Italics are mine.

Oren Lavie

2009-02-11T22:36:00.002+01:00

I absolutely love this song and accompanying video.

According to Oren's MySpace page, the video consists of over 3,000 still photographs, the storyboard took four weeks to complete, and the actual shooting took only two days.

I heard the song for the first time today, so I'm ignoring the bit I just read that said it was featured in a Chevrolet commercial . . . which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'm just ignoring it.

Anton Chekhov

2009-02-08T13:38:00.004+01:00

The way these things typically go is that one thing leads to another which leads to yet another and so on and so on . . .

For example, I was just watching Druckfrisch, a show about new books hosted by Denis Scheck. He began with a segment on "change" in the US and went on to discuss two of Obama's favorite authors, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. I read Bellow when I was really too young to understand what I was reading; a mistake I didn't make with Roth. So I was more than interested in his discussion of the latest Roth novel to appear in Germany, Empörung (Indignation). I was a bit annoyed because this book had slipped off of my radar, so I went searching for reviews, etc.

That's how I found the following quote from Anton Chekhov, which was in the review* of Indignation in The New York Review of Books:

There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her claws sooner or later, trouble will come for him—disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others. (Italics are mine.)

I love Chekhow, and he's one of my go-to guys when I'm feeling miserable and want to feel worse. This quote is taken from a story called "Gooseberries," which is in the collection The Wife and Other Stories. This passage makes clear that things haven't really changed that much since 1898.

It also makes me want to swing my hammer.

*It's a very detailed review, so if you're interested in reading Indignation and don't want to know everything that happens, skip it.

Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud

2009-02-07T13:39:00.004+01:00

It's a dreary Saturday afternoon in Berlin, and I'd love to be curled up on my sofa with a blanket and a cup of tea watching gorgeous French people being crazy in love:

Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud Trailer

Instead, I'm sitting at my desk working. I can't even play the (Miles Davis) soundtrack since it's in storage in DC.

Since I'm a freelancer, however, I will stop complaining immediately. Having work on my desk can only ever be a very good thing . . . a glorious thing . . . a truly magnificent thing . . .

*Sigh*

Auf der Strecke

2009-02-06T12:04:00.004+01:00

Once in a while a film grabs me and won't let me go.

This was the case with Dare mo shiranai (Nobody Knows), Absolutely Positive, and Iklimler (Climates). Each of these films left me reeling, but at the same time hungry for more. Their power rests not only in their beautiful aesthetics and stunning performances, but also in the directors' ability to tell simple, but enormously moving stories with protagonists that make you care about what will happen to them next.

Now I have another film to add to this list: Auf der Strecke, a short film by Swiss director Reto Caffi, which tells a heartbreaking story of love and the terrible impact of a bad choice.

I saw this film on Arte a couple weeks ago, and simply could not stop thinking about it. I won't go into too much detail here, because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it. Everybody deserves to have the same "Oh fuck .... Nooooooo!!!" moment that I had. Suffice it to say that the protagonist is a good guy who makes a bad choice because of love. The repercussions bring the woman he loves closer, but now make that love impossible.

Confused? Sorry, but you do need to see it for yourself.

I'm very excited to see that the film has been nominated for an Oscar in the category of short films.* So keep your fingers crossed for Mr. Caffi; this one really deserves a win.

*Honestly, this is always the BEST category in the Oscars, anyway.

Jumbo Hostel

2009-02-03T11:36:00.006+01:00

As if Sweden weren't cool enough, I recently saw a report about a 747 that has been converted into a hostel. Located at Arlanda Airport, about 42 km north of Stockholm, the Jumbo Hostel is a fascinating example of creative thinking. And honestly, if you have to stay at an airport hotel, what could be cooler than staying in one that used to fly?

Cockpit Suite

Double room

Amazing transformation

I wouldn't want to spend my entire visit to Stockholm having to travel back and forth to the airport, but a couple nights in a converted 747 would definitely be on the agenda.

Details about room types and prices are available here.

Prostitutes and Tax-deductible Corsets

2009-01-31T14:01:00.005+01:00

I have always been fascinated with the prostitutes on Oranienburgerstraße. Yeah, they're beautiful, but that's not the point. Most of them look like they could kick your ass with little or no effort. And then there are the corsets, which create the most amazing tiny-waist effect I have ever seen outside of that Research magazine issue about weird body stuff.

In any case, the article in The Local exploring the popularity of the corset in Berlin's prostitution scene is interesting enough, but to the extent that it reminded me that the oldest profession is legal in Germany and the corsets are, therefore, tax-deductible . . . well, let's just say it made me a bit crazy. No, I don't have anything against prostitutes deducting their corsets as legitimate business expenses, but it just reminded me that I forgot to save my receipt for the colored pencils -- essential for a copy editor -- I bought a couple weeks ago.

I could certainly learn to pay more attention to my business expenses from these ladies, that's for sure.

Stuff I Don't Really Get: SMS on the TV

2009-01-29T11:27:00.004+01:00

This is just bizarre.

The way it works is that you send a text message and your message and photo, if you like, appear on television. Each text message costs 1,99€. Aside from the idea that people are willing to part with money for this, which is bizarre enough, the animation here is really weird and is accompanied by really weird music.

While the rabbit is waiting for text messages to arrive, he taps his big foot and shows his displeasure if he has to wait too long. Then when a message arrives, he hops up and down, whips it out of the kettle, and reads it. He doesn't actually read it aloud, but the text appears on the screen, like this:

Okay, I have to translate this message because it does shed some light on what's going on here.

No one loves you as much as I do. My darling Diana L, please talk to me. Forget everything that happened. Let's begin our love. Your A.

So apparently A screwed up and perhaps s/he thought that the apology would work better if Diana L saw it on television at 2:53 in the morning and knew that it cost 1,99€.

Like I said, bizarre.

Hair India

2009-01-26T12:39:00.005+01:00

Hair India is a documentary from B&B Film that traces the journey of hair: from a temple in India, to a factory in Italy, to salons around the world. The film's strength lies in the filmmakers' ability to expose this remarkable journey with humanity: the Indian women and girls who donate their hair to the temple are not exploited; the factory owners in Italy who make the extensions and the Indian women who purchase them are not demonized.

Nevertheless, it's impossible to watch this film and not come to the conclusion that there's something horribly wrong here. Perhaps it makes sense that hair lying around in a temple is a business opportunity, but I can't get past the feeling that these poor women really thought that their sacrifice was about something else.

As for Sangeeta, the Indian woman in the film who wants the extensions, it is too easy to write her off as shallow and/or ignorant, but there is also an interesting point being made here about notions of beauty in India. The pressure on women to conform to globalized beauty standards is huge and cannot be ignored. Apparently, for instance, Bollywood stars were previously quite voluptuous, but now the beauty ideal is based on Hollywood standards, which of course means skinny . . . very skinny. I felt pity for Sangeeta because she appears to be trapped; both in her belief that having long hair will make it easier to find a partner, and in a society that seems to validate that belief. I was also struck by the filmmakers' choice to make the consumer an Indian woman. That allows the hair to come home, so to speak, and it exposes high-society life in India, making the contrast between the source and the consumer that much more drastic.

Hair India is a brilliant documentary and I salute the filmmakers for their work.

Images courtesy of Arte.

Bullshit They Can Believe In

2009-01-23T11:33:00.002+01:00

I'll confess to gleeful curiosity when I saw the headline -- "Bush loyalists seethe over Obama's address" -- in yesteday's International Herald Tribune. While watching the speech, I was trying to imagine how Bush and his entourage must have felt being on the receiving end of that oh-so eloquent smackdown. The article confirmed what I suspected: Bush couldn't really be bothered, but his mates were not too pleased.

I was ready to dismiss much of the article as the blah, blah, blah I was expecting, but then I read the quote from Marc Thiessen that had appeared in Washington Post.

As the new president receives his intelligence briefings, certain facts must now be apparent: Al-Qaeda is actively working to attack our country again. And the policies and institutions that George W. Bush put in place to stop this are succeeding. During the campaign, Obama pledged to dismantle many of these policies. He follows through on those pledges at America's peril -- and his own. If Obama weakens any of the defenses Bush put in place and terrorists strike our country again, Americans will hold Obama responsible -- and the Democratic Party could find itself unelectable for a generation. (Italics are mine.)

Oh really?

The assertion that Bush's legacy is that he kept the US safe from terror in the wake of September 11, while true, nevertheless seems to ignore the fact that the events of September 11 happened on Bush's watch. Period. So how is it that such a catastrophic failure gets reworked into a legacy that the former Bush administration is proud to own?

Seriously, I wonder if they really believe their own bullshit.

Eating Frogs into Extinction

2009-01-22T11:27:00.008+01:00

You know how it is: you've got the remote in hand and you're channel-surfing mindlessly, when suddenly an image catches your eye and your brain starts to melt. That was the story on Saturday morning when I made my breakfast, turned on the tube, and was soon confronted with a report on frog farming.

Frog farming? WTF?

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know much, but how much I don't know about the world continues to amaze me.

In any case, I was too stunned to immediately start grabbing screen shots, so my readers will be spared pics of slaughtering and skinning frogs. Already skinned frogs, however, are on the menu:

Since I missed the beginning of this report, I can't exactly say where this was taking place, but it was somewhere in Asia. The owner of the bistro killed and skinneded the frogs himself, then tossed them into pots of whatever, bubbling away on the stove.

According to the report, this guy has the best frog dishes in wherever this story was filmed.

Okay, so I knew that frogs (well, their legs at least) are popular in France, but I did not know that they are also quite popular in the United States and in Asia. In fact, according to a recent study, frogs may be facing extinction not only due to poor environmental conditions, but because they're so yummy.

According to UN figures, global trade in frog meat has soared in the past 20 years. France and the US are the two largest importers, with France importing between 2500 and 4000 tonnes each year since 1995. Indonesia exports more than 5000 tonnes annually, mostly to Europe. Frogs' legs are also very popular in Asian cuisine.

Wow. That's a lot of frog meat. And while I'm intrigued that so many people around the world think that frogs are tasty, I just can't get past the fact that they're frogs . . . which makes no sense given that I gladly eat eels. Ah well, if you've had frog meat drop me a line and let me know what you think about it.

Cute, aren't they?

Images courtesy of Phoenix

Leadership

2009-01-21T13:42:00.004+01:00

There's a lot I haven't said since Obama was elected. Somehow the historical significance of the election rendered me more or less mute. My thoughts, though, turned to my grandparents who worked so hard all of their lives on their little farm in North Carolina to provide for their family, and to my own experiences growing up as a black child in south. And yes, I was also one of those black folks who never imagined seeing a black man in the White House; but there I sat yesterday in a daze watching German news coverage of the inauguration.

I have to disagree with the claim that Obama's election was some sort of miracle. To make that claim would be to deny the hard work and political astuteness that convinced the majority of American voters. I would also argue that it was the promise of real leadership that drew so many Americans.

When I marketed management books in San Francisco, I was particularly struck by two of our titles: The Leadership Challenge and Leaders, Fools, and Impostors. Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that leadership is complex, and many people in positions of power haven't the slightest clue about how to actually lead their organizations. Listening to, and then later reading President Obama's Inauguration Address made clear to me that he understands clearly some of the most important aspects of leadership: inspiring by example and challenging followers to act.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is my favorite passage from the speech and strengthens my conviction that Obama is truly the leader that the United States needs in this very difficult period.

Well done voters!

A Great Soup for a Winter's Day

2009-01-08T13:27:00.003+01:00

It's cold in Berlin. Really cold. And when it's this cold, it's so soothing to have a big pot of something yummy simmering on the stove. That was the idea yesterday when I decided to make vegetable soup.

I missed the Turkish Market on Tuesday (it was too cold to venture out) but found these goodies at the Turkish grocery store around the corner. Lovely and ridiculously inexpensive.

Vegetable Soup

1/4 cup olive oil
2 cups diced carrots
1 cup each diced onion, celery, and fennel
1 cup chopped leek (white part only)
2 tbsp minced garlic
6 ripe plum tomatoes (peeled, seeded, and diced)
salt and pepper to taste
6 cups fresh vegetable stock (recipe below)
2 large sprigs fresh thyme
4 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 cup chopped green beans
1 cup diced zucchini
1/2 cup torn basil leaves

Place oil in a pot over low heat. Wilt carrots, onion, celery, fennel, and leek, stirring for 15 minutes. Add garlic during last 5 minutes.

Stir in tomatoes and season with salt and pepper; cook for 3 minutes. Add broth thyme, and 2 tbsp parsley; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium; simmer for 20 minutes.

Add the green beans, zucchini, and basil; simmer 10 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Stir in remaining parsley. Serve and enjoy!

Vegetable Stock

2 onions
2 leeks, sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
3 carrots sliced
3 celery stalks, sliced
2 parsnips, sliced
150 g (1 bunch) flat-leaf parsley
2 garlic cloves
6 peppercorns
4 sprigs thyme

Heat a large saucepan over high head and add the onions, leeks, and olive oil.

Stir until the onions begin to soften, then add the carrots, celery, parsnips and 3 liters (12 cups) of cold water. Ad the remaining ingredients and bring to a simmering heat. Continue to simmer for 3 hours. Remove from the heat and strain into a large bowl. Using the back of a large spoon, press the vegetables into the strainer to draw out most of the flavor. (from Zest by Michele Cranston)

OH MY GOD!!

2008-11-05T14:50:00.002+01:00

Image by Michael Buchino

Love Sucks

2008-11-01T19:48:00.002+01:00

It's not that I'm too lazy to write proper blog posts these days, I'm just kind of busy. Not too busy, however, to scour YouTube to find replacement material.

So next up for your viewing pleasure is a short film from France that nearly broke my heart the first time I saw it (about a year ago).

It's truly amazing what a talented filmmaker can do in three minutes and fifty-four seconds.

A Hockey Mom I Could Hang With

2008-10-31T10:28:00.002+01:00

Aside from the terror and rage that the McCain/Palin ticket unleashed among thinking people, it inspired an incredible creative response as well. Like this:

Amazing.

FPOTUS Barack Obama

2008-10-30T08:58:00.004+01:00

Brilliant.

Seriously, there is no contest here. The fact that there's the semblance of one says far more about some American voters than it does about Barack Obama.

The Best Coffee Commercials EVER ...

2008-10-23T23:11:00.003+02:00

... or Why I Love the Internet Part 47,859

Someone with way too much time on her hands compiled the Nescafe Gold/Taster's Choice commercials from late Eighties/early Nineties into one fabulous clip. I remember being completely caught up in the relationship that played out over the course of these ads, and watching the compilation now I realize I definitely missed a few. Ah well, such is the beauty of YouTube.

I don't think a campaign like this could work today, given the slow luxurious nature of the individual ads themselves, as well as the unhurried approach of the concept itself. I just can't imagine a pitch being made today for an advertising campaign in which a couple falls in love over the course of a few years in a eleven 45-second spots. But what do I know? Maybe this was as hard to pitch in 1987 as it would be today.

In any case, finding this compilation was like seeing an old friend again: glorious.

Enjoy!

Frankfurt International Book Fair

2008-10-09T09:14:00.003+02:00

Ahhhhhh ... the book people ...

Eichborn Stand 2007

Okay, I'm off to one of my favorite events on the planet and will be back here in a couple weeks.

Goat "Condoms" and "Whore" Miles

2008-10-06T12:41:00.003+02:00

The olor is a device being used by herdsmen in Kenya to prevent goats from mating during the drought. When I saw the headline for the BBC story, other images than device actually being used popped into my head. In fact, it's less of a condom than it is a kind of chastity belt, but I suppose "Goat Chastity Belt" takes up too much space. In any case, it's an ingenious device and seems to be 100% effective.

As for the story in the Independent about "whore" miles being employed by the Dutch as an incentive to ease women out of prostitution and into other forms of work, I doubt this strategy will offer the same efficacy. It's not that the scheme is bad per se–though it does strike me as a bit naive–but until the demand for prostitution dries up, prostitutes aren't going anywhere. It really is that simple.

There's a reason it's called the "oldest profession."

Autumn

2008-10-05T14:05:00.005+02:00

A lot of my friends are sad because summer is over and autumn is here. Well, autumn happens to be my favorite time of year. On a very selfish level, it always represented a new school year, which meant shiny new school supplies and the best clothes (wool!!); new teachers who didn't yet know what a pain in the ass I could be; and my birthday, which was the one day that I could get away with thinking that the world truly revolved around me.

I grew up with seasons and I think they're important in underscoring the fact that existence is organized around the cycles of life, death, and rebirth. So here's to fall and its very special beauty.

Böckhstraße, Kreuzberg

And now a Word about Dubbing...

2008-10-01T20:44:00.008+02:00

HATE

No, seriously. I really hate dubbed* films and television programs, which is a bit unfortunate for me since I now live in a country in which foreign-language films are almost exclusively dubbed rather than subtitled.**

German Trailer for House of Flying Daggers

Aside from the cultural implications of watching a Chinese film set in 859 AD, in which everyone seems to be remarkably fluent in German, there is something disembodying (and creepy) about separating performers from their voices. For instance, one of my friends thinks that Brad Pitt and George Clooney are really hot, and I have another friend who is crazy about John Malkovich. Well these women have no idea how hot these men truly are because they've never heard their real voices. To German ears they sound like this:

German Trailer for Burn after Reading

Well ladies, this one's for you:

US Trailer for Burn after Reading

(Okay, to be fair, trying to spot Brad Pitt's hotness behind that haircut is a challenge, but I think you get my point.)

Furthermore, there aren't that many dubbing actors, so after a while Daniel Craig sounds just like Tom Cruise, who sounds just like Javier Bardem. And it's probably best to skip entirely what happens to black American actors in the dubbing arena. Aaaarrrrggghhh!!!

My voice is just as much a part of me as my face, my body, and my mannerisms. To open my mouth and hear another woman's voice would be unthinkable for me, and for anybody else for that matter. Yet, when I refuse to go see dubbed films and insist on either the original-language version or a German film, my friends get annoyed. They seem to assume that films are dubbed everywhere and that I should be used to it. Well I know that at least in the US and the UK they are not. Going to see a foreign film in either of those countries means reading subtitles. This revelation is sometimes met with disbelief, particularly in the case of the US, where it is assumed that we are generally too stupid to read ... as if stupid people are going to art house cinemas to watch foreign films.

Whatever.

When a foreign-language film is marketed in the US or the UK, sometimes there is no dialogue featured in the trailer--just music and/or a voiceover:

US Trailer for Pan's Labyrinth

But if there's dialogue, it is subtitled. Yes, even in a trailer:

US Trailer for The Lives of Others

Can you imagine how completely unrealistic and jarring that would have been with North American English coming out of those mouths? I can't and am really happy that I don't have to, either.

To be perfectly honest, I am quite lucky in Berlin. There are several venues that feature the films in the original versions or with German subtitles. So I can't complain too much. Still, when I'm listening to the film magazine on my favorite radio station, I have to switch it off. It drives me crazy when they feature a segment on Hollywood films, like the one this morning on Burn after Reading. After describing how great the performances are, they played a few audio clips. I don't know who those people were, but they sure weren't Pitt, Clooney, Malkovich, and the rest of the cast.

Well, at least not as I know them.

*The term in Germany is synchronized.
**In the interest of fairness, however, here's a link to a short article on the Goethe Institute website about the history of dubbing in Germany.

I've Got the Music in Me

2008-09-29T09:28:00.002+02:00

What a truly glorious thing it is to wake up singing. Particularly if that music is really only coming from your own head.

That's what happened to me this morning. I don't have a radio or a stereo; my MacBook takes care of all of my music requirements at the moment. Yet at 8:00 this morning I woke up singing the New Radicals, having used their hit, "You Get What You Give" as the soundtrack to a dream I was having. Actually, the song was the focus of the dream. I was being sent on an errand in a sparsely populated high school and it slowly dawned on me that to the extent that there were any students and teachers in the classrooms, they were all listening to the same song. And NOT because it was being piped in through any PA system. I actually watched one teacher put the LP (no, not CD) on the turntable and cue the song to the exact spot being played around the school. Weird, huh?

I'm not sure what any of that means, but I have to say that it was a wonderful thing to wake up singing; and not just any song, but a youth anthem about being true to yourself. The fact that I'm a long way from youth doesn't matter. Old or young, we all need to embrace--at least for four and a half minutes--the feel-good notion that joy comes with having the courage to follow our dreams.

And that today happens to be my birthday, I think the dream is the universe's special way of extending greetings and good wishes. Or whatever. I just know that I was really happy when I woke up singing.

Enough Already

2008-09-27T15:31:00.002+02:00

Even before I read this thoughtful piece by Coates, I had come to the realization that I had well and truly had my fill of bashing Sarah Palin on Facebook. There was something so incredibly painful about watching those interviews with Katie Couric that has caused me to redirect my rage to where it clearly belongs--with John McCain. She is so in over her well-coiffed head that it's not fun anymore; it's on its way to being a national disaster of epic proportions, brought on by an unprincipled political move stunning in its baseness.

That said, Coates is a bit more generous in his assessment of Palin that I am prepared to be, but I get where he's coming from. Well done.