What I like about Germany
They get around to dealing with things eventually.
Relatively few fake smiles.
No one's childhood memories will ever make a great French novel.
Lifetime supply of cardboard coasters.
28.3.06
They get around to dealing with things eventually.
Relatively few fake smiles.
No one's childhood memories will ever make a great French novel.
Lifetime supply of cardboard coasters.
16.3.06
das Morgenrot
Saw 'Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans' (1927), directed by F.W. Murnau. Just because, I don’t know, if one professes to being open to other cultures...perhaps one wants to learn just a smidgen about them, nicht wahr? In 1967 Cahiers du Cinéma called it the best film of all time. A man is seduced by some Schlampe and attempts to throw his wife out of a boat. The man was George O’Brien, and as I watched the movie it occurred to me that his son had taught English in my hometown. I babysat for him once, it was the first time I remember ever feeling sorry for a guy because of who he was married to (Janet Gaynor she was not). Sunrise is not as creepy as Murnau’s Nosferatu
...unless maybe you’re watching Scott Peterson’s copy. The DVD included the obligatory special features, and I have to admit I find the dissection of a film almost as boring as the dissection of a book. The panoramic lake scenes were filmed at Lake Arrowhead (you can tell just by watching), the city set was the largest ever built to date, he used children and midgets in the distance to accentuate the feeling of alienation, the summer vacation montage includes a shot of a train along the coast near Santa Barbara (most likely not far from where the director was killed in a car accident a few years later), the huge, futuristic train station is just a model, he was probably the first person to use a camera on a trolley attached to the ceiling, the film won an oscar for 'Unique and Artistic Production'...there has never been another one since, only Orson Welles was given the amount of control that Murnau had.
The best part was a reconstruction of the film 'Four Devils', of which not one print survives. The story is narrated and depicted in stills, storyboards, and blueprints. One of us is thrilled that this week we will be getting 'Verliebt in eine Hexe (Bewitched) and 'Krieg der Welten' (War of the Worlds), and one of us rues the day that amazon ever started luring customers away from netleih...thereby making relatively current movies readily available.
12.3.06
Basteln
Yeah, it’s common to have a Hobbyraum here. Not cool, perhaps this should be a post on my other blog.
Popped into the toy store at the end of the block (it’s huge, there is another one just like it almost directly across the street). On the second floor is a rather large (about the size of 3 or 4 convenience stores) assortment of model parts, kits, miniature beer tent scenes, etc. Things you wouldn’t believe, as good as any museum...in terms of entertainment. Everything from Wassertürme
...to the house the pope was born in (25 bucks, 30 assembled...god knows how much with a couple of nuns and his 1999 Golf thrown in)
K. wanted to know if he would really be hovering in the clouds above, which strikes me as bitterly sarcastic (very unlike her) and unappreciative of the life-affirming hilarity of dieses Angebot. What with the man-hours it must take to manufacture all these things ("Made in Germany"), I’m surprised that anyone is unemployed here...let alone five million people. Put me in a frame of mind to spend the next ten years on the production of a teeny, tiny Wagner opera.
Next up: modernism off the rack, and how you can get a full page color ad in the German version of AD for 15,000 €.
Popped into the toy store at the end of the block (it’s huge, there is another one just like it almost directly across the street). On the second floor is a rather large (about the size of 3 or 4 convenience stores) assortment of model parts, kits, miniature beer tent scenes, etc. Things you wouldn’t believe, as good as any museum...in terms of entertainment. Everything from Wassertürme
...to the house the pope was born in (25 bucks, 30 assembled...god knows how much with a couple of nuns and his 1999 Golf thrown in)
K. wanted to know if he would really be hovering in the clouds above, which strikes me as bitterly sarcastic (very unlike her) and unappreciative of the life-affirming hilarity of dieses Angebot. What with the man-hours it must take to manufacture all these things ("Made in Germany"), I’m surprised that anyone is unemployed here...let alone five million people. Put me in a frame of mind to spend the next ten years on the production of a teeny, tiny Wagner opera.
Next up: modernism off the rack, and how you can get a full page color ad in the German version of AD for 15,000 €.
10.3.06
Fearmongering, old school
This must have been inside the medicine cabinet for over fifty years. I don't recall ever noticing it...not once.
8.3.06
Oh no, not a roadmap
Last week, the European Commission adopted a roadmap of policies designed to end gender inequality.
It lists 21 activities to be carried out over the next five years.
The measures include:
Recycling
Putting redeemable stickers into the booklet
Decalcing the iron
Sawing all branches off the Christmas tree and just leaving it there
Creating space saving devices to free up more space in the bookshelves
Insisting on those not-so-efficient and more expensive silver bulbs
Forced prostitution
Gaining weight
Interrupting
Being a self-taught jerk
Pointing out that butter is 80% fat
Signing the Pennerformular
Keeping track of things installed by European workmen that have fallen off
Sanding
Changing the vacuum cleaner bag
Reminding
Making note of possible hazards
Suggesting the government let us all fight it out in hand to hand combat
Scratching last tenant's messy paint job off the door frames with fingernails
Waking up and smelling the coffee
Hmm, five years? Learning the fucking pronouns
6.3.06
3.3.06
Über Lärm und Geräusch
Someone was conducting a poll on the new tens...
I like that 'We the People' part, but perhaps it would be preferable to include a brief review of the numerous bloody upheavals that took place over here--in order to get to a point in time where a handful of men could take the concepts of freedom to be a law-abiding, tolerant, independent citizen and separation of church and state...and run with them. Perhaps people would read this while waiting in line at the drive-thru, but then the frequency of and respect for reflection hasn't improved since Schopenhauer's day (thank God he was spared bass music).
They were also conducting a poll over at BBC News on Angela Merkel's first 100 days.
Apparently they'll print anything.
I like that 'We the People' part, but perhaps it would be preferable to include a brief review of the numerous bloody upheavals that took place over here--in order to get to a point in time where a handful of men could take the concepts of freedom to be a law-abiding, tolerant, independent citizen and separation of church and state...and run with them. Perhaps people would read this while waiting in line at the drive-thru, but then the frequency of and respect for reflection hasn't improved since Schopenhauer's day (thank God he was spared bass music).
They were also conducting a poll over at BBC News on Angela Merkel's first 100 days.
Apparently they'll print anything.
