Just got back from Berlin where M and I went to see the Ronkalli Circus with musical guest stars….
The Kelly Family.
It was very entertaining. They did a good job.
Today we went to the Berlin Film Museum. It focused mainly on the advent of the German film industry before WWI and moved up to the present. It also had a small exhibit from Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion animator of such kick ass sci-fi classics like “Jason and the Argonauts” and “Clash of the Titans”. One of the coolest things in the exhibit was Luke Skywalkers light saber from Return of the Jedi.
Suh-weet.
This week the Berlinale is going on. It is the huge German film fest kinda like Cannes. There were supposedly a lot of famous hollywood actors like Jack Nicholson and Charlize Theron walking around but I didn’t see them, because they didn’t call so we didn’t get to hang out.
By The Way: The new album from AIR, Talkie Walkie, is really good. It is my current favorite.
Those who were not shocked and outraged by the public display of boobage at last weekends Superbowl halftime show can just ignore this post or just read along for amusement.
Sometimes I wish I was back in the US just so I could distribute some well-deserved slaps to all the fucking knuckle-heads over there who are flipping the fuck out about Janet (Miss Jackson if you’re nasty) Jackson’s breast. To all of you I would like to say:
So. Fucking. What.
It’s a breast. 50% of the population has them in the same mammarial capacity as Miss Janet (I’m nasty). Most of us have spent the first few months of our lives suckling on them.
“Yeah, but they supposedly staged it and they should have known better.”
To which I reiterate:
So. Fucking. What.
“She should apologize immediately! I’m outraged!”
She and Timberlake did, unfortunately. They should have told everyone to go fuck off.
“But a child could have seen that and been traumatized. Won’t somebody think of the children? Oh the Humanity!”
You know what? If you have a child that has any sort of access to the Internet there is a 90% chance he or she has seen way more interesting things than Janet’s breast.
Wanna know something else? The rest of the world is laughing at you.
“Hey Stefan, the Yankees are flipping out again over something stupid.”
“Ja, Hans. I know. It is as if America was founded by Puritans.”
“It was. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
“Ha ha ha hah ha ha ha ha ha!”
“And Rumsfeld called us ‘Old Europe’.”
I’m gonna do you all a favor. I’m going to help you all get it out of your system. Are you ready? Okay. Click on the picture of the tits below to see. Click on the evil fornication and unclean thoughts inducing bejeweled breast to make it go away. When you are done there we need to talk.
How was that? Need a cig you deviate? Did I corrupt your soul? Sorry about that.
You know what America should be flipping out about? How about a president and his chicken hawk buddies lying to the American public and the rest of the world about what a threat Iraq was to security and freedom. How about over 500 American soldiers and thousands of innocent Iraqis killed in the name of “Defending Our FreedomTM“. The Bush administration has the blood of these people all over their hands and people are flipping out about Miss Janet’s breast?
Yesterday I went to see Robotic Angel in the local arthouse theater here. It’s based on the manga called Metropolis and was directed by Rintaro. I’m not really into japanimation or Manga but this film was pretty cool. The animation style was great and atypical of the genre.
Today I did next to nothing so far.
Isn’t there some sort of football game going on today?
Hey it’s friday night and I’m at home writing in my blogizzle mah nizzle.
The fun never stops.
Actually, I’m taking it easy this weekend. Maybe I’ll right about last weekend and what I can remember of it. Maybe.
Work thoroughly sucked ass this week. Thank you Jonathan Ive and your team of crack engineers for making the iMac so freakin’ difficult to open up and service. Who knew that swapping a hard-drive from one iMac to another could take 3.5 Hours. Next time of course will be easier but damn! Other than that its a cool little machine.
Moving right along
One of the many things that some Americans can take for granted, depending on where they live, is 24 hour grocery shopping. Whenever I was living on my own it was no big deal to go grocery shopping at 10pm, 12am, 2am. It was convenient. I could fit it anywhere into my schedule. Most of the time it was done at a reasonable hour but if I had been in a recording studio for three days and was the last one to leave a session (The assistant engineer is always the first to show and the last to leave), I could always find something open at any time and go grocery shopping.
In Germany and, from what I understand most of Europe, it is different. Generally shops open at about 9am and close about 6pm maybe 7 on weekdays. That is about the same in America for most shops but usually not Grocery stores. On the weekends the shops open at 9 maybe 8. To be honest I don’t know when they open here on the weekends. I’ve never been up and out of the house before 10am here on a Saturday. Well, I probably was but it wasn’t because I had to be the first in line at Pennymarkt. Most stores close then at 4pm. On sunday the grocery stores are not open at all, so you have to make sure you have food for the weekend. If you don’t, you have 3 options:
Gas Station: Mmmm, overpriced packages of pre-made sandwiches, jerky, bread and beer.
Restaurant: A viable option but possibly expensive. Plus if you are a Sunday Slacker this means you have to put on clothes and venture into public. Hmm.
Starve: Its just one day. You can tough it out til Monday morning.
There is a fourth option which is to conveniently physically locate yourself at someone’s place of residence around a mealtime. I’ve never tried it in Germany though. A lot of times I’m afraid of being to forward here so I wouldn’t do it. German’s are not as open and “Oh hey! C’mon by for dinner” as Americans. Some are but it is definitely less common. But say you are over at your pal’s house around 5 or 6 on a Sunday afternoon:
Hey, Wanna eat with us?
Aw naw that’s alright. I got something at home.
Are you sure? It’s no trouble.
No thanks. I’m all set.
Oh Well. Suit your se–
Well alright. Since you twisted my arm
When I first moved here and didn’t understand the whole bumrush ALDI on a saturday at 3:55pm right before they lock the doors mentality, I would miss the shopping hours and eat whatever I had. This let to some creative culinary concoctions. Really fancy things like “Senf auf altem Brot”, “Schinken auf meiner Mitbewohnerin geklauten Kekse”, “Nudeln mit den Reste” and don’t forget “Gurken aus dem Glas”.
But now I got my shit together and will be running my errands tomorrow bright and early at around 1pm. Maybe.
This is great: Hey Ya Charlie Brown! Link Fixed! The original server probably exceeded their bandwidth Quota and got the furious beatdown of an angry server admin. I’ll post it on my server and face the consequences. Google be damned!