No Reverse

Here's a link that gives a good boost to New York nostalgia (lifted from MF's comment): Funkmaster Flex' 4th of July broadcast on Hot 97. Five hours of pure old school Independence Day. Makes you go back to The Roxy, Milky Way, Hotel Amazone and of course Big House. In that '78 T-Bird with no reverse of course.

Simpsonize Me

Fred simpsonized me. With a rather brillant useless web application on the Simpsons Movie website, which is fueling the current Simpsons fever. And yes, I'll go see that movie. Even though we managed to drop out of the movies and enter the DVD cycle, having missed two whole seasons due to moving and other things.
Talking about moving - the second batch of New York City returnees is about to arrive. Sookie and Johan are boarding their Goeteborg flight any miunte now. Reading Sookie's farewell blog about all those farewell parties is inducing serious pangs of New York nostalgia though. Amplified by news that essential personnel from that blog is going to Sandy Hook tomorrow. But hey, we got seventysomething lakes and a mountain range that can take on the Rockies anytime. C'mon New York. Try us.

Prejudice (Joys Of Summer)

The next sequel of "Rush Hour" takes place in Paris, and since the whole series is driven by prejudice, it takes the trailer about five seconds to feature the first smelly-French-joke. Another riff on Europeans lax relations to personal hygiene can be seen in the Simpsons Movie trailer. Of course every prejudice has it's kernel of truth. Although in this case it's more a whole sheaf. If you'd ever taken a morning tram in Munich at the current height of summer mugginess you'd know what we're talking about. Sure tests your gag reflexes. Even at the office some visitors leave persistent trails of butyric acid behind that will linger on for the day. And deodorants don't make it better. Most local brands have the tendency to just float a cheap flowery scent on top of the wafts of perspiration, which can even make sitting in an open air cafe a challenge.

Well, troubled summer hygiene is only topped by European standards of dental esthetics. I'm not talking about the average man on the street. You'd think people who regularily go on TV would invest in some corrective work. Not so. Last night the almost chancellor Rudolf Scharping was on TV sporting a rack of crooked yellow stumps he obviously wasn't ashamed of for a second. But nobody can top our minister of the interior, whose dentals seem to be a memorial for the great famines of past centuries. Oh scurvy - sure can take a toll on your smile. Maybe they should produce a German version of the PSA in the post below.

Read A Book!

This might be one of the funniest PSAs in television's history - BET trying to piggyback dental hygiene, hydration, parental responsibilities onto their literacy campaign.

Europa

Gotta admit watching Michael Moore's Sicko had the desired effect and made me glad we moved back to Europe. Sure it's propagandistic satire and in the usual Michael Moores style not quite acurate. After the French applauded the film frenetically in Cannes, because they're protrayed as living in a health care paradise they sheepishly told our film critic, that it's not quite that phantastic. And German healtcare sure is a two-class, expensive mess. But it's not the anarchy of pure profit margin mentality either. Social services somehow aren't seen as collateral damage yet. Take yesterday's fire alarm a few blocks down, which made us for the first time believe that our tax Euros are at work. A whopping eleven fire department trucks and cars decked out with tons of modern technology were there in a matter of seconds , just to make sure it was a false alarm. That's what makes you feel safe, not a permanent state of Code Orange alarm. Now this entry is of course the classic "Michael Moore in lefty Europe"-effect, where people watch his films and read his books just to reinforce their anti-american stereotypes. Works everytime.

Summer Hit (1977)

Albert sure pulled it off to turn the Brecht Festival into his very own roundtable. With a touch of class reunion. Nobody wanted to leave. And most didn't, spending an impressively overheated weekend in Augsburg, staying up all night to see each other's readings and talks and later getting wasted at the Capitol. Did feel a bit like 1977, staying up all night to watch Rockpalast.

On The Road

Is "Fernweh" a Germanism yet? Should be. And if you want to experience some, go over to A Brooklynite on the ice, where the Brooklinite isn't on the ice anymore, but in the East African bush. Read his brillant pieceon Rwandaise highways. And make sure to remember his name as one of the best travel writers around.

Quite a different trip for me this weekend. Since Albert's festival for the 50th anniversary of Bert Brecht's passing in Augsburg was such a huge success, he's doing another one. Again he recruited each and every one of his friends to read, moderate or play music, so Augsburg's currently turning into Albert's personal party zone.

P.S.: Looked up Fernweh in Leo's Dictionary. They actually translate it with antoher Germanism - "Wanderlust". Which is so 19th century.

Summer Hit (1973)

You always come back to your first favorite records. So few get better than this. But he sure was stoned out of his mind.

Mindless Summer Fun

Now this is a holiday movie, because after a long Sunday on Sandy Hook, at the lake or some beer garden you do not want to burden your mind with character, plot or motivation. Bay, Spielberg and a whole lot of expensive CGI machinery will do just fine.

Bavarian Hubris

When did this constant urge to categorize the world in rankings, ratings and timelines start? It might as well be an outhgrowth of neoliberal thinking, since all rankings are based on a competitive marketplace, even if it's a marketplace of ideas (whoever came up with that term). So to feed that urge a Swiss filmmaker named Bernhard Weber started a web voting for the new seven wonders of the world. The winners were:

Chichén Itzá, Mexico, Christ Redeemer, Brazil, The Great Wall, China, Machu Picchu, Peru, Petra, Jordan, The Roman Colloseum, Italy and The Taj Mahal, India.

Funny enough the Bavarian castle of Neuschwanstein was amongst the 21 finalists, now the Bavarians are pissed they didn't make it. Quite self assured that hill tribe north of the Alps. What makes them think the feverish dream of a flaming gay monarch who was willing to drive his country into ruin for his architectural drag shows would be more than a symbol of corruption and hubris? Well, according to Deyan Sudjic's "The Edifice Complex" most spectacular architecture is.



Another great tool of categorizing are of course comparison charts. One of the biggest faves of this genre are city comparisons. Which could be also useful to explain to our American friends where we live now. Most German cities don't really compare to any US cities. You could cram them all into Manhattan though. In that case Frankfurt would be Manhattan below Canal (lots of banks, great river views and a bit of gentrified subculture), Berlin would be Manhattan between Delancey and 14th (that's easy), Cologne would be Chelsea (art galleries, down to earth gay subculture plus remnants of 80s clubbing), Düsseldorf the East Side between 57th and 86th (high income, high art and pretentious boredom). Hamburg's already off the Manhattan grid, being more of a Baltimore with legal prostitution. For Munich we couldn't come up with any comparisons for a while. But then we got it - it's Santa Barbara. Same mix of money, natural beauty, sports enthusiasm, intellectual vacuum and a strange sense of creepiness. Until everything changes into Daytona Beach during the weekend of course.

New York Nostalgia (4th of July Edition)

I always liked 4th of July with all it's pathos and sentimentality, the barbeques and fireworks and the radio playing cheesy Irving Berlin songs. After having lived in a city thriving on a passionate and infectious local patriotism, it's kind of strange to live in a place where people don't really feel at home in their own country. So to celebrate 4th of July in this land of denial and self hatred here's one of the greatest songs about aforementioned local patriotism. Full of pathos and sentimentality. Only topped by the man who still manages to bring tears to the eyes of grown firemen.

Summer Hit (This Year, French Version)

This is the coming summer hit for this year in France and possibly greater Europe including the Balearic isles. DJ duo Justice is one of the acts on Paris based label Ed Banger (like headbanger with a French accent, got it? Tell you, they're funny, those French), who got famous for their ecstatic parties. All sounds like the second coming of Daft Punk to me, who incidentially are on tour again and featured on Kanye West's new single, so I guess late 90s French Eurodisco's the revival du jour.

War

Hilarious mock commercial for a ficticious medication healing politicians' sagging ratings. It was produced by the Drug Policy Alliance who wants to remind us that there's another war that the US can't get out of.