2004-05-28
Best TV Show Ever
Fed up with Jungle Camp? Had enough of Big Brother? This is the answer. All of the entertainment, none of the barely human idiocy!
You just gotta love British humour.
(Found via The Register.)
2004-05-24
Royally Entertained
The media had been threatening us for weeks with The Marriage. And as we were forced to notice when switching our radio on last Saturday morning, those weren't empty threats, no Sir! The Marriage was everywhere, and there was no escape short of going cold turkey on any kind of media consumption for the day.
(If you have until now been blessedly unaware of The Marriage, let me educate you: Among the several hundred couples who have probably married last Saturday were the Spanish Crown Prince and his bride. Exactly why this one marriage was singled out for global media coverage totally escapes my means of comprehension, though. It may have to do with that equally incomprehensible fascination that the life of certain highly interbred european families seems to hold for a great many people, which families due to their interbreeding are apparently able to trace their ancestry to a small set of robbers, soldiers, putschists, or other questionable personages of the remote past who were more successful at grabbing riches and power than their peers, while the rest of the population is spared similar knowledge about their own ancestry...)
Anyway, as it happened, we had the perfect recipe for countering that idiocy: tickets to the Blue Man Group!
With the ILA finally over, road conditions during our drive into the city were back to normal, the cursing from the guy behind the steering wheel was much reduced from the level of our last foray into Berlin, and even the half-hour diversion through the western city center where my wife wanted to pick up some tickets for the exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art couldn't make much of a dent into my mood.
Considering that the Berlin show of the Blue Man Group had only opened a few weeks before, and that it was Saturday afternoon, the hall of the Potsdamer Platz Theater was not filled to the rim, contrary to our expectations. One more piece of evidence (after the apparent flop of a Circe du Soleil performance here in Berlin in the mid-1990's) that as far as great international entertainment goes, Berliners just don't know what's good for them. Oh well, at least Berlin is apparently the sub-culture capital of Europe. :-|
Back to those Blue Men. These guys have quite probably the most entertaining stage show I have ever seen. Sure, I'd rather like to watch one of the Circe du Soleil shows, especially those like "O" which I haven't seen yet, but for sheer unadulterated entertainment, the Blue Man Group is hard to beat. The mix of pantomime, comedy and rythmic music on weird instruments you just have to admire for sheer ingenuity, combined with their unique mode of presentation adds up to a wonderful show and some fucking great entertainment.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the show couldn't have been better. For one thing, considering the rather steep price we paid for the tickets, one hundred minutes is a bit short, and we actually had expected something closer to two hours. I especially would have liked to see more of those wonderfully weird musical performances. They only had the drumbone - a mix between a drum and a trombone -, the airpoles, their strange three-man plastic-pipe-xylophone contraption and a smaller one man version that kinda looked like a plastic tuba.
Also, we were a bit surprised at how American the show was, for lack of a better word. We'd have thought that when going to the length of establishing a new semi-permantent show in Europe, the Blue Man Group would have gone and somewhat adapted their performance to better conform with European tastes and habits. They haven't, and I wonder whether this won't hurt them in the long run, and whether Circe du Soleil had made the same mistake a decade earlier. (As to what those differences are: For example, European shows usually feature a break about half-way through, feature less audience participation, but don't normally require the first half dozen rows in the audience to be supplied with plastic ponchos. ;-)
I also hope that the Berlin Blue Men get better at choosing participants from the audience. Germans aren't generally used to that kind of thing, they aren't good at laughing about themselves, and hence usually don't play along all that well unless you manage to somehow charm them into cooperation. And let's face it - there isn't a lot of charm about a set of intensely white eyes in a strange, blue face. As it was, the guy they had chosen as a human paint brush was visibly annoyed and kept frowning all the time, which is sort of understandable considering what the did with him, but it still would have been better to pick someone who'd be more of a sport about it. The woman they chose to play the cake eating scene with was better but still far to shy and didn't play along too well, which wasted some of the potential of that particular scene.
You can't have everything, I guess. Still, I loved the show and so did my wife, although she complained afterwards that the wee one seemed not to have taken kindly to the loud, rhythmic music. To anyone who hasn't experienced them yet: go and see them when you have the chance. The Blue Man Group is definitely weird, but they are more on the mad genius than the goofy dork end of the spectrum, as far as I am concerned.
2004-05-20
Bush would be proud
I on the other hand still can't quite believe this, because I just don't see how you could possibly escape the required knowledge in this time and place, especially since it is part of the normal curriculum at school around here.
But if it is, it is probably the prime example why not being open and positive about sex is a really, really bad idea...
[Update: I am somewhat relieved to report that this is, as I had suspected, quite probably a hoax. At least Snopes says so, and I am somewhat more inclined to believe them than Ananova in such matters...]
2004-05-17
From Swearing to Laughter
It's ILA time again. Which means that due to the airport of Berlin-Schönefeld hosting the Internationale Luftfahrtausstellung (International Aeronautics Expo), and everyone and his dog converging on said location to gawk at the modern wonders of aeronautics, all the roads in the area are clogged but good. Those that are not, are occupied by a sufficient number of "ooh, nice view, let's drive a bit slower" weekend excursion people to make anyone with the aim of actually getting somewhere on time frothing at the mouth, which on Saturday included me. After all, after our very successful reunion a few weeks ago, Steffi and Uwe had invited us over to their appartment for coffee and dinner, and due to us having papered part of the upper floor stairwell up to the last minute, we were just the teensiest bit late...
There were, of course, other factors contributing to my growing frustration behind the steering wheel: I hate driving in big cities, especially in cities like Berlin where you have to go 10 kph above the speed limit unless you want everyone else to drive circles around you, while somehow divining where each of the different lanes go because no-one has bothered to put up sufficient signage to steer you in the right direction until it's basically too late. And let's not mention finding a parking spot even remotely close to the destination, shall we.
In the end, and after circling the block without finding something were even my wife's small car would fit, we lucked out by spotting a car leaving a parking spot right before the entrance of our friends' appartment block and being the first to attempt to fill the newly vacated space. I took this as a good omen, and I was right.
The shyness of the first personal contact after so many years that had been underlying our first meeting had vanished, the good old (or in the case of U whom we had only met for the second time, new) vibes were in full swing, their baby was in a good mood throughout the evening, and the food was absolutely deliscious.
The main topic was the care and feeding of barely two feet of human being - theirs, and by proxy, ours. No surprise here. Having someone at hand who is going through the same stuff as we will be in a few months, and is hence able to give us all the little hints that you don't find in the usual places, including but in no way limited to the all-important message of "in the day-to-day affairs, trust your instincts, not necessarily the guide books". But fortunately this was no case of friends turning into parents. There was lots of talk about things other than boobs, poop, or sleep lost and gained.
And there was laughter. Lots and lots and lots of it. There was in fact so much laughter that my face and stomach muscles hurt the next day. And in addition to all that goodness, something more happened: I clicked with U. It's rare enough for me to find someone besides my wife, who understands my sense of humour. It's even rarer to find someone who shares it. U does. His humour is every bit as skewed and weird as mine, though quite a bit less, uhmm, acerbic. We hit it off well, understanding each other almost without words.
And thus I find myself expectantly facing a possibility which I, who has never been any good at that male bonding thing, and who has been preferring female friends since kindergarten, had more or less discounted: having a very good male friend.
This sure would be worth repeatedly facing all that damned traffic for...
2004-05-11
Spring at Casa Gudy
With the arrival of spring and my wife's pregnancy, the pace of our house construction and decoration effort has slowed to a crawl. This is bad as I can only count on my wife's help in this for so long. Since I need her help in wallpapering the rooms, the third room on the upper floor and the area around the staircase have now top priority as the last remaining areas without wallpaper, while tiling the half-finished bathroom has to take a backseat. Oh well.
At least the basement has progressed from looking like this to looking more like this or this. OK, if the truth be told, those doors are still hiding a lot of clutter as well as the remaining construction material, but it manages to look a bit more like a house and less like a construction yard every week.
The upper floor is taking shape as well, the future kid's room is finally finished except for the floor itself (the stars glow in the dark, btw). The same is true for the other room opening to the balcony, which provides a nice view over the spring-wakened greenery around the house. Right now though, I prefer gazing out of the upper floor windows on the street front. The street is lined with chestnut trees which are in full bloom right now, and the beautiful sight, which the photo doesn't do any justice to, combined with the sweet smell and the constant humming of the busy bumble bees is utterly charming and calming, which is something I have come to appreciate rather a lot lately.
2004-05-02
Of Plastic and Hobbits
When we landed in Almeria, our minds filled with images of bulls, olive tree groves on rolling hills and flowering orange trees, we were in for a shock. What we saw from the ice-cold interior of the bus transferring us from the airport to our first hotel was absolutely nothing like what we had imagined. Yes, it was warm outside, and a fresh breeze was blowing in from the sea, but that's where the similarities ended: the whole five mile strip of land between the sea and the coastal mountain range was covered with sheets of plastic making up the endless rows of greenhouses producing vast amounts of cucumbers, tomatoes, egg-plants and several other kinds of vegetable throughout the year.
The first leg of our roundtrip didn't do much to improve our mood. Once we left the area around Almeria towards Malaga, the plastic soon stopped, uncovering a bizarre, dry, and mountainous landscape dotted with lovely villages gleaming white in the bright morning sunlight. Sadly, this display, so typical of the mediterranean part of Spain, didn't last long. All too soon we got closer to Malaga and the endless succession of hotels, one bigger and uglier than the one before.
Thankfully, we soon veered off into the mountains and towards our first attraction, the enchanting mountain village of Ronda. Ronda sits on a high plateau in the middle of a broad, mountain-ringed valley, which means that looking out from the city, one is afforded with breathtaking views of the valley below, dotted with white houses, olive trees, and the picturesque ruins of old watermills which were destroyed in an earthquake decades ago. In addition to those views and to beeing a romantic little town in its own right, Ronda features another attraction: the oldest bull fighting arena in Spain, the cradle of the modern bull fighting spectacle. It's small, with room for only about 3000 people, and even someone like me, who is not exactly a big fan of bull fighting, has to admit that it looks beautiful and has a certain charm lacking in the bigger arenas we saw during our trip. As such, the high praise it has garnered from people like Ernest Hemingway, who loved bull fighting and apparently had a lot of nice things to say about the Arena of Ronda, becomes somewhat understandable.
The next stop was Gibraltar, and despite the nice view one has from that rock over the Straits of Gibraltar and the coast of Africa only a few miles to the south, I heartily detested the place. It was an uncomfortable mix of English and Spanish. It was also very small and crowded. I disliked Hong Kong for the same crowded feeling, but where the thronging crowds of Chinese people in Hong Kong were bareable, Gibraltar with its barely 36000 inhabitants felt utterly and horribly claustrophobic, and we were glad to leave it behind and get on our way to Sevilla.
Of all the Spanish cities, I don't think any have been featured more often in operas and dramas than Sevilla. And while little about that city was remarkable in and of itself, it all added up to what I can only describe as the most thoroughly and charmingly Andalusian of all the places we visited during our trip. The cathedral with it's bell tower, which had been the minaret of a former mosque in the same place, was looming over the narrow streets of the city center and provided a great view over the whole city and the surrounding area, at the same time being a prime example of what makes Spain such a special place: the odd and beautiful mix of Moorish and European influences. Large palaces with rich façades dating from all kinds of architectural eras were giving testament to the former glory of the city, and the whole picture was marred only by an area on the other side of the Guadalquivir river that was home to the World Expo in 1992 and now sticks out like a bloody sore.
The most stunning example of the mixed islamic and Catholic history of Spain awaited us in Cordoba, though. The city features an even bigger labyrinth of breathtakingly beautiful narrow lanes than Sevilla, but in the center of it sits the most surprising building I have seen to this day. From the outside, it looked like a cathedral built in the middle of a large, rectangular sandstone structure of some 130x170 meters in size. The sight that greeted us when we stepped into the cool shadow of the interior of that structure was nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Neither words nor pictures could do justice to that view of a single large hall filling most of the building, the roof propped up by a veritable forest of almost 900 marble columns in evenly spaced, straight lines, and in the center of what had been one of the biggest mosques of its time, a Catholic cathedral. The place was huge, but due to the ingenuity of its islamic and Catholic creators, which let them build that mind-boggling double structure with extremely pleasing proportions, the vastness, though felt at every step, did not press in on the visitor. In fact, once the initial shock at the sheer size of it all had passed, the beauty of this hall of marble columns, the light filtering in through windows in the roof, putting highlights into the cool shadows of the hall and breaking up what could easily have been monotonous and repetitive but wasn't, began to register. I was loathe to leave this place - the first building of such size in which I felt so completely relaxed and at ease.
The second highlight of our trip through Andalusia came on the next day: the Alhambra of Granada. I would need Layne's talent for evocative description to do any kind of justice to what has been repeatedly, and not without merit, described as the 8th wonder of the world, so I won't even try. Like the mosque-cathedral of Cordoba, the palace of the Alhambra with its ingenious combination of garden and moorish architecture just has to be seen to be believed. I'll try to post some pictures once we have had our films developed, but I'm afraid that even those won't be more than a pale reflection of the original stunning beauty of the place.
The last surprise of the trip awaited us on our way from Granada back to Almeria, when our guide announced that he would now show us the Spanish hobbits. He of course earned the laughs and questioning looks he expected, but with views like this or this, you have to wonder wether Peter Jackson actuallyhad visited the cav dwellings in Guadix while looking for some inspiration for the depiction of Bag End and the Bag Shot Row in the LotR movies. The interior certainly was suitably cosy, and the exterior (minus the bike and yours truly) looked certainly rural enough, if a bit mediterranean for Hobbiton. (More pictures hopefully in a future post.)
We vastly enjoyed that trip and hope to return to Andalusia some time in the future, as the area certainly deserves another visit, but this time without Gibraltar, and much more time for Sevilla, Cordoba, and Granada...
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