My pay-for site had a mini-series all of a sudden without fanfare. Seven episodes. It's called Downton Abbey. After seeing that Maggie Smith, ( the incomparable) was in it, had to take a look and got sucked into it, it was fascinating
The late Robert Altmann has lasting influence. His film 'Gosford Park' was extraordinary. Making a 'Krimi' into a study of mores and social strata of British society. It focussed on the people who ran an English manor, and the aristocrats were more or less the dress-up dolls who were fairly irrelevant.
Downton Abbey took a lesson, and sort of changed the balance.... sixty per-cent 'downstairs', forty 'upstairs'. I found it fascinating. It begins with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, and ends with the outbreak of WWI in 1914. There is an issue about inheritance, as the Lord of the manor doesn't have a male heir, but three daughters.
But mostly, it is about the people 'downstairs'. And they harbour a villain and villainess the likes of which I hadn't seen before. A lady's maid with so much resentment she could curdle you with her smile. And a footman with ambitions and without morals, you want to smash his face. Dickensian.
Everyone has a 'sneakret'. The themes are social inequality, the rise of socialism and the suffragette movement, and nothing is out of balance, as some of the 'upstairs' people are aware that their time is over, and help others.
I won't put any spoilers in here. But suffice it to say that Maggie Smith is a wonder as Dowager Countess. That woman never makes a wrong move. Hard and calculating on the one hand... and able to move on as far as she can. Pride, and in the end, very funny. Beginning with holding up her fan to 'protect' herself from 'new-fangled electric lights' and what they might emanate.... which so reminded me of a Thurber story.. . to being sceptical about what good a 'telly-phone' was for. And in every segment, she would drop a dead-pan line so excruciatingly funny, I'd bust out laughing from the heart. And I don't laugh much any more, Preciousses.
I will always regret not having seen her in a play called 'Lettice and Loveage'. Peter and I saw it with top actresses in Vienna, and I could only shrug and think, 'Whaaa? She got a Tony for THAT'????' However.... the last act was so funny, we saw a production in Graz. And the Viennese version was cut to shreds, turns out. Seemingly no cuts in Graz, and it was 'oh WOW... now I understand'. It wasn't comedy, it was devastating. A totally different play.
Peter was impressed, but had a problem, because the acress playing the Maggie Smith role was one of his sworn enemies. They went waaay back. When he was star-struck, and had his first serious affair with a young actor who was so handsome, I never figured out what he'd see in me.... He died of leukemia. But she'd made his life a living hell.
Whatever, after seeing it her, I walked out shell-shocked, and said I'd never seen Gerti so good... she'd made my eyes leak. And he begrudgingly said, 'That was the best I've ever seen her.' And it cost him something to admit that.
So I got a close approximation.
Whatever, obtaining the DVD of Downton Abbey would be worth the money. It is suspenseful. Interesting. And the production values are top-notch. It's rich in narration, and worth seeing. I hope there will be a second season.
For Anglophiles who buy dvds....
NY passed a marriage equality law
yesterday... This clip goes back to the Seventies... Progress? I guess so...
nuclear power is a good idea HOW?
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The corporate destruction of Austria...
Turning it into 'Murka.
Once upon a time, Preciousses, there used to be a country that was gentle.... nice. And they had strict rules about shop hours... not because they were mean, just the opposite. People needed their breaks, and the public's general health was considered a top priority. So there were strict opening hours for all the shops. And if you were a 'responsible' person, you would get what you needed while they were open. The last link fell today. And I find it in no way 'funny'. Or odd. It bothers me to death.
It was the Swiss who invented boullion cubes to reduce cooking time and give nourishment, just so people could work more time and add to production, the inbred yodlers... Anyone who thinks that they were doing people a favour hasn't done their homework. And anyone who has had fresh-cooked soup and one with cubes as base has to know how wrong the idea was. I used to be the soup king of this neighborhood, thanks to my mother, and believe me, you can't differentiate... the cubes suck it big time. My childhood home? Soup was a must, always there, in so many variations it would make your head spin.
Way back in the day.... stores were open from eight in the morning till twelve. If you needed anything, you were obligated to get it then. Because they closed from twelve or twelve-thirty and wouldn't re-open till two-thirty pm.
There was a REASON for that. People went home, and made the big meal of the day, the family came together, and ate, issues were discussed, and they were amazing. It was nutritionally sound. Good breakfast, your big meal at noon, and just a snack in the evening, because the shops re-opened at two-thirty p.m. and remained open till six p.m. Saturdays, the country shut down at twelve noon. And there was NOTHING till Monday. So you had to plan and try not to forget anything on your list.
They were iron-clad rules, and made you responsible to THINK.
Well, it became an encroachment. The creeping destruction of working people's rights, step by step. Suddenly, you had shops open all day, and people got an hour's break for lunch. No more family gatherings around the table, and their interactions, oh no. You worked. Encroachment, I calls it... and subverting family structure.
Then they loosened the laws and let a small group of stores open Sunday mornings from 8-12 a.m. If you were forgetful, like I was, you might have found you forgot to get a container of sour cream or something banal but was what you needed for dinner. And those stores upped the prices so it was a penalty fee for being absent-minded. Was ok by me.... Served me right, hey.
Then they went and loosened the Saturday laws, and supermarkets suddenly remained open till six p.m. No more 'weekends', you guys... and people loved it. So it stuck.
On Sundays, there is a supermarket at the train station, stays open from six a.m. till ten in the evening. That place is a scene of HORROR... so crammed with junk food, you would NEVER get a handicapped person in a wheelchair through any of the aisles. And for some strange reason, people think it is 'fun' to do their weekly shopping there, and it is a nightmare. Six registers, and if you can get out in less than half an hour for some small thing you forgot, oh boy, I want to know the trick. And can't imagine why most of them are so dumb. It's one thing for someone about to travel to get some munchies for the trip, but most of them are seriously buying a week's worth of groceries. The cashiers are just kids, and I don't want to KNOW how stressful their job is. But it must be terrible.
So what's set me off? I took a nap and overslept, woke up hungry, and it was 19:27 on my clock. Closed, I thought, everything closed. Shrugged, wasn't upset, can happen. The weather is so bad, it didn't really bother me.
And I thought, 'Hokay, will get a Döner at the Turk place over the way.' Imagine my astonishment to find that the square was hopping with people and activity! Because... the supermarket next door is suddenly now open till nine in the evening until further notice and you can get empty calories if you need them. How wonderful, if not for the people who work there.
No service on the meat or cheese counters, but hey, you can get wrapped plastic... if you wish.
And one poor girl was there who checked out the customers, what a thrill for her...
The 'geniuses' who thought this one up have to be corporate sharks, I tells ya. To my shame, I went in and bought something just to satisfy my curiosity about what was happeining in there. Everyone else was buying small items as well.
It was beyond 'disturbing', and the last staw for me. 'Murka wins, hey. Corporations win. Upsetting? You better believe it.
My last job in 'Murka, my lunch break on a twelve hour shift was TWENTY MINUTES. Believe me, you do NOT eat anything nutritional in that amount of time. You just eat some junk that keeps you going.
If the areseholes who thought this up think that they will increase profits... they are so wrong. You can't spend money you do not have. My purchase was EUR 1,38 for a can of tuna fish. Whoop-de-do, hey. I wanted a piece of cheese, but the Russians are buying it all up, and the prices skyrocketed. It was cheaper than a Döner. Go figure.
You don't always get what you want, as someone once sang.
Over the past couple or three years, I've noticed a disturbing trend. People feeding their faces walking down the street, mostly young ones. Thirty years ago, that would have been unthinkable.
People went home, had a very good lunch with soup, a main course, and everything that goes with that, and TALKED. And Austrians love nothing more than good food.
I could so relate to that. In my house, Austrian lunch was dinner at six p.m. and gawwd help you if you weren't there. It was respect for all the work that went into that meal, and Austrians are no different. It was 'fambly' time, questions were asked, discussions were held, it was sacrosanct. With lots of caring as subtext. And it was like that here.... once upon a time. It was information, fun, and if you had a person who could cook like my Mom, well, you wouldn't want to miss it.
Some assholes run on about 'family values'. Usually the clueless ones.
Corporate interests seemingly have decided to rip apart the very fabric of our society. Family is important. You lose that, you get mindless drones who will never see the queen bee in the hive.
I know that some people will think that is exaggerated, or I'm being a drama queen. But I know what used to be, and I know what it became. And feel sorry for the young people here who will never know that.
These measures sound so banal... believe me, they are not.
Ok, trivia time....
Daytime Emmy Awards were up on my pay-for site. Ninety minutes of my life I will never get back. For the past year, I've followed most of the shows out of boredom, because they are pleasantly distracting, so I thought it would be interesting.
Now I don't know how the voting system on this is, or who gets to vote for what, but wow... just wow. I would say some very talented people got robbed. In my opinion, only two deserved it. And one of them really disappointed me, because he's a pure Jeebus freak, seemingly. Nope, don't like that. He's on General Hospital, and is very good, but that acceptance speech? Gawwd help us all.
The other was Laura Wright, also of General Hospital, and she won over Michelle Stafford of The Young and the Restless, who plays a character I hate so much, I swear she must have met my bio-mom or my bio-mom has taken possession of her. I yell at both of them sometimes... needy, self-centered characters who tell themselves they are doing what's good for others, but are basically instant gratification freaks, selfish women who verge on the psychotic. So that was ok. Real talent.
The rest had me muttering imprecations. What burns me is the 'lurv' they show to that massive mess called 'The Bold and the Beautiful', Peter's poison. They got a best writing award? Really???? Peter and I used to roll our eyes at the repetitions, and he'd wave sheets of paper around and yell, 'You can hear the script rattling! God! This is for analphabets.' And I would say, so why do you watch it? 'The clothes are pretty.' And I'd bang my head on the wall. Figuratively....
The scripts haven't gotten any better. However. They awarded two this year, also to the team of 'The Young and the Restless'. That was deserved. Like my beloved One LIfe to Live, the story line is super-charged, it moves fast, you get thrown interesting plot twists, so yeah, deserved. Some one should trash the B &B team, if you ask me, they drive me nuts, but oh yeah, that is the only one I know which gets broadcast world-wide.... who have English or Spanish as a second language or something. I don't understand the fascination.
And yes it gets me right in the gall bladder.
The acts were horrible. Just oh-ful. There was a tribute to Oprah, and Gladys Knight? Well, I don't know what she's been smoking or drinking all these decades, but can't we just face the fact that her voice is totally shot? It's painful to behold. Celine Dion made it all about HERSELF, and I've not liked her since her Eurovision Song Contest days. So I'm biased about that. Las Vegas has RUINED Cirque de Soleil. The magic disappeared, and it was all tits and ass and pecs, or something, but nothing like at the beginning, where it was art.
The daytime tee-vee community showcases the charities they actively support, which was probably the most interesting part of the show. You learn about things you wouldn't know of otherwise and might be moved to help.
It seems unfair. ABC is killing off it's Soaps... for yet another food show, and a showcase for the mistress of the daytime producer. And are thinking of terminating General Hospital to give room for the ubiquitous Katie Couric a talk show. The three programmes have been running for over forty years, and I think it safe to say have been part of growing up in America for generations. You got sick at home from school? There was the sacrosanct part of the day you were to shush up, and your Mom watched 'her stories'. And if you were home for over a week, you could get caught up in all 'da drama'.
It's trivial, yes. Silly? Maybe. But for people with no access to theater or the arts, it was as close as they got to it, and there were many fine people who moved them to laughter and to tears.
Removing all that for 'profit' or 'ratings', or gratifying your spouse because you want to be powerful? I don't think that they will succeed in the long run. You don't run for four decades because you're producing shit, in other words.
Real fans are so angry... I think they'll provide some very negative consequences to what they are doing. I feel sorry they'll be gone. They were a part of the culture.
And a huge bit of American culture will disappear? Is it trivial? I do not know. But millions of people without access to anything else? That was their 'theater', their villains, and their heroes and heroines, role models, attitude changing shifts in mores and morals. I don't think that the movers and shakers really understand the implications of what they are doing here. It will be a cultural loss.
Trivial, right? Maybe. Maybe not.
Some ideas
resemble certain bakery products: sweet, soft and and somehow comforting in the morning, but hard, brittle and dry by late afternoon.
Original RenB thought, was in my head when I woke up, so I get the tm. I must have been dreaming something, but lost it.
Spotted two mormon kids at the intersection and lost my composure, busted out laughing because that number from the musical popped into my head. They must be a sub-sect, because their pants and ties were blue, but they had the cute name tags on their crisp white shirts. I've only seen the ones in black with the crisp white shirts. And damn Trey Parker for making that silly song stick in my head.
For anyone who missed it, click down below for a reprise of 'I Believe'. It's enough to start one's day with a smile.
uh-oh... Da Ven has taken umbrage...
That the hooligans in Canada got off with a slap on the wrist... or rump as he puts it. My bad.
He's getting authoritarian in his advancing years. Get on the subject of hockey and the US vs Canada..... well you get volatile feelings hey. Because Boston won... (yay???) ??????
My Dad grew up where sports were fair, and you have your issues with opposing teams, and all that, but fairness counts. Another era, another time. I think he gets very angry about people misbehaving at a sports event, and then nearly rioting or something.... haven't followed the story exactly, just browsed the headlines and shrugged because it isn't anything new to me.
But it seems to have offended his code of 'what you DO'. Sports, fairness, and yeah, you can rag on someone, tease them if your team is up and the other's is down, but you don't go breaking beer bottles over their heads, or go out setting fires and causing mayhem because your team lost.
And that is the correct attitude to take. I'm not sugar-coating the pill here.
But times changed... and some Canadians, who are portrayed in the 'media' as 'nice but sort of clueless', are anything but. I think they're sort of Wild West, and if a fist can solve an argument, they will use them.
I will tell y'all a story. (Gawwwd, I feel old this afternoon...) I was on shift at work at the Olympic Village cafeteria, mindnumbingly boring stuff. Would unpack stuff and put them on trays to be taken to one of the five kitchens on rolling trolleys. When I didn't have a ton of grapes washing in a machine, and the noise was hellish.
Well right at the beginning, I'd gotten caught 'stealing' a grapefruit. The list said four, there were five, so I put the fifth into a container to smuggle home for my breakfast after my night shift. We were only getting packaged crap to eat at that point and doing trial runs. And I had this hyper German tiny guy named Hobus for a boss, and he was a big-wig in one of the most prestigious hotels in Germany. It was right at the beginning of my work there, and he wanted to show us how to package something for the trolleys, and wouldn't you know, grabbed the container I'd hidden the grapefruit in.
He took one look, and said, 'This can ONLY have been the American! Explain yourself!' Embarassing? Died inside. I explained there had been one more than on the list and had wanted it for breakfast. BTW.... you say grapefruit in southern Germany and Austria.... but in the North? The word is Pampelmuse.
My colleagues gave me hell during the break. 'How the hell could you be so stupid? Only Amis eat Pampelmusen!' (Yeah, you learn something every day, hey. ) When the shift ended, 'der' Hobus threw me the grapefruit, and said, 'Next time, ASK', and I could see he was about to bust himself for laughing. Embarassed to the nth degree, hey.
Thus began a weird relationship with 'der Hobus'. I was always joking and laughing with everyone, and his stock phrase was 'B! Mach kein Blödsinn!' (Stop goofing around.) Well I was working, but my mouf wouldn't stop. And he would go off chuckling. 'Mach kein Blödsinn!'. I guess you could say he liked me.
So, you ask, what the hell does that have to do with Canadians, and violence, and so on? It's just background so you can appreciate it better.
I was washing grapes one night, which was so mindless, you could go nuts, when 'der Hobus', came running in out of breath. As I said, he was tiny, only came up to my shoulder, and I was only five foot nine back then... shrunk since.
He was out of breath and yelled 'B!!!!'
'Yes Sir?''
'Do you have nerves of steel?' (I thought 'Whaaaa?' and was cautious...)
'Errm, sometimes...'
'Come with me, hurry.'
Everyone watched fascinated. and we went outside to the entrance.
'Can you get rid of this?'
There was a mess of blood on the pavement. And I looked at him surprised and said, 'Is THAT all? You've never worked a childrens matinee in a movie theater and gotten rid of the puke on the carpets. Get me a mop and cleaning stuff, pronto.' He looked relieved. He did and I cleaned it up.
I later learned it had been a confrontation between two hot-blooded Canadians fighting over a girl. I had to keep mum about it, which I did. As far as I know, that was the only bloody confrontation among the 140o employees, and they got sent home. It was supposed to be the games of peace... till the terrorists ruined it all.
Lesson? You don't mess with young hot-blooded Canadians.
Well... 'der Hobus' saw me in a different light for the rest of the summer. If there was an extra grapefruit/pampelmuse, he'd throw it to me at the end of a shift, with a smile and say, 'Mach kein Blödsinn'.
Over the decades... much changed. The rich-poor gap became wider and wider. The 'hooligans' are in a place where their only heroes are soccer players, and teams. They usually have no way out of their circumstances, and their teams are their own triumphs, that is how they feel. It's a piss-poor lack of edumacation they have, but is all they have. And they get frustrated, and fuel themselves with booze, and get like the Canadian guys that night, and violent. And the worse the economy gets, and the more trapped they become, the more dangerous they are.
I'm not going all bleeding heart liberal here, but I 'think' I know what fuels it... disregard, poverty, anger at not having their own lives, not seeing a way out...
No, they don't deserve just a slap on the wrist, they need to know that actions have consequences. But it is the underlying reasons that cause this that make me want to punish the people who are responsible for making them that way.
Just various and sundry thoughts...
Da Ven sort of vented about the Canadians going hooligan after losing to Boston in some hockey game. He should never want to be a soccer fan in Europe.
I saw a game live.... once. In Berlin. In the stadium Hitler had built for the '33 Olympics. It was so impressive, architecturally. Intimidating and skeery. The home team lost, but there was camaderie, but that was 'back then'. And all I could think was, 'so this is where Jesse Owens humiliated Hitler.'
What later developed wasn't so interesting, and more annoying. Riots. Hooligans, who currently get a huge police presence when they arrive and accompany them to the stadium... which had an interim re-naming to the Arnold Scharzenegger Stadium and after he pissed off the city officials, got re-named to the original Liebenauer Stadium. Long story.
I took a trip to Rome in the late Seventies. It was the one city I disliked on sight. Athens fascinated me, and I fell in love. Rome? I hated it. So I jumped ship after having spent one morning in the Vatican museums, which were way too much to absorb, and fled to Salerno, only because I'd read it was on the sea, and knew that a very bloody WWII battle was fought there. It was a pure vacation place, steep mountains falling to the strip of the city, a long strip of promenade, with the most amazing acts on it... the local version of Punch and Judy, which originated there during the time of Comedia dell'arte, and it was full of vacationing Italians, so I got a brush up on my speaking skills. Took day trips to Pompeii, and Amalfi. Unforgettable, and just what I needed to relax and fill my head with knowledge.
The bus ride to Pompeii was hair-raising. People had chickens in coops on the baggage racks above the seats, and we swerved along mountainsides where everything was so steep, I thought I had made a bad decision, but everyone ELSE was calm, so I went with it. You do that when you're young and fearless.
I was down there for a week, it was inexpensive, and wonderful, and what I needed. Just some solitude. I knew I was falling in love, and wanted to sort it out and be clear in my mind about whether that was what I wanted.
Two days before I was supposed to be back to work, I returned to Rome taking an evening train there and was absolutely freaked when I got to Roma Termini, the station. It was crawling with humanity. What I hadn't known was that the World Cup Soccer Tournament had just ended, and everyone in the wuuurrrrrld was leaving. I was lucky to get on, it was packed.
And landed sitting on my suitcase near the WC door on one car, and it was wall to wall people, yelling, screaming, and I had to keep moving for all the people wanting to void in the toilet one way or another, and had a hysterical English kid drunk out of his gourd who gave me a play by play re-run of all the games in complete 'euphoria'. He brought back all the stress I had managed to lose. People were piled up sleeping in the corridors.
I'm claustrophobic at best, and it was my night in Hell. And I kept thinking, 'I've got to get OUT of here!' but I didn't 'know' any other cities on the route, so I held on to Venice in my head.
It takes twelve hours to travel by train from Rome to Venice. That far.
But I learned some things, although I was more than annoyed at the time.
Once in Venice, I put my suitcase in a locker, took a boat to the Lido, and a bus to the southernmost end, where there was a nude beach. High dunes, sort of magical, and I crashed out and finally slept. There was a train going back to Graz in the evening, you see, and I thought the horror would be over.
But before I got the boat, I'd run into Jimmy Carter for the second time on that trip. Early morning, he was out jogging with his secret service agents... I'd already seen him in Rome, going somewhere... he and Rosalynn waving, and the Romans sort of shrugging as if to say, WTF? It was weird, as in, 'Can't I have a minute here???'
When I got up to go back, there was this letch who followed me on the bus back to Santa Maria Elisabetta, where the ferries back to the city go, and he was fat, toothless, and kept running his tongue over his lips laciviously, and all I wanted to do was laugh, and thought 'Fellini makes documentaries'.
The train home was quiet, I got in at seven, began work a half-hour later, and life became normal again.
What was extraordinary about soccer fanatics then became magnified, but I sort of understand. I've met many since. They scrape everything they have together just to see their HE-roes. They live through them vicariously. They live and breathe the game. Because their lives aren't so exciting. And they are sort of a sad sort of group.
And the more poor they became, the more violent.
It's just a guess.
People can be very sad.
The three best numbers in my opinion...
Wolverine dances... who knew.
Colbert sings and dances... who knew...
Am not so sure about this, but from the comments, the original finale was about fifteen minutes longer, so withhold my snark.
I forgot how much I miss going to the theater
Yeah, the Tony Awards were over the weekend, and were up on my internet pay-for channel. I had been planning to go to Gamlitz, but it was raining cats and dogs, so why travel to gloom in gloom, you know? So will try again tomorrow. And watched the show.
Among all the awards shows this year, the Tony broadcast was smart. They gave out the boring technical awards in the commercial breaks, with notifications when they went back on air. The acceptance speeches were mercifully brief. The rest was what Broadway does best... entertainment.
The guest host was Neil Patrick Harris, who is so multi-talented, it's criminal. He used to be 'Doogie Howser', and is now on 'How I Met Your Mother', but has a lot to offer. His opening number was hilarious. He had a great interim number with Hugh Jackman mid-show. More on him in a moment.
The rest were live excerpts from this years crops of musical nominees. Strong field, I must say. And some from recent ones, and one ballad from Spiderman, Bring On The Dark, which was nice enough, but that wasn't in the running because it's been one of the most scandal ridden enterprises of the past year and still hasn't officially opened because it was such a mess, keeps being re-written, and is fairly dangerous.... lots of injuries to the cast.
The finale of 'Anything Goes' as best revival was very nice, but didn't have the spark that '42nd Street' had. Saw that in Vienna, and for tap-dancing numbers, remains one of my favorites.
One number had me riveted. The NY Philharmonic got an A-list cast together and recreated the legendary Sondheim musical 'Company', which is going to be in some big city movie theaters for four days beginning yesterday. Neil Patrick Harris played the lead. And they did the finale from that. The shock was that Stephen Creier of Two and a Half Men and Stephen Colbert were in it! The original cast was lead by Dean Jones, and Harris really fit the role. The ensemble is excellent, Colbert carries a tune and blended in with the choreography. I was surprised, to say the least.
But, of course, I was wanting to see anything that had to do with The Book of Mormon, which had fourteen nominations and won nine, including best musical. It's from the team that do South Park, and the creater of 'Avenue Q' which was a huge hit. It's about young Mormons who do their missionary year in northern Uganda, get their belief tested confronting a local warlord, and from what I hear, it is not for the very religious or faint of heart.
I hope I can imbed the excerpt they did at the Tonys with Andrew Rannells. I saw an interview with Josh Gad, who is in the show, and the part was so hard to cast, he said, but when Rannells walked in to audition, everyone knew they'd found who they were looking for.... that fresh, wide-eyed innocence that young Mormon missionaries tend to just exude... the kind where you want to shake them and yell 'Wake up!'. A couple of them here tried to get their claws into Peter, and I thought at first that Annti was behind them visiting, but of course she wasn't. They kept coming back and leaving pamphlets with 'pretty' colorful biblical illustrations, the kind a ten-year-old would draw with a full set of Crayolas. I'd be at work, come home, find them on the table, and say, 'Why do you keep letting them in?' 'They're so nice. I think one of them is gay.' 'Do you read this crap??' 'No. It's nice to have company when you're not here.'
That seems to be a recurring theme here. The creators of the show say that lots of Mormons have seen the show, and come backstage and are complimentary. 'They're so nice.'
I suppose they are, but they believe some bat-shit crazy stuff. The embed is fairly tame... there are other themes that have gotten some people's panties in a twist, but it seems to be done so skillfully, they still go with it. Still, pay attention to the lyrics... believing the Jews built boats and sailed to America, and that Eden was in Jackson Missouri? Au weh. I hope they made that up.
Can't embed, but the link is here. The moment I saw this actor, I understood what Josh Gad meant. And what is this about you getting your own planet? Read the comments. Whew.
And the opening
Good grief, hey....
I'm so out of the loop, it's pathetic. Got up and wanted to whip up the energy to finally go visit Peter. So first stop, it being Monday, get something for breakfast next door. (Sundays I vegetate and just try to sleep. Never go out, just check up on things I didn't have time to check during the week.
And I went next door... and they were closed. EVERYTHING was closed, and barely being awake yet, was all 'WTF??? A horriday? What the hell is going on now? We already had Christ's fahrt to heaven, so... June, double horri... OH CRAP. Of course, it's Pentecost, which is a double, the Sunday and Pentecost Monday. Everything closed.'
My synapses in the brain are sluggish in the morning, creepy but true.
Which meant, rev down, take the bus to the train station for some staples for the day, as I had not stocked up on anything, and that's the only place you can get anything, then come home and kick myself for now having been aware.
And it also meant no trip to Gamlitz, because there is no bus connection from Ehrenhausen to Gamlitz, and there is no WAY I'm walking the seven kilometers over hillsides each way to get to the nursing home. It's gonna be thirty degrees C. Verflixt! It's taken me a week to get revved up for that visit.
So will have to bore myself back to sleep and try again tomorrow. Crap!
Barf city...
How in the world can the US function with such idjits?
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Oh, what you don't say.... giggle, outright HAW!
It's too warm, slept, and woke up to news, and my Yahoo always pops up first, with headlines about what is happening in You-rup.... And I thought, 'oh good gawwd, it's gay pride season again' when I read that Lady Gaga is going to give a benefit performance in the Circus Maximus in Rome this evening, and the Vatican has their cassocks in a twist, protesting more than any lady should.
I find that hilarious. Italy is way backwards on gay rights, but Berlusconi can love him some underage girls and that's ok... Yes, very amusing. I'm not so crazy about Lady Gaga's music, most of it has been off my radar, but she is certainly an artist, and THIS gig is going to cement her creds.
And I get chuckles thinking about how 'da cassocks' are gonna shit whatever is under them. How amusing.
The german version is here. It says they are gonna have a forty-wagon parade, and one will have parents and their kids, and another with drag queens. I don't personally like the latter, but they seem to be essential. After all, it was the drag queens who were the most important element of the uprising at Stonewall, and got the least credit. Now Lady Gaga can be the most celebrated of the them all, even if she is a woman.
Italians are crazy. Spain was far more surprising... legalised gay marriage a couple years ago, and they are crazy Catholic, so that was interesting.
Exceot I can't figure how anyone would want to marry anybody. I'm so anti-marriage... nope. Live as you will, but the legal stuff? Oh, that is so out of line, forget it. It would involve trust, and I would never trust anyone that much ever again.
Ed Schultz is back.... good rant.
He really shouldn't have called Laura Ingraham a slut on his radio show... twice. Although I didn't disagree.... I would have called her a bottom feeder.
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Oh, Ricky Sanatorium just again DOING it
Fambly values, hey....
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Why I haven't posted.
I don't care about what Anthony Weiner (which is actually German and pronounced 'whiner'... if it was Wiener, it would be pronounced as what he thinks is a frankfurter. And a Wiener would be Viennese word for a hot dog.)
Ed Schultz is so old party line, he drives me crazy. What about fucking Senator David 'Diapers' Vitter, who is STILL senator, and no one complains or fights back? There were reports that Weiner wanted the Mayor's seat, and thus hasn't made friends.
And how prude are Americans? Men Weiner's age do stupid things. And bringing in the wife which is preggers is so prurient and immature.... People drool over women's breasts, and can get excited over so-called beaver shots in Hustlers, no one likes to see a Penis... They so lack personality.
And the feeding frenzy of the press is shameful.
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Excercises in Dumbness... Sarah yawn...
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Finally Japan update.... and NJ is crazy...
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Wow.... Mittens is creepy, but the others?
Wow. Can you say 'they eat their own'??
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oh, just had such a flashback...
The Grand Magic Circus led by the most incredible man I have ever met. Jerome Savary. He was French, but grew up in Argentina. Brilliant man. Our paths crossed twice.
The first time was in Munich, and they did an outdoor performance on the grounds of the Olympic village. And I had a terrific slide shot of him putting on the final touches on some guys' make-up, The troupe was amazing, and he was a brilliant artist. Later did some very serious stuff all over the continent.
I was reminded of it while watching 'Britain's Got Talent', and there was this really good troupe called ''The Horror Show', which was circus and edgy, but they didn't get into the finals. They weren't as good as what Savary did, but very close, and it opened the memory floodgates.
Many years later, the troupe landed at the hotel I worked in, and it was the most chaotic ten days I ever... EVER had. We had this arts festival in autumn back then, and they were on the programme. So I had to deal with them every day. Amazing people. And they looked like the sort you'd say 'throw the bums out'. Sorta creepy. And surreal.
My absolute favorite was a dwarf. He always had a pair of roller skates slung around his shoulders, but I never saw him actually wear them. Every second word out of his mouf was 'merde'. So onery, hey... He could creep me out to the max. Would slink up to the pult where I was sitting, and it was high. So I wouldn't see him coming, doing statistics and my journals and journals, and he wouldn't say anything. Until I'd feel uncomfortable, as if someone were watching me, and I would look up and see a cap, bushy eyebrows, and brown eyes intently watching me over the desk part of it, and would go bonkers inwardly. He was so intense.
Everyone was so interesting. And of course, I met Jerome Savary. I love artists, and he was... a real gentleman. In every sense of the word. And he had his people in place.
In those ten days, he dealt with hissy fits behind the scenes after rehearsals, and there was a major melt-down with some guy who was supposed to hold and twist a ribbon that a woman was doing acrobatics on, and threatened to quit, it all took place in the lobby, and it was better than Broadway. Lots of fireworks which never really exploded in the end.
And a lovely French Canadian lady who looked anorexic, and I couldn't IMAGINE what she was doing there. She looked sort of plain.
Their week was tumultuous, and it was so much fun watching them. I did get Jerome in a corner one evening, and gave him the slide I took in Munich. He seemed astounded. And we spoke at length. In horrible French. (My French is horrible, not his...) And in the end, he said, ''Vous etes tres gentil'. And meant it.
There was a saxaphone player from Lyon, who was also such a hunk, I was 'in-lurv', gawwd, so sexy.
Well, their play date came, and I just had to see what was going on, and went to see the performance. It was brilliant. The sax player gave me a sax greeting when I entered the theater lobby, it was a chaotic scene they were doing.
What followed was amazing in every sense of the word. Magic. All those motley people were transformed into the most beautiful people I'd ever seen. The anorexic lady was suddenly the most agile, beautiful woman you could imagine.
Everything fit. If I hadn't been sitting, I'd have gone down on my arse.
Sometimes you have the luck to be in the right place at the right time. And see some magic. Those people work very hard to acheive that.
My second favorite was a non-verbal troupe from Nancy in France. They would start off with noise... and it became something way else. Even Millie talks about that today, we both saw it, and they stayed with us. They came back to the hotel one night, and I sort of repaid them... Mimed opening a winder looking surprised, and then opening the door. They loved it.
Tja... artists are fun, and you can't get it any better than talking with them, and being in-lurv with creativity.
Sorry, just reminiscing.
I finally figured it out....
Coronation Street takes place in Manchester England. The dialect is so thick, they offer subtitles on the screen if you watch it on the tee-vee machine. I'd first thought it was supposed to be in London somewhere.
Other than Scots, which is incomprehenisble, it rates third on my list of how not to speak the English language. My Manchester wasn't a borne of well-spoken English either, lots of broad vowels, and some Frenchisms thrown in if you were 'just speaking everyday stuff', but England? Oh wow. It takes a lot of fine tuning for the ear to 'get' it.
The two Manchesters have one thing in common, language-wise. They swallow most of their words, and it takes getting used to. In my Manchester, a common exchange would be, 'J'eetyet? No, d'jew?' You try that one out on someone who speaks English as a second language, and they say 'Wha?' In real English, it means 'Did you eat yet? No, did you?' In the mother ship Manchester, they are even more lazy, and swallow half the words that come out of their moufs.
Which is another thing. th becomes f if it is in the middle of a word. It's worse than rocket science. But once you crack it, and your ear adjusts, it starts to make some sense.
In Manchester, 'thank you' becomes 'ta'. But if it is in the Dales area and elsewhere, it becomes 'cheers'. Which I find oddly unsettling for some reason. Scots is up there at number one for the most incomprehensible English spoken on the planet. I had a neighbor who emigrated from Scotland, and in all the years I knew him, I did NOT understand two thirds of what he said, and he was garrulous. He scandalised the hell out of me when I was young, and he went out on a bender one evening wearing a jacket that was oh-ful. Sort of a baseball jacket in blue with bright yellow letters across the back. What I read, or thought I read was 'Ladies from Hell'. So I thought he was out looking for hookers, and his wife was the primest lady you could imagine. I know now that I mis-read it, and it must have been 'Laddies from Hell', which makes more sense. With the rolling 'r's and being a bit ribald, he was a very colorful person... and the burr? I was lost the minute he opened his mouf.
Oddly, my cousin Jeannie seemed to understand everything he said, and they seemed to take a shine to one another. We lived in the same brick dreary tenement block, so she was about four or five and would march over and pass his door next to ours and seemed to find him fun. Which resulted in the famous/infamous evening she spotted him on his porch from hers and yelled, 'Hey, Mr. Purdy! Ya gonna come over for dinna? My Mom is making chicken boobies!' (Way to go, cousin L...) He found that so hilarious, he nearly pissed himself.
But language isn't always universal. The second worst dialect is 'Jordy', which comes from the Newcastle area in the north of England. During my summer in Munich, I hung out a lot with three lovely girls from there. It was an excercise in frustration. I spent most of my time saying 'I beg your pardon? What do you mean?' 'Whatsamatta, you got a sneck on your netty?' 'Excuse me?' 'Do you have a lock on your toilet'... which was a way of saying you're bottled up and being anal retentive... They also had some problems.
'Can ya do me a favour tomorra... knock me up at half ten?' Upon which I looked at her sternly and said, 'Don't EVER say that to an American.' I knew what she meant, but she didn't know how it sounded. And fell apart when I told her how that would be perceived.
One of my favorite trips into town with them was on the subway into the center of Munich, and Pam was a show-off. So she spots this vicar in collar, and what you did if you were English to break the ice, one of the first questions after introducing yourself was the question that didn't make you a 'tourist'. So Pam had on her high English hoity toity posh accent, and said, 'And have you beeen to Dachau yet?' Whereupon her friend Sheila wasn't having any putting on airs stuff, elbowed her and said, 'ERE, whatcha talkin' like THAT for?' In pure cockney.
Gawwd, I wish I had had a camera with me just to record the look on the vicar's face. Luckily we got off at the next stop and hilarity ensued.
It's fun to be young. But Jordy is the second worst dialect in English that I know of.
So Manchester places third. Or 'fird'. Whatever.
It takes effort to train your ear, and it applies to any language. Get me with someone Swiss or Tyrolean... I get lost. Italian? Oh. My Gawwd. Just because you 'think' you speak the same language doesn't mean you do at all.
But I think I got the Manchester part down now so I know what's going on.
Just sayin'
how is this defensible?
As to the last part with Rand Paul... I went through the Nixon stuff. Travelling back home, and being yelled at a lot at JFK in New Yawk. Beginning with immigration and having an African American big Momma in my face because I'd been gone for a year, and declared nothing bringing into it. And truthfully told her, Listen, hot hips, I spent my money on rent and food because I was poor so get OFF my ass.'
Got moved on to the next stop, and this smiley guy pulls out a computer print-out, the ones with holes in the sides, and told me everything I did the entire year away. It was a defining moment.
Deciding to leave. And yeah, it was the Nixon thing, and they were fucking crazy and most of them criminals. I wanted nothing to do with them. Now they are going after Anthony Weiner, who is credible in my eyes. But he's a big thorn in other people's...
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oh my... two clowns and short of a clown car!
How can you not be disgusted? And Mark Halperin is a Rethug tool.
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I get really irritated...
When you have a horriday no one actually celebrates in the sense it is supposed to be celebrated. Like going to church. It's Christi HimmelfahIrt... Christ's fahrt to heaven. People are supposed to be out there having processions down the main drag, or something. Instead, I have loud neighbours drunk and keeping me from sleeping, because whatever my departed and beloved mother said... it is not a 'holy day of obligation', and I don't believe in it, and thank her for telling me 'When you're sixteen, you can decide for yourself.'
No, I don't like horridays at all.
Other stuff I did while I was inccomunicado....
Watch movies of course, and news on the interweb thing. My superchannel is sort of wonky in that department. I can get every soap imagineable world-wide, but since it is called Soapaliens, well hey, you know what you're getting. And if they post movies, well, they'll be sort of odd, of course.
And they do all the competition shows, which are mostly boring, although it is fun to watch people mostly making an ass of themselves. I get it. As to soaps, there are some humungous differences in what they do world-wide. But it boils down to the same thing... dumbing down the public. And if you watch the message boards on The Bold and the Beautiful, it proves what I've been saying for over a decade now.
Peter got into it, we were still in the Mühlgasse, and I would come home and make lunch or supper, depending on my shift, and while making lunch, he was glued to 'The Forresters' as he called it.... although the german version is called 'Rich and Beautiful'. This piece of shit drove me crazy. And I could hear it in the kitchen while cooking, and yell a lot, because that show never moves. It's for analphabets. Repeat ten times, take a step forward. And I would say, 'Talk about dumbing you down, how can you WATCH that? It's degrading anyone with any sort of intelligence!'
It was just a blip on my radar screen, but irritating. Well, I never watched, but ten years later, Peter is still addicted to it, so I got in and know all the back-stories. It's the most painful 22 minutes of my day for wincing at dumb, but it gives us something to talk about...
I still can't figure how that show won a daytime Emmy last year, it is appallingly dumb.
But it is the comments boards on the site which really cement and prove my theory. Dumbing down. There are people who just use 'there' 'they're', my favourite today was someone using 'accept' when they meant 'except'... and forget about using who and whom in the right context. I had teachers who practically beat it into us. And it gets really weird when they use it to neuter what they are referring to, and use 'that' instead of who. Newscasters do this shit. I don't like them.
Yeah, semanitcs again.
So I saw some movies, as if that were something new. Lame. '2012' was up. Well, Roland Emmerich can do catastrophe films like no one else, but his endings are so patriotic sick he spoils them. My one 'jolly' was the scene where the Pope was praying, and there was a crowd outside. And I thought, 'leave it to the Italians to dress up really big for the apocalypse', before the Church virtually rolled over them.
I watched this horrible film called Hall Pass, which was about couples taking a break from their marriages. The men were buffoons, the wives nearly got it on, and then had to face they were getting older... If you are in depression, you needn't see it, it's a wrong thing to do.
And there was this film called 'Couple's Retreat'... with Vince Vaughan.
Here is what I get from the U'S media: Women are wise, except when they have melt-downs and go either self-destructive, or homicidal. Men... are wimps, Cooked spaghetti, they wimp out, are p-whipped concoctions, and have you noticed? The women always hang out and voice all their concerns, and can be really bitches, but they stick together. The Men... sort of just fold into jello molds and let themselves be played.
And if you get that reflected at you in everything on the tee-vee machine, it's like programming a nation....
Because I think nothing is further from the truth.
Well, whaddaya know. am back on my blog...
Yay!
I didn't know how much I liked this till I couldn't have it... something got fucked up royally, but ok, I can vent.
Which is nice.... I watched a lot of stuff on the intertubes while cursing fate, and missing Peter. And there are really embarrassing episodes of being really just RenB, and yelling at the screen, and whatever.....
And doing stuff to save money, because, Preciousses, ten Euros a day doesn't go far. So I had this hair cutting machine, and whaddaya know, I cut off the locks, and got to the back of my pate... and the damned thing went 'errrr' like your uncle after a huge family meal falling asleep, and I got stuck looking in the mirror wondering what to do with the rest. (It is not 'GOOD' if I can't vent here... believe me... I get 'confused'.)
Well, long story short... I just cut off the rest with a pair of kitchen scissors to what I thought was a baldy, but I really can't see out of the back of my head, can I... So it was sort of patchwork, and if I were 20 and a 'punk' and dyed it orange, I might have gotten away with it. But had an intervention. Enver.
Yeah, my Turkish hairdresser. He parks below my courtyard, and I never run into him, but oh, hey, he caught me. And he said, 'What in the WORLD have you been doing, huh? This is TERRIBLE, all patchwork in the back, what are you DOING, hey.
Well, that was embarrassing, all right. And I said, 'I didn't have the money, Enver, so I tried to do it myself.' And he basically told me to march my arse over to his place to fix me up, like five minutes beforehand. And to pay him the next day when my pension arrived.
So crazy things were happening, and I was trying and re-trying to get access to my account, and nothing was working, so I decided to try a hiatus, could I feel good if I were not able to write, because I'd been so depressed, I'd wanted to shut it down... but soon realised it was a vent, and something I needed, basically every day. Because... I don't have anyone to really talk to any more.
And expressing yourself is fun.
While I was gone... a relative connected, and boy howdy, I have so much I wish to say to him. He's really in the middle of the most disgusting, un-american fight imaginable and being used as a pawn. It makes me angry, as you can tell from my language, I get fired up. Long story.
To top things off in self-embarassment... I got confused because one day is exactly like another in my current life. So I thought it would be a double horriday. Because I was so focussed on Memorial Day, I got to thinking that we were having May First, and tomorrow is Christi Himmelfahrt, so it would be a double, ya know?
Ok, stoopid, I knew it was May 31st I'd been napping, so it was confused, and boy do I dream.
I talked to Peter for the first time in six weeks.
Has to be a record.... I'S a record.....
I cried, very much. He cried, and is so.... vulnerable. He is so hopeful that I visit Monday. And I will.
Gawwd, I wish to stand under a shower and be cleansed in every sense.
