Deutschland über Elvis

Elvis is not dead. He's just left the building.

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:39:00 +0000

He's off to http://deutschlanduberelvis.com

Missing your regular dose über Elvis? Don't despair. I recently tossed off a blogging funk, and moved to a spacious new home. After much gnashing of teeth and fiddly adjustment of DNS whatsits, it even has its own domain name.

Please adjust your readers and bookmarks, and pop over to http://deutschlanduberelvis.com

Or drop me a line at derChef (at) deutschlanduberelvis (punkt) com

Image Credit: the incomparable elvisforever.de

Wordless Wednesday

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:55:00 +0000

WW Home

Chilled

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:58:00 +0000

Most of Munich's many fountains are shut off and boarded up, but the Fisherman's Memorial, near the Stachus, soldiers on.

EDIT: My bad. It's actually the Brunnenbuberl (1895), or Knave's Fountain. The Fisherman's Fountain is down the street, and covered in ice, it kinda looked the same.

@ Iggy:

Beneath the ice is a clothesless knave, trying to shut off the flow of water (wine?) to the elderly satyr above. When King Luitpold saw the naked imp, he asked for a fig leaf, but the sculptor refused. Which, according to city lore, shows that in Munich, the artist is king! Nowadays, pretentious, wannabe artists get the same priveleges, it seems.

Also @ Iggy

IG, you're an architect. If you click on the link, you'll see that the statue is mixed media: stone and bronze. Could the combination of materials explain why the city fathers don't need to shut off this fountain in winter?

A Highly Successful Plane Crash

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:21:00 +0000

The more you fly, the more you fear flying, they say. Yours Truly, whose frequent flyer cards drip with gold, diamonds, plantinum and emeralds, is such a flyer. Sheer mathematics convince anyone with a nervous disposition that his number must come up, sooner or later.

That's why I got in the habit of (don't laugh) counting the rows to my nearest exit, which, for those of you who weren't paying attention, may be behind you. If you fly Qantas, the sultry-voiced Angela Catterns scolds blasé frequent flyers to listen up; you may think you've heard the safety drill before, but every aircraft is subtly different.

Nonetheless, even the biggest scaredy-cat browses the in-flight magazine during the life-jacket bit. Nice in theory, but no pilot has ever successfully ditched in water. One wing generally touches the surface first, and flips the plane. Or the whole kit-and-caboodle is so busy dropping out of the sky that your seat cushion-cum-floatation device may be too little, too late.

Until yesterday.

Much has been written about USAirways #1549.　About the skill, heroism and modesty of the pilot. About the speed with which NY Waterways craft were able to rescue the passengers. And a lot about divine intervention, prayer, grace, or sheer good fortune. FlyerTalk, and the Australian Frequent Flyer Community, both discuss the matter at length.

My first thought on reading the news, though, was this. Aviation seems to be getting safer.

Before you scoff at my bad taste, hear me out. Time was, not long ago, that any catastrophic system failure was a death sentence for passengers and crew.

Ironically, I was sitting in the USAirways lounge at LaGuardia in 2005 when an Air France plane skidded off the runway in Toronto. As news helicopters circled the flaming aircraft, broadcasters solemnly mouthed pity on the travellers inside, unable to imagine that anyone could survive the flames. Yet, everyone escaped alive, thanks to an incredibly alert and well-trained crew.

Last year, I was actually booked on the British Airways flight from Beijing that crashed-landed at Heathrow. It may seem odd to write that it "crash-landed successfully", but no other phrase seems more appropriate. Everyone lived.

Those in the know, credit the pilot's skill. "He deserves a medal as big as a frying pan," they said. Let's hope he got one.

(An aside. At the last minute, accountants at my firm switched the ticket to Air China, on cost grounds. They take this incident as a moral lesson in the virtues of pennypinching.)

And now, USAirways 1549.

Yesterday, benevolent forces controlled the universe. Or, just as important, even in an atmosphere of absurd cost-cutting and near bankruptcy, the behaviour of the pilot and crew suggests that airlines seem not to have skimped on human factors in aviation safety. Perhaps, they took lessons from safety breaches, and trained crews for many more contingencies. Perhaps they recognise the human element as the most important factor in air safety.

I never thought I would say this. Goodonya, aviation industry. And--no, hear me out-- congratulations to USAirways. They may cancel flights and lose luggage, but they appear to have put real effort into improving their safety record. EDIT: Spoke too soon, perhaps?

Personally, I am grateful. Munich and Pittsburgh, for obvious reasons, are two airports I use a lot, and USAirways maintains a significant presence in both.

It seems that the pilot of the stricken plane was, in fact, one of the key movers responsible for crew training standards. His LinkedIn profile shows two recommendations. When he gets to work on Monday, I would be surprised if there were not, at the very least, 155 more.　

* * * * *

The photo credit is a triumph for the citizen journalist. It is Janis Krum's first Twitter photograph of the plane in the Hudson, sourced through (ironically enough) a website named Boing Boing.

Tanz the Tango

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:06:00 +0000

Germans have a name for the folk who inhabit the southern reaches of the state of Baden-Württemburg. They call them Swabians.

The name carries some unfair baggage. The stereotype paints them as dour, mildly pessimistic, stubborn, cheap (EDIT: thrifty), prone to one beer too many. Swabians are, many mantain, the Scotsmen of the Continent.

Fun-loving Bavarians love to diss Swabians. How can they live so close to France, and not pick up some joi d'vivre? How can they make the world's most superb luxury cars, and take so little joy in personal luxuries? And why do they have such lousy senses of humour, even by German standards*?

Stuttgart is the capital of Baden-Württemburg, and I travel there a lot for business. On the way home yesterday, a curious sight confronted me at the Hauptbahnhof.

The Argentine** Tourist Board sent two tangoistas on tour, to encourage shivering Germans to enjoy a sunny, South American summer.

The tango: a dance of love, a declaration of passion, a sexual intrigue on four feet. Here is what the Argentine Tourist Board says about the tango

"Feeling that is danced and percolates through the curbs of the one hundred porteño neighborhoods...
So far, everyone from the intellectual to the suburban[ite] create, feel and speak the language of tango. And even though much has happened since 1880, the essence of tango, brazen, unrestrainable and bonded by blood, remains latent in the canteens of La Boca and in the saloon bars of Recoleta."

By contrast, poet August Lämmele writes the following verse about Swabians

Drink what agrees with you,
Eat what you have available,
Do what you're supposed to do,
Say what you're allowed to say,
Think what you want to think.

(By the way, Lämmle is considered a Swabian wit.)

Hardly surprising that our splendid, passionate tangoistas found an audience. A fine audience, a curious audience, even. But a small one. Who never quite got excited by it.

You can see a gentleman in the picture immediately above, siezing the opportunity to interest his Fräulein in a lttle romance. She ain't buying it. A true Swabian, she's doing what she's supposed to do.

People are different. Ain't it great?

*OK, that was a cheap shot.
** No jokes about the Special Relationship, please.
Hat tip to this gent.

Organised Resistance

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:33:00 +0000

The Headbangery, at Prominent Global Communications Firm GmbH

Today, January 12, sees the Professional Personal Organising Community aflutter over National Clean Off Your Desk Day. In a brilliant stroke of post-modernism, the day was first declared by a leader of the Professional Day-Declaring Community.

I have two words for the Professional Personal Organising Community. One of them is off.

You have read before that the Headbang clan lives in junkyards. We are slobs, with a capital ob. Yes, it's dysfunctional and neurotic, and we have some damn fine reasons, thanks.

Since moving to Germany, where Ordnung ist das halbes Lebens, Headbang8 has attempted to mend his ways.

In part, one can thank The Enforcer, our Putzfrau. Master Right is neat. I mean, like Japanese neat. Even he maintains (get this) she's too professional.

For example, since we're guys, we both used to do, um, the toenail thing. You fellas know what I'm talking about. Well, we don't do it any more.

But I draw the line at the desk. It's a joke in the ad game that every strategy planner's desk is a fire hazard of research reports and articles he intends to read. Our hard drives groan with downloaded cool-hunting. You can't think without shit around you. It's not creative.

I know EXACTLY where everything is on my desk. Yet the tyranny of the tidy means that over the years, people have looked at my office and sneered about it being unprofessional, even as I covered their asses and saved their bacons. You know who you are, my little honeys.

Time has come to resist. Do not be neatened. The Headbang Liberation Front declares tomorrow, January 13, as National Bite Me Day.

The boss. The guy at the DMV. Your mother. No matter what form of small-minded tut-tutter gives you the evil-eye, tomorrow is the day to tell them to kiss your sweet, fragrant buttcheeks. I might even design a logo for it, if I can just find my password to that online clipart site. I wrote it down, somewhere.

Photo Friday: White

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:27:00 +0000

A cheerful little Christmas display in the window of Nymphenburg Porcelain.
Zurika has a few more views.

More reasons to love the French

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:48:00 +0000

These chaps know (at :48) how to console each other after a defeat on the sporting field. Their team-mates seem rather non-chalant. Vive la différence!

(The boys are quite safe-for-work about it, by the way.)

At 1:24, we see a spot of commerce which, um, commemorates the epic defeat.

A bit of chatter in the blogosphere says the gentlemen staged it as a joke in front of the cameras. Say it ain't so, coach! Say it ain't so!

A good Rautsch. Or Rutsch. Or Rausch.

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:22:00 +0000

In Japan, you can choose from two kinds of New Year's parties.

A bonenkai happens in December, where everyone curses the shitty old year and gets drunk. A shinenkai happens in January, where everyone celebrates the hope and promise of the new year. And gets drunk.

In between, the partying goes quiet, with visits to family, church, and emperor.

Other cultures, whose sense of ceremony demands less thoroughness, tend to fall into one of those two emotional camps.

Bavarians, ever the realists, stake out the bonenkai camp. On the Silvester, everyone wishes you a good Rautsch.

I think it comes from the German word Rausch. That is, a good flush. Open the sluice gates, because a torrent of last year's bad karma is going to make its way downstream. Hose it into the gutter for good.

The rest of Germany uses the word Rutch (so I discovered--thank you Damon!). It means to slide, trip, or fall. A landslide can be a Rutsch. Effectively, you collapse into the new year.

Maybe this confusion stems from the fact that we were pretty Rauched by the time we chatted about it.

Though it specifically refers to getting hammered on New Year's Eve, The Bavarians I know apply the word Rautsch to pretty much any serious drinking session.

That, and the word blue ("blau"). As in English, the word blue can mean sad or depressed, but in German, it also can mean drunk.

Does this suggest Germans have an unhealthy relationship wth alcohol? Does it suggest that the sober order of day-to-day life conceals a good deal of sadness? Ah, repressed emotions! No wonder I feel at home.

Shinenkai Français

Well, bugger that for 2009. Master Right was in Japan on a family matter, so I tagged along with Miss deYoung to a splendid party hosted by a French-Finnish couple. Most of the guests were French, and their spouses came from across the globe.

This turned much of the converstaion to English, which seemed to be everyone's relationship lingua franca. Not that it mattered. One of the miraculous qualities of alcohol is that, if you drink enough of it, all languages become mutually intelligible.

Still, this was a party with a definite French accent. No Rautsching allowed! French culture follows the shinenkai school. I think they call it joi d'vivre.

Here are six EDIT: seven reasons to go to a New Year's party where the hostess is French.

The champagne comes from, like, Champagne.
The food is exquisite. Anything thing which can be moussed, is moussed. The hostess and her childhood best friend nearly fought an affaire d'honneur over the consistency of the mousse au chocolat.
You get great tips on French restaurants. The best in Munich seems to be Le Faubourg, in nearby Haidhausen. Though one French gourmand remarked that the managément may have got a little German, and begun "to put too much on the plate"
If you say that you are a fan of Plastique Bertrand, French partygoers will think you are really cool. Kind of like if you walk into a party in TriBeCa and say that you once went to a Ramones gig. Warning: do not try to whistle the melody of Ça Plane Pour Moi to prove your cred. It feels like alot of different notes, but it isn't.
It doesn't take long for disco-boogie moves on the dance floor to turn mildly apache. But in the nicest possible way. This is very, very sexy to watch.
Everybody kisses. Boys kiss girls. Girls kiss boys. Straights kiss gays. Gays kiss Gays. Straights kiss straights. There was so much love in the room, we could scarcely fit furniture. It was great.
Afterwards, the hostess will send you an extremely gracious thank-you note in English, and sign off with the word "Cheeres". Charmant, non?

Munich Silvester revellers, rather dangerously, set off fireworks on my side of the Isar. It's exciting to be in the thick of it, but we got a much better view from our host's and hostess' spacious apartment on the opposite bank of the river. A bonne année, indeed.

To J&S, merci.

Getting Rautschy.

2008 gave Master Right and I some great gifts. But there was plenty to Rautsch about, too. Some other time.

One thing we enjoyed in 2008, was the opportunity of make new friends in a new city. And to enjoy the company of many old friends who came to visit. To all of you, and to all you cyberpals, have a Frohes Neues Jahr.

(By the way, I'm pretty sure that last bit is corrrect German)

Wordless Wednesday

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:09:00 +0000

WW Home

Il a été si bon.

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 05:50:00 +0000

As a child in the 1960s, I recall The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights. My parents would switch it off whenever the Beatles appeared.

The Beatles were a bad influence, they said. Disrespectful. Hair too long. Radical politics. Talk of free love.

But an equally subversive act slipped past their radar. One evening, amid the silly circus acts and mediocre comics, I sat mesmerised by a woman singing in French. Eartha Kitt.

If any woman could put a heterosexual spark in my gay loins, it was she.

My first career ambition was to become one of the tuxedoed dancers behind her, who spun a walking stick and snapped his fingers. Tall, handsome men who vamped si bon as she boasted, without shame, of her greed. All in French, save for important words such as yacht, Cadillac, and millionaire.

I had no idea of sex at that age, except to sense that these young gentlemen, and not the millionaire, would get most of it.

The real meaning of Eartha Kitt went straight over the heads of people like my parents.

On the surface, she sang songs about her quest for a man. It was easy to paint these as love songs. In reality, they were sex songs. Songs about sex and money.

Sexually unsophisticated audiences of the fifties and sixties really couldn't tell the difference. A woman singing about a man was reassuringly predictable; she idolised her lover, or pined over him. It never struck them that a gal who demanded, in exchange for sex, two apartment buildings labelled Hers and Hers, might actually subvert the patriarchy just a tad.

But those with a keen sense of irony got it. That included the producers of Batman in the 1960s, who cast her as the quintessential Catwoman.

She took no shit from the patriarchy, even as they blackballed her for a chance conversation about the Vietnam War. Later, of course, the patriarchy rediscovered her famous cocktail-jazz standards.

And you know what? She still goes over their heads, as this 2006 clip shows. (Santa sure gets it, though) Bear in mind, the woman was seventy-nine years old when they filmed it.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me boast that I once shared a plane with Eartha Kitt across the Pacific, as she returned from a tour to Australia in the late 1980s. I never struck up a conversation. I was scared. She has that effect on men.

Sad, but beautifully appropriate, that Eartha Kitt died on Christmas Day. It seems her biggest hit was not C'est Si Bon, I Wanna Be Evil, or any of that popular disco quatsch which paid her rent in the 1980s. It was, in fact, Santa Baby.

If you're reading this, Mr. Claus, you still owe her a sable. And a platinum mine, if memory serves.

* * * * *

Another sad, but beautifully appropriate death for Christmas Day was Harold Pinter, playwright and Nobel Laureate.

He gave one of his last interviews to Charlie Rose, on American public TV. Listen to the poem Rose reads, and hear Pinter speak of its inspiration. You'll see how few other men were better equipped to spoil a holiday than Harold. Were not two of his best-known works, The Birthday Party and The Homecoming, stories of celebrations ruined?

Pinter certainly went over my head when I first read him, at university. The English department swooned, but I just didn't get what the fuss was about.

Innocent talk which somehow made everyone uncomfortable, and eventually angry, seemed pretty normal. At least, at my house.

Reading Kafka helped me understand Pinter. Beneath Kafka's banal language of bureaucracy or polite society, hid contempt. Pinter unearthed the same bilious mess in the language of family and friends. Critics called it a "comedy of menace".

The notorious "Pinteresque pause" is commonplace between hateful intimates. It's a short breather in a little dance of hurt. Both parties, the attacker and defender, gird their loins for the next assault. Eventully, one of the intimates wins. As Pinters's plays show, the victory seldom tastes sweet.

Not hearing the dialogue hindered my understanding immensely. Even after all these years, I still haven't seen a Pinter play in production. Not until I saw Peter Brook's 1973 film of The Homecoming, could I actually understand what was going on.

This clip features Ian Holm as Lenny. Holm was one of Pinter's favourite actors, who instinctively knew what evil undercurrents flow beneath the commonplace. This seems to have equipped him for later roles that require an understanding of the Kafkaesque, from Dr. Putney in Strangers with Candy to Mr Kurtzman inTerry Gilliam's Brazil.

My appreciation of Pinter paralleled recovery from a toxic family of origin. Once I actually got what was going on in his plays, I shuddered to read them. They hit home.

The Economist obituary wonders how Pinter learned the language of loving cruelty, given his benign upbringing. I suspect he picked it up through his well-documented male friendships. Even men who are close to each other, and who admire each other greatly, engage in alpha-dog one-upmanship. They can't help it. In many of his plays, it is women who are the most uncomfortable with the state of affairs, and who sometimes call their menfolk's bluff.

His ear for the evil behind the bland served him well offstage, too. Increasingly, he devoted his later years to political causes.

His Nobel Prize acceptance speech, in 2005, is chilling. He delivered it by video, from a wheelchair, too ill to travel to Stockholm.

In it, he describes of a number of British artists and humanitarians, who met with the deputy American ambassador to the UK from the Reagan White House. They protested the senseless and deliberate slaughter of innocents by the US-backed contras in Nicaragua.

The deputy ambassador simply replied, that "[i]n war, innocent people always suffer." As though this were the most perfectly reasonable thing in the world.

Pinter tells us that a shocked silence followed. Now, when Harold Pinter says there was a pause, you damn well know there was a pause.

It was rather like his plays. The act of speaking attempts to conceal a truth which the silence reveals.

He adds, "So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you...at any time."

It's sad that Pinter passed away, just when much of this official language has begun, in many quarters, to crack under the weight of truth.

Photo Credits:
Eartha Kitt from 55 Secret Street.
Harold Pinter from Bujacob is Burning

Photo Friday: Best of 2008

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:41:00 +0000

EDIT: On reflection, the best picture of 2008 goes back to January 1st. I was lucky and caught this picture of the free-for-all fireworks celebrations at just the right moment. The woman was, no doubt, dealing with a flood of Happy New Year texts.

The people at Photo Friday have challenged followers to choose their best photo of 2008. Not sure if this is the best, but it's one I like, and haven't used before. That's a candy stand at Oktoberfest. Enjoy!

Linguistic Creationists

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 12:20:00 +0000

The well-known Coffee Funny cafe, in the heart of Shitomachi.

From A Free Man, on pronunciation.

As much as I am loathe to, I've got to agree with your teenage antagonist on the 'natt-choes' thing. That used to drive me batty about the Brits (and the Aussies for that matter). And 'pass-tah'. Although I'm being told hear that our new car is not a Mah-zda, but a Maa-zda. Maybe you could ask Mister Right's opinion?

The Japanese View

Here's how you pronounce it: 松田.

Your new car is a Mutt-soo-da. That's the name of the family which once owned the company. The first kanji means pine-trees, and the second means field.

The family that now owns the company is called Ford, which the Japanese pronounce Fo-do. It derives from the middle-English verb to ford, which roughly translates as "we don't know how to build a bridge".

Mazda is already a deliberate corruption for markets abroad, so pronounce it as you like. In western Pennsylvania, we used to call them Mazzdas, like in Oz.

In truth, most Japanese would find it difficult to mimic either pronunciation.

Look at Datsun. Some say Daht-suun. Others say Datt-son.

Datsun was another concoction, this time an acronym of the original investor's names, which by chance sounded a little like datto, the Japanese word for rabbit. Nissan felt so unsure that their automotive ventures would succeed, they deliberately kept their name off the cars, for a time. Many Brits and Australians drive Nisss-anns, when perhaps they should drive Nee-sahns.

Anyone who pronounces Tokyo with three syllables is guilty of Anglicising it. The same goes for people who say Oh-SAHK-a, instead of OH-sucka.

The Japanese need to re-engineer borrowed words into their own language, often quite severely. They are patient when westerners do the same.

But they might have balked at my father, who, in his own words, drove a Mitsi-buttsi.

The Headbang View

The prominent gay writer David Sedaris once made an observation about Americans in France. Many, after learning basic French, will say Pa-REE instead of PAIR-iss, when speaking in English.

He thinks they're tossers. Touché.

The city where I live is Myoonshen, spelled München. But in English, I use the word Myoonick, spelled Munich. It would be silly to do otherwise.

The Italians have a similar problem getting their tongues around German, and their word for Munich holds a great deal of charm. They call it Monaco, or more precisely, Monaco di Bavaria.

That’s so nobody will confuse it with Monaco, the principality, whose name comes from the Greek. Monte Carlo, of course, is an Italianisation of the French Mont Charles, the name of the mountain which gives the city its name, but actually sits across the border in France.

The Japanese, interestingly, say Myoonshen. Germany is Doitzu.

I try to pronounce proper names as authentically as possible. But if my tongue doesn’t quite get there, who cares?

Americans are annoyed by Australians who say Chryzler. Australians are annoyed at Americans who say Mel-BORN, rather than MEL-burn. Big deal.

My own surname is plentiful with the letter a. My American family always pronounces them with flat-a’s, as in fact. When they see the spelling, most Europeans, Brits, and Australians prefer a rounded, Italian-style-a, as in the –abra bit of candelabra. How is it pronounced in the Russian dialect, spoken in eastern Slovakia, whence it came? Who knows? Should I enforce my received family pronunciation? Pointless.

It would be silly to pronounce the English auxiliary verb will as “vill”, simply because it came from the German word which performs the same function. Nobody would dream of saying on-for-ma-see-on, just because we borrowed the word information from across the Channel.

Eat Your Words

Words are like foods. They travel, and get adapted to local tastes.

Do you refuse a pizza, because it differs from that served in Naples? (Do you pronounce Naples as Napoli, while we’re on the subject?).

Pizza no more belongs to Naples, nowadays, than the hot dog belongs to Vienna, nor the hamburger to Hamburg*. Real Hamburgers, of the two legged kind, are quite surprised when you suggest that this strange squashed-meatball sandwich may have something to do with their city.

(I don't extend this idea to sushi. But that's a personal quirk.)

In fact, nachos itself (themselves?) present(s) the perfect example of fusion cuisine, even in name. By my reckoning, the word is already corrupted English-Spanish, for Nacho's (i.e. Ignacio's) special dish.

English steals words all over the place, and splashes them onto other languages with equal abandon. Can we ever hope to keep track of it all? Do we need to study every other language on the planet just to use our own?

Demanding perfection can sometimes kill the very linguistic richness it hopes to serve.

And can we ever, really, get it perfectly right?

* Or Mazdas belong to Hiroshima, for that matter.

Narrow Escape for Moose and Squirrel

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:16:00 +0000

Where is he gay today? Mayfair, London

G.F. Trumper. Official Barber and Gentleman's Perfumer to the Court of HRH Elizabeth II

Supplier of Straps for Child Discipline to Prince Phillip, the Royal Consort
No. 9, Curzon Street, Mayfair W1

"If I hear one more fucking Brit say natt-choes, I'll yell for a fucking Jedi to behead him with a fucking light sabre."

The young man, scarcely out of his teens, spoke with an American accent. Except for the fucking. He pronounced a disctinct double-k: fock-king, in perfect British diction. A word, perhaps, that he'd learned outside his native land.

His dad beamed. It showed a special kind of fatherly pride, reserved for a son precocious in the manly arts.

The smile said, ain't my kid a real pistol?

Or it seems like only yesterday that I bought him his first whiskey, and now he won't touch anything but single malts!

Or she's pregnant? That's my boy!

Here's the reason the subject of Natt-choes came up. Master Right and I chose Mayfair's oldest wine lodge to dine that evening, in pursuit of an authentic British roast-beef-and-Yorkshire-pud, preferably washed down by a nice red before a cozy fire. We found that Mayfair's oldest wine lodge now serves a hybrid Polish and Mexican menu.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, there's much right with that. The management, wisely, attempts no fusion. The cuisines sit on opposite sides of the menu. Chorizo and kielbasa don't rub shoulders in the charcuterie, nor will you find red cabbage in your taco.

An elegant, engraved badge told us our waitress's name. Natasha spoke with a slight accent; the occasional W turned to a V, the odd dropped article. Combined with a leggy frame and high cheekbones, it gave her the air of a Russian supermodel.

Natasha had seated us in the cellar. Once used for actual cellaring purposes, I imagine, it was rendered useless with the invention of the delivery truck. It now holds a cosy dining area with brick walls and an uneven cobblestone floor. Our hostess held a pen poised for the order, when the father-and-son pair interrupted us.

If you embiggen the pic, you can see the plaque that confirms Mayfair's oldest wine bar serves Mexian and Polish food. I don't make this up, you know.

Natasha judged that these guests, perhaps unaccustomed to the manners which fine dining demands, would get antsy if left standing too long. She seated the pair at the next table, and took both our orders at the same time.

The wine list challenged our new chums. They chose a merlot, pronouncing it mur-low, in an exaggerated French manner, rather than mair-low, as the British would say.

I ordered a South African shriaz, pointedly pronouncing it shi-razz, rather than the silly, Frenchified shi-rahz. First, because the word isn't French. And second, because speaking English, in England, you can Anglicise shit.

Master Right decided on pierogi, a dumpling made of potato pastry that he thought might taste a little like gyoza. The Wild Game Feast caught my eye.

"Excellent choice, sir. But I varn you it includes pheasant, dot is hunted like vild animal. You may find some lead shot." advised Natasha. Misjudging my accent, she added, "I say this to American guests, since you often have wery expensive teeth."

"Ah, so you're American!" exclaimed the father, alert to a conversational gambit. "What state are you from?"

I hate questions like that. Given my rather odd life, a short answer is misleading in many ways. Of course, I could actually give a short answer, and mislead him any way I damn well pleased, just to shut him up. But the bastard snuck up on me.

"Um, currently, the state I'm from is Bavaria. We live in Munich."

The father chuckled. "Forgive me, but you don't sound German."

"OK. I was born in Pittsburgh, but spent many of my formative years in Australia, and I have both passports."

The long reply was, in fact, just as misleading as a short one. It misled him to think that I wanted a conversation.

He explained that his son and he hailed from San Francisco. The lad was studying in the UK, and his thesis had to do with the heroic archetypes of courtly legend and modern popular culture. It stumped me that Junior needed to come all this way; the subject had been well and truly studied right down the road at Skywalker Ranch. Given the young man's entrance, he'd probably logged a few hours there already.

Church of Christ Scientist, Curzon Street

The exchange was loud enough to attract the occasional gaze from others seated in the small cellar. The father interpreted these glances as an interest in our little chat. He asked an open question. "There seem to be a lot of Americans here tonight. What states are you all from?"

"I'm Japanese." said Master Right, who has little patience for meaningless talk. He hates this stupid-chit-chat about personal stuff that westerners, especially Americans, seem to love. A proper Japanese--and he's very proper--would need to be introduced by a mutual acquaintance, cards exchanged, and bows made, before you'd get into your backstory. You can't just blurt it out to a stranger on a bus. Or in a cellar.

"We're from New Zealand." said one couple, as they asked for the bill.

"And we're from Canada" said another, tersely. "You know, that state."

"I guess all the Brits are in Milton Keynes tonight, at the Pizza Express." quipped the son, showing off his deep knowledge of British culture.

Natasha rescued us for a moment, by bringing our meals. She explained the Wild Game Feast. "Forst, here is breast of pheasant. Second, here is sausage of vild boar. And this is your venison meatball."

"Venison?" Junior pointed at the meatball in mock outrage. "So, Natasha, that's what you did to poor Bullwinkle!"

"I don't think moose is venison, son," corrected his father. "I think moose is just moose. You, know, like chicken."

Helpful advice from the Guv'nor.

At that precise moment, their almost-full bottle of wine toppled to the floor.

I'm sure most in the room would have assumed that the uneven surface of the cobblestones caused the table to shift. But those of us who were watching it, know better. The wine veritably leapt off the table, in an arc that suggested a hand lifting it, and dropping it.

Perhaps the ghost of an ancient reveller tired of these antics. "Look here, you fuck-king tosspots!" it seemed to say. "It's bloody burgundy!"

Best to cut and run, we felt. That meant finishing our meals rather too quickly than they deserved, for they were indeed delicious, and leaving a hefty tip for the long-suffering Natasha. On the way back to the club where we stayed, Right noticed a building with an odd name.

Nightingale House. He asked me about it.

I dimly remembered lyrics to the famous song about Mayfair, and sang them on that very London street.

When two lovers meet in Mayfair
So the story goes
Church bells ring
Birds begin to sing

That certain night
that night we met
there was magic abroad in the air
There were angels dining at the Ritz
and a nightingale sang in Berkely Square.

Then, he kissed me. The evening had gone precisely to plan.

Photo Friday: Weathered

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 05:39:00 +0000

Nymphenberg Palace, November 2008

The Sacred and the Profane are neighbours.

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:30:00 +0000

Where is he gay today? Blackfriars, London

The young Victoria, outside St. Paul's.

Business tends to keep me on the western side of London whenever I visit. So does pleasure, what with the gay bit in Soho, next to the theatre bit in the West End.

This time, though, Master Right and I hopped the Tube to Blackfriars, on the fringe of the City, to London's east. Highly recommended.

First, the Gothic Revival grandeur of St. Paul's. They don't allow you to take pics inside, but trust me, the building is breathtaking. Cool crypt, too. Makes Westminster Abbey look mediaeval.

Modern art is supposed to shock and confront, and the Tate Modern is a shocking, confronting building in which to house one of the world's great collections of it.

The TM has curated its collection of masterpieces (i.e. stuff I've seen in books) so that it actually makes sense. And stuck the explanation on the wall in case you lose track.

Highly cool. Highly recommended.

The Blackfriars pub makes a great place for a pint on the way home, as well. The beer's too warm, but hey, what can you do? It's England.

A disquieting scene in the Tate Modern Turbine Room.

Louise Bourgeois named this sculpture Mother. She must have met mine.

For frequent wankers

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 07:32:00 +0000

I didn't know you had to pay to do it. If they ever catch up with me, I'm gonna owe these guys a lot of money.

Eastmas

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:58:00 +0000

Many of us have heard the story. A Japanese department store once created a giant Christmas display which featured a jolly Santa, nailed to a cross, smiling down on the busy shoppers below. The incident became known as Santa Cross, a near-perfect confusion of Christianity's two most sacred celebrations.

Speaking as a former resident, this has all the hallmarks of an urban legend. Some recall the events in Osaka, some Tokyo; some set it just after the war, some in the nineties. And conveniently, no photos. (You gotta be suspicious when there are no photos of something in Japan!)

If some Santa hats have bunny ears...well, that's just more proof that the Japanese are sexual oddballs, right?

But on Christmas Eve 2004, I saw something that gave me pause to reconsider. It was a poster at Ebisu subway station, promoting the DVD release of Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of Christ.

The right half showed Christ carrying his cross to Calvary, the left showed a harried subway commuter carrying his own cross, amid a bustling crowd scurrying home with their Christmas goodies: presents, cakes, and a box that looked suspiciously like it might contain Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The headline read: Christ died on the cross. That's how Christmas began. The copy went on to encourage the reader to learn more about the true origins of the holiday with Mr.Gibson's helpful film.

Of all the holidays in the Christian calendar, Easter is the one which has gained least traction in Japan.

No coloured eggs. No baskets. No need for a spring break, because a home-grown holiday season starts every April 29, known as Golden Week. Buddhists believe in reincarnation as a matter of course, so Christ rising from the dead ain't such a big deal.

The story of the Passion is pretty unpleasant and not hugely optimistic. And, we're still waiting for the happy ending, aren't we?

Without Easter, how does one explain Christianity's brand logo? Graft it on to Christmas. Like I said, everything in Japan makes perfect sense.

Colonel Santa, and other Christmas reflections.

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 11:54:00 +0000

Atomic Mutant Christmas Monster!

Master Right and I have just installed candles on the Adventskranz, and since we're a week late, we wonder which candles we should light; two adjacent ones, or two opposite ones? He looked it up on Japanese Google, and worked out that they should be two opposite candles. Christmas in an authentic Christian country delights him, and he's a stickler for getting it right.

Of course, the Japanese celebrate Christmas, too. Kinda.

December 25 is just another working day. I rather looked forward to it the first time. Thanks to a few bad Christmases early in life, I'm a bah-humbug type who despises the cheap sentiment of the season. When the day finally arrived, though, I felt curiously unsettled by the lack of cheap sentiment to despise.

(It was totally worth it for the brownie points from my Japanese colleagues. Until then, no expat westerner, ever, had fronted up to the office on December 25.)

The time I spent living in Japan mellowed me toward the idea of Christmas. There, it's a much more innocent and lighthearted day, with parties, presents and decorations, and no special need for gross acts of uncalled-for goodwill to your fellow man.

Japanese halls are decked with boughs of holly--and twinkling lights, of course, as befits the world's largest manufacturer of electrical goods. Tokyo Tower (a chintzy tourist attraction near where we used to live) lays out a special Christmas Town display at the base of its very large tree. But this being Japan, we see a twinkling-light Godzilla attacking it.

Yurakucho was delicious. On to Shiba Park!

And the Japanese don't get the whole Santa Claus thing, either. Everybody wants to play Santa. Tokyu Hands, Japan's leading chain of homeware stores, devotes an entire department to Santa suits. Sometimes, you can walk into a Christmas party to find the whole room dressed in red, with white fur trim. I tried to explain to my Japanese friends: the thing which makes Santa special is that there's only one of him.

In the west, the heavyweight family/religious side of Christmas lightens up for the racy excess of New Year's Eve. In Japan, it's the other way around. With candle-light, mistletoe, and cuddling in front of the fake fire on DVD, Christmas becomes an ersatz Valentine's Day. Many courting couples choose Christmas Eve on which first to do the deed.

That means that many of these Christmas costumes are designed for seduction. Except the ones where you dress as a reindeer. (On second thought, given the sexual weirdness of he Japanese, perhaps a few closeted salarymen fantasize about cruising Finland for a great big sexy hunk of venison)

Christmas in Japan is little more than a great excuse for a party. One with unusual western food, gifts that don't require reciprocation (amazing!), elegant decor, twinkling lights, a cream cake and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The last of these became a fully-fledged Christmas tradition because, apparently, the Colonel looks like Santa in civvies. Many confuse the word "Santa" with "Sanders". Makes perfect sense, no?

Photo Friday: Dusk

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:41:00 +0000

Brighton, South Australia

Christmas Day, 2003

Wordless Wednesday

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:44:00 +0000

WW Home

Photo Friday: Black

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 06:47:00 +0000

Park Avenue South, 2005

A leadership readership

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:02:00 +0000

Covert intelligence sources (i.e. SiteMeter) confirm that Deutschland über Elvis has earned a couple of visits from the Pentagon. Welcome!

Our Pentagon visitor spent some time reading the post Waking up from the American Dream, including the comments. Until now, most of the comments have come from American expats and non-Americans. I would love to invite our Pentagon visitor to join the discussion.

Someone involved, in any way, with the defense of American values, may have a different view from this blog's coterie of regulars. I welcome your thoughts and feelings, via email or blogpost comments.

EDIT

Our Pentagon visitor has revealed himself. Or herself--the reader is still a little cagey.

If Pulver is a spy monitoring my subversive activities (as many of you suggest) then he or she is the politest spook on the planet. Pulver probably just surfs the net from work, like everyone else.

Does anyone find it sad, that so many of us leapt to the conclusion that because the visit came from the Pentagon, there was something sinister afoot?

(Maybe you meant it as a joke, but many a true word is said in jest.)

Mind you, the US government as whole has given its own citizens, and those of other countries, reason for pause. From the McCarthy era, to trashing habeas corpus, US government can sometimes act as the enemy of personal freedom, rather than it protector.

That's why I am so glad Pulver commented, and why I look forward to his or her further thoughts. Do people inside the US government share our disquiet? Is there another take on American values that we should hear?

Think about it.

Our sushi snobbery is legit.

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:28:00 +0000

A full set of sushi kit, idle in Munich.

My boss loves sushi. He jokes that his middle name should be maguro.

I haven't the heart to tell him that maguro is nothing to boast about. Maguro, in Japan, is catfood. If he wants to boast, he should really name himself toro.

We went out to lunch at our local Japanese place. It's a species of restaurant which the Germans call, in borrowed English, running sushi. Those in the know would call it a kaiten sushi restaurant, one with a conveyor belt in the centre and diners who help themselves as dishes roll around.

After about thirty minutes, I asked him if he noticed anything odd about the place. No, he replied, it seemed fine to him.

I pointed out that amongst the many dishes which had passed before us in the previous half-hour, we had seen not one piece of fish.

He looked at the California roll impaled on the end of his chopsticks. With palpable disappointment, he realised he'd been eating a whole lot of seaweed and cucumber.

Now, I don't want to be one of those insufferable expats who once lived in Japan, and spends the rest of his life scoffing at amateur Japanophiles in the West. But really, Europeans have no fucking clue about Japanese food.

This taste test in the UK asked a respected Japanese chef to rate the food from London's most popular sushi restaurants. None rated above a three out of ten. These offerings achieved the the near-impossible; they made a Japanese person say something rude.

Master Right insists that one should never eat sushi or sashimi more than 100 kilometres from the coast. Looking at the mediocre fish on offer in the Viktualenmarkt, he has a point. The only place outside of Japan where we eat sushi is Australia; much of the Japanese catch originates there, in any case. (Here's a recommendation.)

Before I left Japan, we took an excursion to the Kappabashidori, the street where every Tokyo restaurant buys its supplies. (That includes the plastic pretend-food which they insist on putting in the window.) We bought the whole sushi kit, from the ceramic knife to the wooden trays to the birch chopsticks to the little bowls for soy sauce.

Since we moved to Munich, the stuff has gathered dust.

My favourite bit of sushibilia, found at a 7-11 konbini in Tokyo.
Two ceramic hashi-oki, or chopstick rests, which came as a freebie
around the neck of a bottle of Jacob's Creek.

No use regretting what you can't have. Better to celebrate Munich's culinary strengths. Münchners take great pride in the quality of the city's Italian food--in fact, Munich bills itself as the northernmost city in Italy.

This news hadn't quite reached our local Japanese place.

My boss ordered a caffe latte after his meal. "I'm sorry, we can only do espresso and cappuccino," explained the waitress. "We're Chinese, you see."

By the way, today's Photo Friday subject is Food.

Waking up from the American Dream, Part One.

headbang8@earthlink.net (headbang8) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 08:18:00 +0000

Change. A good idea.

American values. Another good idea.

Am I the only one who sees a train wreck coming?

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for change. Hell, I voted for change. And thank goodness that change has come.

Changing presidents is the easy bit. Changing America will be tough. Some treasured American values need an overhaul.

Many would argue that rather than change, American values must change back. Back to an earlier, purer, more noble version of themselves.

Whatever. The truth is, my fellow Americans need to look hard at the values by which they live today, and not flinch when they see hypocrisy, shallowness, inhumanity and falsehood.

It takes moral courage to do this; you must be open to truth, from any source. Stop buying half-truths ready-made, cloaked under religious rhetoric, or cooked in glib sentimental goo.

What values need to change? Here's one.

The marketplace is moral.

Victoria de Grazia opens her book Irresistible Empire, the classic study of how American consumer society triumphed over European bourgeois civilisation, with an astonishing scene.

She recounts Woodrow Wilson's 1916 address to the World Salesmanship Congress in Detroit. With the American century still a decade away from its first spectacular cycle of boom-and-bust, he argued, with touching innocence, that greed is good.

America's "democracy of business" had to take the lead in "the struggle for peaceful conquest of the world," Wilson said...

"let your thoughts and imagination run abroad throughout the whole world, and with the inspiration...that you are Americans and are meant to carry liberty and justice and the principles of humanity wherever you go, go out and sell goods that will make the world more comfortable and happy, and [thus] convert them to the principles of America." (pp. 1-2)

Over the next several pages, de Grazia analyses Wilson's assumptions in eloquent detail. She describes a caste of mind which I find familiar from my American boyhood.

If the gentry turn up their noses at the great unwashed, then one should use the power of mass production to make soap cheap enough for them to buy. Pretty soon, the great unwashed will look pretty clean and smell pretty good, and the gentry will seem a whole lot less genteel by comparison. The influence of the wicked old gentry will fade away, along with their silly elitist ideas. Democracy triumphs, and freedom reigns supreme.

So pervasive is this notion through the United States, that many have ceased to see material goods as a means to an end, but as the end in itself.

During my recent stint back in the USA, I would challenge people to show me how America was, in fact, the land of the free. Disturbingly, proof often pivoted on the freedom to choose amongst a vast array of consumer products.

Again, don't get me wrong. A vast array of consumer products is a jolly nice thing. In fact, I make my dosh shilling for a vast array of consumer products.

But consuming in quantity does not equal living in freedom.

You can walk right into any American supermarket you damn well please and vote with your wallet for Liquid-Plumr® over Drano®. Is that the beginning and end of freedom? Are these the fruits of democracy? You'd be surprised at how many Americans believe so.

De Grazia points out that Wilson endorsed "a peculiarly American notion of democracy, that which comes from having habits in common rather than arising from equal economic standing, freedom to select far fetched alternatives, or recognising diversity and learning to live with it."

That is, if billionaire George Bush drives a pick-up truck, and I drive a pick-up truck, then the difference in our incomes doesn't matter all that much. Homogenised tastes iron out political differences. Promoting that homogeneity furthers peace and progress. Right?

(Elections have been won and lost in America for the sake of homogenous tastes. Earlier this month, 48% of America voted the Republican ticket. Many of these voters did so, at least in part, because it contained a hockey/soccer mom just like us. More about that later, perhaps.)

Does it work?

Let's make a value judgement on this system of values. Does it work?

Recent history vividly shows that this sea of material goods is not, to stretch a metaphor, a tide that lifts all boats. The gentry hasn't drowned in an ocean of the gentrified middle class. If anything, the worker's quest for material comfort has enriched the elite far more handsomely than it has enriched the worker.

Getting richer doesn't guarantee that a worthwhile democracy will take root, as is implicit in Wilson's argument. "Liberty and justice, and the principles of humanity" don't necessarily follow from owning a lot of stuff.

Look at the Middle East or China. There are plenty of ways to get rich, and not all of them are the American way.

Nor does democracy make you rich, automatically. Just ask a South African township worker, or a disappointed eastern European after the Iron Curtain fell.

Did the spread of American bounty result in the "peaceful conquest of the world," as Wilson predicted? If only he could see how much of her wealth America pours, today, into the violent conquest of the world. With little real peace to show for it.

The marketplace is incredibly good at sorting out, and providing in abundance, what is useful. But that misleads us. An abundance of useful stuff doesn't guarantee that amongst it, you'll find what is essential.

Like healthcare. Or education. Or art. Or justice. Or equality. Or peace.

Modern Americans seem to believe that if you just get rich enough, everything else will sort itself out. From there, it is not a long stretch to believe that getting rich is the only way to sort everything out. If we're all fat and happy, what else matters?

Shovel enough Oldsmobiles, Pop-Tarts, Magnavoxes and Cheez-Whiz in my direction, and do I really need to marry the man I love? If my supermarket shelves are well stocked, is it important that the local library's shelves are not?

I'm not knocking materialism--hey, I work in advertising. But it it's a pretty poor place to search for values.

Modern American values are so entwined in materialism, that it will be a hard habit of mind to break. Can we do it? I hope so.

Photos from Cape May, New Jersey, April 2007, and the Woodbridge neighbourhood of Detroit, 2004.

Cape May is a classic, picturesque American seaside resort, popular for weekends away from Philadelphia or Washington, D.C. Some time ago, the town's hotels and guest houses were booked out by Disney executives. Locals were abuzz with speculation that they might see a new Disneyland nearby. Alas, the Mousers were in Cape May to rip it off; the town of Celebration, Florida is an ersatz Cape May. Celebration is so creepily fake, that they filmed The Truman Show there.