The second annual International Day to Bite Me has arrived! It's your day to flip the bird at the small-minded, the petty, the unreasonable, the insufferable. Tell us your story in the comments, or you can blog about it, and link back here.
Whales and Dolphins are Delicious!
And to put you in the mood, here's the Tokyo Choir of Complaint. I'm not sure whether they should bite us, or they want us to bite them. No matter. It's splendid discontent, if a little too polite.
By the way, the government forbids the Complaints Choir of Singapore from performing in public. Sounds like they need a National Bite Me Day, real bad.
Odd. Studies, they say, show people with messy desks are as productive as those with tidy ones. Perhaps even moreso, if they produce thinking.
People use their desks to park information they may need, but which they can't keep top of mind. Getting people to clean up their desk gives them, according to one expert, an "environmental lobotomy".
Yet companies still enforce clean-desk rules. And a veritable industry has grown up around getting people neat and organised.
People make moral judgements about slobs. Slobs obviously have more important things to do than clean their desks. They might use the time to think beautiful, original thoughts. Do you know how uncomfortable that makes the world's meddlers, busybodies, control-freaks and Calvinists?
Be alert to those who pass off their own hangups as "helpful". Or just plain better.
This issue is about people with nothing better to do who seek to foist whatever it is on you
that they have nothing better to do than. (Hey, grammar police! Suck on
THAT.)
HOW TO TAKE PART:
Refuse to accept someone else's emotional agenda. Draw a boundary.
Don't let them bully you, with bogus arguments about what's
best, what's right, what's more efficient, what's pretty, what's nice, what's necessary.
Your emotional comfort is as important as theirs. Say so.
Afterwards, leave a comment. Let us hear your
stinging riposte. Tell us who you told off. How did they take it? Not
that you, like, care.
Click on the twink-link to your right to get the full story, or on this page.
You might like to post about it on your own blog, and link back to here. You'll find some (if I do say so myself) cool graphics here, should you clever webophiles want to use them as a hotlink. I've already paid the royalties on the images, which was rather well organised of me. Don't you think?
An exhibition poster at the Odeonsplatz subway station, Munich.
Did you ever know a gentlewoman—your former schoolteacher, or a maiden aunt—who felt coy about swearing, no matter how much she wanted to? Such a woman would never dream of cursing a minor frustration with a muttered shit! But she might happily say, in a ringing voice, merde! A foreign tongue made her vulgar thought rather more polite.
I'm beginning to feel the same way about fuck.
Now, we all know that fuck is a meaningless syllable in many languages, including German. But natives of other tongues have picked up a vague idea of its meaning, and the word has become rather popular.
Do non-native speakers of English, even the most skilled, really know how to use it?
"What a fucking day it's been!" I once declared to Master Right.
"Yes," he agreed, "It's been very fucking."
Since then, fucking has become my favourite predicate adjective. The day is fucking. The printer is fucking. The pump jockey at the gas station is fucking. Christmas is fucking.
I've brought all my interpretive skills to bear on the exhibition poster above. I'm still not quite sure what the artist was trying to get at.
Is he trying to say that beauty and hauteur go together? That fame makes you bitter? That that Marilyn Monroe would never have sex with anyone who rides the subway?
English is a long way from becoming the undisputed international language of business, diplomacy, science or academia. (They say, for example, that three-quarters of the world's tax law is written in German. And I believe them.)
But English has turned into the preferred lingua franca for the crude. Blame rock'n'roll.
The world really should make a thorough study of English vulgarity. Starting with that nasty little word at the top of the list. Fuck seems to be everywhere, but not its evil twin. Can you find it on the box below, for a Japanese CD rack?
French is the language of seduction; Italian the language of passion; German the language of precision; and Japanese the language of politeness. English....well, it found a different calling, I guess.
EDIT: To my esteemed colleagues in the office. Don't worry. You certainly know how to swear properly! With great skill and charm, I might add.
In 2005, San Francisco design collective Rebar declared the first annual Park[ing] Day. In a gesture designed to liberate our streets from the scourge of the parked car, citizens claim a metered spot and turn it into a public park of the human sort; a place where ordinary people can interact. In the words of the founders, Park[ing] Day is "intended to promote creativity, civic engagement, critical thinking, unscripted social interactions, generosity and play."
Groovy Munich communications agency Büro Gelb decamped from their offices on nearby Einsteinstraße to take part. One of their staffers explained the creative rationale behind Gelb's 2009 Park[ing] Day concept. "Usually, most Park[ing] Day parks have trees and greenery. We thought that was very predictable." He then used an English word which I hear a lot in translation, when discussing high-concept affairs. "We wanted to do something unseen."
Germans, as has been observed, pursue irony with a passion. Parking a carin a park which is supposed to reclaim the street from parked cars could do one of two things:
Make a brilliantly ironic statement about the role of motorised transport in our lives and culture.
In the eighties, Melbourne actors Nick Giannopolous and Simon Palomares were fed up.
Australian soap operas like Neighbours had taken off in the UK. Gloomy Thatcherated Brits loved all the bright, shining, optimistic faces. Such shows gave bread-and-butter work to many Australian actors—to some, even fame
Those bright, shining, optimistic faces were bright, shiny and very, very white. A Sydney casting agent once described the so-called Classic Australian look to me; tall, lean, and dark-blonde, with the hint of a tan. Think Paul Hogan, but younger.
Critics complain, even to this day. Neighbours is set in Melbourne, the third largest Greek city in the world. Yet it has taken over twenty years for the first regular Greek character to appear.
Rebuffed by the establishment media, Giannopolous and Palomares made their own luck. In 1987, the pair teamed with fellow actors George Kapinaris and Mary Coustas to produce a stage show. They called it Wogs out of Work.
The show, from a comic standpoint, shone brilliant. The characters were fresh, outrageous, and larger-than-life. The jokes pulled no punches and respected no boundaries.
I still recall the final sketch, in which Kapinaris and Giannopolous played immigrant women at work in a cannery. The characters chatted as they performed their mindless tasks, speaking mostly of their children. In the course of the conversation, it became clear that they understood almost nothing about the lives which the second generation led in the New World.
The comics milked the material for laughs, yes, but amongst the laughter they affirmed a touching faith in the immigrant dream. That no matter how tough your circumstance, how mindless your factory job, it's worth it if your children can live better than you do.
Stop Laughing. It's Not Nice.
Australia's multicultural establishment was outraged. Many harped on the fact that the show contained ethnic stereotypes. Some acknowledged that the characters "validated the experience" of immigrants, but soundly deplored those who made similar jokes without the pedigree for it.
The multiculturalists saved their worst scorn for a very, very white comedian named Mark Mitchell*. A little after the Wogs, he created a character known as Con the Fruiterer, a Greek greengrocer who milked laughs from malapropisms and a cheerful disregard for the rules of business.
Amid barbs from the chattering classes, a curious thing happened.
Over a million people saw Wogs out of Work on stage. It spawned two sitcom spin-offs: an ensemble piece called Acropolis Now, and a star vehicle for Mary Coustas, called Effie. Real Greek greengrocers named Constantine stuck pin-ups of Con the Fruiterer in their shop windows, for a laugh.
Actors like Alex Dimitriades began to score roles in mainstream cop dramas. A certain swarthy Croatian standup named Eric Banadinovich (better known as Eric Bana) got his own TV show.
Notwithstanding the recalcitrant Neighbours, so-called "wogs" began to appear all over the Australian media.
Did it weaken some of the glass ceilings which NESB Australians faced in other walks of life? This recent article from Jason Di Russo reminds us that it still has a long way to go. But the ability to laugh at one's differences, and one's self, earns you a great deal of moral authority.
Di Russo quotes Italian-Australian journalist James Painichi on the Wogs out of Work phenomenon:
"They started off as buffoons when buffoons were exactly what was
needed. You needed that kind of a figure to take the piss out of people
while not taking yourself too seriously. [When] you're laughing at yourself, you get a chance to throw a few arrows in the right direction."
Why am I telling you this story? Because I recently saw Sacha Baron Cohen's movie, Brüno.
Wogs Out of Work, Fags Out of Drag.
Homocrats have made polite, but predictable noises. Rashad Robinson, senior director of media programs for the Gay and
Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said to the Hollywood Reporter.
"We do feel the intentions of the filmmakers are in the right place—satire of this form can unmask homophobia—but at the same
time it can heighten people's discomfort with our community,"
Robinson was particularly skeptical of the way Brüno's adopted African baby worked itself into the plot.
"That wasn't really unmasking homophobia... especially in a
country [the USA] where same-sex couples can still be denied the ability to
adopt children that they've raised since birth. Trivializing gay
families isn't a joke."
You don't need to be gay to sneer. Brits seem to be OK, but the elite media in the USAviewed Brüno as debris to scrape from the bottom of the nation's cultural shoe.
Brüno is not a New Yorker cartoon. You don't see it and have a quiet chuckle to yourself, while nodding "How true, how true..." Brüno is a belly-laugh.
What, exactly, makes this concept so difficult to understand?
Anthony Lane, the New Yorker film critic, writes:
"In his relentless, unmistakably Anglo-Freudian insistence on the
genital and the anal, Baron Cohen takes the double entendre and strips
it to a single one, placing in full view what used to be a smirking
aside."
I'm not sure wat he means by this, but I think he means that Brüno makes dick jokes. And dick jokes couldn't possibly be funny, right?
"To be fair, the two young women beside me howled at the talking penis
(not a bad emblem of the average male, they would say)....Even so,
there was something forced in the women’s laughter, as if they wanted
to banish any suspicion of prudery, and to prove themselves far too
cool for disgust."
It's not the young women who are trying to be cool, I fear.
Frankly, dick jokes are useful. Nothing disarms a homophobe so much as reaching into your pants and flopping out the old fella..
That's pretty much what Brüno does when he interviews an ex-gay pastor—a target whom Lane regards as too easy.
Now, one could lure one's victim into a cunning rhetorical trap, fault his theology, and expose him with one's rapier-sharp arguments.
Or you could just point out that the guy is obviously still a flaming nancy. Too easy, yes. But really the only sensible answer to such blatant stupidity.
The New Yorker headlined Lane's review with the words Mein Camp. Must New Yorker types always see the world through a lens of camp, irony, and multiple entendre? Maybe someone should tell them that Brüno is a big, fat, fucking joke.
Should we take lessons in irony from a magazine that put the Obamas on its cover, dressed as terrorists doing a fist bump, and who thought it was funny?
Having seen Brüno, I can assure you the scenes of gay life are obvious
parody. As intended, they mock the haters who paint such a picture, rather than mocking gay life itself.
Outrageousness redeems Brüno. If you take it seriously, you look like the fool, not the clown onscreen.
Not 100% funny.
Of course, there are parts of the film which are very poorly judged, and offensive.
I cringed at Brüno's swing through the Middle East. The character can successfully expose hypocrisy about subjects where a gay fashion reporter is relevant—homophobia, or the shallowness of celebrity. But the scenes in which he provokes people of goodwill from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian debate is not satire, it is mockery. It fails.
The less said about his interview with Ayman Abu Aita, the better. There were no belly laughs lurking there, let me tell you.
The Middle East is a hotbed of homophobia. Such prejudice deserves enormous scorn, whether through comedy or other means. But here, Brüno falls flat.
Laugh, and the world laughs with you
In the early part of the twentieth century, a short, scrawny Jewish kid named Melvin Kaminsky got beat up every day in his Brooklyn schoolyard. He worked out that a few jokes would disarm even the meanest bullies.
If they laugh with you, they can't hate you. Hatred doesn't crack a smile.
Today, we know this kid as Mel Brooks. And one of his favourite comic subjects is his own Jewishness.
Jewish humour teaches us about the role of a good laugh in overcoming hatred. Its gentle self-deprecation robs the anti-semite of his power. Should someone start to mock you, mock yourself first. It leaves the other guy nowhere to land a punch.
Just as important, the Jews I know seem very gracious about such ethnic humour. One of my Jewish friends remarked that he didn't mind if gentiles cracked Jewish jokes. "Many of them are quite funny," he said to me, once. "But remember, we Jews always have better Jewish jokes. That is to say, worse ones."
I'm a bald guy. If someone can crack a better bald joke than me, or even a bald joke at my expense, more power to him. But beware. I know some of the meanest bald jokes around.
I've tried to make subculture jokes about groups to which I don't belong. You know what? I failed.
Both Sasha Baron Cohen and Mel Brooks† have made their share of gay jokes. That's OK, as long as gay guys crack better fag gags than they do. That is, worse ones.
I can hear the outcry already. These stereotypes demean gay men. They trivialise us. They make us harmless.
Please think me silly, funny and harmless. It beats being a wicked perverter of the impressionable, and destroyer of traditional marriage. Just maybe, a guffaw works better for my rights than enforced PC.
Taking strides toward equality, one go-go boot at a time.
I understand how spokespersons for GLBT organisations can fault many aspects of Brüno. But I disagree with their fundamental stance.
Brüno follows the arc of a classic romance. Our hero abandons his shallow quest for glamour in the name of true love. He settles down with Lutz, his faithful assistant, and lives happily ever after. Swedish actor Gustaf Hammarsten deliberately plays Lutz without gay affectations, and the perfomance tells us that stereotypes don't always apply. Look closely, and you'll find Brüno becomes quite a traditional morality tale.
Earnestness has its place. But so does fun.
Have the nay-sayers forgotten the drag queens of the Stonewall Tavern, forty years ago, who made more progress for gay rights in one night than their assimilationist counterparts did in a decade?
Have they forgotten how much good PR comes from the sheer, outrageous joy of a Pride parade?
Have they forgotten that people love clowns?
Or do they look on "gayface"—which millions of gay men wear, in earnest, every day—with embarassment and contempt?
I ask you, who are the real homophobes?
* * * * * *
* Full disclosure: in my non-blog, non-anonymous life, I have worked with Mark Mitchell. Before he was famous, of course.
The English language continues to spill its seed across the continent, whelping curious word-creatures and bastard ideas, abandoning them to grow up as orphans in another culture.
MTV Deutschland just might be the best place in Europe to watch my native tongue have unsafe sex, and to watch its progeny frolic.
The network is one of the few free-to-air channels which subtitles programs, rather than dubbing them. A godsend for people like me, who speak Bozo German.
Let's look at Pimp My Ride. The American edition, of course, hosted by dembehrühmte Rapper, Xzibit.
Miles ahead of the British PMR. Last time I watched, they pimped out a Fiesta. Unpimptacular, I'm afraid.
Word on the street says there will never be a German version. The dreaded TÜV, the German Technical Inspectorate of Every Damn Thing, would insist that the stereo not cause noise pollution, the skull-and-crossbones decal reflect the light of approaching cars, and the mobile pool table be upholstered in organic felt. If they can't find anything wrong with your car, they'll improvise.
Not Very Volky Wagens
Not surprisingly, Germans are the world's consummate car snobs. It shows in the approach to Pimp My Ride auf Deutsch.
Rather than translate ride literally, MTV subtitlers often use the word Karre. Thus, the show might back-translate as Pimp My Jalopy, Pimp My Heap, or Pimp my Piece of Crap. They avoid such vocab when Xzibit pimps out a Volkswagen, I notice.
Further, locals fail to grasp the difference between tuning a car (as AMG, HSV or Tickford might) and pimping it out.
Contrary to the spirit of pimpmanship, most German customisers prefer to start at the top. The result is always exquisite, and often achieved simply with intelligent use of standard RPOs. Munich firm Semco gave these two Rollers a tasteful workover, and parked them in the chic Maximillianstrasse to attract attention from cashed-up summer visitors.
Semco suggests only subtle alterations to the standard models; perhaps a "Starlight" roof lining, exotic upholstery, or bodywork discreetly armoured. ("Armoured" in German, by the way, is gepanzert.)
EDIT: My heart skipped a beat when I noticed this mirrored Porsche in the Bayerstrasse. (No doubt the owner had mirrored the inside, too, since owners of expensive cars are like that, right?). Had a German motorist finally given in to the vanity of a flashy custom paint job? Not quite. If you embiggen the picture, you'll notice a Bahraini license plate.
The introduction of the smart, and the revival of the Mini, advanced the cause of populist pimping. The ease with which body panels can be painted or replaced gives many the chance to make a modest personal statement.
Don't drive naked
Close, but no cigar. This ain't a pimping. This is a pimple.
The photo below shows the closest thing to an officially pimped-out car I've seen in Germany. It's Ringo Starr's 190E, at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.
(The Beatles were big fans of German cars. John Lennon had eyesight too poor to drive very well, so he invested in extravagant limousines. The most famous is the 1965 "Psychedelic Rolls", which to my eye looks a little more like French porcelain than Op-Art. But his favourite remained a custom 1970 Pullmann limo, replete with turntable and one of the world's first car cassette players.)
So, it turns out that recent ads for Volkswagen in the USA, showing a German engineer sneering at custom cars, are not so far from the truth.
MTV has a tough time finding a German word for pimping. So they borrow the English word, and screw on German verb endings.
For example, your car is totally pimped out! becomes Ihres Auto wird völlig ausgepimpt!
Thanks, MTV, that you have pimped my car.
You have been officially pimped.Pimp, pimp.
Well then, Mike. I'll show you what goes by pimping.
From time to time, they lay off pimpen and use the verb aufmotzen, which means fluffed up. A little too accurate, in a Freudian sense, for my taste.
Sometimes, alas, words fail them.
That's an ogre-like far-seer.
What is that, to the devil?
So, we see a good deal of English pop up in the titles. Is PMR auf Deutsch just a little too to eager to pounce on an English word, when a German one will do?
All the images in this post meet US and EU criteria for quotation in criticism or review. If you copy the images and use them for any other reason, you will need to obtain the permission of the copyright owner.
Through the window of a shoe store in Müllerstraße, in the Glockenbachviertel. They wouldn't let me take a picture inside the shop, because I might scare away customers. They probably maintain that art must be an outrage, fashion must be transgressive, and all that.
Boy, you almost got reamed! (Er, sorry, that's just an expression.)
You probably won, but it was close. Maggie Gallagher still managed to land a few punches that, to mix sporting metaphors, should have gone straight through to the keeper. Here's a couple of tips.
When she interrupted you at the beginning, I wouldn't have tried to shout over her. She'll always win. Rather, you might have waited for her to run out of steam, whereupon you may have reminded her that Chris Matthews is an able moderator, and he will ensure she has an opportunity to rebut your points. And that in future, you will ask her to wait for the interviewer to invite her to respond, rather than interrupting. Moral advantage scored.
Those pesky Methodists on the beach? "Maggie, I believe that religious charities need to learn a lesson that gay charities learned long ago. When you act as a business--that is, charging people rather than asking for a donation--you need to conduct yourself like a business. When the HRC sells a bumper sticker to raise money, we can't refuse to sell one to Maggie Gallagher because we disagree with her morals. Of course, religious charities have been getting a free pass from the law for quite some time, and it needs to stop. That's independent of the issue of gay marriage."
Catholic doctors performing abortions? "Catholic doctors should get out of the abortion business. Find another specialty. More to the point, though, is that they should not perform a service for one which they deny another. Should a Catholic fertility specialist refuse to help a remarried divorcee, lest he abet adultery? Should a Jehovah's Witness doctor refuse to administer a blood transfusion to a patient he treats in the ER? Even worse, should he have the right to say that NO patient may receive blood from another, anywhere, because he finds it immoral? That's effectively what you're doing when you oppose gay marriage."
The Catholic adoption agency? "Faith has not protected the Catholic church from incompetence, and indeed malfeasance. Any agency which takes children, often from failed heterosexual relationships, and denies them a loving, stable home beccause that home happens to belong to two women, raises not a question of morals, but of professional competence. We should judge the agency on whether it has denied this child an opportunity for a loving family, when loving families are so few and far between. That's the injustice, not for the prospective parents, but for the child."
"By the way, Maggie, show me the unbiased stats that say kids raised in gay homes fail to thrive."
"Of course you have your religious freedom, Maggie, which allows you to make moral judgements, to which you are entitled. But everyone's morals differ, even within your coalition. That's why the law concerns itself less with morals, and more with ethics and justice and fairness. You may disagree with the morality of many people, but that's no reason they should not be treatedfairly."
Here's an easy point everyone has overlooked. "Maggie, tell me why you chose a young black woman to say the line 'and I am afraid', and not a white guy. It's scary for both of them, right?"
Now, Joe, you let her get away with the violins at the end. We have gotta tug at the heartstrings better, while still remaining cool. Obama is a master at this, and it left his critics with no means to fault his character or motives. "Maggie, I actually agree with much of what you say. That which truly puts us human beings at our best, in the eyes of God or by any other standard, is the love in our hearts. Right now, you're saying that the love in my heart is worth less than the love in yours. Shame on you."
Joe, by all means, keep up the good work. But if your arguments always descend into he's-lying-she's-lying, you'll fan the flames, rather than douse them.
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.
My guide to the homosphere, including the blogs of quality queers. Be gay the Headbang way!
Coming out of the safety of the closet was easier for me than coming out of the mindwarp of the church. This page has plenty for the godless and groovy, including Mojoey's incomparable Atheist Blogroll.
People often ask about life as an expat. The experience is different for everyone. Here, you'll find stories and advice from my favourite modern-day immigrants.
Men and their minds sometimes don't get along. No wonder. The routine abuse that we suffer is enough to drive us crazy. Find links here to recovery resources, and the stories of men brave enough to use them.
The motto of a certain well-known advertising agency is Truth Well Told. The authors behind this link need no reminder that a well-told truth is powerful. They prove it. Of course, tales well woven, and jokes well cracked earn a berth here, too.
The online world will revolutionise social history. The stories of ordinary people were once hidden. Now, we can share them with the stroke of a key. Many bloggers (such as Neil Kramer and A Free Man) have encouraged their readers to interview each other, share their stories and record them for posterity. Here are the interviews I've participated in.
Sorry to disappoint, but Deutschland über Elvis, is not an Elvis Presley fansite. The title is a pun on the German national anthem, Deutschland uber Alles. Presley fans curious about his G.I. stretch in Germany (1958-1960) should whack elvisforever.de into BabelFish and follow the link to Elvis in Germany. It contains some extraordinary photos, and the story of a rumoured Munich mistress.
Resistance is Useful
Is someone dicking you around? Is your day filled with petty people tut-tutting you at every turn? Through no fault of your own, do you find yourself marching to someone else's tune? Strike back against the petty tyrants and oxygen thieves. For one day, let them kiss your sweet, fragrant buttcheeks. The Headbang Liberation Front has declared January 13 to be the International Day to Bite Me. Join the movement, here!
Teaching the Germans to party since 2007. No, not that party. Headbang8 proudly proclaims himself to be stateless, rootless, godless and gay. A fiftyish American-Australian chap, recently posted from New York to Munich. He and his Japanese husband regularly discover new reasons to think the other odd.
Alice Miller: The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting I have suffered through endless therapy sessions, support groups, and self-help books which proclaim the abused must forgive their oppressors in order to find peace. Alice Miller calls bullshit on this quatsch, and shows that victims make better progress if they do NOT forgive their abusers. I concur.
Robert Whiting: You Gotta Have WA (Vintage Departures) Prospective expats often ask me for tips on doing business in Japan. This book, which tells the story of American baseball players recruited to Japanese clubs in the eighties, proved the single most useful guide to how a Japanese organisation works. Richard Whiting is a sportswriter who has spent most of his career in Japan, and carved a niche for himself explaining the curiosities of Japanese team sports. Check out his most famous work, The Chrysanthemum and the Bat.
Michael Heyward: The Ern Malley Affair This is so post-modern, it makes your head spin. In 1940s Australia, two would-be poets Harold Stewart and James McAuley grew tired of rejections from avant-garde literary journals. As a lark, the two composed what they thought was were silly parodies of the prevailing modernist school, and submitted them under an assumed name to Angry Penguins, a new journal published by the Adelaide dandy Max Harris. Harris said they were brilliant. The (real) authors revealed that the poems were frauds. Or were they still brilliant, even if the poets responsible never intended them to be? A fascinating artistic morality tale, which still stirs arguments in Australian academic circles.
Gore Vidal: Myra Breckinridge & Myron Today, Vidal concentrates on scathing essays and scandalous memoir. But you'll find his best work in his early satires. Myra Breckenridge tells the story of a ball-busting post-op transexual woman who wreaks revenge on the millieu of B-list celebs and wannabes who spurned her as a man. This short book carries not an ounce of fat; every word packs a punch. It is, without doubt, his masterpiece. The sequel, Myron, runs longer, and is just a little too aware of its own cleverness. Irritated at a Supreme Court decision on censorship, Vidal replaces each of the proscribed nine dirty words with the names of the Justices themselves. Oddly, the judges all seem to sport names which suit the purpose. I am especially fond of the name for a vulgarity which refers to the female genitalia; Justice Whizzer White.
Dana Thomas: Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster A staggeringly well-written book from a former Washington Post fashion correspondent. The many hundreds of billions of dollars which passes through the hands of the luxury goods industry has not trickled-down to the people who actually do the work. Once proud brands tarnish their reputations by badge-engineering. A merciless expose of luxury marketing, but one which respects the artisanal ideals which spawned the industry in the first place.
Japan Travel Bureau: Japan in Your Pocket: "Salaryman" in Japan No. 8 (Eibun Nihon Etoki Jiten) Perhaps the funniest book on Japanese culture ever written. And it's meant to be serious. Did you know that the highest ranking executive gets the safest seat in a taxi? I didn't, until this book explained all those silly details of business etiquette. Special section on how to curse your bucho.
Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist Dali once described surrealism as the chance meeting of a fish and an anvil on an ironing board. As a modern surrealist, Leyner provides plenty of anvils, but the fish are somehow missing. A dozen eskimos in bowler hats have just rung the doorbell, and I must get my llama to make them hot fudge sundaes. Do I make myself clear?
Muriel Spark: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie The relationship between a gifted student and a truly inspiring teacher is an intimate one. So intimate, the student and teacher can resemble two lovers, with their intrigues, passions, and potential for betrayal. Spark's cool, detatched style is at odds with the simmering emotion that runs through this tale of adolescent self-discovery. It makes her story all the more heartbreaking. A masterpiece.
Nick Flynn: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir What effect does it have on your soul, if you're working in a homeless shelter, and your dad checks in? And you have to throw him out for bad behaviour? A gut-wrenching tale of family dysfunction, emotional torture, and (yes) vanity. Flynn is a poet, and he tells his tale in a way that's morbidly beautiful.
Mary Karr: The Liars Club Like Nick Flynn, another poet tells her tale of childhood neglect and abuse. The portrait she paints of her star-crossed parents, held together by lust and divided my tragedy, will bring you to tears.
P.J. O'Rourke: Republican Party Reptile O' Rourke says he's a Republican, but he appears on NPR. A (political) party animal. His viewpoints, in large measure, suck. But I bet he mixes a mean Gimlet.
Did you enjoy your visit to Deutschland über Elvis? Then take home a souvenir from the Euros über Elvis gift shop. Select from a fine range of quality Schmuck and Flitterkram, , including "Schwanzdraper" boxer shorts, "Johann Six-Pack" baseball jerseys, "Bavarian Beast" beer steins, and more! Why stop at Einstein? Buy zwei or drei Steins! All proceeds donated to beer.
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