[once i get MT to work right, I'll just blog Flickr photos, but at the moment I'm having a little trouble.]
Johnny has posted a fabulous review of Tropical Islands, the, um, repurposed Cargolifter hangar. What a trip. I guess I'm glad they found a use for it, but really I'd rather spend my 20 Euros in Templin (yes, I'd go there of my own volition). For the same price (at least on the weekend) Templin's NaturTherme offers some excellent and very varied sauna time. Even TURM in O'burg would be money better spent for me, but as Johnny says, it's all about the kiddies, and neither of these two Erlebnisbäder has sand anywhere. Though both have waterslides...
I've been meaning to try out Bloglines' Blogroll Wizard for a while but only got around to it today. It worked like a charm. On the left you'll see the list of blogs I read daily, with the exception of a few I marked "private" on my feed page (this keeps hem|mungen from showing up there, for example--I subscribe to it to make sure that the RSS is working ok. I swear. Not because I'm vain). Actively updates itself, so whenever I add or remove or edit a feed it also changes on my blog. How dandy.
[Of course stupid ie doesn't preserve the breaks between the folder titles, but otherwise it's fine.]
Christoph Hein has backed out of the directorship of the Deutsches Theater. From the story at FAZ:
„Das DT ist nicht das erste Theater, das mir angeboten wurde” sagt Hein. Kurz nach der Wende habe er zwei Angebote großer Häuser abgelehnt, weil er das Gefühl gehabt habe, das geistige Klima lasse es nicht zu, daß er als Ostdeutscher Chef eines großen Theaters werde. „Ich habe gedacht, man könnte es 15 Jahre nach der Wende doch mal versuchen.”[Berliner PDS-Kultursenator Thomas] Flierl meint, er sei entsetzt gewesen über die Heftigkeit, mit der die Entscheidung für Hein „primär vor der Folie ostdeutscher Herkunft gespiegelt und als drohender Rückfall in einen anti- liberalen Kunstdirigismus interpretiert und diffamiert wurde”.
This is a really bad sign, I think. In part it seems to have to do with Hein's personality (a more stubborn person might have withstood this crap), but overall it signals a really firmly-ensconced Ostalgie backlash. I wonder if the media hadn't made such a big hoo-ha out of the last wave of Ostalgie whether Hein's appointment might have been recognized as the progressive step that it was.
"The DT isn't the first theatre that was offered to me," Hein said. Shortly after the Wende he turned down offers from two large houses because he had the feeling that the intellectual climate would not yet permit an East German to head a large theatre. "I thought one could try again fifteen years after the Wende."
[Berliner's Senator for Culture (PDS) Thomas] Flierl expressed his shock over the ferocity with which the decision to appoint Hein was "primarily seen against a backdrop of East German heritage and was interpreted, even villified as a threatening regression into anti-liberal art direction."
Lemme just beat a dead horse. At Salon, Laura Miller has written a nice explanation of why the Da Vinci Code sucks (watch the ad and get a day pass to read the whole thing if you don't have a subscription). Having been interested in Christian history in a previous life I caught a lot of this stuff, though not all of it. I guess the one thing that I appreciated about the book (certainly not the plot or the writing; even Angels and Demons was better) was that it made people think about Church history. Unfortunately, the information that was making them think was patently wrong. Too bad, because there is a lot of right information about the historical Jesus etc. that could also give a thinking person pause.
Oh, and did I mention that nobody in the business refers to Leonardo as "da Vinci?" Did I? Man, you'd think he could've at least figured that part out.
While reading Brown's book I was reminded of another pulpy write-up of the Real Story of Jesus, Clysta Kinstler's The Moon Under Her Feet, which I enjoyed WAY more than Brown's clunker. Kinstler sets up Mary Magdalene as a priestess of the Goddess (you see where this is going) and makes Jesus into the random man chosen for a sacred marriage. It's an interesting angle because she tries to put non-Jewish, non-Roman religion back into the story...with varying degrees of success. A fun if cheesy read with a nice bibliography at the end.
From the NY Times:
Susan Sontag, Writer and Social Critic, Dies at 71.
Adam links to this collection of disaster information and links for donations. Help if you can.
[See also the Red Cross' site.]
I've always wanted to enjoy a cozy cup of tea in the bath. Haven't you? (If not, browse around and you're sure to find another interior that's more in keeping with your needs. Like having your horse handy to your kitchen.)
[via Moe via...]
Regardless of the stickiness of the songs, Katamari Damacy was one of the best presents ever.
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Andrew links to this list, which is guaranteed to prevent me from getting any work done today at all.
Favorites remembered so far (with no links so that you have to browse through for yourself): Merlin, Perfection, Vertibird (!! almost forgot about this one, but someone had bought this and it lived at my dad's mother's house. Loved it and yet used it only rarely), Ker-Plunk, Shrinky-Dinks (that's the new version they're showing at Cream, though), Mousetrap, Etchasketch (at which I am a wiz), Battling Tops (also at Grandma's), Spirograph (ditto. How odd), Run Yourself Ragged (UK: Screwball Scramble, which I can remember getting for Christmas not in the '70s but in the 80's. Maybe it was released later here); Speak-and-Spell (NERD), and the 6 Mill$ Man (my brother had this one; I had Jamie Summers and her Bionic Beauty Salon. Seriously!).
Why do the work when someone else already has? Andrew wrote up a nice description of our neighborhood to go with his earlier post of businesses we can walk to, and he's made an annotated map [part one, part two] (posted at Flickr) of the area, as well. From his links to the neighborhood association, I came upon this old map of the section right where our house is, dated to 1890. Our house is near the large number 15.
The ratio of flat to bumpy is fairly low this year.
[A friend's four-year-old charge once asked for "no flat presents. Only bumpy presents" at Christmas. Translation: "Fewer books, more action figures, please."]
If the National Weather Service is right about this, we'll be in total lock-down mode here over Christmas. Fun.
(This isn't because the weather is especially dangerous but because people here can't drive in any kind of inclement conditions; it's just safer to stay in.)
Happy shortest day. See the sun at Newgrange, or read a little background on various aspects of the holiday. And don't forget that now's a good time to think about saving Tara...
The NY Times has a little write-up of Wladimir Kaminer today. I'm a big fan, though somehow I never made it to Kaffee Burger--even though it was all of ten minutes' walk from our house. Oh well. Next time.
Ever slow to adopt new technology, I have just joined Flickr and have posted larger versions of the tree pics there. I swear I did it before reading today's featured article at Salon, which lays out the basics of what makes Flickr special. Come on people, add me so I have some friends. I don't know who's out there.
One more for good measure. Andrew has a bunch of color nighttime pics up at Flickr, as well as some shaky shots from 37th street last night. I plan to mess around with those and post a few here too a little later.
Here's our amazing aluminum Christmas tree, freshly decorated with a whole lot more glass ornaments than we had last year. So far no interest from the cat, which is good, I suppose. In the sunlight it is extremely sparkly...
_
I'm finally using Quicksilver, and yes, it is making my life easier. Today I wasted spent about an hour figuring out how to do a google search directly from the command window. Having gotten that to work, I thought, you know, the other thing I need is a Leo autosearch. So I set one up! By myself! Bwahaha. It would be neater still if there were a German-English-German DEF plugin, or I guess it would be TRANS...but this will do for now.
Peter Eisenmann's memorial in Berlin is nearing completion, or at least you can tell how it's going to look now. The last pylon was put in place yesterday, but there's still several more months before it officially opens. In anticipation, the BZ has an interview with the architect. The FR also has some thoughts.
A friend sent me an email SOS, something I always view skeptically, about the impending destruction of the sacred site Tara for the sake of a highway. Turns out this is a real, serious threat that archaeological entreaties (which you'd think would at least carry more weight than the cries of the pagan community) might not even be able to stop. Here's some of what the Guardian had to say on the matter:
Historical experts are aghast at the proposals. One group of 21 British archaeologists wrote to the Irish Times, reminding the Irish authorities that "driving a four-lane motorway through the valley will destroy the integrity of this ancient landscape for ever." The president of the Archaeological Institute of America sent an unusually direct appeal: "We are shocked that planning permission has been granted. We appeal to the Irish authorities as a matter of urgency to move this section of the M3 away from the Tara/Skreen valley and to save this precious legacy from our shared past for posterity." Tara's leading archaeological expert, Conor Newman, warned the government's planning appeals board: "How [Tara] is managed by us will become the yardstick against which our reputation as guardians of cultural heritage will be judged." It's a test the Irish authorities seem determined to fail.
It makes me ill. Have a look at Protect Tara and see if there's anything you can do to help them out.
Why should I write up a review of the press coverage of the Flickmeister when H-Arthist has done it already? Happy Reading.
H-arthist just sent around this notice about a discussion/event, "Heil Dich doch selbst!," a critique of the Flick collection to be held this week. The list of participants is impressive; wish I could be there. Scroll down the h-arthist page for an English version, or read the same thing at the bookstore's site:
Vielleicht ist der politische Unternehmer Friedrich Christian Flick auch deshalb zum Nach-MoMA-Joker der Berliner Kulturpolitik geworden, weil die Unterstützer in der Dreistigkeit des Coups ihre eigene Macht erkennen. "Heil Dich doch selbst!" ist ein weiterer Versuch, diese Form der Stillstellung der Erinnerung zu unterbrechen.
I can only find a reasonably-sized write up of this at Stern, but a new study regarding the attitudes of young female immigrants in Germany has just been released by the Bundesfamilienministerium. I'm sure more commentary will follow at other papers throughout the day.
update: Rochus Wolff notes in the comments that "the zdf has a short story about this [here] and also offers the study itself in pdf format."
The same story is now also available from the FR and the taz.
I haven't found anything in English yet, but I did stumble onto this photoessay on "Kotti" (at Deutsche Welle). Not especially compelling, and the text is annoying, but I guess I'll take any photos I can get.
...are big and bright etc. If you like to stare into the night sky and sometimes know what you're looking at, you might enjoy Sky and Telescope's Sky Chart. Made specifically for where you are. All you do is plug in your own location (there's a bar at the top of the page to modify that) and presto, through the magic of java, you can see what's where, and how high it is on the horizon. Super cool. At the moment the Geminids, which are peaking, are the thing to watch, but we have this hospital in the way and I don't think I can see into the northeast well enough...
I'm just getting around to reading yesterday's NY Times, in which there's an article in the travel section about barhopping and clubbing in Friedrichshain, "on the Edge". I really thought F'hain was not much of a hotspot anymore, at least not to anyone but annoying tourists. It's not "increasingly hip," is it? What about all that talk of lopsided development in which no new businesses open except bars, and rent prices continue to skyrocket in spite of the fact that there's no place to go grocery shopping? These kind of badly-informed write-ups irritate me (mostly because I'm not there to see for myself).
Yesterday I made yetakelt w'et, out of Sundays at Moosewood. I highly recommend it. It's a wee bit labor-intensive because you need a spice mixture, berbere, and spiced clarified butter, niter kebbeh, both of which are a little bit of extra work. For simplicity we don't bother with the niter kebbeh and instead just use a little more of the berbere, adding a tablespoon or so of butter at the end of cooking. I know it's not the same, but it was good anyway. And it will be even better today.
Following a suggestion on CT (I think), I've been reading Left2Right, which tries to encourage discussion between, duh, the left and the right. So far I've been enjoying it because these people are much smarter about The Issues than I am, and it's nice to see conversation emerge. The comments haven't been too trashy, though there's this person who keeps posting, for lack of a better word, lefty spam. Slightly crazy-sounding pronouncements on the administration's policies and how they're ruining things; it's not that I disagree with what the author says, but the comments never seem to quite follow the topic in question, unless I'm missing a subtle connection. Browse through any comment thread and you'll find one of these...
We claim to miss the change of seasons, but really when it comes down to it a 60-degree day in December with blue sky, a gentle breeze, and horizontal winter sunlight all conspire to make those desires seem less pressing. It's lovely here.
I've been out for a few days. Luckily Scott posted the results of the Bobs, which I was following mostly because the entries were pretty international and especially because there were (as he mentions) lots of entries written in languages other than English.
Among the winners I was most taken by El Hombre Que Comía Diccionarios, both because of the title and because I can read it. As far as I can tell, it's basically a collection of well-chosen quotes. Here's the Bobs' description of the site; sounds like everyone else is probably already reading EHQCD. Since my Spanish is rusty at best I'm still puzzling my way through much of the page, but sometimes I don't need to worry about Spanish, as with this gem that we all learn in first-year German:
Ottos Mopsottos mops trotzt
otto: fort mops fort
ottos mops hopst fort
otto: sosootto holt koks
otto holt obst
otto horcht
otto: mops mops
otto hofftottos mops klopft
otto: komm mops komm
ottos mops kommt
ottos mops kotzt
otto: ogottogottErnst Jandl, Der künstliche Baum & Flöda und der Schwan, S. 60
[Posted here.]
A Sammelrez. at H-Soz-u-Kult on books about our friends the Flicks, including one about the Flick Collection. Now *that* was some fast publishing.
I was just thinking how much fun a good online advent calendar can be and decided that I'd spend about ten minutes digging around for some new ones. Here are the results, all in German. I'll try to steer clear of the kitschy or super-religious. But not the super-kitschy.
To get us started in the right Stimmung.
For the cynic.
For the stylishly bitter.
Moose loves poetry.
Rilke IS holiday spirit.
Sehn Se, wat sagt ick Ihnen; für Berliner.
Lest we fortget the mathematician.
Indulge your U2 fetish.
Eep. It's the big man himself. Singing karaoke.
That'll have to do for now. Frohes Clicken wünsche ich Euch.
Update: Here's Metafilter's collection.
