Heil, Thüringens Würstchen, Heil!

Finally, in an ironic twist in the dénouement of this administration, the Supreme Court has chastised our Supreme Leader. Finally, the misbehaving get a slap on the hand albeit from the over-indulgent mother, who, in her past evils, put him where he is in the first place. That’s the irony, I guess. Now that things have over-reached past the point of sanity, the two other branches of government must do their best to rein Il Duce in. Good luck. This process will be greatly accelerated come November. You just wait and see, mein Führer! Your days are numbered.

I do what?

Ok, it’s true, occasionally I google my own name just to make sure that someone on God’s green earth actually reads my blog. But what I found this time just friggin’ cracked me up:

“One of the best things about J. is that he has expectations of his riders. He insists that they use the reins properly if they expect him to turn or stop. This attribute is very helpful when we work with students who really want to learn to ride and have the ability to do so. Even though he is firm in some ways, J. is also very gentle and patient. He takes independent riders as well as little ones who cannot sit up by themselves. He is an all-around champion to all of his friends at Magic Moments.”

Am I the only one who finds this funny?

While we're in the mood...cold cottage and custard

I propose that we all play a little game from time to time. Perhaps inspired by Karen’s diligent, and equally somnambulant food lists (how the hell did she even survive on so little actual, vital nutrients) I think we should all share from time to time what food we are presently obsessed about. I know there are some soulless people out there who don’t have cravings and who, God forbid, don’t even take insane pleasure out of the amazing gift that we get to eat day in and day out. These people are the ones who eat to live instead of, like me, those who live to eat. So, what food really gets your juices flowing these days?

For me, it is the rediscovery of Hacke Peter. Those of you who speak some German need not worry, we didn’t cut peter up into little bits or run him through a grinder. Hack Peter is a German food that is smeared on bread. And, knowing that is going to gross the hell out of you Americans who read my blog, I will tell you very simply what it is, and spare you the effect of some kind of dramatic lead-up: Hacke Peter is like steak tartare (what we in Belgium used to call filet américain.) it is ground meat that is flavored with, salt, pepper, etc. Ad, yes, it is RAW PORK! You spread it on bread and eat with a big smile on your face, because it is oink oink goooood!

I first got turned onto this stuff when I was doing a guest contract in the delightfully picturesque town of Wernigerode in what used to East Germany. They eat it day in and day out. You can buy it just about anywhere: you’re even able to have some buy in an Imbiss spread it on bread for you for a to-go snack of carnivorous wondrousness.

Ok, I gave you my current favorite. Now, it’s your turn!

A Taste from the World's Cup

Things are crazy here. To kind of give you an idea of what it's like, I took a video of what happened today in the afternoon. Sometimes, these little marches happen more than once a day, since there are three World Cup matches played per day. The most annoying demonstrations are those that happen at around 11:30 at night, because they usually involve lots of cars with lots of blaring horns. I found this one cute today, though. What do you think?

"So You're Boisterous. Now What?"

I keep having these unexpected, vocal breakthroughs. I keep getting these moments of clarity where once-obscured talent jumps out from behind a dark corner and pinches my ass. It’s like that scene in a movie where a normal, Joe Schmo citizen who has never had anything special happen in his life suddenly sees a specter in an old Victorian house somewhere. It makes me do that proverbial double take just like the guy in the movie, unable to believe that the boogie man does actually exist after all of this non-believing. These “breakthroughs” are also thrilling, though. I am just so understated these days that I can’t muster up anything besides a quick nod to myself and maybe a “neat” said under my breath.

But the uncanniness at the timing of these breakthroughs over the past couple of months is starting to direct my career at an accelerating speed towards an obvious place, one of un-anticipated success. The momentum is finally starting to pick up as I had always hoped it would...and I am starting to get very excited....and very scared. After my début in the Requiem last week, I woke up the next morning, unable to believe that I had actually had the nerve to get up in front of all of my colleagues, etc. and, against the odds, to do well. “I can’t believe I did that!”, I kept saying.

Well, to make what could, with me, a long, excruciating story short, I had a lesson on Wednesday of this week. I learned some breathing techniques that allowed me to still sing with the power that my voice needs, while remaining flexible, a difficult balance to muster. We also found some techniques that allowed me, finally, to get the notes in the upper part of my voice out of my throat. To describe what this sounds like, it would be like rapping on a big bell with your knuckles “klink klink klink” and then taking out a big, wooden mallet and giving it a good smack. “Gong!” This “peel” is how my voice can ring when unencumbered and out of my throat. Neat.

Anyway, this great lesson was on Wednesday, two days before the second performance of the Requiem. Convinced by my teacher, namely that it was nice that I sang the piece last time, with this small, choirboy voice to please the other people around me. “Now, sing it with your REAL voice.”, she said. She was right and I knew it. Even if I am no Mozart specialist and the thought of some Heldentenor singing the Requiem would not appeal to my listening tastes, either, I knew that she was right: I have to sing with my own voice even when the circumstances are not ideal. I am not a choirboy and even if I were hit by a Max Factor truck in some freak accident, I will never be one. And I certainly will never sound like one. I just gots to be me...

Last night I was standing there on stage waiting for what always seems an eternity for my first phrase. I was about 10 times more scared than I had been last week. This time it was “I can’t believe that I’m going to do this. I can’t believe I’m going to do this.” I felt I was plummeting down some icy slalom with no bobsled, just me and my ass careening towards some hard landing, which, logically, must come with its most-decisive eventuality. (I would normally put out my nails and try to scratch myself to a stop like that tiger does in Ice Age after the baby gets away from them and they find themselves in an ice chute labyrinth sliding in and out of ice pathways. Scraaaaaaaaatch. You can imagine how hopelessly frustrating it was that I had been a good boy and trimmed them that very morning.) I was practically mumbling to myself at this point “I can’t believe that I’m going to do this. I can’t believe I’m going to do this.” But then, somehow, the light started to break through. “I HAVE to do this. I HAVE to do this.” The bass is almost finished with his melody, and then I’m up at bat. “I am going to do this. I AM GOING TO DO THIS!!!!” Light. I see light! BREATHE! ‘Mors stupebit et natura.’ “It’s working...” Breath. ‘Cum resurget creatura.’ “Holy shit this is loud. I think I see the audiences hair blowing back.”

After singing a bit, the soloists leave the stage while the ballet performs with some of the chorus numbers. Waiting on the side, I realized that, because of pure nerves and adrenalin I could not actually recall most of the memories from these moments. What is it about the brain that conveniently erases trauma? Let’s just say I was scared shitless in spite of the absence of poo, but just sang through that fear and kept going.

I know it is in bad taste to compliment yourself, and I don’t want you to think that my head has gotten even bigger than you all know it already is, but I am proud of myself. It took some pretty big balls to do what I did yesterday and I’m sitting here, again on a Saturday morning, unable to believe that I actually did it.

I did it!

Cup This

Speaking of changes to my life because of the World Cup...it is 11:30, and I am thinking, at this point, that there may be some distinct disadvantages to living downtown in a little city in Germany during the world cup.

There are cars driving down the street in from of our house now, honking their horns, sometimes with women hanging out the top, waving great, big, Italian flags because Italy just won a game in the Cup. This normally would be no problem if it were a rare occurrence. But, yesterday, Mexico won a game, and I had no idea that there are so many Mexicans living in Pforzheim.

It is a fun phenomenon. A bit overstated, but what should I do, go down and inform them all?

Waldmeister?

A comment posted today said that I should really make some kind of comment as to the World Cup happenings around me. Good point.

Even though I am rather isolated from most of this kind of thing, being 100% isolated in such a situation is simply impossible. In fact, Germany learned that it had won the 1st game just as the Requiem was starting on Friday night. Our production is a joint cooperation with the ballet here. The first portion of the program is a dane interpretation of a Mozart Sonata—very quiet, contemplative and sometimes joyful. Well, what we heard on Friday, sitting on stage, waiting for our first musical cues, was more like John Cage does Mozart. The entire city had just erupted, blaring their car horns, screaming at the top of their lungs. Chris later said that the city had celebrated as though Germany had won the Cup (a term that I have always found so funny--the winner in German is called the “Weltmeister.” So, when Germany won in 1954, 9 years after the country had been obliterated, the sports announcer yelling with his genuine excitement “Deutschland ist Weltmeister! Deutschland ist Welmeister!” is a sound bite that really pulls at every German heartstrings akin to that famously touching one where reporter Herbert Morrison describes for radio listeners around the world the Hindenburg explosion. But, to me, “Deustchland ist Weltmeister” always sounded eerie in s a sort of “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” kind of way.) Anyway, the town erupted and didn’t really settle down until well past midnight (the performance started at 8PM.)

Another startling change of late is the amount that people are displaying the German flag. I see almost no signs of patriotism on a daily basis—it is seen as a kind of taboo here, in fact. But, this seems to be the one time where it is ok for Germans to be proud to be German, Now there are German flags flying past on cars, and German flags in windows. I’ve even seen people wearing them as dresses and using the national colors to dye their hair with.

And the town partied while Chris and I slept, I guess. I awoke to find many a smashed beer bottle on the streets here in downtown. And, while I was practicing I saw some policemen asking some drunk guy sleeping in the park to put his clothes on. (I saw him still sleeping there later, so everything must have checked out.)

Every store here has taken advantage of the situation, offering some kind of Weltmeister special. You can get ice cream specialties like the World Cup Sundae, or buy a pastry with a little Marzipan soccer ball on top. Even we, unknowingly, have brought things home from the grocery store, only to find that practically every package had on it something to do with soccer.

I think the low point was the national church service, though, televised on Friday morning. Broadcast from Bavaria, of course. (Didn’t you know that the Germans think that Bavaria is this hickdom that it should be its own country? When Sesame Street started broadcasting here in Germany in the late 60s, Bavarian children were not allowed to watch, because the public officials there didn’t think German children could relate to Blacks and Whites co-mingling on the steps of their New York City Brownstones. Hmmm, sounds like racism to me...) The church service featured a giant, glowing soccer ball with the continents of the world all over it. In case there is anyone out there who thinks that there aren’t kitschy people in Europe, I have some news for you. I have come to understand that people with bad taste exist everywhere, in every form. In some ways, I think there are actually more here than back home, but that’s a topic for another day.

Tid bits

The Requiem went well. The overall feedback that I have gotten so far has been that it was very musical and that I could give more in terms of volume. Well, now I know what to shoot for in the practice room. I’ll blow their socks off yet. Speaking of that...

Death Yay Death?

It’s been such a very long time since the last good news came from that God-forbidden situation we have allowed GW to create in Iraq. The last time that I felt even the slightest pang of joy about the whole thing was the day that the Iragi’s held their first free elections. But now I have to admit to you that I hooped and hollered, hearing that that fucking, God-damn rat bastard Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead. I am sorry to be so extreme, but I hope that, if there is a hell, his carcass is burning there to a fine crisp. Never has there been such an inhumane, vile person. Never have the dregs of society produced such scum. If karmic forces determine rebirth into different forms of life, I hope that he is the slug that some pre-pubescent rogue finds, saltshaker in hand. I haven’t sensed such an overwhelming sense of justice since Timothy McVeigh was exterminated (yes, even when I don’t even believe in the death penalty.)
You know how people wonder why bad things happen to good people? Well, at least one 500-pound bomb happened to a butcher today.

Courtesy of the Washington Post, I have here a list of the people of the world’s grievances with him. Please note the number of times "decapitated" and "beheaded" are used.

2005:
-- Dec. 27: Volley of rockets fired from southern Lebanon into Israel.
-- Nov. 9: Triple suicide bombing against hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing 60.
-- Aug. 19: Rocket attack in the Jordanian port city of Aqaba, killing Jordanian soldier. One Katyusha rocket lands in neighboring Israel -- causing no casualties -- and another misses a U.S. Navy ship docked at Aqaba.
-- May 7: Two explosives-laden cars plow into an American security company convoy in Baghdad, killing at least 22 people -- including two Americans.
-- Feb. 28: Suicide car bomber strikes crowd of police and Iraqi National Guard recruits in the southern city of Hillah, killing 125 people.

2004:
-- Dec. 19: Car bombs tear through funeral procession in Najaf and main bus station in nearby Karbala, killing at least 60 in the Shiite holy cities.
-- Oct. 30: Body of hostage Shosei Koda, 24, of Japan, is found decapitated in Baghdad, his body wrapped in an American flag.
-- Sept. 30: Bombings in Baghdad kill 35 children and seven adults as U.S. troops hand out candy at the inauguration of a sewage treatment plant. Al-Zarqawi's group claims responsibility for attacks that day, but it is unclear if these include the explosions that killed the children.
-- Sept. 16: British engineer Kenneth Bigley, and U.S. engineers Jack Hensley and Eugene "Jack" Armstrong kidnapped in Baghdad. By Oct. 10, 2004, all three men have been confirmed beheaded.
-- Sept. 14: Car bomb rips through a busy market near a Baghdad police headquarters where Iraqis are waiting to apply for jobs, killing 47.
-- Sept. 13: Video purportedly from al-Qaida in Iraq shows Durmus Kumdereli, a Turkish truck driver, being beheaded.
-- Aug. 2: Video from followers of al-Zarqawi showing shooting death of hostage Murat Yuce of Turkey.
-- June 29: Bulgarian truck drivers Georgi Lazov, 30, and Ivaylo Kepov, 32, are kidnapped. Al-Zarqawi's followers suspected of decapitating both men.
-- June 22: Kidnappers behead South Korean hostage Kim Sun-il; Al-Jazeera television says the killing was carried out by al-Zarqawi's group.
-- June 14: Car bomb attack on a vehicle convoy in Baghdad kills 13, including three General Electric employees.
-- May 18: Car bomb assassinates Iraqi Governing Council president Abdel-Zahraa Othman.
-- May 11: Kidnapped American businessman Nicholas Berg is beheaded while being videotaped, and the voice of the knife-wielder is identified as al-Zarqawi's.
-- March 2: Coordinated blasts from suicide bombers, mortars and planted explosives strike Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing at least 181. U.S. and Iraqi officials link the attacks to al-Zarqawi.

2003:
-- Aug. 29: Car bomb in Najaf kills more than 85 people, including Ayatollah Mohammad Baqr al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
-- Aug. 19: Truck bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad kills 23, including top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

2002:
-- Oct. 28: Laurence Foley, a diplomat and administrator of U.S. aid programs in Jordan, is gunned down outside his home in Amman.

One Kraut Two Kraut Three Kraut Four

The first thing that I seem to have forgotten whilst living here in Germany (other than the fact that “whilst” sounds as affected as hell) is spelling. Without my trusty spell check on this computer, I am relatively confident that I would sound like a second-grader even in my own language. It is a strange balance that an expatriate has to accept—to not be truly proficient in either of the languages that are closest to you. Sucks to be dumb. Now I know what it feels like, all of you morons I constantly teased to no end in high school and beyond. I am sorry about that. (As though they have the brains to read this blog...) Oops. Sorry. I did it again. Culpa.

This all occurred to me, the spelling, that is, when I was doing a crossword and could not, for the life of me, remember if ‘Inca’ was spelled with a ‘k’ or a ‘c’. That whole ‘k’ ‘c’ thing is the first to go for a German/English bilingual, I’ll bet. The second is the rather obsessive use of hyper-logical prepositions. Germans will always tell you, as I am relatively sure anyone speaking any language in the world would also say, that theirs is the most complex language and that it has many more words than the English language. (How a language is more complex because it has more words is beyond me almost as much as is the concept that someone, without a degree in linguistics or, for that matter, someone who has never seen the multi-volumed Oxford English Dictionary, can assume that one language has more words than another.) Twelve points to anyone who understood that last sentence. The author is hereby docked 13 points for overly complex sentence structure, a possible example of run-on, and, since the judges didn’t get it either, the additional possibility that the sentence simply made no sense. Damn you, judges,

Anyway, the preposition thing has nearly driven me mad up till now. I use, folks, as my example today the word ‘ziehen’. ‘Ziehen’ means ‘to pull’. You see it everywhere printed on doors, as might be expected. I always feel like that Gary Larson cartoon where the kid is pushing on a door that says ‘pull’, trying to get into the “Academy for the Gifted” or some such thing, when I go to the Rathaus here. They have glass doors, and near the handle is either ‘drücken’ or ‘ziehen’ depending. The problem is, you can see the word, reversed of course, printed on the other side of the door. For some reason, the greatly confuses me, because my mind always reads the inversed message, taking it as the primary one, and misinstructs my hands sending me, flailing, in a rush right into the door I should have pulled. Big dummy. It doesn’t help that this usually happens right in front of the Foreign Citizens Bureau, making me look even more like an big, Aerican dum-dum. Grrrr.

Back to ‘ziehen’. ‘Ziehen’ is used for everything. If you change residences, you must “pull about” in German (umziehen), when you get dressed, you have to “pull upon” (anziehen), children here are “pulled big” (großziehen) making me think of some giant, state run taffee pull for children, to make a nice egg dish you may need to “pull your eggs under” (Unterziehen), you “pull up” stickers you don’t remove them (abziehen), and you “pull up” in an elevator even if you are being pushed (aufziehen.)

My mind can’t help but make literal translations of the phrases that I sometimes hear, (There have been many times when I didn’t know the word for something and just made it up from one of the core German words plus preposition and it was actually right. That is always a fun, light bulb moment.) The flip side, of course, is that being here puts the whole grammatical structure of my mother tongue in question. I am sure that in another couple of years this blog is going to read like a Vietnamese transient extracted from a sweat shop somewhere in Jersey...“Me no likey Germanland because the Germans no sense of humor have...Me talk pretty some day.”

You gots to accentuate the positive...

After having just read many of ma favorite blogs, I realize that I need not write you all one of my epic sonnets on life in order for an entry to be interesting. I like Karen’s blog for its variety, for instance. Sometimes she just says what she’s had for dinner and then just gets on with her life. Life seems to be getting the best of me lately, so I haven’t had much to say. Things have been productive, it is true. What I have to show for it, though, has yet to be seen.

I have been obsessed for the past few days about learning the Mozart Requiem in that I will be singing the tenor solo part from it on Friday. I’m not quite to the point where I am scared out of my friggin’ mind, but I am slowly getting there. I find that sitting down with the score and just working through it in my head alleviates some of the mental distress.

The constant commentary from the many practically everyone in the chorus is starting to get a bit annoying. Almost all of the men have told me that they are “curious” to see how it will go. I find that non-committal to say the least; passive-aggressive seems more the tone. The women are all excited and very positive. At any rate, let’s just say that all eyes will be one me especially from behind, where the chorus stands, for the performance. I hope that I do well so that I can subtly give my naysayers the finger.

I have almost forgotten what it is like to be a soloist. I am just not sure if I have the stomach for it...or discipline. Things I have presented in the past have been pretty good. I just have to come to a point with my voice where I feel satisfied with its own construction and can be relatively confident of what is going to come out. That will help. I realize now that this only comes from hard work, though, and, frankly, I have enjoyed the past several months of actually taking the prospect of having a solo career seriously.

Who knows, maybe it will happen...even if it doesn’t, I will be happy.

Squish

I saw this photo on the front page of the Pforzheim paper yesterday and just thought it was the most amazing thing ever. Imagine, you’re just speeding along, having a nice vacation somewhere in Switzerland, and off of the nearby mountain falls a huge boulder, right on top of you. I mean, look at the size of that fucking rock, people!



I'm sorry, but this has "act of God" written all over it.

It reminds me of Mr. Miagi’s little “squish like grape” thing...or what an ant must think as it looks up sensing a dark figure above, the dark figure coming into focus just as the ant realizes, too late, that it is the sole of someone's shoe...crunch and it’s all over, folks.

Anyway, the two people in the car were from around Pforzheim and they were, yes, killed instantly. A very dramatic reminder of nature's awesome power.