Parlour

Yes, indeed. Adjectives that came to my mind when I thought about Phoenix: sweet and gluey as hell. Well, that describes their last album Alphabetical pretty well. But not It’s Never Been Like That. Still Pop but not the gluey and way to sweet part of it. Great music for the hopefully soon beginning summer (8° Celcius tomorrow and grey skies, brrr).

As a kind of follow up to my recent High Fidelity article. Yeah, I dare. But just for fun.

Well, actually, I don’t even own any records, just CDs. I’m a child of the CD age. But records sounds better than CDs, so I will use that. Whatever. Here it is:

5. Set Yourself On Fire, Stars
Simply a bunch of beautiful popsongs. And if I say beautiful I mean beautiful. I still cannot stop listening.

4. Californication, Red Hot Chili Peppers
Yeah, just #4. After all the whole album is not that great, but Californication is a song that’s without comparison. A song you could die for. Also the first RHCP song I’ve ever heard. This song and the video that I have seen so often on MTV, somehow – I think – started off that whole music thing. Blame it.

3. London Calling, The Clash
Old People’s music. Yeah. From 1979. Actually pretty awesome that I like it. Don’t know, but who could ignore the sound of London Calling? Not I.

2. Demotape, Fettes Brot
German Rap? #2?! Yeah! You know, the thing with english music is, that there always comes music first, and lyrics second. I don’t even know what many of the songs I listen to are all about. It’s often hard to decrypt, and simple translating often won’t help. Listening to music with lyrics in your mother tongue is a joy. And Fettes Brot is something you can enjoy. Funny and serious, with a whole lot of irony, as I like it. I always liked and maybe always will like rap, be it german or english, and it’s Doktor Renz, König Boris and Schiffmeister you have to blame for that.

1. Curtains, John Frusciante
Listen to it and you will understand.

Not half as sophisticated as Rob’s lists, but hey, I’ve only just started.

This Book’s gonna definitley make it in my Top Five all time favorite books list, if you know what I mean.

I just finished reading it, and it’s really all in there: the music, the relationships and especially the relationships, and wether it’s important what you are like or what you like.

I’m a Rob kind of guy when it comes to books, mainly because it’s so hard for me to choose. It’ all easy with records, but I’m not at all able to just look for books and pick some I think I could like (I don’t know why deciding about books is so hard for me), and consequentley I read far less than I would like to, so never mind my opinion about certain books, but boy, that’s a book you can adore!

Even better than the movie. Looking back I regret having watched the movie before reading the book. (Isn’t it always like that? Considering my experience with Herrn Lehmann reading the book first and then watching the movie, doing both of that is never that satisfactory at some point or another.) Not that the movie is bad or something – it’s right there in my movies Top Fife, second place, right behind Trainspotting – but it somehow spoiled it. Not enough to not see that High Fidelity is a really awesome book, but the book is full of nice little details, the movie hasn’t, and that difference, especially when it comes to the character of Rob is important. (The movie Rob and the book Rob are different, though – no doubt – movie Rob John Cusack is a very good book Rob – but, in the end, not the same.)

Somehow what you think Rob would be like when reading the book, is overridden by what you thought Rob is like, when watching the movie. It’s not that the movie paints a false picture of Rob, it’s just not what you imagine him to be when reading the book. The director of the movie interpreted it that way, I interpret it this way. And this difference in interpretation is something no one can turn off. That’s maybe the reason behind all that problems with turning books into movies, turning movies into books or turning comics into movies or turning whatever cultural into whatever cultural.

And boy, how the hell did I come to talk about that topic? I just wanted to say that High Fidelity is one of these books that nearly make you cry, and that’s great. Don’t read too much by Nick Hornby though, you will be disappointed.

The »we-take-photos-of-huge-Apple-ads« business is huge here in Germany. Mainly because there are hardly any of them to find here.

In fact, the first one I saw, was a cool new nano ad, and I saw it two weeks ago in Berlin. Even localized (with German CD covers), and pretty darn huge. It was put up some hundread meters next to where we stayed and directly next to the new (not yet completely ready, will be finished some time before the World Cup) central station. We passed it every sinlgle day several times (four or so).

I thought about photographing it, and getting all the fame, aka some links from some Mac fan sites. And I even took one very shy picture of the ad:

There is much Lehrter Bahnhof (you know, the name of the new central station) in the foreground and dull apartments in the background and you actually cannot call this picture great or in any way a picture of an ad.

There is of course a reason why there is no great photo of the ad (»Oh come on, spare me with your dumb excues!«):

I decided against it. You know, this whole »we-are super-excited-about-an-ad« thing is kinda infantile, isn’t it? I mean, that’s something just crazy Apple nerds could do, and I don’t even own an Apple computer (uhmm, yet). And even if I took a photo, everyone would already know the ad, wouldn’t they? It’s in Berlin! And maybe an ad like that is nothing exctiting anymore in Berlin. If roundabout 90 percent (or something like that, I’m not that good at math) of all people in Berlin run around with white earplugs, why should a huge iPod ad be in any way something special?

Today I looked in my RSS reader and I saw this. Damn!

I have to write about that. Ten pages.

At the end of one’s career as pupil, everyone (at least in Bavaria, don’t know about the other states) has to write a paper about a topic, that has something to do with one of the two main subjects you have choosen to write Abitur in.

I’ve choosen to write about fundamentalism in north america – in english. Yeah, I know I’m crazy. I could have picked a history topic (history being my second main subject), there were tons of it, even not that boring ones, but after I met these crazy north american fundamentalists (only virtual, but was enough to scare me) with all their »earth-is-7,000-years-old« stuff, I quickly became interested in that creationism and ID thing.

Not that I belive in it or something, but I was just astonished to see that such reactionary views of the world like creationism or ID can have such an huge impact on people living in an as modern society as the USA. Maybe I shouldn’t be that astonished, because reactionary ideologies have been – not that long ago – hugely successful in Germany, too …

Now (or at some point in the not so distant future) I have to start somehow. At least we have one year of time to write it. That should help me to get over my empty mind I have at the moment …

Not in any way representative, but I liked them. They both don’t show the fucked up Berlin I like so much, but rather the »tourist attraction« part of Berlin. Looking back now, I kinda regret not having photographed any fucked up stuff, but you can’t always get everything right.

This one’s from the Reichstag. List of the severest security checks from severe to loose:

1. Reichstag
2. Offices of the Members of Parliament
3. Auswärtiges Amt (=Foreign Office)
4. Ministry for Education (none at all)

This one’s from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This memorial is really impressive, though it’s completely unable to shock you like a visit at a former concentration camp or just something like watching photos from the holocaust.

But nevertheless, I really like how fast you get lost inside the memorial, how the noise of the city dies away, how the outside world fades away.

Today, the Bundeswehr and I agreed that I would be a lousy soldier. Now we both can happily go on and see us never again for the rest of time.

I’m obviously pretty happy about that. But the big problem remains. It may have worked out well for me (because the Bundeswehr and I are talking in perfect harmony or something like that), but not for many others. Where is the justice in me, losing no time at all, but others losing many months? They are the ones with perfect health, not I. I should be enslaved because I’m in such bad condition, not they. (Yeah, ok, I know. The Bundeswehr is no bootcamp for unathletic people.)

I don’t even think that this whole Wehrpflicht thing is completly idiotic. It wouldn’t be wrong if it would be abolished, but an alternative would be to make this social stuff thing a duty for everyone, and the ones who want (or the ones who the Bundeswehr wants) can go to the Bundeswehr.

I mean, I’m not all that lazy, and in the end I would be ready to accept being a Zivi (=Zivildienstleistender, you know, the one who does this social stuff). That would at least be fair.

Uhm, no. I’ll have to go to the physical examination of the Bundeswehr (at least they have a great Coporate Identity) tommorrow, and if I’m unlucky, meaning healthy enough, I’ll have to become a soldier for nine months in a little more than one year after I finished school (yeah, I know, I’m even somehow lucky, because it’s just nine months and not the 15 my dad had to stay there, and they’ll only take the sportiest). I can also do some social stuff instead (something in a nursing home for example), but that’s no fun either.

Maybe it’s just that I’m so lazy or something, but I think this whole Wehrpflicht thing (conscription in English, I think) has become (or was always?) not very justice. Nowadays the Bundeswehr doesn’t need that many soldiers, and in the end it’s often somehow random if they take you or not. If not you are lucky (or not, if you want to, for example, study at the Bundeswehr), in any other case you are forced to give away a whole lot of time of your life. That’s ok if you want to (or if you think that time isn’t in any way wasted) but the Bundeswehr won’t take you because you want to but because of wether they think you would be a great soldier. And if you think you wouldn’t be a great soldier but they do you are just fucked.

I don’t think I would be a great soldier. I’ll see what they think tomorrow.

Ich mag die Stadt. So richtig schön abgefuckt, alles, irgendwie. Und man kann nicht mal eben in jeder einzelnen Keipe der Stadt ein Bier trinken, wie im Provinzkaff hier (also, könnte …).

Das war sie dann wohl, eine der letzten Fahrten irgendwohin von mir als Schüler. Vor den letzten Sommerferien meines Lebens geht’s nochmal nach Polen, ansonsten ist das dann vorbei. Ein schöne Fahrt war’s auf jeden Fall.

After looking once again at the photos, I took the same day as this one, I noticed quite a few photos with the same »topic«.

Hm, strange. Just my mood, or do small bavarian towns have this flair of hostility?