Wer fertig mit dem Übergeben ist, kann jetzt weiterlesen.

Da das Veröffentlichen von Songtexten in Deutschland ganz doll extrem abmahnfähig ist (herzlichen Glückwunsch an die deutsche Justiz - Nach- und Mitsingen sind dann wohl strafbar), kann ich hier mal kurz zusammenfassen, worum es in diesem Knaller-Hit geht:

Es geht um einen Mann, der geboren wurde (ich?!), um gejagt zu werden, wie ein wildes Tier, weil er arm war (ich schlage mich so durch). Er wurde für etwas verurteilt, was ein anderer getan hat (immer eine gute Ausrede. Kenn' ich.) und seit diesem Tage Tag und Nacht in ganz Spanien gesucht (Na dann sucht mal... in Spanien... *amkopfkratz*). Er brachte sich selbst das Lesen und Schreiben bei (nee, das war glaub ich Fräulein Schiller, oder wie die hieß.) und wollte nichts sehnlicher als ein eigenes Heim (so ein Eigenheim wäre eine feine Sache, stimmt!). Das ausgesetzte Kopfgeld machte ihn berühmt, und die Leute gaben ihm trotz allem Brot (danke, Mama!), sein Kampf war ihr Kampf (keine Parallelen zu '38 - '45 bitte, ja?!). Niemand gab ihm damals eine Chance in Spanien (ja, das kann ich bestätigen! scheiß böse Iberische Halbinsulaner!). Er stahl wie Robin Hood (auf keinen Fall! wenn, dann in MEINE Tasche!). Naja, am Ende haben sie ihn doch noch gefangen und er lebt nun in den Köpfen der Leute weiter, war ein toller Typ, ein Rebell und so, blablablaaa. Aber eines zum Abschluss: Lieber rechtstaatlich als tot!

So, und ab heute bin ich EL LUTE. Merken!

[via Frank und meinungsplanet]

She was the meanest cat
In old Chicago town
She was the meanest cat
She really moved them down
She had no heart at all
No no no heart at all

She was the meanest cat
Oh she was really tough
She left her husband flat
He wasn't tough enough
She took her boys along
'cos they were mean and strong

Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - she taught her four sons
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - to handle their guns
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - she never could cry
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - but she knew how to die

They left a trail of crime
Across the U.S.A.
And when one boy was killed
She really made them pay
She had no heart at all
No no no heart at all

Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - she taught her four sons
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - to handle their guns
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - she never could cry
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - but she knew how to die

she met a man she liked
she thought she'd stay with him
one day he formed with them
they did away with him
she didn't care at all
just didn't care at all

spoken :
- Here is a special bulletin.
Ma Baker is the FBI's most wanted woman.
Her photo is hanging on every post office wall.
If you have any information about this woman,
please contact the nearest police station...

- Don't anybody move ! The money or your lives !

One day they robbed a bank
it was their last foray
the cops appeared too soon
they couldn't get away
and all the loot they had
it made them mighty mad
and so they shot it out
Ma Baker and her sons
they didn't want to hang
they died with blazing guns
and so the story ends
of one who left no friends

Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - she taught her four sons
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - to handle their guns
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - she never could cry
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - but she knew how to die

Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - she taught her four sons
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - to handle their guns
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - she never could cry
Ma Ma Ma Ma - Ma Baker - but she knew how to die

Hier ist Farian mal von seiner weniger kommerziellen Seite mit einer richtigen 12" Disco-Single ohne größere Anbiederungen an europäischen Massengeschmack zu hören.

1982. Ich hatte keine Freundin, hatte noch nie eine und wollte gerne eine haben. Was macht man in so einem Falle? Man geht in ein Tanzlokal um Mädchen kennen zu lerne. Nur konnte ich überhaupt nicht tanzen. Also buchte ich in Straubing einen Tanzkurs. Tanzschule Huber. Es war so ein Anfangstanzkurs. Ich brauchte auch keine Patnerin mitbringen. Die Situation war wie in einem Tanzlokal, ich musste die Mädchen auffordern. Hier war der Vorteil, das davon auszugehen war, dass die Mädchen auch tanzen wollten. Wir lernten natürlich auch den Walzer. Langsamer Walzer und Wiener Walzer. Als Beispiel für einen langsamen Walzer haben wir dann nach diesem Lied von Boney M. getanzt. Seither muss ich immer an den Tanzkurs denken, wenn ich dieses Lied höre.

Ach ja, noch etwas: In der letzten Tanzstunde vor dem Abschlussball war Damenwahl. Natürlich wurde ich nicht aufgefordert. Nun sollte man der Dame, von der man aufgefordert wurde einen Blumenstrauß mitbringen und mit ihr den ersten Tanz tanzen. So ein Pech aber auch. Der Tanzlehrer bot mir an, mit seiner Frau zu tanzen. Dazu hatte ich dann auch keine Lust. Ich nahm meine Mutter mit.

Ach, diese Bilder sehe ich vor mir, als sei es erst gestern gewesen.

Tempting as it is to feed all my faves from this year 35th Telluride Film Festival through the Zizekian viewfinder, I'm going to refrain from such fanatic behavior and deliver a well-balanced account of what really happened...

HUNGER (Steven McQueen, UK, 2008)

What Firaaq failed to provoke during its Crash-inspired dissection of the ongoing Hindu-Muslim hostilities in India is the intimate kernel of individual suffering made unbearably palpable by the lingering shots of the open sores blistering and sputtering against the fine pale surface of a cadaver waiting to shed his last sign of life. It may be unfair to judge both films (the latter being Hunger) by some arbitrary aesthetic yardstick, since their creators belong to two completely polarized modes of filmmaking, on one hand, we have a famous Bollywood actress turned passionate chronicler of her country's forgotten crimes against itself, and on the other corner, we have a video artist evolving from installation eye-candy to the loose narratives of the European tradition. Director Nandita Das employs shock tactics to externalize the pain of a Hindi housewife haunted by the banshee screams of her Muslim neighbors begging for help, so obviously, her only means of masochistic atonement is to sear her arm with hot cooking oil. Steve McQueen, on the other hand, creeps closer to the essence of horror, building dread not of death's approach, but of apathy wearing away little by little of political conviction, and while many critics has cited the middle portion as being the most political and politicized, the now infamous 20-minute long take of two people conversing whether a hunger strike really achieves or motivates social change, for this reviewer's opinion, where Hunger truly exceeds are the soft-focused texture of surfaces, from fingers probing the rusty iron bars to snow falling on the bloody knuckles of the prison guard, there lie its most gentle moments wrapped around extended tableaus of institutional brutality and frenzy protests (exemplified by the opening credits, the sound of drums are enough to cite historicity without all the cheap signifiers of that Thatcherite era). In the end, neither lofty philosophical conversations nor liberal ideals could rescue the body from flatlining, all that remains is the precious flashback of a childhood lost in the woods, a journey not into a man’s personal beliefs, but his mind right at the precipice of forgetting everything including himself.

I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG (Philippe Claudel, France, 2008)

Finally, a high-pedigree film that can be read in no other way than a French maternal melodrama centered on Zizek’s most belabored conceit: the inherent transgression. With drooping baggy eyes and quenched lips, never far away from a lit cigarette, Kristin Scott Thomas fulfills her duty as Oscar bait in another Fresh-off-from-Jail picture starring a strong female lead with a deep dark secret, but even as her most ‘heinous’ sin is carefully spelled out in calm bold letters to an inquisitive employer, we have already succumbed to the face of this pitiful creature that any audible gasp in the audience is a knee-jerk reaction than a sudden transformation of empathy to revulsion. [Spoiler alert] Simply put, Juliette is no cold-hearted murderer, taking a page out of the Euripidean playbook, she’s the modern equivalent of the tragic Medea, sacrificing her terminally-afflicted son in order to save him. Her proof of love is not diminished, but intensified by defying bourgeois notions of morality and confronting the harsh reality of mortality. There’s no better way to showcase pure maternal affection than through mercy killing. The film, in full Zizekian fashion, casts a suspicious eye on this enigmatic mysterious character of Juliette in order to scurry her away into the space of innocence with maximum approval by the audience…of course, how could she, look at this poster child of melancholia. However, we are the not the only spectators of this staged reversal of virtue, for the title points to one of the most banal yet powerful phrases in all of declarative speech, those precious three letter words, I-love-you spoken by a restless spirit: I’ve Love You So Long. Who else but Lea as the true addressee and addresser of this private confession between on the surface, estranged sisters, but symbolically, mother and child surrogates to one another. Is not one of the most poignant gesture of the waiting lover is to write the name of her beloved on each day of the calendar, when physical arrival becomes less important than the promise of remembrance, as time replaces space in all manners of treachery? One could extrapolate that the true monster of this film is the Janus-lingual mother, cast away in her dungeon of a convalescent home for separating the siblings at the first place, her disorienting switch from French to English serves up a cushion of sharp pain for Juliette, who pulls her crucified arms away from this Jane Birkin wannabe. While we could characterize I’ve Loved You So Long as a study on mourning, this intellectual euphemism can’t hold back the flood of what in layman’s term is a full-blooded weepie, you just gotta wait till the doves cry [first].

TULPAN (Sergei Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan, 2008)

How can I truly encapsulate the experience of watching Tulpan, a sort of all-knowing homage to Nanook of the North, as if its director’s humble start in documentaries reveal itself through the winding long takes of nomadic kinship set against the desolate plains of Kazakhstan, while the story is languidly propelled by the coming-of-age ambitions of Asa, the returning naval officer in search of a bride. The title of the film refers to ‘tulip,’ the elusive beauty, prized among the scattered inhabitants, but kept offscreen, out of sight, not necessarily out of mind, to drive Asa’s hopes of starting his own enclave of animal husbandry extraordinaires. While the film culminates with a mesmerizing and squirm-inducing birth of a lamb, in which the lack of cuts produces its own brand of realism, not in the order of authenticity to reality, but the other A: aware admiration for the actor’s ability to endure such extraneous demands, a miracle of photography that would raise Bazin from his grave. Thematic consideration aside, what makes the film so pleasurable is the repetition of the disco hit, “Rivers of Babylon” by Boney M, which enters the film only at times of euphoria, when the City, as both urban space and dream realm invoked in the song, promises easy passage into adulthood. Interestingly, the director rejects the hipster flavor of today’s pop tunes for an antiquated sound, an already too late nostalgia, an opportunity missed and never to be recovered, perhaps the inclusion of the folk ballads sung by Asa’s niece is a much required listening session: a counter siren call that lures him back to discover a rite of passage still waiting for him in the present, in his own home, and what the film promotes to be more viable than the hanging gardens of Babylon. Guess which route he chooses?

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE WEIRD (Kim Ji-Won, Korea, 2008)

Would it be wrong to indulge in a excessively violent action movie while knowing all too well that it consists of thinly-coherent setpieces, like dots on a blank paper with lines connecting to form nothing but more meaningless scribbles? Of course, my description could fit any Hollywood blockbuster from the last five years, including those heading towards the Nicholas Cage’s retirement funds, but what makes The Good, The Bad, and The Weird different from the lot isn’t its intrinsic value as a Kimichi Western, a national appropriation of a bygone genre, resurrected occasionally like its clown-whore cousin, the Musical. Unlike his Asian compatriot Johnnie To, director Kim Ji-won revels in his inconsistency, jumping form one genre to another, and reinvents himself not as an auteur of fresh originality, but as a refiner of form, a distiller of borrowed styles to their most effective luster. As if parodying academic reductions of Korean cinema to nationalist readings of trauma and historicist hoopla, the film accounts for its interpretative posterity by inserting a random scene that takes place in a roadside brothel, even proffering a lecture about the fractured identity of Korea during the 30s. What’s more, we are given everything we expected from the Western, including quiet reflections on what outlaw men dream of, while leaving The Good in the middle of his thought. What does he really want? The film answers this question with the final draw between all the titular leads, their desire is mutual, a chance to challenge each other, whatever hokey bullshit spoken before comes down to a moronic duel-to-the death existence.

Forget about the ‘Melville’ Kim of The Bittersweet Life, or the ‘Kobayashi’ Kim of The Tale of Two Sisters, there’s no dramatic grace or terrifying ambience here, only a topsy-turvy road to perdition, punctuated by perfectly choreographed sequences of deranged shootouts, epic train robberies, and chaotic chases-within-chases. If the Tarantino signature (an oxymoron) is awfully apparent in his recent excursion, it’s only because of their shared passion for Santa Esmeralda, a song that truly blends with the visual spectacles of men running after each other on horses and jeeps, to almost ridiculously laughable duration. I could never articulate my sheer ecstasy in rewatching (infinitely if possible) these scenes of sensory overload, but what I realize in my second viewing is the unique technique Kim brings to Hollywood plot devices that could have called for split-second editing, instead, he decides to keep the camera rolling, extending the moment of gory impact for not only objects on camera, but of the camera itself blown into smithereens. It reminds me of the film’s own vulnerability, its materiality, its mortal inevitability in the filmmaking process rather than only being a omnipresent window to a fictional world. For instance, when the Japanese army starts shooting at all the bandits, our perspective is bound with that of the machine gun, jittering across the frame, but right there, you start to feel the “frames” of the film running every 24 seconds. Like an amusement park thrill ride, The Good, The Bad, and The Weird refuses to play into the dialectic between full form and empty content, we have here a reconciliation of form as content, spectacle as narrative, and a feast even the eyes would think twice about before attending.

Tempting as it is to feed all my faves from this year 35th Telluride Film Festival through the Zizekian viewfinder, I'm going to refrain from such fanatic behavior and deliver a well-balanced account of what really happened...

HUNGER (Steven McQueen, UK, 2008)

What Firaaq failed to provoke during its Crash-inspired dissection of the ongoing Hindu-Muslim hostilities in India is the intimate kernel of individual suffering made unbearably palpable by the lingering shots of the open sores blistering and sputtering against the fine pale surface of a cadaver waiting to shed his last sign of life. It may be unfair to judge both films (the latter being Hunger) by some arbitrary aesthetic yardstick, since their creators belong to two completely polarized modes of filmmaking, on one hand, we have a famous Bollywood actress turned passionate chronicler of her country's forgotten crimes against itself, and on the other corner, we have a video artist evolving from installation eye-candy to the loose narratives of the European tradition. Director Nandita Das employs shock tactics to externalize the pain of a Hindi housewife haunted by the banshee screams of her Muslim neighbors begging for help, so obviously, her only means of masochistic atonement is to sear her arm with hot cooking oil. Steve McQueen, on the other hand, creeps closer to the essence of horror, building dread not of death's approach, but of apathy wearing away little by little of political conviction, and while many critics has cited the middle portion as being the most political and politicized, the now infamous 20-minute long take of two people conversing whether a hunger strike really achieves or motivates social change, for this reviewer's opinion, where Hunger truly exceeds are the soft-focused texture of surfaces, from fingers probing the rusty iron bars to snow falling on the bloody knuckles of the prison guard, there lie its most gentle moments wrapped around extended tableaus of institutional brutality and frenzy protests (exemplified by the opening credits, the sound of drums are enough to cite historicity without all the cheap signifiers of that Thatcherite era). In the end, neither lofty philosophical conversations nor liberal ideals could rescue the body from flatlining, all that remains is the precious flashback of a childhood lost in the woods, a journey not into a man’s personal beliefs, but his mind right at the precipice of forgetting everything including himself.

I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG (Philippe Claudel, France, 2008)

Finally, a high-pedigree film that can be read in no other way than a French maternal melodrama centered on Zizek’s most belabored conceit: the inherent transgression. With drooping baggy eyes and quenched lips, never far away from a lit cigarette, Kristin Scott Thomas fulfills her duty as Oscar bait in another Fresh-off-from-Jail picture starring a strong female lead with a deep dark secret, but even as her most ‘heinous’ sin is carefully spelled out in calm bold letters to an inquisitive employer, we have already succumbed to the face of this pitiful creature that any audible gasp in the audience is a knee-jerk reaction than a sudden transformation of empathy to revulsion. [Spoiler alert] Simply put, Juliette is no cold-hearted murderer, taking a page out of the Euripidean playbook, she’s the modern equivalent of the tragic Medea, sacrificing her terminally-afflicted son in order to save him. Her proof of love is not diminished, but intensified by defying bourgeois notions of morality and confronting the harsh reality of mortality. There’s no better way to showcase pure maternal affection than through mercy killing. The film, in full Zizekian fashion, casts a suspicious eye on this enigmatic mysterious character of Juliette in order to scurry her away into the space of innocence with maximum approval by the audience…of course, how could she, look at this poster child of melancholia. However, we are the not the only spectators of this staged reversal of virtue, for the title points to one of the most banal yet powerful phrases in all of declarative speech, those precious three letter words, I-love-you spoken by a restless spirit: I’ve Love You So Long. Who else but Lea as the true addressee and addresser of this private confession between on the surface, estranged sisters, but symbolically, mother and child surrogates to one another. Is not one of the most poignant gesture of the waiting lover is to write the name of her beloved on each day of the calendar, when physical arrival becomes less important than the promise of remembrance, as time replaces space in all manners of treachery? One could extrapolate that the true monster of this film is the Janus-lingual mother, cast away in her dungeon of a convalescent home for separating the siblings at the first place, her disorienting switch from French to English serves up a cushion of sharp pain for Juliette, who pulls her crucified arms away from this Jane Birkin wannabe. While we could characterize I’ve Loved You So Long as a study on mourning, this intellectual euphemism can’t hold back the flood of what in layman’s term is a full-blooded weepie, you just gotta wait till the doves cry [first].

TULPAN (Sergei Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan, 2008)

How can I truly encapsulate the experience of watching Tulpan, a sort of all-knowing homage to Nanook of the North, as if its director’s humble start in documentaries reveal itself through the winding long takes of nomadic kinship set against the desolate plains of Kazakhstan, while the story is languidly propelled by the coming-of-age ambitions of Asa, the returning naval officer in search of a bride. The title of the film refers to ‘tulip,’ the elusive beauty, prized among the scattered inhabitants, but kept offscreen, out of sight, not necessarily out of mind, to drive Asa’s hopes of starting his own enclave of animal husbandry extraordinaires. While the film culminates with a mesmerizing and squirm-inducing birth of a lamb, in which the lack of cuts produces its own brand of realism, not in the order of authenticity to reality, but the other A: aware admiration for the actor’s ability to endure such extraneous demands, a miracle of photography that would raise Bazin from his grave. Thematic consideration aside, what makes the film so pleasurable is the repetition of the disco hit, “Rivers of Babylon” by Boney M, which enters the film only at times of euphoria, when the City, as both urban space and dream realm invoked in the song, promises easy passage into adulthood. Interestingly, the director rejects the hipster flavor of today’s pop tunes for an antiquated sound, an already too late nostalgia, an opportunity missed and never to be recovered, perhaps the inclusion of the folk ballads sung by Asa’s niece is a much required listening session: a counter siren call that lures him back to discover a rite of passage still waiting for him in the present, in his own home, and what the film promotes to be more viable than the hanging gardens of Babylon. Guess which route he chooses?

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE WEIRD (Kim Ji-Won, Korea, 2008)

Would it be wrong to indulge in a excessively violent action movie while knowing all too well that it consists of thinly-coherent setpieces, like dots on a blank paper with lines connecting to form nothing but more meaningless scribbles? Of course, my description could fit any Hollywood blockbuster from the last five years, including those heading towards the Nicholas Cage’s retirement funds, but what makes The Good, The Bad, and The Weird different from the lot isn’t its intrinsic value as a Kimichi Western, a national appropriation of a bygone genre, resurrected occasionally like its clown-whore cousin, the Musical. Unlike his Asian compatriot Johnnie To, director Kim Ji-won revels in his inconsistency, jumping form one genre to another, and reinvents himself not as an auteur of fresh originality, but as a refiner of form, a distiller of borrowed styles to their most effective luster. As if parodying academic reductions of Korean cinema to nationalist readings of trauma and historicist hoopla, the film accounts for its interpretative posterity by inserting a random scene that takes place in a roadside brothel, even proffering a lecture about the fractured identity of Korea during the 30s. What’s more, we are given everything we expected from the Western, including quiet reflections on what outlaw men dream of, while leaving The Good in the middle of his thought. What does he really want? The film answers this question with the final draw between all the titular leads, their desire is mutual, a chance to challenge each other, whatever hokey bullshit spoken before comes down to a moronic duel-to-the death existence.

Forget about the ‘Melville’ Kim of The Bittersweet Life, or the ‘Kobayashi’ Kim of The Tale of Two Sisters, there’s no dramatic grace or terrifying ambience here, only a topsy-turvy road to perdition, punctuated by perfectly choreographed sequences of deranged shootouts, epic train robberies, and chaotic chases-within-chases. If the Tarantino signature (an oxymoron) is awfully apparent in his recent excursion, it’s only because of their shared passion for Santa Esmeralda, a song that truly blends with the visual spectacles of men running after each other on horses and jeeps, to almost ridiculously laughable duration. I could never articulate my sheer ecstasy in rewatching (infinitely if possible) these scenes of sensory overload, but what I realize in my second viewing is the unique technique Kim brings to Hollywood plot devices that could have called for split-second editing, instead, he decides to keep the camera rolling, extending the moment of gory impact for not only objects on camera, but of the camera itself blown into smithereens. It reminds me of the film’s own vulnerability, its materiality, its mortal inevitability in the filmmaking process rather than only being a omnipresent window to a fictional world. For instance, when the Japanese army starts shooting at all the bandits, our perspective is bound with that of the machine gun, jittering across the frame, but right there, you start to feel the “frames” of the film running every 24 seconds. Like an amusement park thrill ride, The Good, The Bad, and The Weird refuses to play into the dialectic between full form and empty content, we have here a reconciliation of form as content, spectacle as narrative, and a feast even the eyes would think twice about before attending.

Adrian's right wrist has been heavily strapped for at least three weeks. Indeed, I knew things were serious when he ditched his white, elastic bandage for a state-of-the-art, black, neoprene number. I'd love to tell you it was an adventuring injury and he fell off his mountain bike or snowboard. But naw. He actually strained it while playing virtual tennis on his Wii game console. I'll say no more, becuase if you click HERE you can see there is an entire website devoted to Wii injuries.

A week ago Raymond Notarangelo came in with a DIY splint on his rather swollen and purple pinkie. The result of an ill-advised attempt to transfer his vinyl record collection into his attic. Bear in mind, this is the man who was the YMCA Young DJ of the Year in 1978, so trying to shift such a huge volume of Earth, Wind and Fire and Boney M records in one go was never a good idea.

The rather impressive collection of black soul disco music once had an amazing ability to pull plookyyoung clubbers on to the dancefloor. However, in 2008 the pull exerted was only just enough to dislodge the Bold Raymondo from his rather precarious perch on the Ramsay ladder.

He managed to avoid a 12ft plunge by jamming his smallest finger between the attic hatch and the ladder edge - but it is a wee finger to be taking that kind of weight. Manfully holding back tears, Raymond assured his guffawing son and wife that the digit was broken.

That prognosis was confirmed several days later when the pain and swelling convinced him to visit the Western General. Not only was it broken - it was spectacularly shattered. So in short order, a trip to hospital was ordered for surgery to save the little finger.

Today Raymond has come to work with a whopping great bandage on - after spending Friday in theatre at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, under a full general anaesthetic to have splinters of bone removed and the rest fused together, so that the digit, will be permanently straight.

The injuries suffered by Mondo and Adrian pale into ordinariness, when compared with that of the young, rather effete chap who ended up in the hospital bed next to Raymond. He sent titters round the ward after announcing in a rather camp (and high pitched) voice that:

"I don't want to talk in a high pitched voice because it causes my belly button to reverberate - which is giving me extreme pain."

Now that's an unusual injury, by any measure. Suggestions on how it may have been suffered (or examples of similarly weird injuries) more than welcome.

But enough about the weather. At the rate I go on about it, you'd think I was Irish or something.

The sunshine was that saucy (last mention, honest), it tempted Husband and I out on our mountain bikes. Again, I've written essays on cycling, so I'll almost leave it there. Except to say this was the first time in over a week we've been out biking, since we were visiting the Outlaws in South Island. If that comes as a surprise, well, I'm canny like that.

It's calving season on the farm, which means there was a disturbing amount of mucous. According to local legend (Craig), one of their pregnant heifers suffered such a build-up of gas that she fired her newborn right across the field. I suppose you might call it an explosive delivery. If the calf wasn't dead at blast-off, it certainly was by the time it hit the neighbouring paddock.

Since I am chronically afflicted with Pteromerhanoboviphobia (fear of airborne cows) I spent the entire week cowering in the living room. Husband's family pretty much treat me as one of the livestock, albeit a pedigree. It suits everyone: I get fed and watered, and have even trained the Outlaws to the extent that everyone is horrified when I fix myself a drink.

Mother In Law: Niamhie, did you make that?

Me: *martyred sigh!* Yes.

Mother In Law: CRAIG! Poor Niamhie had to get her own drink.

Craig: Ker-rist.

Don't ask me how I arranged that; I only wish I knew. [Note: this phenomenon applies only to Andrew's immediate family, not Andrew himself.]

It wasn't an entirely one-sided arrangement. Every now and then I did the dishes, in order to feel useful and moan about how dishwashing fluid dries out my hands. Also, I exercised the farm dogs, albeit inadvertently when they came to round me up at the end of the day. And I am great entertainment value in the evening.

At least the surfeit of sloth gave me time to catch up on some quality TV.

On Oprah, I discovered that apparently, someone has stolen my bold. The pyschologist was regrettably vague about who or when, although it was probably a man (cue earnest shot to earnest woman in audience nodding earnestly). She also failed to specify whether I could retrieve the Bold if I staged a daring counter-raid, or whether it would be a waste of time because shortly after the theft my Bold was traded on the Black Market. Then again, it was difficult to make her out with all the hair patting and gesticulating.

I can't say I'm happy about the situation because, despite not being entirely sure what it is, my Bold sounds like a useful asset. I'm considering robbing someone else's Bold. Maybe Andrew's, because he appears to have double or even triple rations of Bold. Even though he heatedly denies it, chances are he was the one who stole my Bold in the first place.

Once you get over how profoundly disturbing shows like The Swan and Wife Swap are, they make compelling telly. On Swan, women who are mentally compromised and/or have deep-rooted issues apply for a makeover, because they believe their earlobes or abnormally large ankles are what is holding them back in life. In a fairly typical overview, Kelly explains how she has always hated her teeth: "Kids made fun of me in school. They called me- they- <sob!> called me 'Rabbit Teeth'. I kind of nibbled my food. I just know <pause to wipe eyes> if I didn't have these teeth, everything would be better."

When I say 'makeover', two participants are whisked off to a hotel where they have cosmetic and/or reconstructive surgery, followed by an extreme diet and exercise for three months. Neither woman is allowed see themselves until the grand unveiling in front of a full-length mirror.

"Are you ready?" asks the presenter, gripping Kelly's hands fiercely. "Are you ready to meet the brand new you?"

The curtains over the mirror swish back, and Kelly's all:-

"Oh my God! Oh my Gaw-haw-hawd! Is that- I can't believe it's really ME! I'm SO BEAUTIFUL! Waah! Waah! Waah!" <fluttering hands>

"You're a new person!"

"I am! A new person!"

In this case, Kelly was fitted with a full set of glow-in-the-dark veneers. Despite the fake choppers being freakishly large and causing a significant overbite, Kelly appeared to be ecstatic. She proceeded to the Swan Pageant because her competitor was disqualified for smuggling a mirror into the hotel in her anus.

Wife Swap features two families where the matriarchs abandon their families to be temporarily installed with another. Wiccan chicken-worshippers are placed with born-again Christian families, and composting yoghurt-weavers with families who mainline MacDonald's. That sort of stuff.

I don't know what the duration of stay is, but the whole exercise is staggeringly irresponsible. I've only seen the show a couple of times, but it has never featured anyone I would trust to water my plants. No family members have been killed in the production of this show, but it can only be a matter of time.

In 'Don't Forget The Lyrics!', contestants have to guess the lyrics of a given song. In a nail-biting buttock-clencher, Nicole had to guess the next ten words to Michael Jackson's 'Rock With You'.

Girl close your eyes
Let that rhythm get into you
Don't try to fight it
There ain't nothing that you can do
Relax your mind
Lay back and groove with mine
You got to feel that beat
And we can ride the boogie-
____ ____ ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ ____ ____

There you go folks, what are the last 10 words?

$600,000 at stake, and Nicole tanked.

The Outlaws have viewed me with a new respect since I leaped to my feet, gripped my crotch, and nailed the lines in a dazzling performance:-

Share that beat of looove!
I wanna rock with you-OW!

Of course, they were not to know that I have stored in my memory banks a library of seventies and eighties lyrics, including the entirety of Boney M's canon. Couldn't tell you what I had for breakfast this morning, but

Caribbean Queen!
Now we're sharin the same dreeam!
And our hearts they beat as one
No more love on the run

Tratto da un romanzo autobiografico della scrittrice L. M. Montgomery, giunse in Italia nel 1980 trasmesso da Rai 1 e Rai 2 e la sigla conquistò il pubblico italiano anche perché... ma ne parliamo dopo il video.

Ebbene sì, come detto in un precedente post, il "maestro" Vince Tempera attinse a piene mani dal repertorio del gruppo Boney M, prima utilizzando "Brown girl in the ring" per la sigla di Remi, poi "Rivers of Babylon" per Anna dai capelli rossi", con tanti saluti al diritto d'autore...

Confrontate le due canzoni e poi giudicate voi stessi...

Hé oui. Disons que les épisodes de ma vie s'accumulent sans que je prenne le temps de les partager avec vous, curieux surfeurs de la grande toile mondiale. Pour en savoir plus sur mon été qui s'est faufilé pendant un bon ti-bout en Ukraine, vous n'avez qu'à m'écrire.

Voyons maintenant si je peux m'y remettre, au blogue, à berlin et les autres. Hier, j'ai testé l'efficacité de ma carte de presse en allant dans un musée. Et oui, ça marche. Gratuit. Ceux qui me connaissent savent depuis longtemps que j'adorrre profiter du gratuit, j'avais fait la manchette du journal du Cégep de Trois-Rivières avec ça, j'ai donc une belle constance dans mes valeurs, bon, pas important, de toute façon je crois que c'est juste fondamentalement humain que d'être content de pas payer quand tous les autres doivent sortir 12 euros pour mettre pied dans un endroit.

Alors mon statut de VIP m'a donné envie de vous faire un petit aperçu de cette expo. Puisque c'est ma carte de journaliste qui paye, je vais vous donner une chronique qui vaut à peu près 12 euros, tiens.

L'expo, c'était au Musée Pergamon. La collection permanente de ce musée exhibe de l'art de l'Antiquité volé au Moyen-Orient dans le temps des grandes aventures archéologiques. Une immense pièce est occupée par un temple grec presque complet, le Grand Autel de Pergame.

Leur expo de l'été, c'est: Babylon. Mythos und Wahrheit (Babylone. Mythe et Vérité). Une première partie, Vérité, s'occupe de faire le tour des testaments archéologiques de Babylone, de leurs grandes découvertes scientifiques aux rites de la vie quotidienne. C'était des agriculteurs incroyablement évolués qui avaient compris comment maximiser les récoltes dans une terre saline, ces Babyloniens, des mathématiciens astrologues astronomes qui continuent d'influencer notre monde aujourd'hui. Dans la partie Mythe, on fait le tour de la trop ambitieuse Tour de Babel, de la multiplication des langues qui s'en est suivi (punition de Dieu pour les humains qui se pensaient trop bons): un récit de la Bible qui a inspiré des tonnes d'écrivains et de peintres. Ville de luxuriance et de jardins suspendus sous la gouverne de la Reine Sémiramis, Babylon a aussi inspiré des récits de prostitution et d'amazones sans pitié, tels que ceux de l'auteur Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (le masochisme, ça vient de son nom, voyez le genre).  Et puis l'Apocalypse: c'est toujours assez mythique comme source d'inspiration, de bonnes images là-dessus dans cette expo. Bob Marley et sa gang sont évidemment là aussi, les rastafaris ayant repris cette idée du "système de Babylone" - le vampire qui suce le sang des malades - en allusion à ce paradis perdu par l'exil forcé, l'esclavage etc. Mythe repris de la Bible, évidemment, mais en lisant cette citation de psaume 137 du Livre des Psaumes, "By the Rivers of Babylon..." c'est inévitablement la musique de Boney M qui revient en tête.

L'exposition Babylon. Mythos und Wahrheit: jusqu'au 5 octobre.

Das ist doch einfach schön! Oder etwa nicht?

No comment needs to be made, I think.

Now the chorus is stuck in my head. Constantly playing.

So, being the sharing type, I thought I'd see if I could infect a few other people.

I give you... Rasputin, by Boney M.

Now, not only has this gotten stuck in my head... but somewhere along the line my twisty, randomy mind said, "Hey, wouldn't it sound funny if Elmer Fudd sang this song?

So now I have Elmer Fudd in my head, dressed in harem-pant-ish things, singing "Wa Wa Wasputin, wover of the Wussian queen..."

Dear God. Be very glad I only subjected you to Boney M. Cos it gets pretty ugly in here, some days. :-D

Presa locala de azi anunta ca renumita formatie Boney M va sustine un concert la Pitesti,pe Stadionul Nicolae Dobrin cu ocazia sarbatoririi a 55 ani de la infiintarea clubului de fotbal FC Arges,festivitate ce va preceda meciul din etapa a treia,FC Arges-FC Brasov.Pretul biletului este de 10 lei,unul obisnuit pentru meciurile de acasa ale Argesului.

Concertul este organizat de Primaria Municipiului Pitesti si firma PIC,principalul sponsor al Argesului si mi se pare ca este un eveniment deosebit pentru orasul nostru care nu este obisnuit cu astfel de showuri cu artisti straini.

Asadar,sunt curios cum vor "susura" "Rivers of Babylon" pe stadionul din Trivale.

A dire la verità, il "maestro" Tempera, ha preso pari pari la musica di Brown girl in the ring dei Boney M e l'ha riadattata per l'occasione... Non ci credete? Di seguito il video dell'originale.

Purtroppo il "maestro" Tempera ripeterà lo scherzetto anche con la sigla di Anna dai capelli rossi (altro n° 1!), riprendendo in modo ancora più smaccato Rivers of Babylon sempre dei Boney M (doveva essere il suo gruppo preferito...), ma di questo ne parleremo nel dettaglio in un prossimo post...

Det stompas tappert på, rytmiskt och svettigt. Efter ett tag har skoborsten fått av sig allt på överkroppen (utom nageln) och jag blir nästan lite rädd. Han svajar bakom mikrofonstativet, går ned på knä. Hans byxor är sydda efter märkligt mönster, I tell ya. Tuttorna ställer sig på led, de stönar, de har väldigt blanka läpptstift. Armarna vevar frenetiskt. Publiken klappar händerna.

Så här stunsigt gick det till på 70-talet. När "Kall Far" klev ut ur tysk studio och tog världen med storm. Ja, ni vet vad jag menar. How could we ever forget...

2"38 aka subliminaal beïnvloeden.

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Video Clip : New York City

Singer : Boney M.

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Video Clip : Hooray! Hooray! It's A Holi-holiday

Singer : Boney M.

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Video Clip : Sunny

Singer : Boney M.