2009年3月7日星期六

Vignettes #3



Recently our online friends Ulli and Harry came to Regensburg. Besides wanting to meet us the main mission for this short trip was to visit the Kneitinger. Just like the Hofbräuhaus the Kneitinger is a large brewery tavern which serves its own beers, of course, but also has an excellent kitchen and a large menue with typical Bavarian dishes. It is reknown by and far as the best place to hang out in Regensburg, if you manage to get a table. In places like these you'll find Bavarian culture in full bloom, and a mixture of people unlike elsewhere.

So we had a good time there. After a couple of pints I needed to go to the restroom. Since the last time I was there the tavern had been redecorated and some of the rooms were rearranged. The new restrooms were in the back of the building a few steps down. I entered the anteroom, but unfortunately the doors of both restrooms were opened to the inside, and at first glimpse I could not see which room was which.

In the room straight ahead there was a drunken couple arguing loudly with each other and fiddling with a mobile phone. They looked typically battered from a life long of heavy drinking. That was the men's room.

I hesitated for a moment thinking about how to go around the two of them without getting involved into their argument. The drunken woman noticed that and politely she said to me: "Excuse me for using your toilet, but we urgently need to call a taxi."

A Scan a Day

Iron Man (2008)





Well made comic adaptation, not a masterpiece, but fun to watch.

2009年3月6日星期五

Natalia Vodianova

Indeterminacy 22



Once


when I was to give a talk
at Columbia Teachers College,

I asked Joseph Campbell

whether I should say something

(I forget now

what
it was
I was thinking of saying).


He said,



“Where

is the ‘should’?”

- John Cage

Ellen Page

Juno (2007)




A great feel good movie, although it's about a teenage pregnancy and I had my doubts before watching it. At one point in the movie Juno decides not to have an abortion and says: "Maybe they'll, like, canonize me for being totally selfless." And that's what the movie pretty achieves: Juno is the coolest kid you can imagine. And if American kids nowadays are in any way like her, we can have reason to find our faith in humanity again. But I suppose this is still just another wonderful fairy tale.

Mac MacGuff: Look, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person is still going to think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with.

Gwyneth Paltrow

New stuff