Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

"Double Faced Eels" claim to be the most extravagant band in Latvia. Actually it`s the only thing that separates them from zillions of similar sounding bands. But since the bandmates do nothing except for bragging about their wild sex life and make a homophobic title song for the album you have no chance but to get to know them. "Zilais valis" itself isn`t a bad song by the way. But the main problem with this band is its total lack of originality - every one of their songs seems to have a stolen melody, and the supposedly funny lyrics don`t add much. They play the most simplistic and trivial riffs in the world and claim to be much more than they are in deed. "Cemme" for instance reminds me of I don`t know what but the guitar sound on it is about as fresh as a fish that has been dead for two weeks. "To take breathe" is a shitty Linkin Park meets Nickelback. "16" is a cover of a popular Latvian pop song and it`s not an improvement despite the fact that the original wasn`t even close to a masterpiece. The key point for this band probably is sounding very relaxed and unforced but without some talent you can`t achieve much (if you don`t count fame among Latvian teens). A crappy record that sometimes becomes offensive. And not because I was scared of them making fun of gay people.

Lai būtu skaidrs, par ko ir runa - tā ir otrā daļa Franču animācijas filmu festivālā, kuru ar Lienču apmeklējām iekš K-Suņa un kur tusēja daudz tā saukto šallaiņo.

I don`t know why but I thought myself a fan of European animation. Maybe it had to do with me liking the collection of short European films I watched at the same place something like 9 months ago, maybe I just wanted to prove myself alternative. As for being alternative - the K.Suns cinema in Riga is the perfect place to see "alternative" young people. Most of the spectators at events in there usually look so out of reality that you can`t probably imagine how funny they are. In short - it`s a place where you`d meet a lot of people who look worse than bums and are proud for it. I got tickets for six hours of French animation but neither I nor my girlfriend had enough mental strength to stay until the end of it. Therefore we saw only two out of five programs of animation films.

The second part from Chapek`s so called "Trilogy" of novels didn`t impress me as much as the first one. Although I have to admit that it had a much more promising content. While Hordubal was just a variation of a real crime commited somewhere in Czechoslovakia, "The Meteor is a purely philosophical piece. A strange man has survived a plane crash and sent to a hospital without a chance of ever coming out of coma again. Three different observers create their own versions about this man`s life - they have no real facts about him for his face is gone with the fire that happened on the plane, he has no documents and he isn `t concious. First a nurse has a dream where mister X tells her what a sinner he has been in his life. Then we have an oracle who just happens to be lying next door to the Meteor who has some visions about the man yet he can`t give no exact information about the man`s life for as he says himself he cannot look at insignificant details in a life, he observes the life as a whole. And in the end a writer writes a story how Meteor became the right hand of a mafia man somewhere in Cuba and how he lost everything. Whether any of these stories contains any truth about the hero isn`t mentioned. What`s true what`s imagination - that`s left for the reader`s imagination. Why did I like this novel less than the first part? Mainly because there`s too much of theorie and too few of practics in here.

When I finished reading "Velo" by J-E Albig I thought: "this is the worst book I`ve read in quite a long time. I hope the next book I`ll read will help me forget it." Sadly Juergen Becker`s novel (if it is a novel) "Raender" was worse than I could have possibly imagined. You see, this is experimental literature. John Cage among writers. A book not only without a story but quite often - even without sentences. It reminds me of a time when I made a program that collected random words from a story I had written and said that the result was a story itself. Today I`m ready to admit that it was a pretentious piece of shit. Worse than dadaist experimentation - mainly because it came after the last true dadaist had died. Becker wrote his book something like 38 years ago yet I can imagine that it sounded very dated even when it was still fresh. A book where several pages are just empty, others have nonsense texts without any reason to exist - to me it`s the worst kind of crap possible. It may be some sort of high art but I can`t like a book if I`m unable to read it. Just to show how interesting this book is I`ll give here a short quote (in my own very crappy translation): "wants someone there to go once again to steal wood just as once in the golden age of wood stealing not true a swallowed hurrah with tears in the mouth formed once again something like a prayer deep from the start". Is that enough for you? It is for me for sure.

The problem with German literature lies mostly in the fact that it`s rarely readable. And unknown German writers tend to be less readable than prominent authors. Take this Albig fellow, for instance. What is this book supposed to be? I read it and I can`t even say that I`ve already forgotten it. It just made absolutely no sense. Was there a story line? I`m not sure. There were two characters - Enzberg and Lolli who were sorta living together. Enzberg was a bicycle courier and he was a sicko. Lolli was a woman. That`s probably the best information about this book you can get from me. Most of the time nothing happens in this book and the only at leastly partly readable episode was a story about a man who killed a woman he loved and ate her and when she was half eaten used her for some necrophilic games. Yet even from that part the only thing that has stayed in my memory was the fact the woman`s anus didn`t taste good and the cannibal threw it away. If you ask me - I`d throw this book in an anus if I were able to find an anus big enough.

I`d love to know why this film isn`t on the factoid yet. That`s very strange and I`d love to know why it isn`t there. I only remember that the beginning of the film was brilliant but I don`t really know why. If I remember correctly it was about the little things in life that change everything. Now some of the things are coming back to me - for instance the story of a man who wanted to commit suicide and jumped off a building but he would have been saved by a net if his father hadn`t shot at the moment at his mother missing the mother and shooting through the window. Yet it was only the introduction to the film stating how much coincidences mean. Later on we have some info on a TV show for whiz kids and a fellow who had much luck at the game but isn`t too lucky now. Then there`s another man who wants his son to be a hero at the game right now but he doesn`t care for his son only for the win. Then there`s Tom Cruise as a complete jerk who`s lying about his past all the time and whos father to whom he hasn`t spoken in ages is dying. Then there`s a fat guy working for the dying father who`s looking for this fellow. So in the end we know that there are just coincidences in this world that change everything. It would be a good point proving how all the different stories fit in together, yet there`s a problem that if you made a film about all the people I know and never showed them together before the end you`d probably get a similar effect. Still this is a very good film.

My attitude towards Chapek and his work has overgone some shifts during the past few months. Until recently I thought him to be one of the greatest Czech writers but after re-reading tales from pockets I found out that my admiration for his humour had faded. And now when I found a book of his works on a shelf at home I wasn`t very keen on reading the book. Yet I know that you can`t judge a cook by his lover (that was shown perfectly in "The cook, the thief, his wife & her lover" so I gave Chapek one more chance to prove himself worthy of my approval (for everyone wants to be loved by my just as everyone loves Raymond). Hordubal started as a take on Homer`s Odyssey (which I haven`t read, as you can probably guess). Hordubal is a Czech farmer who had been working in the United States for eight years and now he returns to his wife and daughter. The problem is that his wife hasn`t kept her bed empty all those years and that only means trouble. Hordubal himself is quite a simpleton and he doesn`t realise anything for quite a long time and when he does he gets murdered. Still it`s absolutely not clear how he was murdered and what was the main reason of his death - was it lust, was it jealousy, was it greed or was it something else? The novel isn`t comic at all, although Hordubals behaviour may seem silly at times, and despite the traditional start by the end of the book there`s no doubt that Chapek is a 20th century writer and not someone from the era of Dickens. And that`s the way I like it.

This is going to be an interesting observation. In late January the arrival of "Arctic monkeys" on the scene of popular music is considered to be at least as important as that of "Oasis". I wonder where the Monkeys will be in... say 5 years. Probably they`ll be lost on a dusty shelf next to the last LP "The Monkees" ever recorded. But perhaps they`ll be bigger than U2, bigger than "The Chili Peppers", bigger than the still living "Rolling Stones". Who knows?

When I went to the cinema to see this film little did I know what it was going to be like. After having a brief look at what IMDB told about this film I thought: cool, a mystery film! So I couldn`t resist from getting a couple of free tickets for this film and so I went to see it. The strange thing thou was the fact that I took with me not only my girlfriend but also a friend of mine. Everything would be just fine, had this film less sex in it. But as it is I felt a bit embarassing, there`s probably no need to explain exactly why. The story of the film was a mystery after all - two comedians (Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth) who were very famous once split up after a dead naked girl was found in their hotel room. An another girl who`s a young and talented reporter tries to solve the mystery of the death and of the split up. It`s especially important for her to learn to know more, since she has been a fan of these comedians since her childhood. But as it proves to be, both of her heroes aren`t the kind and caring they were supposed to be after all. One of them lays her and doesn`t care for her at all on the very next day, while the one played by Colin Firth... I`d rather not even say what sort of lesbian action he induces in the film. What I found especially nice was the dual appearance of Jefferson Airplane`s "White Rabbit" in the film. The first time it was done at a play with censored lyrics, the next time it`s ok.