Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

Together with the film "Ray" it`s certainly neccessary to listen to the last album by Ray Charles. Ok, probably there will be 20 more last albums by Ray Charles - but this one was the last album he was planning as an album and not just some hogwash collection of songs found in a garbage bin. This, if you can trust the people that give out Grammies is an astonishing album which brought Ray Charles 7 or 8 prizes. Why is that? Because, he`s dead for sure! The man had been around in the music business for more than 50 years and it would be a very bad thing to do not giving him a lot of posthumous awards? And the record? It`s ok. All the songs on here are duets, many of them even I do know already. The partners he chooses are quite good - there`s Diana Krall, Norah Jones, BB King, Van Morisson and some more, but this still is just a good album, that is good enough to be called good but not the album of the year as some people want to tell me. "Here We Go Again" with Norah Jones is surely my favourite song on the disc.

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.

It may very well be the case that the record that I listened to was just a bootleg and not the official release but since the bandmembers themselves said that only little bits that the average Joe would hardly notice were added after the album got leaked on the Internet I guess the version I got will be good enough for me to cristalize an opinion about the name Def Leppard`s album of covers. The album starts with a cover of Sweet`s "Hellraiser". I`m not familiar with the original for I don`t rank Sweet among my favourite bands but it seems to be a decent AC/DC style song. "No Matter what" was originally performed by Badfinger but the Leppards make it sound like a Bryan Adams composition (and as you know Canada already apologised to America for Bryan once). "Rock on" is a David Essex song (I don`t know more about the fellow than his name) - it`s typical album filler. Next comes "Hangin` on The Telephone" from Blondie which has lost its new-wavish feeling and has become just an average dumb rocker. T-Rex`s "20th Century Boy" is good although I still prefer the cover by "Placebo" from "Velvet Goldmine". David Bowie`s "Drive-in Saturday" sounds good but is too much of a power ballad for me. I won`t go on for I`m too lazy for that but I`ll briefly mention that "Waterloo sunset" - a cover of the Kinks song is the best piece on the album yet it doesn`t come anywhere near the original. In comparison to Ozzy Osborne`s album of covers the Leppards are at least in a good form but they just don`t have the good style - their vision is very limited and most of the songs sound similar despite the diversity of the source material. Maybe it lies in the fact that the Leppards haven`t produced anything impressive since the 80s. Just like Ozzy.

With this we end our introduction into the mysterious world of Franz Kafka. K. is a land surveyor that was asked to work in a castle. Because of some strange reasons he isn`t let into the territory of the castle, for there`s burrecracy surrounding it. And you can`t even be sure that K. really is a surveyor, for there`s no proof in the book that he is indeed planning to get on with his work and his whole purpose seems kinda strange. A woman named Frieda who was the lover of an important clerk changes the clerk for K. But it only leads to bigger problems for K., who doesn`t really know what he wants, if there even is such a thing. He sinks lower and lower in the society around the castle, but it doesn`t really bother him, all he wants is to talk to some highly positioned clerks, but he doesn`t have much success at that. He has a strange friend who`s family is treated like unhuman in the village for the guys sister refused to go and become a fuck buddy for some important guy. And in the end nothing comes out of all K. troubles, everything ends like nothing had ever started. The book is similar to the "Process" and not definetely worse than the most highly acclaimed Kafkas novel.

Am I turning Japanese or is this the second film with Paul Giamati I`ve seen over the last couple of days? I guess the last option could be true. My first experience with this film wasn`t a positive one - upon watching the trailer to this film at a cinema I expected it to be a boring mediocre piece of crap. You know, something like "Road Trip" for middle-aged people. That does seem a bit disturbing, don`t it? There`s those two fellows - one of them is a teacher at school and a wanna-be writer, while the other one is a TV commercials actor, who is going to get married in just one week, and his pal organizes a bachelors party for him. The party isn`t that much of a party - Giamati`s character has planned a week of wine and golf, but it happens that his pal wants some real action, and they hook up with some girls (ok, none of them are boys or girls by my standards - the youngest of chicks is 33 by now, the older one is in her 40s already). But nobody tells the women that one of the party-goers is getting married in just a couple of days. Giamati`s character is quite similar to the one he played in "American Splendor" but the film is much better constructed, and less of a comedy and more of a drama. This ain`t surely a mainstream Hollywood film - it has very few "for your consideration scenes", not too much pretty faces, and a realistic view of life. Probably, there`s a bit too much information about wine for me but this still is the best candidate for Oscar as the film of the year I`ve seen so far (beating out "Neverland" and "Ray").

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.

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.

Probably you have never heard the name of this writer. Neither had I. But now I know that Erwin Grosche is one fellow with a strange taste for humour. What`s good is that his taste is good. If it weren`t I`d probably never read a book like this. As a matter of fact under any circumstances I wouldn`t be a likely person to read a book like this. "Praise of the province"? You gotta be kidding me, why I never! I don`t find too much interest in local things, I`m a global person that wants blood of the nation on my hands etc. I`m not really sure what the genre for this book could be. It`s not a novel, probably. Or is it? It`s got something similar to a storyline, but no, not really. There is some weird diary that somehow ties the book together, although most of the texts in the diary don`t make very much sense. For example, what do you think about something like this one: "Today I slept so long, that this writing is the only thing I can note."? Then there are stories about some people that are all probably the same person. There`s one guy who likes to dress-up as a cowboy, and there`s one who stands at a bus stop and wins the world championship for people waiting at bus stops. Mostly harmless - that`s what you can say about the people of this book. It`s probably really a praise of the countryside or of the little towns, but I don`t care. To me it`s just a collection of funny episodes.

Germany is the second most turkish country in the world following Turkey itself. Therefore there`s no wonder that some sort of German-Turkish art has been becoming more and more known lately. "Hurriyet Love Express" is a book of stories about Turks in Germany. You probably know the song "Young Turks". In fact I`m not 100% sure that I do myself, but it`s just one more proof how the Turks are taking over the world. Just like the Chinese are. But enough of that. What is so special about this book that I decided to read it? Nothing really, just another case of taking a book by an unknown author from the library. Some of the stories are at least worth reading - the first one about a gambler who goes to Germany from Turkey in order to do his trade but when he arrives he sees that the gambling place isn`t built yet and that he`s come there as a construction worker. Then there was a story about a taxi driver picking up a Latino woman from a S&M club - the woman has come to Germany thinking that she`ll be working in a restaurant, just as she was in Columbia. To make it three stories mentioned in this memo factoid I want to tell myself a story about a young but poor guy who falls in love with a girl (quoting the White Stripes) and buys her 800 roses but doesn`t impress her with that. Oh, no, I don`t want to stop. Then there`s a story where a man steals expensive sunglasses from a store just because he doesn`t have cash and creditcards aren`t accepted, and when the glasses break he manages to get a new pair from the factory. In another story two guys desperate for sex start a lot of relationships through telephone ads and in the end each of them falls in love with a girl, only they don`t know that it`s the same girl but with different names. I guess that will do it - stories are good, not breaktaking, not bed shaking but a solid 7 is the right mark for a book like this one.

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.