Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

We went to this place in order to see the biggest skeleton of a dinosaur that any museum has in its collection. Yet the skeleton wasn`t there for some reason, so we spent some time looking at rocks. I can`t say that I find rocks particulary interesting. There were a few dinosaur bones though but that`s not really the same as a dinousaur itself.

The Berlin Zoo is one of the oldest and biggest zoo`s in the world. I had been there some ten years ago, but for my better half it was the first visit. There`s lots of animals in here and they are kept nicely, but who am I to write about animals? In comparison to the Budapest zoo this one is certainly better, so it is better than the zoo in Riga, yet a zoo is still a zoo - a place you visit once you go to a big city - but not a place you think much about afterwards.

Amazing what pearls you can discover in a least expected place! While the biggest names in German literature usually don`t really offer something outstanding to me, it`s the less famous writers that make up for that. For example, this novel. Herman Hesse would never write something as simple as that, yet I find a book like this much more private, it speaks to me and doesn`t push me away. It`s Germany of the late 1930`s - you know the time, and if you don`t why would I explain it to you? So, there`s this little port town, Rerik is it`s name. There`s a boy who doesn`t even have a name, who is fond of Huckleberry Finn and wants just like him to run away for he finds that this little town will make him suffocate. Then there`s Knudsen - a fisherman who employs the boy, who doesn`t want to leave because of his mentally sick wife. The third local hero is Helander - a crippled priest who wants to save a statue of a young boy from the Nazis, which are bound to take it away the very next day. And two heros come from outsite - there`s Gregor - a communist who has lost his faith in the party, and Judith - a jewish girl who`s mother commited suicide so that the daugther would be able to flee to Sweden. Gregor decides that it`s his mission to persuade Knudsen to put both the girl and the statue on his boat. Without believing in anything he`s really a very righteous man. And he has luck at that. What is peculiar about the heroes - is that not one of them believes in anything: Judith doesn`t believe that she can be saved, Gregor doesn`t believe in his party, Knudsen who`s also a former communist doesn`t believe in absolutely nothing, the boy doesn`t believe that one can do like Huck nowadays, and even the priest doesn`t believe that God is good, and he hates God. But despite that they handle as if they had faith guiding them. I especially like the ending, where the priest kills one of the nazis and lets them kill him so he can have his revenge on God. And - why is Zanzibar the last reason? The boy had three reasons why to leave the town - that nothing happened in there, that the town killed his dad and he couldn`t remember about the third one for a long time, and it was, that there were places like Zanzibar in this world. The whole novel tells just one day in the life of a few people, but it`s got really much to tell.

I just love those titles most indie bands have. How can anyone write them down more than once? And remember them? You gotta be krazy with a kapital K to be able to differ between "Dogs die in hot cars" and "The flaming lips". Why can`t they come up with a simple title that anyone could remember? Like "Limp Bizkit" for an instance. Still this is one very strong record, never mind the stupid band title. It sort of has some reminescences of the rock music of old - having an orchestration like a sixties band would want it to have. Overall it`s very smooth and relaxing, althoug I would appreciate a bit more energy, but as a moody record its almost perfect. I can`t really say which of these songs are highlights, probably the opening "A Long Day Continues/We Sound Amazed" but probably something else as well. This record seems to me being a timeless thing if not music for every occasion.

It would be a sin for me and my wife not to visit a museum of erotic on our trip to Berlin. After all, everyone knows that Berlin is the European capital of both sex and drugs. Not of rock`n`roll though, that`s not an area where Germans have excelled in the past few decades. But who needs rock`n`roll in a museum of erotics? Sadly we were a bit dissapointed with the museum. We had already been in a similar place in Prague and there it was much more interesting - for there were lots of ancient technical sexual appliances - both funny and gross. Here the museum mostly consists of "erotic" works of art - drawings and sculptures with vaginas and penises. To me the most interesting aspect of this museum was looking at other visitiors. Actually I do find it kinda peculiar seing single men and women in this museum. I can completely understand how a couple can go to a place like this, or even two friends but what sort of pathetic people go to a sex museum alone?

First I learned about this band`s existance in late 2004 (or it wasn`t that late, nevermind) with the poppy and cabaret-like song "Coin Operated Boy" which instantely stuck in my head where it still remains. After that came a brief introduction to this band by a friend of mine who somehow thought Dresden Dolls to be one of the best modern bands. Since I normally don`t care about other people`s opinions I never listened to the bands debut album, so "Yes, Virginia" came to me as the first experience with the band in the LP form. I can`t really say (paraphrasing one of the songs of the album) that it was "The first orgasm of the morning" (although I did indeed listen to it in the morning for the first time - if you call 12:30 morning, of course). Actually now I`ve been listening to it for four hours. The most characteristic aspect of this duo of piano and drums is the theatrical/broken rhythm which somehow makes the listener believe that Dresden Dolls could have been performing in pre-war Europe, although they haven`t for sure. This is one of the rare cases when I don`t mind an album for being too monotonous (although it certainly is a very far cry from diverse), for it somehow works well on almost every level. The songs aren`t too sticky, but most of them have a strong backbone to hold them together. My favourites include "Shores of California", "Mrs O", "Dirty Business" and the already mentioned "First Orgasm" (which by the way starts off like one of the songs on the debut of Matching Mole).

I have no idea who this Tom Vek fellow is, but he sure ain`t really normal. Otherwise he wouldn`t create such music as he does. He has the same singing style as the signer of Franz Ferdinand but not too good singing abilities. Actually he is a FF wannabe, but with a limitation of talent. `I Ain`t Saying my goodbyes` for instance is such a typical FF track that you wouldn`t believe that FF never did the song. `If you want` has a cowbell intro that reminds me of either Deep Purple or Nazareth but after that the song goes nowhere. Tom Vek is probably very raw and intense but I don`t care cos he just ain`t very interesting or amazing.

It`s year 2006 out there. Elvis is long dead and buried. Slobodan Milosevic is long dead and buried. Rock`n`roll is long dead and buried. Ozzy has completely sold himself out and turned into a joke. Sparks still do the same kind of twisted piano/strings pop they did back in early Seventies. Their lyrics are still funny, one of them still has a very impressive voice. The opening "Dick Around" gets a bit heavy in the second part of the song and I can`t say that I like it as much as the first part of it, before the guitars kick in, still the "All I do know is dick around" chorus is cool. "Perfume" has the same dirty guitar noise in the background, put up to a steady bass rhythm. The first real highlight on the album doesn`t follow the "Propoganda"/"Indiscreet" pattern as closely as the preceeding numbers and it sounds a bit messy to be honest, yet it`s once again saved by a perfect chorus: "Baby Baby, can I invade your country?" "Waterproof" is the most typical Sparks song on the entire record with the goofy operette meets rock music attitude that Queen lifted from Sparks. Come to think of it, another brilliant song is "There`s no such thing as aliens". The band is still capable of delivering the goods, that`s for sure, but I still see that they have to try harder in order to be in top form than it was for themselves when they were young - occasional moments of sloppines don`t let "Hello, Young Lovers" to take the same level of "Big Beat" and some other their records from the 1970s in my heart.

Despite the fact that Roman Polanski is considered to be one of the most important living filmmakers, I can`t call myself a big expert of his work. So far Rosemary`s Baby has been just the second of his films (after The Pianist) that I`ve seen in its entirety. Rosemary is a young woman that`s married to a moderately successful actor who has so far appeared in several plays and some TV commercials. They decide to rent a new apartement and for that they choose quite a pretty place in a house where strange things have happened over the years, yet Guy and Rosemary are young and happy people and why should they worry about tales of dead infants being found in the house or living children being eaten alive? Some things do seem somewhat strange though, especially that concerns their neighbours - an elderly couple - whom Guy somehow gets strangely attracted to. But everything turns really strange when Rosemary gets pregnant (she has some strange visions about that for the neighbours have given her some sort of a strange drink). The whole thing with the baby doesn`t go perfectly well - Rosemary is given some strange drinks which she gets prescribed by a famous doctor and which don`t make her feel better. Only with time she learns to understand that she`s surrounded by a group of practicing witches that have involved her in some crazy ritual, and the trouble lies in the fact that her husband has sold their child to the devil for success as an actor. And in the end, when the baby is born, it doesn`t get used in satanic rituals for there`s no need for that - after all, it`s not Guy who`s the baby`s father, but the Devil himself. To be honest, this film isn`t the scariest one I`ve ever seen, but it`s still pretty haunting. Actually it`s somewhat similar to some works by Hitchcock, as a film that mostly relies on suspense and not on troubling images, yet it is scary enough for a person to become a troubled mind after watching it for sure. By the way, Rosemary is played by a very young and good looking Mia Farrow (before her connection with that Allen creep). Certainly a must-see for all lovers of scary movies (but not of Scary Movie though).

A man in his 50s lives a partly normal life until the day he sees a pigeon in the corridor leading from his room to the bathroom, and it scares him almost to death. Not the most popular beginning to a book? Quite so, and there you can discover Sueskind close to his best. A character that doesn`t make any sense, doesn`t do dirty things (unlike most characters in modern books) and is absolutely out of his mind. At some part of the book he has envy towards a clochard who begs money outside the bank the hero is guarding, but everything changes when he sees the beggar shitting in public and realises how tragically it is when a person can`t lock the door even in the most sacred moments. Groovy!