Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

A collection of stories. Some of them seem to be missing the final pointe, while others don`t need to have one. Actually I quite liked it, although now, just a few weeks after having read the book, I remember very little from it. Not memorable but enjoyable.

I went to see this exhibition so I would have been in an art gallery in Berlin. I am not a huge fan of paintings, so my hopes weren`t too high before the thing. The biggest problem with paintings lies in the fact that I find them quite boring and the only thing of at least some sort of interest for me is seeing famous paintings so I could later say - I`ve seen them. As for this exhibition, it consists of paintings from the era of 14th century until the 17th century and I can`t say that I noticed a lot of works by famous painters, and I can`t say that I enjoyed this stuff much.

Knowing me as a sicko who`s just crazy for anything done by any member of the Monty Python flying circus, you can guess that I watched those 3 episodes of the Muppet Show only because of John Cleese`s performance. It turned out that he indeed was the only worthy thing about those episodes. Peter Sellers was a great actor for sure, his performance in "Dr Strangelove" playing multiple characters of that film was just excellent. But he doesn`t have a very funny part in the Muppet Show. Probably the only good thing about his performance was when Kermit introduces him as the epitome of Britishness and then says: "So we naturally employed him as a gypsie violin player." The rest is crap. John Cleese has two good sketches - one where he complains that he never works with pigs, and then another when he works with Pigs in space as a pirate with a stupid talking parrot. Dudley Moore? Who`s that fellow? I don`t know, and after watching the show I`m not so sure that I want to know who he was.

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.