April 10, 2007

• I Love My Dog

  

  ---

  Thanks to Lewis for such a sweet gift!!! 

  

   

  ---

  One More Reason to love dogs.  WARNING: this video is not good for the sqeamish, the faint of heart, the prude, the jealous cat lover, the radical PETA member or the Against Dog Masturbation Coalition.

  ---

  On the Lighter Side: 

  American Idol stars Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest recently toured Africa to give back to disadvantaged children.  The children’s first question,  “What’s friggin’ up with Sanjaya??”.

  Keith Richards snorts his own dead father??

  and finally, thanks to Conan O’Brien for www.hornymanatee.com

  ---

  The Lives of Others – East & West

  OK, I know I live in Hollywood and all, but isn’t $14 too much to pay for a movie??

  

  I’m getting ready to head to my aunt’s house for Easter Dinner, but wanted to post a few photos from last night.  Mica and I went to see “The Lives of Others” at the Arclight.  I know I was quite late in seeing it and that it won the Academy Award for best foreign film (Germany), and now I know what all of my German friends were talking about.  It’s hard to believe how much has changed since the Berlin Wall fell.  When my brother and I were little growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, we were best friends with the kids across the street; Brandon & Tracy A’Hearn.  Their mother Karin was from Hamburg, West Germany.  In those days you had to address letters to Germany as either East or West.  I know this because their grandmother (from the West) came to visit every year.  I loved her dearly, and called her ”Omi” just like her real grandchildren did.  She was an elegant woman, just like her daughter, but still full of piss and vinegar.  A real German frau who had lived through two World Wars and could enchant me with stories for hours.  After she left each summer, I would write to her religiously every month.  I was quite the letter writer up through college.  A normal hand written letter for me, even at age 9, was several pages.  I guess that explains why my posts here are so long.  I got this skill from my mother and her mother as well, who was a high school English, Latin and History teacher for 50 years. 

  I still remember how I addressed Omi’s letters:

  Frau Lotte Eidenmuller

  Hammer Hof 38

  20535 Hamburg 26

  West Germany

  Isn’t it funny how I still remember that after more than 30 years?  Even after I went away to college, I still wrote to Omi.  After she died, and I began traveling for a living, I visited Hamburg and even looked for Hammer Hof 38!  I now have two great friends who live in Hamburg.  I have posted about them several times, David & Daniel (whose images are in the spinning cube to your left.  The one with the snow is all of us bundled up in Munich with snow falling after just seeing Lord of the Rings, and yes, that is snow .)  But that’s a whole other story for another time.  Once again I have digressed, but this movie made me think of the stories that Omi told me about the differences between East and West Germany.  I understood nothing of politics or governments at that age, but I did understand good vs. evil, artistic expression vs. staid formality.  It’s an ageless theme really and it’s what this movie is about.  An author named Henri Murger’s wrote about it in 1846 when he penned his classic story of his real friends who were Bohemians in the Latin Quarter of Paris (the West) entitled Scènes de la Vie de Bohème.  Fifty years later, Puccini turned Murger’s masterpiece into the most famous opera in the world, La Bohème.   And, believe it or not, 100 years later, Jonathan Larson turned Puccini’s labor of love into the musical Rent, which for those of you who don’t know is the entire theme and reason for this blog.  You need only go to the top of this page, to hear a song between the two star crossed dying artists, Mimi and Roger in Rent (Mimi and Rodolpho in La Boheme).  525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes. How do you measure, measure a year….?   Again, I digress.

  The “Lives of Others” taps into this good vs. evil theme.  The protagonist a handsome playwright with a famous actress girlfriend against the rigid East German STASSY, an organization even more corrupt than the KGB and the Mossad.  But there’s a chink in the STASSY armor.  A lonely bureaucrat who becomes entranced by an artistic life.  Something offered just behind that infamous wall.  Those of you reading this who were born after about 1979 probably don’t even remember the fall of the Berlin Wall.  I urge you however, to educate yourselves.  It was quite a turning point in world history.  I was two years out of college when it happened, and even then I could not grasp its meaning.  This movie helps those of us who never lived under such a regime, understand it just a little bit better, the bad with the good.  It was an excellent film, but I digress…. (Maybe that should be the title of this blog!)

  Now, on to the photos (which many people skim for anyway!  Doesn’t anyone read anymore ??  It seems like I mostly get comments and emails about my pictures.) 

  
  

  
  
  

  And in one of those, “it could only happen to me categories”, we went to Famina after the movie for some soup.  Just before they were closing at 2 AM, this van full of guys from a Japanese film crew (only in West Hollywood, LOL) pulled into the parking lot.  They were apparently at some Japanese Awards show, and they were stopping in for some sustenance!  We all got to talking, and I’m sure they were beguiled by Mica’s charm, but she snapped this photo which was pretty funny.  You know how the Japanese like to bow! LOL
  
  

   

  ---

  And here are the Easter pictures from today.  Family in attendance:  Aunty LuLu, Uncle Georgie, Darlene & Dave, Freddie & Susie with Kyle and Cody (Kevin as at the river, Kenny was in Las Vegas and Curtis was in Boulder at school), Teddy & Sam with Emily, Jennifer & Rob with Cole and Tressa, Lisa & Joel with Tommy and Andy, and me!

  It’s after 3 AM, and I’ve probably made many mistakes, so forgive me.  I will proofread in the morning.  For now I leave you with another one of my “Omas” in Germany.  This is my dear friend Sabine’s grandmother who has been quite ill and in the hospital in Bavaria.  I’m sending her love and “dicken schmatz” for a speedy recovery.  I love you Omi!

   

  

   

  • 3:57 am
  • 18 Comments