Meet the Trabbi

We're on our way to Switzerland, getting gas (diesel, to be precise) at the gas station of the Geant mall in Mandelieu, and there's a motorcade of alike-looking cars riding up to the pump next to ours. They are all from Germany, from Cologne, to be precise. They look antique. "These are Borgwards?" I ask one of the young men descending from the conveyances. "No," he says, "these are Trabbis."

Communism lives, folks, these Trabbis (Trabants) were the Volkswagens of East Germany. They didn't have a good reputation in my days. Production was soon discontinued after the fall of the Wall. Why do you do this, I ask another of the young men. He doesn't answer.

Bürchen in Switzerland (reposted)

Milka milk chocolate, with the milk from happy cows---that was the slogan of a chocolate commercial during my youth in Germany. And there we are, in Bürchen, Switzerland, and it's true.

Near Bürchen, Bietschhorn in the background (peak in the clouds)

Bürchen is located on the southern side of the Valais valley, near the side valleys of Zermatt and Saas Fee, at 1600m altitude. The ski lift begins right in front of our settlement, the Chalet zone.

Frankentrix

(Bob Bienpensant)

Gemini (Jezza Smilez)

(Click here for Jezza's website)

Find a caption

"Those damn darn liberals"

Monday matinée

Henri Rousseau: The dream

Demons (Imagine Dragons)

(Let's put it this way: we're only one year behind: this was published on May 7, 2013) 

When the days are cold

And the cards all fold

And the saints we see

Are all made of gold

When your dreams all fail

And the ones we hail

Are the worst of all

And the blood’s run stale

Dutch for beginners

San Francisco (last post) --- Neighborhood eatery

We discussed this before, the Riverside Café in two of its emanations,

(1) as a proper river-side café and
(2) as a hill-top café in Phuket town in Thailand,

"river-side" here being code for the hex value #00703C == Dartmouth Green == upmarket conversations in clipped voices at neighboring tables about Muffy who did not make partner at Overy & Allen == Chardonnay as default wine == chicken breast fillets served with sauce Hollandaise == checks that do or do not carry remarks to the effect that a 17% tip would be obligatory == and so on.

Now we're on our last day in San Francisco, we have a writer's blog after a productive morning, we hit the Castro District where old-fashioned in-your-face homosexuality is still en vogue, HIV and all, and we are on our way back home. The idea is to have dinner at the Chinese restaurant we've frequented so frequently during the last 2 months. But yesterday, on the way back to our apartment on Potrero Hill we walked past an outfit with a wooden sign saying "Neighborhood Eatery"---we were on 24th Street, between Mission an Potrero (street), a peek through the window convinced Michael that this is, in fact, a neighborhood café, and there's a person outside smoking and interrupting his cell-phone conversation and assuring us that the place is "great."

Neighborhood Eatery, interior

So, today, now, we walk along 24th Street again and I raise the subject of this "eatery" as an alternative to the Chinese restaurant. Chang, still mellow after my birthday yesterday doesn't really object but insists on studying the menu first. There's no menu outside to study, we have to enter the place---bistro layout, open kitchen, glasses, bottles, international semi-upmarket---to have a look at the menu.

__________________

"I would venture, folks, practically everywhere else in the world you eat better than in France."

__________________

The menu is incomprehensible to anybody living in France where dishes come in six or seven varieties (Steak frites, Magret de canard, Loup grillé, and so on), and (where dishes) are always accompanied by rice/potatoes/aïoli (don't ask). While we are at it: It's a well know fact that the French are the best cooks in the world, so they cook well BY DEFINITION, which means they have to make no-effort-what-so-ever-to-serve-drab-and-overpriced-fare-through-jaded-garçons-or-garçonettes who have more important things on their minds than to help their customers. I would venture, folks, practically everywhere else in the world you eat better than in France. It's Obama's fault, of course, because he's not only from Kenya, he's also French, as has been recently shown in a lengthy study from the Heritage Foundation.

Find a caption (Sacha)

Michael Ampersant, surfing the net for pictures for his blog

(Artwork by Virtues, you can order this on Fiverr for $5)

Computer science

San Francisco (15) The Warhol factory

Our title is misleading, as usual. And unfair to Warhol.

Anyhow, while we are at it: somewhere around 1966, the term Pop Art made it to Europe, and the name of its inventor, Andy Warhol. There were also pictures of the guy, and from the first picture I saw I fell in love with him, especially with his hair. Great, I thought, great, that's the hair I want. Blond, ebullient, expansive (the hair sticking out), extraneous even, subversive, inspired.

Andy Warhol: Self portrait

Andy Warhol died in 1987, in tabula, i.e., not the way you would have expected him to die after having watched too many clips of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground (one of the productions of his factory), or of Joe Dallesandro, the hunkiest hunk ever, another one of his productions, no, he died on the operating table.

San Francisco (14) --- Connubial bliss, Nordstrom, and so on

Nordstrom on Market Street, San Francisco

Michael A. to Nick Ch. (02 May 2014 07:25:14):

...just great to be in the US...so many ideas...this one came from some billboard for some San Francisco Law School...

“Certainly,” he says, “that’s why we are in the business of writing, isn’t it, to feel inspired, and by feeling inspired getting inspired, and by getting inspired feeling more inspired, and so on.”

“You sound like an expensive graduate course of something,” I say.

________________

Nick Ch. to Michael A.  (02 May 2014 07:26:50 -0700):

Are you still here?

________________

Michael A.. to Nick Ch. ( 02 May 2014 07:29:44 ):

...until May 10...

...Chang sits on the bed next to me (as we speak) and tells me he doesn't want to go back to Nordstrom (the department store) on Market Street, because he went to the toilet there which turned out to be cruising territory, and he fears the police will come next time and arrest him...

Thursday matinée

Bob Bienpensant: Habana, Cuba

The Term Resurrectors of Trayas (Maud)

We met Maud in the street the other day, and she, normally a serene neighbor with a charmingly stand-offish approach to local gossip, she was all-aflutter.

"Michael," she says, "I have something for your. I've seen the light! Have you ever been a member of the Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts?"
"Yes," I say.
"And?"
"Well, I got evicted."
"By Avril Mondragon?"
"How do you know?"
"Never mind," she says, "but we're getting the band back together again. There's a new society. The Term Resurrectors of Trayas."
"The what?"
"The Term Resurrectors of Trayas. Let me explain. Or better, let me not explain. A picture says a thousand words."

(She shows me this picture:)

"Queer"

"Here, she says, "queer" resurrected. Queer!"

Obama's fault

The many little Nazis of Germany tended to ask rhetorically "Wenn nur der Führer das wüsste," (if the führer (Hitler) would only know); meaning to say: "it's not Hitler's fault." Führer translates to "leader," by the way, I think any business school worth its endowment would fire you immediately if you would raise the subject at a faculty meeting.

You get the gist.

But we have something else in mind, Something lighter. Stay tuned.

Handsheet for the erotic writer (6)

Salvador Dali: The temptation of St.Anthony

(Like the last post on this...)...not exactly a hand sheet either, but we couldn't help developing second thoughts when reading the following short quote from an article about sanctification:

"Saintliness is part of the church's DNA," the Vatican's current chief saint-maker, Cardinal Angelo Amato, wrote in his 2012 tome on canonization. "Through the centuries, saints have been the spiritual doorway through which humanity is directed toward God."

Like Alex says, the power of substitution, folks. Start considering substituting terms for "saints" and "humanity."

(Just saying, okay. When you write sex scenes---yes, it happens, people write sex scenes---you have to rely on the power of similes and analogies. Along those lines. Nothing deep. Peace from Cali.)

(Sorry, Alex didn't say "the power of substitution," he said "the power of subsumption"---never mind)

Shakespeare---let's celebate his 450th birthday...

...and repost our piece about his 18th sonnet:

(So, it starts:)

Since we are a literature blog now, we have to do serious stuff, like posting some serious pictures, like. Like this one...

Tyson Beckford

...which brings to mind Shakespeare's 18th sonnet...

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

...(you don't want to look at the HTML code underneath)...

...but you might want to look at this clip, eternalizing David Gilmour, the singer of Pink Floyd, when he set the sonnet to his music, because that's what aging rock stars, like us, do, when, they, have, their, reflective, moments...





...and judge yourself.

Hold on, here are a few pointers to Sonnet 18:

Tuesday matinée (Jezza Smilez)

(Just a new picture from Jezza:)

(Click here for Jezza's website)

Time for a really bad poem

Upfront update: This is really getting embarrassing folks---we're getting so many hits for this post, possibly because people think: "This must be a good poem," but no, this really is a bad poem:

The Morning flame is on her mind

The up-and-up is hard to find,

For every dollar is a dime,

For summer solstice is a crime.

When moonlight strikes the heaven breaks,

Has nothing done, has eaten steaks,

Has drunken whiskey far to much,

Has left the sickbed not as such.

Halfdead she is and half alive,

Not given much to sinful strife,

How is she getting out of this,

Well, she is not, tell mighty Chris.

It's Easter morning here in town,

My neighbors dog won't show his crown,

But royals will, and that's enough.

(And you thought we were joking)