I'm very sorry about this...#4

My mate Pete's then-girlfriend Linda used to do announcements at Terminal 3 at Heathrow back in the 1970s.

I guess you get into a bit of a routine after a while - "Flight such and such is delayed and will now leave at whenever."

One day, Air Canada had an indefinite delay and Linda started off without having read through the announcement quite to the end

"Air Canada flight 874 is delayed and will leave".........very long pause and then - very quickly..."sometime today"

A couple of guys in the UK went one better

They‘d go and sit on the balcony at Terminal 3 at Heathrow, directly under one of the speakers. They'd put the tape machine in their bag with the microphone poking out of the top and then look for a flight that had arrived in the last 40 minutes from somewhere where you‘d expect mental names.

They'd then write a letter saying, 'Could you go and pick up etc. etc. from flight, etc.' That way, it looked like it‘d been arranged in advance as the flight arrival details were written on the note. Wore an ID-style badge and carried a mobile so that they looked like taxi drivers and pretend to be unable to pronounce it. Handed them the bit of paper with the name written on it.

For example:

Arheddis Varkenjaab and Aywellbe Fayed - I hate this fucking job, and I will be fired

Arhev Bin Fayed and Bybeiev Rhibodie - I have been fired, and bye-bye everybody

Aynayda Pizaqvick and Malexa Kriest - I need a piss quick, and my legs are crossed

Awul Dasfilshabeda and Nowaynayda Zheet - Aa-ooh, that feels better, and now I need a shit

Makollig Jezvahted and Levdaroum DeBahzted - My colleague just farted, and left the room, the bastard (My all time favourite....)

Steelaygot Maowenbach and Tuka Piziniztee - Still, I got my own back and took a piss in his tea

Of course they got rumbled......

Don't ask me (about cooking) #18

Well, do actually...

I'm a bit of a dab hand (if I say so myself) when it comes to things culinary and I was well pleased to read the New Times' "Summer Express - 101 simple meals ready in 10 minutes or less" article.

Which made me dig out Edourd de Pomiane's 1948 classic that I bought in the UK in the early 70s. Without doubt, a recommendation from Clement Freud.
All of 6 shillings, which was probably what 2 pints cost in those days.

The first chapter: "Things you must know in order to understand this delightful book"

The moment you come into the kitchen, light the gas. Ten-minute cookery is impossible without gas.
Put a large saucepan of water onto the fire. Slip on the lid and let it boil.

What is the use of the water, you will ask? I don't know. But it is bound to be useful, either for cooking or washing up or making coffee.

The menus are nothing to be trifled (sic) with, either.

Example:

Escargots de Bourgogne
Quails a la Crapaudine
Asparagus with oil and vinegar
Cheese
Fruit

Buy it at AbeBooks for anywhere between 2 and 10 bucks.

Or at least TRY some of the NYT's recipes.

You won't be disappointed.

What a load of bull...

The Daily Telegraph is gender-challenged

Lost in translation

If there's one thing I've missed in Germany, it's subtle and witty advertising.

Television's infected with fake dentist's wives touting toothpaste, middle-aged people being attacked in the middle of the night by snaking, sparking electric wires (you can keep them at bay by taking magnesium tablets..) and happy, Teflon-coated families becoming even happier by remotely deploying the sun awning.

This is more my sort of stuff.

Posh-looking bird. Flash mansion. Elegance.
As soon as she opens her marf (sorry, mouth), out pours Sarf Lunnen. Innit


But there's hope.

Paulaner's one of the few wheat beers that I drink and their advertising is choice.



Three Indian businessmen clutching dictionaries in a Biergarten, one says "I don't want to buy this carpet. Please"
Waitress looks bemused, returns with 3 glasses of Hefeweizen.
"Have a good trip", he says.
"You're welcome" she smiles.

Fast forward to last night and the first time I've laughed out loud at an ad for a long time



The same three Indian chappies, except this time he orders "a freshly drawn Paulaner for me and my friend" in an exquisite Bavarian dialect.
"Perfect" says his friend.
"Get well soon" says his mate.

And as they say in the ad - different comparative and superlative qualitative forms apply when it comes to beer.

"Good, Better, Paulaner..."

I'll drink to that

I'm very sorry about this...#3

It could also be a "This I need..." post.

Or have needed.
For sure.

Those rascally Germans have come up with a solution for the age old problem of getting caught short in the car with the Roadbag.

There's even music to go with it, too, on the German website

Definitely a technological quantum leap (or paradigm shift) from the jam jar and it's supposedly odourless and COMPLETELY SAFE, with fluids getting converted to solids by some ingenious process.

In fact, it's supposedly so effective that you can up-end it and HOLD YOUR HAND UNDERNEATH.

Yeah, right..

The Right Stuff

Read the second paragraph - a single sentence - and be amazed.

In the training film the flight deck was a grand piece of gray geometry, perilous, to be sure, but an amazing abstract shape as one looks down upon it on the screen. And yet once the newcomer's two feet were on it ... Geometry - my God, man, this is a ... skillet! It heaved, it moved up and down underneath his feet, it pitched up, it pitched down, it rolled to port (this great beast rolled!) and it rolled to starboard, as the ship moved into the wind and, therefore, into the waves, and the wind kept sweeping across, sixty feet up in the air out in the open sea, and there were no railings whatsoever.

This was a skillet!--a frying pan!-a short-order grill!-not grey but black, smeared with skid marks from one end to the other and
glistening with pools of hydraulic fluid and the occasional jet-fuel slick, all of it still hot, sticky, greasy, runny, virulent from God knows what traumas--still ablaze! consumed in detonations, explosions, flames, combustion, roars, shrieks, whines, blasts, horrible shudders, fracturing impacts, as little men in screaming red and yellow and purple and green shirts with black Mickey Mouse helmets over their ears skittered about on the surface as if for their very lives (you've said it now!), hooking fighter planes onto the catapult shuttles so that they can explode their afterburners and be slung off the deck in a red-mad fury with a kaboom! that pounds through the entire deck--a procedure that seems absolutely controlled, orderly, sublime, however, compared to what he is about to watch as aircraft return to the ship for what is known in the engineering stoicisms of the military as "recovery and arrest."

To say that an F-4 was coming back onto this heaving barbecue from out of the sky at a speed of 135 knots ... that might have been the truth in the training lecture, but it did not begin to get across the idea of what the newcomer saw from the deck itself, because it created the notion that perhaps the plane was gliding in.
On the deck one knew differently!
As the aircraft came closer and the carrier heaved on into the waves and the plane's speed did not diminish and the deck did not grow steady indeed, it pitched up and down five or ten feet per greasy heave--one experienced a neural alarm that no lecture could have prepared him for: This is not an airplane coming toward me, it is a brick with some poor sonofabitch riding it (someone much like myself), and it is not gliding, it is falling, a thirty-thousand-pound brick, headed not for a stripe on the deck but for me!-and with a horrible smash! it hits the skillet, and with a blur of momentum as big as a freight train's it hurtles toward the far end of the deck-another blinding storm!-another roar as the pilot pushes the throttle up to full military power and another smear of rubber screams out over the skillet-and this is nominal!-.quite okay!-for a wire stretched across the deck has grabbed the hook on the end of the plane as it hit the deck tail down, and the smash was the rest of the fifteen-ton brute slamming onto the deck, as it tripped up, so that it is now straining against the wire at full throttle, in case it hadn't held and the plane had "boltered" off the end of the deck and had to struggle up into the air again. And already the Mickey Mouse helmets are running towards the fiery monster….

Tom Wolfe - The Right Stuff.

Mug of the month #2

.OK, teabowl of the month. And no, it's not August yet, either.

Anyway.

Richard Dewar (who's been in France for almost as long as I've been in Germany) claims that this is from his "grunge" period.

There's nothing I enjoy more than sipping Lapsang Souchong and listening to Neil Young and Pearl Jam doing " Rockin' in the free world".

Or to hear French folks pronounce his name.

Monsieur Dayvaaah...

Karla with a K

There are coincidences and then there are coincidences.

At Rosemarie Jäger's excellent gallery in Hochheim this morning for the opening of a posthumous retrospective of Erich Kuhn's wood sculptures and an octogenarian retrospective of Beate Kuhn's ceramics (with some excellent Riesling to wash it all down)

Started chatting with a lady whom we'd seen (and whom I'd photographed) at Marianne Heller's gallery in Heidelberg way back in April and I promised to send her a link to Flickr.
"Excellent" she said "My email address is Karla - with a K.... etc etc @t-online.de"

And I'm thinking:

"Hooters! A hurricane is on its way, call it Karla with a K!"

I'm also thinking:

"Forget it - no-one in this room has even heard of the song...Don't make a scene"

The subject of demographics came up when we were talking later on with Elke Wolf and Dorothee Wenz - they'd exhibited together at Odile Landragin's a couple of weeks ago.

We were young compared with the rest of them today (the exception being the 2 W''s, who are even younger) and it appears that there's a group of iconic artists in Germany- either deceased or not far off - who have a following that's pretty much their own age group.

I mentioned that it sounded like Cadillac's demographics - people who had started buying the brand in their 40s and were now in their 70s. No replacements in sight and at some stage, the entire market was going to shuffle off to the grave.
(Just looked it up - average age of a Cadillac buyer in 2002 was 66.)

Thought nothing more of it until I played the track -

"Hurricanes and Cadillacs
They run you down and don't look back"

Now, that's worth a couple of cuts...

Karla with a K - The Hooters from One way home [Listen}
Cadillac Hotel - Little Feat from Hotcakes & Outtakes [Listen}
Comin' Back In a Cadillac (Live!) - Al Kooper from Black Coffee [Listen}

Customer Service - 1 & 2

One

Toddled into Mainz a bit late this morning and figured that a late breakfast at Cafe Dinges just off the Cathedral Square wouldn't be the worst idea.

Had a quick look at the menu to see if they're still serving, but all it said was "As from 8am." Popped inside and asked "I know you serve breakfast from 8, but when do you finish?"
"No worries" said the waiter " If you want breakfast, grab a table"
A deal. Excellent.
Different waiter turns up, listens to the order, says breakfast's finished.
I point out the mixed messages, he says it's a misunderstanding, I ask him if he wants to lose a customer, he says the boss refuses to serve breakfast after ....not sure, but definitely not now.

Exit (probably non-returning) customer in quite a pissed-off mood.

Two

Met Thomas Heinicke at Kalle's "Legendary Courtyard Festival" on Saturday and we started chatting about wine and he reckoned that the best Sauvignon Blanc that he's tried in a long time is made by Klaus Hofmann in Appenheim.

So I popped in on Thomas on Friday at Schloss Sörgenloch to get Klaus's phone number and address and he said "Look, he's away over the weekend, but why don't you have a glass here and - if you like it - I'll sell you a carton at his cellar door price"

Can't be a lot of things that beat sitting out in the sunshine in the afternoon, enjoying a good glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

Exit customer in a VERY good mood......

Weather you like it or not...

Call this the Meteorological Midweek Mix

One of the readers has been having a moan about things meteorological.

Quite right, too. No point in shaving your legs, putting on nail polish and investing in expensive diaphanous kit if the sun won't come out to play.

So if there's anyone else out there feeling somewhat deprived in the lux department, here are a few ditties to cheer you up

My Friend The Sun - Family from Bandstand
Burn the sun - Ruined By Martin from Burn the sun
Don't Eat The Yellow Snow - Frank Zappa from Strictly Commercial
Electrical Storm - U2 from The Best of 1991-2000
Everybody's Missin' The Sun - Grin from The Very Best Of Grin Featuring Nils Lofgren
Fairweather Friend - Graham Brazier from East Of Eden
Fallen leaves - Teenage Fanclub from Man made
Flood - The Feelers from Communicate
High Country Weather - Jordan Reyne from Baxter
Ice - Daniel Lanois from Acadie
Lost in the flood - Bruce Springsteen from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
Rain - The Beatles from 45s
Rainstorm - Bonnie Raitt from Takin my time
Six Feet Of Snow - Little Feat from Hotcakes & Outtakes
Slippin' And Slidin' - Little Richard from John Lennon's Jukebox
Snowing In Boston - Paved Country from Chemically Unable To Panic
Solar Energy - Fred Dagg from Fred Dagg Anthology
Stormy Monday - Chris Farlowe from Hungary For The Blues
The Wind Changed - Able Tasmans from Store In A Cool Place
Under The Weather - KT Tunstall from Eye To The Telescope
Weather With You - Tim Finn, Bic Runga & Dave Dobbyn from Together In Concert: Live
Wet Sand - Red Hot Chili Peppers from Stadium Arcadium: Jupiter

I was tempted to slip "Hail, hail Rock'n'roll" in, but that might have been pushing it...

I'm very sorry about this... #2

... but it's a true story

Over at Kalle Stöckle's place on Saturday for his "Legendary Courtyard Festival", with Axel and Sylvie Schmitt providing the wine, Thomas Heinicke from Schloss Sörgenloch dishing up classy food from an open-air kitchen and a pretty good jazz/funk/blues band getting everyone up on their feet.

The big (dis?)advantage of wireless mikes, of course, is that there's no corner of the courtyard that the singer can't get to cajole folks to their their feet or put their hands together.

(I always tell them to sod off/that I have a criminal record of GBH resulting from my attempts at dancing/ I'll whack them with the stick that I need to get around until I get a hip replacement)

One couple was being pretty passive, so over she prances with "I want you to put your hands together!"

To which the wife says in a low voice "He would, but he's paralysed".

I thought I heard the girl say "Oh, shit", but I'm not sure.

I hope it constrains her future excursions into the crowd.

Here's a few ditties appropriate to the occasion, anyway.

Something In The Air - Thunderclap Newman from Almost Famous
Clap your hands! - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah from Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
The shape you're in - Eric Clapton from Money and cigarettes
Clap Hands - Tom Waits from Rain Dogs
The Clap - Yes from The Yes Album

Northland recovers after storm, PM visits

You'll find that classic here on Fairfax Media's Stuff, New Zealand's Best Media Site 2007.
(That's what it says here anyway, Brian)

Continuing in Oceania....

“Traditionally, most of Australia’s imports come from overseas.”
- Former Australian cabinet minister Keppel Enderbery

and further afield...

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we"

No prizes for guessing the perpetrator of that one..

Mug of the month #1

A new series.

I collect ceramics. It's more of an obsession that a collection, but we don't want to go there.

A mug a month will - conservatively - keep me occupied for 15 years at current inventory levels, so I'll be selective.

Jane Hamlyn - master salt glazer, close to Living National Treasure status - drank out of this and said " I don't think that this pot could be improved on...."

It's by Andrew van der Putten, a New Zealand potter and one of the founders of the sadly-missed Albany Pottery, just north of Auckland.

Bought at Crushed Pipi in Mangawhai Heads

Dragons under my bed

BREAKING NEWS

It's Kath's birthday today. Give her a present - buy her CD. Make her happy. You'll go to heaven if you do.

Kath Bee is a friend of in-a-distant-networked-kind-of-way friends, Meg and Ben Nakagawa in Nelson who do Nelson Daily Photo and Unravelling.

She's a singer/songwriter, has a million other jobs to make ends meet, is a quarter of The Nancies, a half of Zilk (no link..), and is pretty much world famous in Nelson.

This will change.

She writes Songs for Kids, and she's just released her first CD.

With gems like "Dad, I wanna be a camel" in a genuine Kiwi accent

Well I went to the zoo just the other day
and I saw lots of animals there
I saw a couple of camels and a kangaroo
and a big brown grizzly bear
And I said "Dad, I wanna be a camel
Or a bouncy kangaroo"
And he said "You haven't got a hump
or a pocket in the front
So you'll just have to settle for you"

Over much too quickly...

And here's a video of" Odd Sox"



And MySpace, of course

Selling well, which pleases me no end, so get in there quickly for your own copy.

(No, Meg. You can't click on this - it's an image to stop Kath getting spammed to death)

She'll ship anywhere.

Until she gets really famous and gets someone else to do it for her.
Which won't be long

I'm very sorry about this...

...but my puerile sense of humour got away on me for a moment.

This I need - #3

(Actually, I have it.)

This is so cool. And useful. And free.

This is FlyGesture.

It's a mini-app that you call by hitting F1.

Draw a pattern - "gesture" - and it opens an app. Runs a script. Whatever.

Use the pre-defined ones or make up your own.

Like this.

When I open Tunes, I want to open (and minimise) Last.fm at the same time.

So I combined 2 commands and a script, defined "1 up, 1 right" as the gesture and away we just do go.

Mac only.

Schadenfreude at those of you still on the Dark Side?

Who, me...?

The Midweek Mixtape - 4 July 2007

Mix and Match #11

[Disclaimer #1: The mixes and the majority of the tracks from all of these mixtapes are the original C90s from the late 70's/early mid 80's. Vinyl to tape. Play a couple of hundred times. Tape to mp3. Snap, crackle, pop and hums are free of charge]

Excellent.

No Phil Colon. Again

Some songs are goose bump material.
"Sehnsucht" -("Longing") is one. You don't have to know German to understand it.

Spoken by a small child in an environment utterly void of affection

Why is the sky empty? Isn't there anyone up there anymore?
Why did you have me? I was lost before I was even born
This land of executioners. No man's land
A burnt-out paradise
I'm homesick, I want be somewhere else
Longing? I don't know what it is
I just want to get away
As far as I can

Sobs/Screams:
Ich will raus! Let me out!

Frampton's very, very best album
Burrito's are the logical extension of the only band who's albums I'd have queued overnight for. (There's a restaurant in Wellington by the same name. Cuba St, I believe. Opposite Logan Browns. Not that I've eaten there. Neither of them)
I had the opening chords to "Welcome to the club" as a ring tone at one stage. Scared the shit out of everyone.
Ever liked the mandolin on Rod Stewart's decent albums (Every picture tells a story, Never a dull moment, bits of Smiler)? That was Ray Jackson from Lindisfarne
Snakes on the run is a beaut. Joe Walsh comes thundering in at 2:30, subtle as a brick. And the 33 seconds from 3:03 have everything - thundering piano scales, Joe's back again with a delicacy that still blows me away and Willie Weeks lets go with a big bass "WOO" at rthe end. Wonderful stuff.

Work the rest out for yourselves - I 'm going to put Snakes on repeat for an hour or so.

Well, if it wasn't for Dave doing Mercury Blues. Saw him do it acoustically live in Sheffield last year. Almost as noisy.
And Nackt im Wind ("Naked in the wind") which was the local answer to the "Do they know it's Christmas"/"We are the world" fluff and beats them both hands down for lyrics, content, focus, whatever you want to list. Hands down. Every bastard and his brother (or sister) who is/was anything in German music- and of course you've heard of none of them. Except for Nena. Maybe.
Here's YouTube
Had the start of Jungle Love as a ring tone once, too. I have no idea what I was thinking about...
Actually, there's not a duff track on the whole tape, come to think of it
Definitely not Chrissie Hynde. Here's a beaut acoustic version on YouTube
Or Feat.
Or JJ Cale

Sehnsucht - Purple Schulz from Hautnah
Wind of change - Peter Frampton from Wind of change
Bon soir blues - Flying Burrito Brothers from Flying again
Come and go blues - Gregg Allman Band from Playin' up a storm
Welcome to the Club - Joe Walsh from So What
Sea cruise - Glen Frey from No fun aloud
Meet me on the corner - Lindisfarne from Fog on the Tyne
Stairway to heaven - Led Zeppelin from IV
Wired to the moon - Chris Rea from Wired to the moon
Your song - Elton John from Elton John
Snakes on the run - Jay Ferguson from All alone in the end zone
Everything must change - Paul Young from The secret of association
Cut it away - Jackson Browne from Lawyers in love
Mercury blues - David Lindley from El Rayo Live
If This Is It - Huey Lewis & The News from 80's 02
Nackt im Wind - Band für Afrika from Nackt im Wind
Jungle love - Steve Miller Band from Book of dreams
Back on the chain gang - Pretenders from Learning to crawl
Of Missing Persons - Jackson Browne from Hold Out
Six feet of snow - Little Feat from Down on the farm
Don't cry sister - J.J Cale from V (5)