Mom makes an interesting point.

I was chatting with my mom this afternoon (3:45pm here = 6:45am there... they're early risers) and she pointed out the following:

just one very important thought............did you realize that you are the age now that i was when your were born?

I don't know what that means. But it's kinda freaking my shit out.

Things I learned at Art Forum Berlin.

Here is a short list of things I learned while visiting Art Forum in Berlin on Wednesday:

That, sir, is a ridiculous hat.

You can put feet on anything, and I'll think of it as human.

I don't like video art exhibits. Ever.I just can't take them seriously. Every single one has that jumpy, grainy, black and white footage of pouty women and/or men dancing or staring off into space or both, with no discernible plot or point. And we all watch, in those stupid square rooms painted all black, sitting on those hard block benches, with our chins resting on our knuckles, brows furrowed, nodding slightly, pretending to be interested while desperately hoping to see the word "Fin" or some tits. Ridiculous.

I like big versions of small things. You can take anything - coffee cups, thimbles, a sweater - and make it really really big, and I think it's art. And awesome. The gigantic Fiat 500 at the Frankfurt auto show was the ginchiest. And there's this big ol' Nokia cell phone used as an ad outside a cell phone shop 'tween my house and the office, and if it would fit in my bag, I'd totally steel that shiz. And outside of a lot of ice cream shops here in Hamburg are GIGANTIC plastic ice cream cones with three colorful scoops on top. I'm such a sucker for those things.

That's what I've been saying all along!

Yeah! Finally, someone with more power and influence than me (well, any power and influence is more like it) is doing something about the disgustipating mess that is the Heathrow airport. I had to travel through that hell hole on British Airways several times in the last few years, and it was always a major pain in the arse - long bus rides, followed by long walks to long lines. And if I remember correctly, you have to go through security twice. Double your pleasure. If your plane is more than ten seconds late, you're sure to miss your connection.

It's bad, bad, bad. So what did they do?They installed signs that say "If you get mad and yell at one of our employees, we'll throw your ass in the slammer. So keep your mouth shut and suffer, bitch."

Or something like that.

We're all White Trash.

Met up with Jens and Eric and friends last night at a grrrrrrreat bar/restaurant called White Trash Fast Food. Its run by a bunch of Brits and Americans, and it's the kind of place that really makes an expat feel at home. Everyone spoke English effortlessly, the place was decorated ceiling to floor with a mix of kitschy and satanic, and the menu was hilarious - Fuck You Fries, The Fuck You Cheeseburger, and something about the tortilla chips being free, "unless you're a cunt", in which case they're ten Euros. Oh you cheeky Brits! All that, and the outstanding quality of the cheeseburger I ate (bacon motherfuckers!) make me want to move to Berlin immediately.

How international is this city? Just look at our table: one American, one Norwegian, one Swede, two Swiss, three Germans (one half Egyptian) and a lovely Dane. It would have been four Germans when Eric's girlfriend arrived, but instead of coming inside to eat, drink, and be marry, she stayed outside so they could argue and fight about whatever. Ah well. I didn't see Eric afterward, but I heard that he looked as if he'd been beaten by Somalian solders and dragged through the city.

Eric and Jens used to work where I work now, so we had a nice long bitch session, followed by compare and contrast, and perhaps best summarized by this thought: no matter where you go, no matter where you work, some people will be complete and utter morons. So make the best of it and keep smiling. Very philosophical. And then everyone got really hammered.

And to top it all off, today is German Reunification day - the Fourth of July for Germany - and a day off. Yes! And I poked my head out of the window to verify that indeed, the sun is shining and all is well with the world. I'm going to meet some folks from the JvM Berlin office and check out this big fat (and by the looks of the website, pink) contemporary art show extravaganza that I think is taking place near my hotel.

I think I'm turning German.

I'm on a train to Berlin right now - it's the third time in just over a week that I've gone someplace far away by train. The first time was Frankfurt for the car show, and the second time was the following Monday morning when I went to Berlin the first time.

But the most JvM thing ever happened on that trip. Friday evening I got word that I was going to Berlin on Monday because the Berlin office needed an English speaking writer (that's me). So we panicked a bit, then figured out tickets and times and places, and then I went to Frankfurt for the car show. Monday morning I would meet Sebastian, account planner extraordinaire, at the train station and we would head to Berlin together. He'd do the briefing, and I'd stay and work for the week.

We met at Central Station at 7:45am, got our tickets and sat down (more on the sitting down part in a minute). The Hamburg to Berlin express train does it's thing in an hour and forty five minutes. And half way through, as Sebastian was telling me all about the brief, he got a phone call. The trip was cancelled, the meeting was cancelled, me working there all week long was cancelled, all as we hurtled towards Berlin at 250 km/h. Apparently they were busy with something, don't come in, we have no time for you, go back home, thanks anyways, bye.

The thing about an express train is, it doesn't stop. So we went to Berlin. I was all for taking a few hours off and having a fun day (they've got a zoo!) but Sebastian really needed to get back to the office and get some work done. We asked information when the next train back to Hamburg was. There was a train leaving in ten minutes, but we decided that that would be absurd. So we signed up for the train fifteen minutes after that. So last week I was in Berlin for twenty six minutes. And had a meeting at over 200 km/h.

Anyways, the whole point of this is that I think I'm turning German. As I walked down the aisle of the train looking for my seat this morning, it occurred to me that on the last two trips I took, both times we had reserved seats, but we didn't sit in them. And that for a few seconds each time, it really got my goat.

See, the deal is that when you book a train ticket, reserving a seat is optional, and like two Euros extra. Then you board the train and each pair of seats has a little digital display above them. If the label says something like "Hamburg-Berlin", that means it's reserved from Hamburg to Berlin. If the label is blank, the seat is free and anyone can sit there. On an early morning (yaaaaaaaaawn) train like the ones I've been taking (cheap!), there are always plenty of seats free. But on a busy every-body-commutes-home-at-that-time train it's a good idea to reserve a seat so you don't end up sitting in the aisle. So I always book a seat, because it's practically free, and I like the peace of mind, and fuck it, the company is paying. And when I train it all by my lonesome, I dutifully find my reserved seat, and I sit in it because that's the way it works, right?

Well, apparently not. The last two times I've been on early trains with Germans (okay, Julia is Austrian, but close enough), we've boarded the train and then the German says "Oh whatever, let's just sit here" all willy nilly like. WELL! How un-German is that? Both Julia and Sebastian are perfectly respectable people, so this came right outta left field. Up is down and soft is prickly and nothing is right when the Germans are shunning their assigned seats. And each time I had a microscopic panic attack as I visualized two seats with our names on it just sitting there, empty, while we took up two unreserved seats. That's FOUR WASTED EUROS and TWO WASTED SEATS! The universe falls out of balance and an adorable baby seal PLUMMETS off the edge of the planet into an abyss of burning fire. That is just not right. Around here, you can get deported for shit like that.

So when I return to The States, I'm sure I'm going to have to be broken of my newfound Germanic ways and re-integrated back into society. Or maybe I should just fly RyanAir a few times because it's one of the only airlines on the planet that (gasp!) doesn't have assigned seating. So when they open the doors, everyone RUSHES ON BOARD as if they're trying to find the one seat that hasn't been peed on by a crackhead. Now that's American.

IAA Afterglow.

Last weekend I did something I've always wanted to do - I went to the Frankfurt Auto Show. As a car guy, it's on of the Meccas of the industry since (I think) it's the biggest show in the world.

Coworker and Austrian princess Julia and I hopped on an ICE train (the coolest, fastest, Star Trekkiest trains in the country) at 6 in the damn morning, and zoomed to Frankfurt where we met up with her boyfriend Michi (that's how the Euros shorten 'Michael'). Frankfurt is kinda lame - bad coffee, not much action, a lot of suits - but we managed to have a good morning. We met up with Boris, my new favorite Bulgarian, and dove into the show.

I'm used to the SF auto show which, if I remember correctly, fills up two and and a half halls of Moscone center. There are big booths from manufacturers like Mercedes that feature all the cars, some on rotating stands, a few girls with microphones, and a desk with marketing material. The Mercedes "booth" at IAA was an entire hall unto itself, maybe half the size of one hall at Moscone. It was two floors with a giant hole in the middle of the second floor so you could see down onto the first floor. The lighting, projections, and screens were straight out of a U2 concert, and they had a counter on the second floor that gave out glasses of water (with and without gas). All the new cars were there, along with a few race cars, artifacts from Mercedes' history, and what looked like exhibits from the Museum of Science and Mercedes. There were probably a hundred Mercedes people working. It was incredible. And BMW had the same thing (though it was less like a U2 concert).

The Ford group had its own hall for all its brands - Volvo, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Ford, Land/Range Rover, etc. And then there were halls containing several manufacturers each. There was the mostly Italian hall (my favorite) with Maserati, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Fiat and... Hyundai. Poor Hyundai! They were all the way at the end of the most crowded hall of them all. So after pushing your way through hot human oatmeal to see the most passionate cars on the planet, you had to make a decision: do I push a little more to see Hyundai? As you can imagine, it wasn't really a decision at all.

And speaking of crowded, holy shit this thing was crowded. We were foolish enough to go on a Saturday and arrive around 11am along with the rest of the planet. Volkswagen was so crowded that you couldn't actually see any of the Volkswagens. And after our first visit to the Mercedes hall, where the line to get on the escalator was twice as long as the escalator itself, we decided to take a little break and wait for things to clear out a bit.

And about six hours later, we had seen everything we needed to see. I saw the new Ferrari F430 Scuderia which is my current dream car. The Alfa Romeo 8C looks as good in real life as it does in the pictures (though it's a lot smaller than I thought it would be). I stole three of the Mercedes glasses. And in honor of countless Thanksgiving day Moscone hot dogs, I ate a genuine Frankfurter sausage.

Amsterdan.

I'm in Amsterdam this weekend! Talke and I got us some plane tickets and have come to hang out with her boy toy Mathieu, who I know from ad school. It's to be back in this ADORABLE little city. It's so cute! I swear, watching the outskirts of the city pass us by on the train ride from the airport, it's like a giant plastic train set utopia. It's clean and futuristic with bright shiny colors and freshly paved roads. And as you approach Amsterdam proper, it gets older and more dense, but stays cute. All these brick buildings squooshed up against one another, and you know they've been there for a thousand years (give or take 500). Spend some time around here with your eyes open, and you'll understand Walt's thinking behind Disneyland.

The plane we flew was a Fokker 50, and by plane I mean bus with wings. That shit was small and rickety. How small was it? It was so small, I caught claustrophobia. They have to evenly distribute the fat people. The seat belt sign stayed illuminated because it's impossible to stand up. We got delayed by a stiff breeze. No kidding, that shit was tiny. But the good news is that it got us where we needed to be, and we got two prepackaged sandwiches each on the way. Now that's livin'.

On our way from Centraal station to Mathieu's place, we did a little shopping, and Mathieu uttered these words: Dude, do you want to see something that will blow your mind? It was a rhetorical question of course, so we found our way to a book shop, and went to the section selling planners for school kids. Schools here start up in September as well, so stores are littered with back to school items and such, and there were twenty different styles of planners available. You know the ones - a spot to write in your schedule, lots of room to write down your appointments, finished in bright kid colors for your kid's brightly colored kid lifestyle.

But remember, we're in Amsterdam, where sex is viewed in a slightly more progressive light than, say, all those red states where nobody masturbates. Mathieu handed me this. It's a day planner for kids called Starfucker. And I'm not making this up. It was right next to day planners with cute designs and exotic cars and sporty themes.

Money quotes:

Fuck me, I'm famous.

VIP: Very intens penetration [sic]

I never fake orgasms
only with you

There's a new bitch in town.

Your place or right now.

A few planners over was one featuring a sexy blond woman posing in various positions with a giant sausage. Pardon my American prudishness, but this is insane. Mathieu and Talke back me up on this, and it's not like the French and the Germans are known for their skittishness when it comes to the horizontal mambo. Needless to say, I bought Starfufcker, and I'm sending it to Elizabeth Holt. If she can handle Cockolada, this should be no problemo.

My friend Julia is funny.

Yesterday Austrian Julia said she was going to the movies in the evening. Apparently JvM does this thing where if you go to the movies on Tuesday, they'll pay for the ticket because Tuesday is "family day" at the movie theaters. Nice.

So I saw her in the kitchen this morning and I asked her what she saw. She said Die Hard four.

ME: How was it?

AJ: It was very creative.

ME (surprised): Really?

AJ: Yes. I didn't know there were that many ways for a car to fly through the air.

That cracked my shit up.

Rant.

I'm sick of people calling Al Gore and the like hypocrites because they proselytize a low carbon footprint, but still use a lot of energy. They shout hypocrisy and sarcastically say Do as I say, not as I do, when really, they're missing the bigger point.

Yes, Al Gore travels from speech to speech in big, heavy, secure SUVs. He has no choice because a) he needs the protection and b) these overweight, inefficient cars are the only option. We let the auto corporations do whatever they want so they can maximize every cent of profit with no regard for the planet. There isn't a light weight, fuel efficient alternative that suits his needs because there's not enough incentive for auto makers to build one.

Yes, Al Gore uses three thirty inch computer monitors in his office. And the monitors he's using are a thousand times more efficient than old school alternatives.

One fabulous part about the new green movement is that it encourages technological innovation so that we don't have to make drastic lifestyle changes to protect the planet. Pissing and moaning about Al Gore isn't going to help as much as pushing companies to create and innovate.

Think seat belts and airbags. Good ideas, right? Yet the auto industry had to be dragged kicking and screaming into making those innovations happen. They whined about bottom lines and how it would kill their business, they lobbied the government until they were blue in the face. They did the same thing to keep fuel efficiency standards low, except here they were successful.

But what a load of horse shit. Here's what I say: What kind of pussy ass company are you running? Work hard and make a good product better and shut the fuck up. We should be able to drive big cars and use the computer equipment we need, and we will if these ridiculous corporations would stop whining and get to work doing what Americans do best: innovating.

Silly

I went across the street to the other JvM building today to get the good coffee, and I got to talk to my friend The Lovely Ms. S. We did the how-was-your-weekend exchange, and when it was her turn, this is approximately what she said with a totally straight face, without missing a beat:

I went to visit my aunt to help her. She lost her husband a year ago, and now she's starting to die. She's an alcoholic, and we had to set up her will and sign her up to be an organ donor.

It's this kind of straight forward, no bullshit rhetoric that makes me really appreciate the Germanosity of German people. I've seen this sort of thing before; it usually goes something like this:

ME: What do you think German person?

GERMAN PERSON: I think it totally sucks.

ME: Well okay then.

Why mince words? Let's deal with reality right here and now. You go girl(s).

Anyways, the other thing I found interesting about this whole conversation was the alcoholic who wants to donate her organs. Organ donation is as noble an action as any other, but I'm sure there are health restrictions. For example, if you're a non-smoking, non-drinking athletic organic food type who spends your life meditating, massaging, and yoga-ing, then I'd imagine your organs would be more sought after than those coming out of an alcoholic, chain smoking prostitute with herpes and a bad attitude (not that The Lovely Ms. S's aunt are any of these things). But I'm sure that the number of people needing an organ far exceeds the number of donations, so it's probably a take-what-you-can-get sorta thing.

But who gets the alcoholic liver? Do you have to be an alcoholic to receive it? Does it come with instructions?

Care and maintenance for your new organ: Thank you for installing this high quality, second-hand human organ. Please note that due to its alcoholic nature, you'll need to drink like a fish to keep it healthy. We recommend large quantities of box wine and vodka.

That would be a fun label to see hanging off of a shiny new organ. Though if I had to drink to get a liver, I think I'd prefer to kick the bucket.

Attn: Bike Nerds

This little photo tour of Koichi Yamaguchi's workshop is fantastic. I love it for the same reason I love VH1's Behind the Music - it show's you what it looks like behind the scenes.

Makes me want to jump on Spanky and ride away... in fact, I think I will! The weather is perfect today - sunny and still. FINALLY, after a month or two of constant rainy and gray. We all thought summer would never come. Now hopefully it'll last a few weeks... Like, say, though September.

Reality Distortion Field

With no iPhone here in Europe (rumors are T-Mobile will be the carrier, and it'll be here Octoberish), I have to live my geeky fantasies vicariously through others via the internet. I was just reading an article by Farhad Manjoo, a techy writer living in the Bay Area who's written some great stuff for Wired and Salon, among others, and this one thing really jumped out at me...

And one more thing: It's $600! I'm not used to treating my cellphone with much respect. I throw it in my bag, I flash it around in public, I don't think twice about slipping it in the security tray when I'm going through the airport. The iPhone alters that calculus of risk. When the thing in your pocket is worth half a month's rent, you feel yourself constantly on alert.

Holy crap is SF expensive! When six hundred bones only gets you about two weeks of living, you know you're living in the whacky reality distortion field that is the Bay Area That and the live show at Trannyshack. Rim job on stage? Why wouldn't you?

Hamburg is one of the richest cities in Germany, and generally considered quite expensive. For a room in a two bedroom apartment, I pay €355 (about $500) per month, and that includes all utilities. When I lived in San Francicso, a similar sized room (granted, it had a big closet with mirror doors - fancy!) was $700 plus utilities. Poor Farhad is paying $1200. It's a fabulous city, but that's a lot of rent. To think that you could buy two iPhones per month... well, it's the rent that makes me queasy, not the iPhone.

Sup.

when i grow up...
Originally uploaded by ricstefano

MAX: Daddy, what was life like before Photoshop?

DADDY: It was totally lame, son.

Random bits of whatever.

1. I wrote this during a recent bout of dating frustration. It's my way of mocking the whole process, and I think it's kinda funny:

Dan, i've reviewed your request with a summit group of my closest friends, and after a thorough examination and exhaustive research, we've compiled this list of 142 reasons why a relationship with you could be a heart wrenching disaster five to ten years down the road. Though potentially pleasurable in the near term, we see an inevitable breakup that would cause short-term heartbreak and might lead to long-term psychological damage and post-traumatic dump disorder. We apologize for any inconvenience. Your request for "a drink, or a maybe a movie" is hereby DENIED.

In my thirty one years, I've gotten a lot of those responses.

2. This guy I know has breath that smells like the inside of my colon. And what's worse than that? He's a close talker. He doesn't just tell you something, he leans in to do it. Which is great way to establish intimacy and make your audience of one feels special. But it's definitely sub-optimal when you have to postpone breathing every time he does it.

3. My partner Ricardo is having his baby today! His frau Anika is doing most of the work, of course, but they're in a hospital right now huffing and puffing and making the baby come out. It's a boy, and his name is Max.

We were having a meeting today and at the end Doerte asked if there was an update. There wasn't, but Henning brought up an interesting question: why is it that when a baby is born, we always report the length and weight? Why not eye color and hair color (if applicable). Doerte, who's had one of her own, said that it's because you can tell a lot about the baby by those two numbers. Bigger means more healthy, small could mean trouble. Also, size tells you how hard the birth was... though I'm not so sure about this one. The whole process is so HOLY CRAP! painful and traumatic that I can't imagine that there's much of a difference between passing a watermelon or a honeydew.

Quote of the Day

If you let me fist your mother, I'll let you fuck my sister.

Oh yes. That is good stuff. Especially because the quote comes from our lawyer. And it's also a good lesson in how to piss off a Chilean (or any other South American, I'd imagine). This particular example caused the Chilean to chase the German out of the kitchen.

People like this...

Will you be my friend? Will you? What about you? Please? Can we be friends?That friend of yours, does he want to be my friend? Or perhaps you? Let's be friends. You can't be her friend, because you're my friend. Please be my friend. We can be friends now, and maybe good friends later. Someday we can be best friends. Doesn't that sound nice? So let's be friends! Will you be my friend? Please be my friend. I need more friends, and I like you. I think you would enjoy being my friend as much as I would enjoy being your friend. So let's be friends. Can we be friends? Let's be friends! Will you be my friend?

...drive me fuckin' nuts.

Quiet day.

It's a quiet day here at JvM/9. We were busting ass for weeks it seems (I guess it was really only a week and a half, looking back) on a brief for a big-ass German client. It was tough because we kept trying to do advertising that doesn't suck, and yet it seems the client desperately wants to do crappy advertising. "That's really smart and funny," our bosses would say about our work. "Too smart. And too funny." So it goes.

This was supposed to be a four day weekend - Tuesday was a "bank holiday" in honor of the beginning of May, and Monday was a "bridge day" because it's silly to have just Tuesday off. But of course the client presentation is Wednesday (today), so we had to work all weekend. Due dates here are always the day following the weekend... if they were scheduled for, say, the end of the week instead of the very beginning, the universe would collapse on itself and we'd be able to enjoy our weekends like normal people. So I was here Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and some sad bastards (read: Art Directors) had to be here Tuesday as well. Das ist nicht gut! But the powers that be promised to give us back the days... so it's cool. I didn't have any plans anyway.

But Tuesday was heavenly, if only relative to the grinding hell of the previous week and a half (whine whine whine, my white collar life in the first world is SO HARD). On Tuesday I got what I had been craving for so many days: alone time. And it was fabulous! Some people don't call it vacation unless there's a tropical island or snowy alps, but fuck that. I wanted to do laundry and dishes, and I got all that and MORE. I slept in, vacuumed, cleaned my room, cleaned the bathroom, did two loads of laundry, put the finishing touches on my new bed, took out the recycling, and read on our patio in the sun. It's the stuff that dreams are made of! And my roommate was gone too, so I had zero human contact for the first eighteen hours of the day. Then Teresa came over and we watched Pulp Fiction... she had never seen it, and I can't be friends with someone who's never seen Pulp Fiction. I mean really. She didn't like it, but whatever.

And today the final touches were put on the client presentation (happily not by us) and our bosses trained it to Berlin. Which means we've spent the rest of the day fooling around. Henning is playing with his axe. I went to the bike shop to buy shoes. Sergio went to another bike shop to fix his cruiser. We fixed a flat on his girlfriend's bike. We sang happy birthday to Peter. We chatted with the new guy. We threw some paper planes out the window. Can you say two hour lunch? I knew that you could.

Anyways, it seems that although little has changed, a lot has happened since last I blogged. Here's a summary for all my readers (both of you):

1. I got Spanky back! A year or two ago I quit my job, got rid of most of my stuff, and moved to SF. I wasn't using my dear old racing bike, and it so happened that Ian needed one. So I said listen, take it, and don't pay me. Consider it an extended loan; someday, i'll call you and ask for him back. Since then Ian's gotten married, divorced, and moved to Australia, and Spanky was with him the whole time. And then he sent him to me via air courier. Spanky went to Bangkok, Vienna, and finally the Hamburg airport where I picked him up like a mother and child reunion (sorry). Ian added a fancy carbon fiber fork, changed the Chris King headset from regular to Aheadset style, and built up a nice solid pair of wheels. I bought a new saddle, new shoes and Speedplays, and now I'm ready to dive back into cycling. I don't think I'll be shaving my legs anytime soon, but it's really great to have Spanky back. And I think I hear the Alps calling me.

2. I met a bunch of new people! I went out with Talke and met her friends Cornelia, Nora, and Miri (Mira?), three lovely students. We rode our bikes through the Elbe tunnel and froze our asses off on the beach. Cornelia is cute, she rides bikes, and speaks Swahili. How cool is that? We're going out for sushi on Saturday.

3. I went to the Ice Bar with Fernando and his wife Tamara. It was kinda silly, but now I can say I've gone (not that anyone's ever asked). It was all part of the Goodbye Fernando 2007 celebration. Homeboy moved from Zurich to Hamburg to work at JvM/9, but then the visa didn't work for his wife Tamara, so after three months he transfered to JvM Zurich. Sigh. It's really too bad because I liked working and hanging out with Fernando. But at least now I have a floor (nay - they promised me an AIR MATTRESS!) to sleep on in Zurich. See you soon Fernando and Tamara!

4. I bought a bed. A real bed! From Ikea. I haven't taken pictures of it yet, but as soon as I do, I'll post it for my teeming mass of followers who no doubt can't wait to see it. :-) It's really nice and simple, and more comfy than the air mattress (duh).

5. I read some good books. I read Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. It's a weirdo fantasy book by Haruki Murakami and it's kind of about a guy who has to choose between the real world and his inner consciousness. I'm sure Wikipedia understands it better than I did. After that I read High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. It was great, of course. Easy, fast, and delicious. Then I read a piece of crap called Everyman by Phillip Roth. Lame. It's a rambling story of a sad old ad man coming to grips with his own pathetic-ness at the end of his life. It went on and on with no real point (that I could see) and the writing style was only occasionally good and often downright confusing. There were all these dangling he's and she's where I had to read the sentence three times to figure out which character we were talking about. Whatever. And now I'm reading an EXCELLENT book called Perfume by Patrick Süskind. Interesting story, sweet writing style, nice sense of humor (though it's not a particularly funny book) and intriguing characters. Really a joy to read.

6. I bought green shoes! I have ALWAYS wanted green shoes, and now I have them. Hooray.

I think that's about it. Word to all your moms.

Tactful Germans.

Spring is finally here, and that means the sun actually comes out and shines upon us once in a while. It's quite a change from the usual misty grayness we're all used to here in Hamburg, and it has quite an effect on the people and the mood. Suddenly everyone, including myself, is just itching to get outside and mill about in the warm bright sunshine. Tables have moved outdoors, and makeshift patios have sprung up everywhere, and everywhere you go, Germans are sitting in those chairs at those tables in that sunlight... just... sitting there. They don't talk or read or word process, they just sit and stare into space. Their skin glows white from months of indoor fluorescence, and they bask like lazy, confused moths.

It's great though, and it's time for sunglasses, and that means it's time for contact lenses. I hate contact lenses. They dry my eyeballs out, they collect dust, they poke and prod and move around. But they give me über clear vision (when they're not dried up and clouded with muck) and they let me wear sunglasses. Sunglasses! How wonderful.

So I've been wearing contacts lately, which means (duh) that I'm not wearing my glasses. Thing is, all the people I work with and/or hang out with are used to me with glasses. So lately, when I see them and they see me, often they look at me with furrowed brows. Something's different you can see them think, but I can't quite tell what it is. And then it hits them.

"Dan! Where are your glasses?"

And then...

"You look so much better!"

Yeah. Germans do this thing where they're really direct about their feelings. Of course this is a generalization, but I say from experience that a German is likely to tell you exactly what (s)he thinks of that shirt, even if it's "I really don't like your shirt!"

It's a little different in America. Say I don't like your shirt; chances are I keep my mouth shut. If you ask me what I think about your shirt, and I think it sucks, I'll try really hard to say that I hate it in the nicest way possible. Maybe I'll list all the good qualities first, and then slip in a not-so-good one at the end. Crafty! If I do it right, you may not even know that I despise your shirt and think you have terrible taste and pray that you don't breed and propagate said taste.

Now, it's a bit different in this case because they're saying they like what they see (I'm happy to report that no one has said I look worse). But there's a nice and a not-so-nice way to say that as well. I don't want to sound overly sensitive, but Dan, you look so much better! sounds an awful lot like Before you looked like an idiot!

This has happened twice: once in the HR department, and once with one of my two bosses. The HR girl just said I look way better. Okay, thanks. But my boss, or Captain Tactful, as I'm going to call him from now on, took one look at me and said:

"Dan, you look great!"

And then...

"You don't look nerdy at all!"

Nice. You know, it's fine if he thinks of me as that skinny American NERD in the office down the hall. It's okay if he thinks I scored really high on the math portion of my SATs (I didn't, but whatever), or that the only friend I have is a hamster named Barney who runs around in a ridiculously complex habitrail that I built for him to fill up the time I spend not getting laid. But seriously. Can't he keep that thought to himself?

Quote of the week.

That headline looks like it was written in German by a Chilean, and translated to English by a German.

-Ricardo

I'm just happy he wasn't talking about something I wrote.

The girl who loves potatoes.

A week ago I went out with Lanky Girl. We talked about many things, including her boyfriend, and the fact that she's loved three men in her life, all named Thomas. So not only is she currently in a relationship, but she's unavailable on this whole other cosmic level as well.

Still, we had a very nice time. We ate asian food; she had noodles, I had sushi. She shared her broccoli with me. We created charts of our lives with a pen and paper. I think we'll meet again, maybe at a restaurant called the Kartoffelhaus (kartoffel = potato). We walked past it, and I made some joke about how I guess everything there is made out of potatoes, which is kinda funny from my Californian, not-so-many-potatoes upbringing. And she told me that she LOVES LOVES LOVES potatoes, and how they're her favorite food, and mom served potatoes with every meal. So that'll be fun.

Fun in German

Last week a bunch of us went to a bar in the Karolinen Viertel (the "Karoline Quarter", a hip little section of town with it's very own website). I've been learning to sprechen, and all my German friends have been telling me how much better I've gotten, so I was feeling all good about myself and decided to order my drink in the Deutsche. I decided I wanted port, also known as dessert wine. I remembered that the word for dessert is nachtisch and the word for wine is simply wein. So I sauntered up to the bar an said Haben sie nachtische wein? and I slurred it a bit so the words would be a little squooshy and blend together and it wouldn't be so obvious that I'm an American infidel. For a second there, I was pretty proud of myself.

But the bartender, a twenty something girl with extremely red lipstick, looked at me in horror. Turns out that nachtischwein, when properly slurred, sounds a lot like nacht shwein, which OF COURSE means naked pig. Which I suppose could sound like some sort of exotic cocktail ("Naked pig on the rocks please!"), but probably sounded a lot more like a bizarre sexual maneuver ("I'll donkey punch you if you give me a naked pig after! Whaddya say Ms. Sexy Bartender?"). Naturally, she turned to my Deutscher friends, who laughed and clarified the mistake. I turned a little red, and they asked me what I was trying to say.

"Dessert wine," I said. "How do you say dessert wine?"

They all said, practically in unison, "We say dessert wine!"

"Well fuck you then!"

Which I think is about the right answer. How could "dessert wine" possibly sound like "naked pig", and how could Germany have made it this far while speaking such a ridiculous language? I mean really.

:-)

I totally got her number. And his. And his too.

I went to a fun party last night with my good friend Luke. It was a birthday party for our friend Caro, who just turned 27. It was at her little apartment, and the place was packed with boys and girls, all of whom were Caro's age, plus or minus five years... a good place to meet people, then.

Luke and I are always looking to meet new people - we both moved to Hamburg around the same time, and met soon after, lamenting about how we don't know enough people, and now despite our charm and talent, we are dreadfully single. I came home with three new phone numbers in my little cell phone. Go me! But wait, two of them are guys. Wha... ?

This is something that's happened often over here in Hamburg. I go to a party, and meet new and interesting people. Someone will sprechen at me, and tell them sorry, I'm the one guy here who doesn't speak German. A few of them bail immediately - especially German girls who don't speak English very well; they tend to be really self conscious about it which is funny, because I'm a guy, so theoretically it shouldn't matter: "Baby, your head may not speak good English, but that body is slammin' it's way through all kinds of language barriers!", etc. - but most speak English really well. So we talk about America, California, San Francisco, Germany, Hamburg, why I'm here, and how it's possible to be an English-only writer in Germany and on and on and on.

And because we're all basically friendly, interesting people, and I guess because there aren't too many other Americans around to hang out with, eight guys out of ten (a rough estimate) ask me for my number. And now that I think about it, I don't have anything near that kind of hit rate with women. I think last night is pretty typical - a 2:1 ratio. Hmph.

I went to a lot of parties back in the states (or at least I went to enough to notice this pattern now) and I don't remember reflecting on this issue - I never got a guy's number. Maybe it's because so many of the parties I went to were made up of a group of people I spend time with anyway (school, work) so getting ahold of them wouldn't require contact info. Or maybe there were loads of men desperate to give me their number, but they were afraid someone would think they're gay. I'm sure this is illustrative of something to do with American males vs. German males, but I'm not sure what it is. Does any body know what it is? Are there any guys out there who can offer an explanation (or perhaps their number?)

Anyways, in addition to two really nice guys, last night I spent a lot of time talking to a lovely girl named Sandra. We covered many topics, including cities of origin, occupations, German vs. English, and why she lives in the boonies of Hamburg. We spent a bunch of time talking about how one of the few things I know how to say in German is Ich möchte eine latte machiatto bitte, and the chaos that ensues when the waitperson assumes I sprechen and then follows up with a barrage of coffee-related questions. She was interesting, tall and lanky, and just the right amount of goofy. She made the most adorable facial expressions. She was wearing red Adidas sneakers, and I'm a sucker for red sneakers. And in a delightful reversal of the social order of German twenty-somethings, she asked me if I'd like to meet for a latte macchiato some time, and I told her I'd love too. She grabbed a pen, handed it to me, and held out a very long left arm. I left my name, number, an American flag, and a cup of coffee with steam above, a saucer below, and smiley face on the cup. Then I got her number and put it in my phone, you know, just in case she forgets, and then showers too vigorously.

How not to be Rock n Roll

So we got another brief the other day. Apparently the powers-that-be here at our big fat ad agency have been inspired, and have shouted from the rooftops that this year they want the agency to be... wait for it... more rock n roll. It's the theme for the year. Our ideas should be more rock n roll and our executions more rock n roll and we're going to be more rock n roll with our clients and more rock n roll with each other.

I'm not sure if I'm getting the entire message here, because the message is always given in German and then translated into broken, jaded English by my frequently bitter co-workers. But it seems to boil down to the following key items: we're going to let our work be a little more kuh-RAZY!, we're not going to pitch clients who won't let us rock out with our cock out, and every other tuesday there'll be cocaine-fueled orgies with underage groupies*.

It's hard not to roll the old eyes with a cynical smile when two guys with a combined age of 104 think it's perfectly reasonable to tell us to be rock n roll. I'm not sure I can think of something that is less rock n roll than sending out a memo to be more rock n roll. I'm pretty sure there weren't any PowerPoint presentations at Led Zeppelin band meetings, and I doubt Kurt Cobain ever took the budget into consideration.

The point here, of course, is that you can't just tell someone (including yourself) to be more rock n roll. It has to come from within; it has to be a genuine feeling of FUCK YOU for almost everything around you; it has to be a rebel streak that takes no prisoners and gives convention and nay-sayers a big fat middle finger. And I think it helps to get drunk and throw up a lot.

And now we have this brief to think of ways to make the agency more rock n roll. It's great - we can hang out and think of ideas that'll make this place more crazy (and newsworthy! we were specifically instructed to come up with ideas that would get us into the paper... just like how Ozzy would get the gang together and said "Lads, let's get ourselves some press coverage!") so we can present them and get them killed for being too expensive or too crazy or too offensive or all three. "No," I can hear them saying, "more rock n roll!"



* yeah, I made up that third one.

Tomorrow's To Do List

Tomorrow is Saturday, and I have no plans until the evening. So! I'm going to be so productive, it's going to blow your mind. Here's what's on the list:

Get up at a reasonable hour. Dude. Seriously. There's only so many hours that can be made productive, so you've got to take FULL advantage of them. Sleeping in is for losers with no future! Rise and shine and bring out your glory!

Wash sheet and set it out to dry. I only have one sheet for my bed. It needs to be washed once in a while, and it's time. I have a washer, but no dryer, and since I only have the one sheet, I've got to get up early (see above), wash it, and then hang it out to dry so that come bedtime, I'm not laying in a soggy fog of cold cold sadness.

Finish Slaughterhouse V. Holy crap this book is good! I borrowed it from Ricardo (or as Germans would say, he borrowed it to me) and started reading it. Then I noticed that I couldn't stop. I've read it long ago in high school, and I remember liking it then too. The writing is so good. It's visual, and uses lots of metaphor, but in a good way so it's not annoying and overblown. Good shit!

Start reading How to be Good. Last week I got a credit card from my bank (yay!) and this week I learned how to order English books off Amazon.de (yay!). Shipping of English books is free anywhere in Europe (who says America isn't loved around the world?) and apparently it's pretty fast too, cuz the books where here only days later. How to be Good is by Nick Hornby who wrote High Fidelity which of course was turned into one of my favorite movies ever, and a great book called A Long Way Down that I read a few weeks ago and loved.

Ride bike. Somewhere. Anywhere. It's going to be sunny, so get out there you fucking pansy.

Go to a birthday party. There's a birthday party for this crazy girl named Renatta tomorrow night. It won't start until 10 or 11 or even midnight because we're all so goddamn hip. So that leaves PLENTY OF TIME to get through this exciting to do list.

Exciting!

The Ukranian way.

Got on the elevator this morning along with Andrej, who sits across from me, and a girl of, shall we say, some girth. We all exchanged pleasantries until the girl got off and left Andrej and me alone to ride up one more floor. And then Andrej turns to me, and in his thick Russian accent, he says simply:

She is strong!

Tell me Andrej, what's Russian for awesome?

My very first (very small) ethical dilemma (in advertising).

So we got a brief this week for a bank. They offer this savings account where twenty percent of what you put in gets put into a lottery, and you can win money and prizes. That's right, you put, say, fifty Euros of YOUR money into YOUR savings account, and assuming you don't win, a month later you have forty Euros. The account doesn't pay any interest.

My first thought was well that's fuckin' retarded. It goes against everything I've ever been told about the virtues of saving. The whole point of saving money is to let it sit there and not touch it and not do anything stupid with it like gamble it.

The second thing I thought was this would probably go over well with the young, not so wealthy, not so educated crowd. So I asked who the target audience is. Yep. Nailed it.

I knew this would happen eventually - it's the nature of the business. I knew that one day, someone would waltz into my office (or we'd meet in the kitchen, whatever) and ask me to make ads that convince the not-so-intelligent to do stupid things.

Back when I was trying to figure out if I wanted to make advertising my next career, I talked to some people in the biz, and a couple times I asked this question: do you ever feel bad about trying to get people to buy things they don't need? Most people just hemmed and hawed a bit and said you get over it. But one guy whose name I can't remember put it really well. He rolled his eyes and said something like: "Look, I try as hard as I can to do good work that doesn't take advantage of people... but if I make an ad that says something ridiculous, and you're dumb enough to fall for it, then you're just dumb, and there's not much I can do about it." I thought that was a pretty good answer. And I think it's fair. I'm a Darwinistic kinda guy, and I think the buyer ought to beware. Do your best and don't be an asshole, but everyone knows that advertising is all promises promises. But there's just no way accommodate everyone's stupidity.

Still, I don't want to lie to people, or trick them (Cigarettes are healthy! Mel Gibson loves the Jews! This bank account is a great deal!). And what they want us to do is tell people who don't know any better that this savings account is FUN! and HEY, A EURO ISN'T THAT MUCH ANYWAY! and YOU'LL WIN A LOT AND GET RICH! Which is okay if you're the national lottery, but not so cool if you're a bank who's supposed to be telling people how best to handle their money. Hmph.

Then the account folks pointed us to our lawyer (THAT's always a good sign) if we have questions about what we can and can't say. So I talked to Christian. Turns out it's legal to offer accounts like this, but it's not legal to advertise them. Or at least, it's not legal to say things like you're gonna get RICH from GAMBLING with us. He also said that the client knows all this, but they want to make ads anyway. I guess they figure they can either a) get away with it, or b) get caught, pay a fine, and still basically get away with it. Great.

So I let all that brew in my brain for a bit, while Ricardo and I tried to find good angles to sell a product that we both know is pretty lame. We came up with some initial ideas, nothing spectacular, and I kept whining (internally) about it. So I talked to Christian some more.

Turns out, he's got one of these accounts with another bank. Same deal - no interest, and twenty percent of what he puts in goes into the lottery. Every two weeks they do a bunch of drawings, and he's won a couple of times. Usually he wins €5 or less, and a couple of times he's won €50. He said that he's probably broken even. And that it's kinda fun. Huh. Christian's not a retard... he's pretty smart. Made it through law school and ever'thang.

So that pretty much took all the wind out of the sails on my little ship of righteousness. Meanwhile, Ricardo and I have a pile of ads that are kinda funny, and not too dastardly. We present them tomorrow... I'm sure most of them will get kicked out, especially the ones that make outright gambling references... and the one that shows a hand with outstretched fingers against a white background. The pinky finger is missing and the copy says "If this were our bank you could win back up to 150,000 fingers or maybe a car!"

That shit is genius.

Oh, Flickr

Cold hotties
Originally uploaded by Women, Fire & Dangerous Things.

Sometimes, you're just browsing through Flickr, and you find something like this, and you're all "WTF?" and then after a few minutes, you're still all "WTF?"

Help me Lionel, you're my only hope.

As of this moment, right here, tonight, my upstairs neighbor has lost the right to complain about the volume of my music/television/whatever. He's lost the right completely, and he's lost it forever. Whatever weirdo modern day musical game show in front of a live studio audience he's watching is coming loud and clear through the thick cement walls of our building. And the only thing louder than the TV is his booming voice that occasionally yells, and often sings along. I'm picturing a fat old guy with broken hearing aids and a drinking problem.

This is one of the rare cases where I am lucky to be a foreigner in a foreign land; the only way this could be more annoying or distracting, would be if I understood the voices coming out of the television.

Funny - I just wrote that run-on sentence, and now I'm hearing an ad for the upcoming Lionel Richie concert here in Hamburg. I totally wanted to go, but the tickets start at 85 euros. Sorry Lionel, but I can't afford to dance on that ceiling. Perhaps I'll you can sing me to sleep instead... through my headphones at full volume.

Saturday

I managed to escape the relentless savage of my own sloth, the warm embrace of Ikea sheets ("What's the thread count?" asked Diana. "Don't be a snob", I replied), and mild depression caused by frigid temperatures, and go out into the world today. More specifically, I made it into my 'hood, Ottensen, found a cafe, ate a pizza, and drank 0.2 liter of Coca Cola (mmmm, capitalism tastes delicious).

A few tables away, there's a pair of parents with a little kid, and the kid has been coughing for thirty minutes minutes straight. And not little dry throat, it's-that-time-of-the-year, something's-going-around coughing, but serious, phlegmy, choking on a fishbone, Heimlich maneuver, hocking-up-green-goo coughing. There is something inside this child, it's gooey, it wants out now, and it's trying to make a run for it via his esauphogus. I guess he isn't choking, because he's still managing to shovel pancakes in to his face while not turning blue. But goddamn. Either this kid hasn't yet learned how to swallow, or he's developing cystic fibrosis right here in front of everyone. And the parents are just looking right past it and into their newspapers. And I feel like yelling: oh my god, sweep his throat, smack his back, tell him to raise his arms above his head for crying out loud. 'Cause this has got to stop. When child services arrives, I will not defend you!

In other news, GODDAMN, it's been cold lately. We were several weeks into an oddly warm winter (temps in the 40s, which is no big deal if you've got a good coat) when suddenly, one afternoon, it dropped to 19. 19! That's cold. The difference between 40 and 19 is 21. But obviously, the difference manifests itself in other ways...

Water: you wash your hands in 40 degree water; you drop 19 degree water into a drink to keep it cool.

Bike riding: 40 degrees means you wear gloves, and a coat over your t-shirt. When you arrive, you're sweaty and you have to take off the coat immediately. 19 degrees means you add another layer in between, add a scarf, and put a hat under the helmet, and when you arrive you stand next to the radiator and wait patiently for you fingers to thaw out so you can take off the jacket.

Words, capitalizations, and punctuation: Jeez turns into FUCK, and you add an exclamation point, as in: FUCK, it's cold!

And it snowed for real for the first time all season (apparently it snowed a bit in December while I was gone, but it only lasted a few minutes). As usual, it was pretty for a few minutes, and then it was a slushly, muddy, messy, icy pain in the ass. I just can't get past my cynicism towards snow; sure it's pretty, and it's neat how it falls so quietly... and then when you have to leave your insulated office and do anything out doors, it's a thousand times more annoying than it should be. I never think of nature as vindictive, except for when it snows, melts, and freezes. I've fallen off my bike twice; you shouldn't need metal spikes in your bike tires, that's just not right.

But whatever, I'll figure it out. The sun is out today, so that makes it a lot easier to cope with the cold.

It's finally getting cold.

It's finally getting cold.
Originally uploaded by dpieracci.

Well, the temperature finally got to where it's supposed to be at this time of the year. 19 is a lot colder than 40, and there was ice on roofs and cars. This morning was the coldest bike ride so far; my fingers and toes are still feeling it.

I knew it!

From the Häagen-Dazs entry on Wikipedia:

Contrary to common belief, the name is not European; it is simply two made-up words meant to look European to American eyes. This is known in the marketing industry as foreign branding ... The playful spelling devices in the name invoke the spelling systems used in several European countries. "ä" (an Umlaut) is used in the spelling of German, Finnish, Slovak and Swedish language, doubled vowel letters spell long vowels in Finnish, Dutch, and occasionally German; and zs corresponds to /ʒ/ (as in vision) in Hungarian.

I knew it! Partly because I think someone told me once. Anyway, it's still delicious, but not as delicious as Ben & Jerry's (which, by the way, was named after two real people).

Welcome, Sabine

One of the things I like best about Sabine is her name. See, in America we would simply say suh-BEAN, which gets the job done, but it's a bit, well, flaccid. It kinda just ker-PLUNKS right out of your mouth. But here In Germany, where the Germans speak German and switch the S's to Z's and give every vowel its very own syllable, suh-BEAN becomes zuh-BEE-nuh. Mmmmm, now we're talking! Go ahead and say it out loud - and then purr like a cat who just found a sunbeam. Yummy. And if you don't think she deserves such a sultry name, then you must not have seen her shoes last night.

Sidenote: Some of her friends call her BEE-nuh for short, which is adorable, but impossible for me because BEE-nuh sounds way too much like BEE-ner, or beaner, which is what you call Mexican kids when you want to get your ass kicked in PE class. I tried it once, and thought Sonny Gonzales was going to fly into Hamburg just to spit on my locker again. We'll have none of that.

Anyways, last night we celebrated Zuh-BEE-nuh's thirtieth birthday at a cool little bar in Eimsbüttel. It was fun, and we drank and hung out and watched a little slide show put together by her hip photographer boyfriend. So welcome, sweet Zuh-BEE-nuh, to thirty. We're glad to have you.

Oh, I went to bed at 5am (how you like me now?) and slept 'til noon. Rock 'n roll, baby.

4 Things to be happy about today

1. On January 1 a new rule in Germany went into effect that allowed... wait for it... stores to stay open as long as they want! Outstanding. It's like they read my mind, and I'd personally like to welcome Germany to the nineties, on behalf of all Americans. The change meant that I could swing by the local Rewe and pick up some muesli, yogurt, chocolate, and Pringles (they're like America all over my mouth).

2. The first half of the day was busy, but the second half was relaxed. So my partner Ricardo and I became Flickr friends (aw, group hug!), and took pictures of what's inside our bags for the What's in your bag? pool. I've always wanted to do that, and I don't know why it took so long. For some weird Web2.0/RealityTV/OCD reason it feels good to organize the contents of my (favorite) bag, take a picture and share it with the world. Maybe because I really like that bag and most of the stuff inside. Like that all-in-one tool... I love knowing that I can adjust all the important stuff on my bike AND build Ikea furniture at all times. As my old friend Craig would say, titties.

3. While we were at it, I took a pic of our office, and Ricardo posted it. Gee whiz I love standing on desks.

4. I'm in our kitchen, sitting on a chair at the little blue kitchen table. I know that doesn't sound like a very big deal, but it feels like forever since I've had a place to sit down with my computer and write something (outside of work of course). I don't have a desk or a chair in my room. And until Tuesday night, the kitchen was empty and waiting for Ikea to deliver. But then they did, and now there's places for stuff and the washing machine works and we can boil water and I can sit in a chair and life is grand. It's the simple things, man.

Happy New Year

Just about to head out to get a bite to eat after a very lazy New Year's Day. I put on my jacket and hat, grabbed my iPod, set it to shuffle and hit play. What popped up? Babyshambles, The 32nd of December. Nice.