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April 28, 2006.
After a horribly pretentious local act called “Surrender to the Stars” with an originality factor of zilch (hello, John Mayer. I never liked you), Canadian band “The Organ” brought an air of melancholy to the industrial Deutz Art Quarter, coating the rotten walls and illuminating the smoke-laden atmosphere with a beauty that is rarely encountered during a live performance.
May sound cheesy, but this is exactly what happened.
I first discovered this band in March 2005 thanks to their guest spot on The L Word where I instantly took to them. Finally seeing them live had been quite a big deal for me, and all my hopes and expectations were completely fulfilled. My friend, who was not acquainted with their music at all, left the venue enthralled about what she had just witnessed, and that might be the biggest accomplishment for a band. Lead singer Katie Sketch’s voice has often been compared to that of Morrissey, but when witnessed live, it reaches an almost ethereal quality. Backed up by a fabulous band, this was a fantastic gig which even made me forget the hipster scum that was standing in front of me.
Yeah, harsh. But of course the relatively low hipster quotient in its entirety had to squeeze into the vacuum before us shortly before the gig started. Annoying? Yes. But thanks to The Organ, also quickly forgotten. If you’ve read my other reviews, you will note that this is something very special.
Further links:
The Organ
Review from a UK show that I really enjoyed reading
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April 25, 2006.
I didn’t catch most of “Germany’s Next Top Model” because I don’t care for Heidi Klum, and partly because “CSI” was running during the same time slot. I did watch the finale though and felt like I had missed out on some partially good entertainment, e.g. the show’s winner, Lena Gercke, but mainly Bruce Darnell, jury member, catwalk instructor, and model extraordinaire. I totally loved him, and when I saw him in town the other day while shopping with a friend, I almost shrieked. It’s a good thing he didn’t see me, because I’m sure he would have shrieked too – and not in a good way.
Thanks to my friend for giving me this supplement of Bruce Darnell modelling for “Lust for Life”. I hope you enjoy the scans – especially the one with the green tracksuit, LOL
Continue reading ‘Bruce Darnell Scans’
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April 21, 2006.
Pope Benedict XVI. is celebrating his one-year-anniversary as the leader of the Catholic Church these days, and while thousands are celebrating with him, one group of followers is not feeling so gay right now.
Extract from Spiegel Online (German), translated quite liberally by me:
St. Moritz parish, a Roman Catholic church in Augsburg (Bavaria), used to hold an annual service for homosexuals during the Christopher Street Day activities since 1999, praying for gay and lesbian rights and remembering AIDS victims. Now they’ve been locked out from the house of worship.
As the Augsburg general-vicar, Josef Heigl, confirmed today, he is no longer allowed to provide his parish for the oecunemical service. A member of the diocese had filed a complaint to the Vatican last year, effectively leading to a ban.
He gets the impression that the Vatican isn’t intending a general ban on these kinds of services, but rather feels uncomfortable with the seasonal proximity to the Christopher Steet Day.
With the directive, the Vatican is trying to avoid the impression that the Catholic church may support homosexual or lesbian relationships in any kind of way, Heigl said. He himself never saw any kind of problem in the services.
The congregation, led by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI., had dealt with the complaint and has consequently instructed the Bavarian Bishop Seminar to place a ban on the service.
The organizers of the homo-service are now trying to find new localities. “The service will have to be celebrated at a place where we are welcome then”, they said.
Interesting disctinction between “homosexual” and “lesbian” there. In fact, it’s the same one the Nazis used. Will they be calling lesbian relationships “anti-social” in their next directive? Stay tuned to find out.
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April 19, 2006.
I’m getting flooded with hits from people looking for this:
Two things I wasn’t even aware of:
a) Me saying “ass” in this here blog
b) The event described by the search string
My friend Marion enlightened me, though. So if you REALLY want to see, you’ll have to click the link below. I do condemn those pictures, and again I am rendered speechless by Mrs. Merkel’s lack of public demeanour (granted, she is on holidays, but do you ever get privacy when you’re in any kind of spotlight?) – but for the sake of diverting traffic, here ya go:
Big in the Bumdestag (The Sun Online)
Update: The above page is no longer online. Try Blogger Search. Or this link.
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April 17, 2006.
I am not quite sure about the typography of the name, since both variations can be found in various online publications, and I’m finding the font on the official website a little too hard to read after a long weekend. Behind the cryptic name, however, is one Chris Corner, formerly of Sneaker Pimps-fame. Which means that I must have seen him live, supporting Placebo at the Düsseldorf Philipshalle in 2001. I wasn’t too impressed then, but I do love his solo stuff – A LOT!
Categorisation appears to be difficult. Sure, there’s a strong 80′s influence: some synths, some dancey beats, some darker edges… but what appeals to me the most is Corner’s warm voice, often bordering on the camp. Sometimes reminiscent of The Ark, a vastly underrated band, his voice has the right urgency to take this project beyond the “just another act trying to emulate a past decade”-sentinemt. His new album, “The Alternative”, will be released April 21. His debut album, “Kiss + Swallow” was released in 2004, but sadly it appears to be out of print in Europe. It’s available on iTunes, however. Bit of a shame, because I still buy albums in their “physical” form, and merely raid iTunes for individual songs and singles. Which still amounts to many, many songs a month :-/
You won’t need to peruse iTunes for his latest single, “President”, though – it’s available as a free download from his website!!
IAMX – President
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April 14, 2006.
Gareth “People in Planes” Jones and Jorja Fox
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April 13, 2006.
Since all the religious lunatics are crawling out from under their rocks these days, demanding that MTV’s new cartoon show “Popetown” be cancelled due to “blasphemy” – without having watched a single episode, natch – I, in the name of democracy and free speech, say “Watch Popetown!”
If you don’t like it then – fine. At least you’ve given it a fair shot, which is more than the bigots can say for themselves. Example: The Bishop of Fulda has urged advisers to withdraw from their contracts with MTV. Dude, have you ever even watched MTV? Virtually all the adverts shown there are about ringtones and other mobile phone antics. Do you seriously think they give a rat’s ass about what the church has got to say?
No air date for Popetown other than “early May” has been announced yet, but I will keep you posted. Unless MTV decides to chicken out, that is.
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April 13, 2006.
Among some of the files lost due to the dead HD were a couple of songs from my recent iTunes shopping spree. Since I still had them on my iPod Shuffle, but no longer in iTunes, I didn’t want to add new songs to my iTunes playlist, because that would have meant synching and ultimately erasing the songs from the shuffle. I’ve grown tired of the same playlist though, and after a short Google search, I found this solution, which I’d like to further distribute here. I’ve added step 1, because even if you make sure that iTunes is closed, it will still open and override your iPod’s files – as I had to find out the hard way. Luckily I stopped it soon enough, or more songs would have been lost.
Note: This is for Macs only. Under Windows, you should be able to access the music folder via Windows Explorer. Under Mac OS X, this folder is made invisible, hence the little help from the friendly Terminal app.
- Delete the playlist originally accociated with your Shuffle from iTunes (make a new playlist as a backup if you want), quit iTunes.
- Make sure iTunes is not runnung, plug in the Shuffle. If iTunes should start again, quit iTunes asap!
- Open Terminal.app, type in the following:
cd /Volumes/YOURIPODSNAME/iPod_Control/Music/, hit enter, and then type
open F**, hit enter
- Drag the files from the window to wherever you’d like them, import into iTunes.
- Done!
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April 12, 2006.
I thought I might try and not rant about Germans as much, but seeing these pictures made me laugh and inspired me to introduce a new category, simply titled “Germany”.
It’s pretty much common knowledge that Germans dress horribly when on holidays. Ok, maybe not only when on holidays, but especially when they are. Comfortable clothes might make the fights about deck chairs a little easier, I don’t know. I try to overcompensate by dressing especially sharp when going abroad, in fact I don’t even spend as much time getting ready for a night out as I would when about to roam the streets of London, Paris, New York or Heerlen – and I’m not even a stylish person.
Imagine my shock and horror when I saw these pictures (all by DDP) of two Germans vacationing in beautiful Italy:
What a hot guy. And yeah, I agree – that wonderful potbelly should totally be emphasised. Yeuch. Hmm, that woman looks sort of familiar…
Wait… it’s German chancellor Angela Merkel, the third-most powerful person in the country!! Shopping for more wonderful clothes, I assume?
Something tells me that Aphrodite will probably pretend to not be at home when these two lovebirds come a-knockin’
Mr. Angela Merkel doing his best K-Fed impression: “Look Ange, it’s the Pavarottis!”
But seriously, I can understand that people want to be comfortable while being on holidays – but COME ON! I’m sure lots of designers would hook you up with some clothes that look tasteful and feel good. You’ve got a representative function, don’t forget that! I hope that the next pictures I will get to see won’t be of you two wearing the German holiday uniform, shorts, sandals, and white kneesocks – or I’m going to be mighty mad.
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April 12, 2006.
Don’t get me wrong – I would have loved to participate in CSS Reboot Spring 2006. I just can’t, because I don’t have the “skillz”. I was tired of my old, darker theme, which served me well throughout the long, horrible winter. Unfortunately, it didn’t serve users of Internet Explorer very well, and I couldn’t figure out what the sidebar resizing issues were caused by. I’ve been home sick yesterday and today, so I thought this might be the right time to upgrade WordPress and K2.
Turns out there were more resizing and spacing issues afterwards, so my old theme based on the Liverpool Albert Dock looked way off even in Firefox. Therefore, I’m back on the colours of last year’s theme for now, i.e. b/w and pink, and a header based on what was going to be a design for a T-Shirt. The current theme basically is my tribute to Cologne, a city which despite everything I do love to bits. It’s all a bit hasty and make-do, and I will really try to do some more work on it soon.
Now Playing: Ringside – Strangerman
