The Volkshochschule Augsburg Experience: Intro

I have a friend, y'all! Her name's Sonja. She's awesome AND she lives next door. It's like being in college again, or having a roomate even though I am totally an old married hag now. We go jogging together, have coffee on her balcony, cook together when the men are away, sit around and read magazines, rent DVD's. It's true love. Plus, we both like beer and as we discovered, playing with make-up. Last week we went jogging and then decided to put on makeup and go dancing. Which we did until the wee hours of the morning. We went to a place called BarFly where there is no dancefloor, but everyone kind of bops around. You have to be a little drunk because otherwise you would get claustrophobic and freak out. It would be closed down in the US for fire-hazard reasons, but they like to live on the edge in Augsburg. The music is... why do people think if you only play like 20 seconds of a song and then move onto the next that that means you are really partying? Why can't we just hear the whole song? Is this the ellusive art of the DJ? If so then I officially hate DJ's. Just play the song and then play another one. It's really annoying to think I am going to be able to shake it to the Pussy Cat Dolls, Dontcha! for 15 short seconds. my moves are take more time than that. Curiously, they party-mixed,or whatever, all the good songs, but then played I think an entire CD of Oldies (that the crowd went wild to, BTW) Seriously, they gave me 20 seconds of Xtina's Dirrty, but the entire Mashed Potato and Twist. I am not kidding. I could not believe that a crowd of people my age and younger actually danced more when the Oldies came on. I guess that's why they are called Euro-nerds. Oh. I am being cruel. I had an awesome time and it is truly a great bar. Great atmosphere because EVERYONE dances and has a great time. No sullen, greasy-haired cool kids in the corner like in New York.

My girlfriend invited my to a cooking course that she was taking with a bunch of her girlfriends so that I could get to know more people and learn to cook too. Woo hoo. Girls night out! It was offered by the Volkshochschule which is the adult education college. One night, €33 and seven courses. We were to bring a kitchen towel, an apron and our apetites. We would cook seven courses and then eat them. There would be lots of alcohol in the food and in our glasses. The class started at 7 and would be open-ended. Little did we know open-ended meant lock-down until 3AM.

I need help

I wanted to buy a flatscreen monitor as a gift for Alexander- don't worry he never reads this. The ones at Apple are thousands of dollars. I looked around at reviews for LCD monitors and at the old tube ones. I learned a lot about which ones would be better on the eyes, have the best colors etc. Does anyone know if buying a monitor from Dell or Samsung would work with an Apple Powerbook? Some specifically say only PC compatible- some don't say anything. Not one said Apple compatible. I would appreciate any advice in the comments section or straight to email.

Thanks, Mang.

Twins: Linda Hogan and Smurfette in the Golden Years

There is something disturbing about Linda Hogan, Hulk's wife, mother of Brooke and that other kid. I could never quite put my finger on it. she seems nice enough if not a total push over with her son, who easily manipulates her and her doting. There's something about the yellow hair, the thick makeup, rock boobs and bubbly personality. she looks like what I imagine Smurfette looks like now after all those years of taking it from Papa, Gargamel and the gang.

Just for Fun- Weird Al's White and Nerdy

These made me laugh out loud at my desk

White and Nerdy (Parody of Ridin by Chamillionaire)

First in my class here at MIT
Got skills, I’m a champion at D&D
MC Escher - that’s my favorite MC
Keep your 40, I’ll just have an Earl Grey tea
My rims never spin, to the contrary
You’ll find that they’re quite stationary
All of my action figures are cherry
Steven Hawking’s in my library
My MySpace page is all totally pimped out
Got people beggin’ for my top eight spaces
Yo, I know pi to a thousand places
Ain’t got no grills but I still wear braces
I order all of my sandwiches with mayonnaise
I’m a whiz at Minesweeper - I could play for days
Once you see my sweet moves you’re gonna stay amazed
My fingers’ movin’ so fast I’ll set the place ablaze
There’s no killer app I haven’t run
At Pascal, well I’m number one
Do vector calculus just for fun
I ain’t got a gat but I got a soldering gun
Happy Days is my favorite theme song
I could sure kick your butt in a game of ping pong
I’ll ace any trivia quiz you bring on
I’m fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon

WWED? (What Would Ebert Do?)

My old boyfriend used to check out Roger Ebert before each movie we would see. If Ebert liked it, chances are we would see it. If Ebert didn't like it- I usually ended up seeing that one with friends. I prefer to know next to nothing about a movie, except the title, before I see it so that I know all opinions I form are mine and not someone else's. I used to tease him by asking- Did Ebert say we could see this movie? Is this one ok? I even said I would get him a bracelet with WWED to help guide him.


Since I really don't anticipate that I will see most of the movies coming out these days, I have allowed myself to read Ebert's fresh reviews each Friday without guilt. It's my way of staying connected to what is out now. I have also gone back and been elated to learn that Ebert appreciated Prelude to a Kiss as much as I adore it, but deeply saddened to learn that he thought Edward Scissorhands was a silly waste of time. That really hurt me, Ebert! It was made up for his beautiful article over Man on the Train, one of my favorite movies that I only like to watch alone.



Ebert's free movie therapy has been missing since June and I have had to resort to Rotten Tomato.com to read annoying critics construct complicated sentences to support weak logic. It's either some Hipster poet who hates everything except the sound of his own writing or some midwestern small paper writer whose values are way out of line with mine. Why does Batman Begins need to be so dark? My kid didn't like it...

Ebert has been in the hospital with Saliva cancer for the past few months and finally posted this update to his site. Hurry back, Roger!

For 40 years, I didn’t miss a single deadline, but since July, I have missed every one. I also, to my intense disappointment, missed the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Having just written my first review since June ("The Queen" — for 10/12), I think an update is in order.

Faithful readers and viewers will recall that I expected a speedy recovery from surgery for salivary cancer last June. My expert (and now beloved) doctors had an encouraging game plan, and I expected to be back at work right away. Then I had several episodes of sudden and serious bleeding.

They stabilized me, operated on me to deal with the arteries, kept me sedated to avoid disturbing the affected areas — and then I essentially spent July and August completely out of it. I remember only fragmentary episodes.

In September, my bleeding hazards stabilized, I came off sedation to find I had lost track of two months of my life, and starred in several prayer vigils for which I am eternally grateful to my wife and tower of strength, Chaz; my family and friends, and the many clergy who came to see me.

I was so touched when Chaz described those lost months. And now I am at the famous Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago — learning to walk again! My muscles were atrophied by the weeks of inactivity, and I became a rehabilitation candidate. It’s been quite an adventure, made easier by the tireless good cheer and expertise of Dr. Jim Sliwa and his RIC team.

During all of this, I didn’t lose any marbles. My thinking is intact and my mental process doesn’t require rehabilitation. Visits from colleagues at the Chicago Sun-Times, "Ebert & Roeper," ABC-7 and the film world kept me informed — although, curiously, I found myself more interested in plunging into the depths of classic novels ("Persuasion," "Great Expectations," "The Ambassadors") than watching a lot of DVDs. I prefer to see the new Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood films on a big screen, for example. But our "Ebert & Roeper" producer Don DuPree brought around a DVD of "The Queen," and when I viewed it, I knew I wanted to review it.

A few more recent movies also will be reviewed, but I won’t be back to full production until sometime early next year. The good news is that my rehabilitation is a profound education in the realities of the daily lives we lead, and my mind is still capable of being delighted by cinematic greatness.

I plan to have my Overlooked Film Festival again in April, and cover the Academy Awards and Cannes. I can’t wait to be back in the Sun-Times on a full-time basis, and to rejoin Richard Roeper in the "Ebert & Roeper" balcony. Dr. Harold Pelzer and Dr. Neil Fine of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and my personal physician, Dr. Robert Havey, also of Northwestern, assure me I will eventually walk, talk, taste, eat, drink and live, more or less, normally. But it will be a struggle, involving another surgery to complete what began in June.

I have discovered a goodness and decency in people as exhibited in all the letters, e-mails, flowers, gifts and prayers that have been directed my way. I am overwhelmed and humbled. I offer you my most sincere thanks and my deep and abiding gratitude. If I ever write my memoirs, I have some spellbinding material. How does the Joni Mitchell song go? "Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone"? One thing I’ve discovered is that I love my job more than I thought I did, and I love my wife even more!




By the way- in case you don't know everything about the almighty Ebert, he definitely likes his women built for distance, not for speed. His wife is a lovely woman who is a foxy, round, built, black woman. I think they call it a brick-shit house- and not in the fat way. Ebert has made no secret of his love for darker, curvier women over the years. He is an unabashed Halle Berry fan. For some reason, I always pictured the dorky, fat guy with a wife like Jay Leno's whose name is fittingly, Mable. Ebert's wife name is Chaz. She wins right there. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though considering how awesome Ebert is. Double props for loving his wife so much!

Some people are really serious about golf

A few weeks ago Alexander and I played golf in Germany. We didn't think it was anything that we could do because golf here is expensive. In order to play you need to be a member at a country club. Once you are a member of a club, you can play on any golf course even if you aren't a member there. I think the membership thing is to prove that you actually can play golf. They don't want any rifraf on the course. The alternative to being the member of a golf club is that you can hire a Golf pro to go out with you who will sign something that verifies that you understand the rules of golf and then you can also play on golf courses in Germany. The logic is a little like my childhood friend's crazy family who wouldn't let her drive the family's prized possession (the Teal Blue, oval-shaped-everything, Ford Taurus) until she had driven the Taurus. I am not sure how one can crack the you-aren't-allowed-to-do-this-until-you've-done-this conundrum, but I think the answer is in the bible somewhere.

Like most things that seem impossible or univiting, it is usually a matter of just knowing the right people or the secret, local's trick to get around whatever barrier. Turns out there is a golf course about ten minutes from our apartment that lets you play pretty much no matter what. And the guy who checks you in and doesn't check for your official Golfers Association of Germany card also charges €10 for everything. Round of golf? 10 Euro. Golf glove? 10 Euro. Leopard print visor that pinches onto your head instead of going all the way around? 10 Euro. Sweet.

So a few weeks we played golf for the first time in Germany. IT WAS AWESOME. I am sure there are lots of courses in the world that have rolling greens and 45 Mexicans to keep the grass at a perfect level, ball-washers at every hole, shoe-cleaners, towels, wooden signs that indicate what hole you are on and even maps. But how many people have played on a golf course with a full-on chicken coup behind the fourth tee? What about having to walk between to two horse pastures to get to the third hole? Not too many. Our 10Euro friend actually had to draw us a map of the course because the holes are not marked with numbers. There are also no sandtraps and no water. But there is are horses and basically the fairways are parallel to eachother so that at any given time there is usually someone else playing their ball off of your fairway, but he's facing the other direction. The fairway, by the way is really just grass. You can tell what is not the fairway even though it is also only just grass because it is only cut every two weeks instead of once a week.




I started to laugh on the first hole thinking this would be good for practice. Plus, it helps me to play golf when it is not so serious and expensive. We played with a friend of ours who, though a well-meaning guy, could not quite adjust to the fact that he would be playing nine holes (18 holes means just playing hte course twice) in Bumblefuck Germany basically on some extra farm land. I say if a rooster is cockadoodledooing not more than three meters from you, you should probably put all of your sacred golfing rules in your pocket until the next course. If you can smell horse shit and actually see which horse is shitting and the hole is exactly a straight line 220 meters in front of you, maybe you don't need three practice swings. We ended up having to let three groups play through us as we obeyed all the whoever has the longest distance to the hole plays first rules. The irony is that our more sophisticated golfer friend ended up losing 9 balls, that's one for each hole, as the unmowed grass (of DEATH!) got the best of him. Alexander and I didn't lose any balls. Plus, we discovered that we can play golf in our own town and see the country-side at the same time.