A lot of times when I'm wandering through this strange Super Mario phase called "my life", I tend to think out loud. "It sure would be nice to find this or that thing", or "I should probably see a doctor about xyz", or "I heard that this or that band is coming to town", and so on and so forth. Most of the time the Luigis and Goombas of my world either nod, ignore me, or respond, "yeah I've been looking for one too, I saw an ad online" or "such-and-such is a good website for that, I found a great doctor through them" or "that's so-and-so's favorite band, he'll be so excited".
Then you have the name-droppers.
The people who can get you in any door, a lower price on any object, a superior service or product, faster/bigger/better this-that-or-the-other thing, if you just mention their names.
Example 1
Person A: "I'm thinking of going to White Trash tomorrow for a burger and a beer." (fairly straightforward activity, requires no outside assistance)
Pathetic Name-Dropper: "Oh my god the servers there are so fucking rude but if you find Wally, he runs the place, he's an American? We used to snort coke together, back when I traveled with his band. Say hi to him for me and tell him you want to sit at table 46, you get the best view of the stage and you're right next to the bar so you never have to wait more than two minutes for a drink." (forget that Wally is busy working and doesn't give two shits if you're his grandmother, you're going to get seated where he has space, and the burger/beer is going to taste/cost the same one way or the other, withouth involving a complete cokehead stranger)
Example 2
Person A: "I need a new tattoo."
PND: (without bothering to ask what kind, how big, on which part of the body) "Go down to Flaming Hearts and tell Johnny I said hi, he'll give you one for free. He still owes me from that time I washed all of his dishes after a live-band kegger at his house."
Person A: "You really think he's going to give me a free tattoo... a tattoo that could cost hundreds of dollars... because you washed up some cups? Don't you think he'd rather spend that time, you know, making money?"
PND: (eyes glaze over)
Example 3
Person A: "I hear Copenhagen is lovely in the spring, I might go up for a weekend."
PND: "Oh! I have a friend there! Let me call her up, I'm sure you can stay at her place, she'll show you around, I'll arrange everything."
Person A: "Um... That's OK... I was sort of just thinking I'd stay in a hostel and walk around the city a bit with a map or something." (not to mention how creepy, awkward, and inconvenient it would be to sleep in the home of a stranger to which you have no key)
PND: "You haaaaaaaaaave to see it through the eyes of a local, though! Oh and you absolutely must go to Museum X, on Boat Trip Y, and to Nightclub Z! You and so-and-so can meet up for lunch and drinks and then she'll show you around."
Person A: "Really, that's not necessary. I'll be fine, but thanks for the offer."
PND: (desperate now) "It's no bother! Don't worry, I'll make sure to meddle in your trip in every way shape and form, thus depriving you of any choice in the matter whatsoever!"
Person A: "Good day."
PND: (sobbing) "Please!!!"
Person A: "I said GOOD DAY!"
And God forbid you should ever let it slip to PND that you like music or know how to read. PND will always have a laundry list of bands you ABSOLUTELY MUST LISTEN TO RIGHT FUCKING NOW or books that anyone who considers themselves a modern intellectual (but what if we don't?) has read. Nothing is going to get you out of having to endure a book or band that PND has decided you must read or listen to. Just pretend to be tone-deaf and illiterate; it will save you a heap of time reading and listening to shit in which you have zero interest.
I know that people are just "trying to help". And it's not that I dislike recommendations, suggestions or tips. I think it's grand that you've been there before and can tell me that this or that thing is overrated or overpriced. What I don't really understand is why you believe that my tastes and preferences will be exactly the same as yours. As a matter of fact, my tastes and preferences differ wildly from those of even my closest friends and relatives. I like to do my shit, my way, which is why I like traveling and shopping alone.
No matter. Helpfulness is always well-meant. But when the offer of the "help" suddenly and mysteriously becomes a catalyst for all your name-dropping stories, I begin to question your motives. Not that at 27 years old I would ever DARE walk into an establishment, any establishment, and say, "Hi there, my name is Odessa, you've never met me but I was wondering if I could just sort of wander around backstage/in your kitchen/drive your car/have something for free? I am the acquaintance of an acquaintance of yours--we might as well be related by blood." I don't think so.
Furthermore, PNDs often neglect to ask you if you've got a plan of your own. You could have a thing fairly figured out when PND decides to rearrange everything for you according to their past experiences, but that doesn't matter. PND knows what's best for you because she knows what's best for her and if that's not what's best for everybody then what is the world coming to, anyway?
Sometimes I think I should just keep my mouth shut. But the good thing about PNDs is that they tend to give themselves away fairly quickly, having recommendations for everything that you don't need help choosing, like tampons, radio stations, and books. Sigh... it makes you wonder who the people are who really do benefit from this guidance...?
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
TIPS - To Insure Prompt Service?
One of the biggest cultural differences between Berlin and my native hometown of Seattle can be observed in the art of dining out.
Germans, and German men in particular, are probably the cheapest (and rudest) breed of human being ever known to man. My boyfriend is even cheaper than my father, and that is speaking volumes. My man will scrimp 5 cents here and 20 cents there to take home a more inexpensive, but usually inferior product from the store--and then wonder how he wound up with such a worthless piece of crap. On the extremely rare occasion that we get to go to dinner, I tremble when the bill comes, because I know a huge heaping helping of cheap is about to be served up to the waiter, unless I proactively intervene and prevent this cringe-worthy disaster.
As a kid in a single-child, single-parent household, we went out to eat A LOT. I had been well-versed in the practices and norms of restaurant dining before starting first grade. Eating out really isn't that difficult, but even seasoned veterans like my own mother slip up sometimes. There are a only a couple of basic rules of thumb, but if you break any of them, it is likely that I will never willingly sit down to a meal with you again. Here are some of my ground rules, adapted both for the West Coast of the United States and for Berlin, starting from the moment you walk in the door:
1. If you don't like the table to which your server is leading you, alert them to that fact before you sit down and get water and silverware and that. Don't sit down and then whine and point to the table by the window after you've already eaten half the chips and salsa and gotten smudge marks all over everything. Now the server has had to unnecessarily set up TWO tables for your party. Time is money.
2. Never. Ever. Argue with the server. If you want a substitution and he can't do it, or to do it will cost you extra, don't fucking set up a picket line in front of the restaurant until the manager comes. You are not in any way special to this person. He has just informed you of the restaurant's policy. If you truly believe you have been discriminated against or something, then discreetly ask to speak to the manager, and don't make him come to your table. Go speak to him somewhere privately and prevent putting him, your dining companions, your server, and yourself on display for the rest of the restaurant to gawk at.
3. If you don't like your food because something is wrong with it (cooked improperly, shard of glass found, isn't what you ordered, is too spicy) then send it back after you've taken A BITE OR TWO and decided it is unsatisfactory. If you don't like your food because you think the beans came out of a can (and the menu doesn't promise fresh beans) then suck it up. Either choke it down, trade with someone at the table who doesn't believe they are the Queen of Fucking England, or quietly set it aside. Who knows, the server might even ask you why you're not eating it, and maybe if you tell him, he will get something else for you. You may not send back the food because it doesn't conform to your unrealistically high standards, especially if you're at a $10 a plate establishment--if you know exactly how you want your food, and are unwilling to settle for anything less/different, then you should stay at home and cook the meal yourself (what I often do for this very reason). You may not eat half, most, or all of it, and then decide you would like to have it for free. The point is not whether it can be sold again. The point is whether your complaint is genuine, or whether you just like to take advantage of sycophantic General Managers who will comp in a heartbeat just to shut you up.
4. Tip. If the service is bad, tip 5 - 10%. If the service was average, tip 10 - 15%. If the service was good, tip 15 - 20%. If you want to bang the waiter or convince him that you are a stalker, tip 20 - 25%. I know the temptation to overtip can be strong, but seriously you just wind up looking like a kissass or a groupie. Unless it's his birthday/you can see he's stressed out but still doing a fantastic job/it's Christmas then 20% is probably the most you should tip. Not tipping is not an option, unless you were verbally insulted and found AIDS in your soup. "Funny" tipping, like tipping all in nickels, or leaving ten rolls of pennies, or just leaving a dime to show how displeased you were with the service, is something that no one over the age of 14 does. Ever.
Germans, and German men in particular, are probably the cheapest (and rudest) breed of human being ever known to man. My boyfriend is even cheaper than my father, and that is speaking volumes. My man will scrimp 5 cents here and 20 cents there to take home a more inexpensive, but usually inferior product from the store--and then wonder how he wound up with such a worthless piece of crap. On the extremely rare occasion that we get to go to dinner, I tremble when the bill comes, because I know a huge heaping helping of cheap is about to be served up to the waiter, unless I proactively intervene and prevent this cringe-worthy disaster.
As a kid in a single-child, single-parent household, we went out to eat A LOT. I had been well-versed in the practices and norms of restaurant dining before starting first grade. Eating out really isn't that difficult, but even seasoned veterans like my own mother slip up sometimes. There are a only a couple of basic rules of thumb, but if you break any of them, it is likely that I will never willingly sit down to a meal with you again. Here are some of my ground rules, adapted both for the West Coast of the United States and for Berlin, starting from the moment you walk in the door:
In the Super-Cool, Laid-Back Northwest
1. If you don't like the table to which your server is leading you, alert them to that fact before you sit down and get water and silverware and that. Don't sit down and then whine and point to the table by the window after you've already eaten half the chips and salsa and gotten smudge marks all over everything. Now the server has had to unnecessarily set up TWO tables for your party. Time is money.
2. Never. Ever. Argue with the server. If you want a substitution and he can't do it, or to do it will cost you extra, don't fucking set up a picket line in front of the restaurant until the manager comes. You are not in any way special to this person. He has just informed you of the restaurant's policy. If you truly believe you have been discriminated against or something, then discreetly ask to speak to the manager, and don't make him come to your table. Go speak to him somewhere privately and prevent putting him, your dining companions, your server, and yourself on display for the rest of the restaurant to gawk at.
3. If you don't like your food because something is wrong with it (cooked improperly, shard of glass found, isn't what you ordered, is too spicy) then send it back after you've taken A BITE OR TWO and decided it is unsatisfactory. If you don't like your food because you think the beans came out of a can (and the menu doesn't promise fresh beans) then suck it up. Either choke it down, trade with someone at the table who doesn't believe they are the Queen of Fucking England, or quietly set it aside. Who knows, the server might even ask you why you're not eating it, and maybe if you tell him, he will get something else for you. You may not send back the food because it doesn't conform to your unrealistically high standards, especially if you're at a $10 a plate establishment--if you know exactly how you want your food, and are unwilling to settle for anything less/different, then you should stay at home and cook the meal yourself (what I often do for this very reason). You may not eat half, most, or all of it, and then decide you would like to have it for free. The point is not whether it can be sold again. The point is whether your complaint is genuine, or whether you just like to take advantage of sycophantic General Managers who will comp in a heartbeat just to shut you up.
4. Tip. If the service is bad, tip 5 - 10%. If the service was average, tip 10 - 15%. If the service was good, tip 15 - 20%. If you want to bang the waiter or convince him that you are a stalker, tip 20 - 25%. I know the temptation to overtip can be strong, but seriously you just wind up looking like a kissass or a groupie. Unless it's his birthday/you can see he's stressed out but still doing a fantastic job/it's Christmas then 20% is probably the most you should tip. Not tipping is not an option, unless you were verbally insulted and found AIDS in your soup. "Funny" tipping, like tipping all in nickels, or leaving ten rolls of pennies, or just leaving a dime to show how displeased you were with the service, is something that no one over the age of 14 does. Ever.
In Über-Cool, Entspannende Berlin
1. Seat yourself. It doesn't matter where you sit. No one will tell you where to sit, and no one cares where you pick, unless they'd been using that table to take their breaks at (the staff's comfort will ALWAYS come before yours).
2. Wait for up to half an hour for someone to come talk to you. It is not acceptable to become upset about the wait. It is über uncool and the people you are with will look at you as if you had complained about spots on the stemware or the silver being improperly polished (completely bourgeouis behavior and never tolerated by anyone, ever).
3. When the server comes, nine times out of ten, she will be a complete bitch, will not know anything that is not written on the menu, and will act like you are wasting her time, even and especially if the place is empty. She will forget at least three things and you will have to go up to the counter/bar area, ask for it, wait for it, and bring it back yourself. The server will not express any remorse about this.
4. If you don't like the food, tough. I once waited an hour and a half for a dish to arrive at my table cold. Our server had been, for the past hour, flirting with old guys for tips and making sure they were comfortable--going so far as lugging around heating towers and leaning over their table a lot--while completely ignoring us. I KNEW that the food would be cold when it got to our table--it was painfully obvious that she was fucking around and not doing her job. When the food arrived, I didn't even take a bite out of it; I stuck a finger in the middle of it and told the server I wouldn't be paying for cold food and that she could take it back. She demanded that I "speak to her in a different way" because I was evidently being disrespectful about paying for ice-cold food. My dining companion was mortified. The girl DID NOT comp the dish or offer to bring me another one. We ACTUALLY PAID for the appetizer and drinks we'd had while waiting a full 90 minutes for our food. The girl however was in tears and her co-workers looked at us as if we had beaten her across the face with the cold meal. Moral of the story: if you don't like what you got--tough.
5. At the end of the meal, if you have any jingly change left over, you may leave it as a tip. For example, if your bill was €38.42, you may leave the .58 as a tip, and the server will actually thank you. On the other hand, if you do not choose to leave this .58, then you are a dick and the server's eyes will shoot nuclear bombs in your general direction. On the third hand, if you come from a tipping country, like I do, and tip say, six bucks on a €38 tab (unheard of in these parts) the server will take you to be the fool you are and sort of shrug off your existence, maybe feel a little sorry for you. Do not expect any gross displays of gratitude. Although these people make €5 an hour and depend on their tips as does any server anywhere, acting grateful goes against their beliefs and you may also be unfavorably marked as a groupie. Stick to tipping €3 or under, even if your bill is in the thousands of Euros. Rewarding good service is an alien concept here and disregarded as just more clueless, touristy behavior.
6. If you are unhappy with your dining experience, you must remember that you--in all probability--got what you paid for.
I used to cook a few times a month when I lived in Seattle because going out was such a pleasant experience and way of life. So in a way, Berlin's horrible, HORRIBLE restaurant scene has been beneficial to my life, because I cook literally every day now. I've learned tons of new dishes and am a whiz at serving and cleaning.
Too bad no one bothers to tip me for the effort.
1. Seat yourself. It doesn't matter where you sit. No one will tell you where to sit, and no one cares where you pick, unless they'd been using that table to take their breaks at (the staff's comfort will ALWAYS come before yours).
2. Wait for up to half an hour for someone to come talk to you. It is not acceptable to become upset about the wait. It is über uncool and the people you are with will look at you as if you had complained about spots on the stemware or the silver being improperly polished (completely bourgeouis behavior and never tolerated by anyone, ever).
3. When the server comes, nine times out of ten, she will be a complete bitch, will not know anything that is not written on the menu, and will act like you are wasting her time, even and especially if the place is empty. She will forget at least three things and you will have to go up to the counter/bar area, ask for it, wait for it, and bring it back yourself. The server will not express any remorse about this.
4. If you don't like the food, tough. I once waited an hour and a half for a dish to arrive at my table cold. Our server had been, for the past hour, flirting with old guys for tips and making sure they were comfortable--going so far as lugging around heating towers and leaning over their table a lot--while completely ignoring us. I KNEW that the food would be cold when it got to our table--it was painfully obvious that she was fucking around and not doing her job. When the food arrived, I didn't even take a bite out of it; I stuck a finger in the middle of it and told the server I wouldn't be paying for cold food and that she could take it back. She demanded that I "speak to her in a different way" because I was evidently being disrespectful about paying for ice-cold food. My dining companion was mortified. The girl DID NOT comp the dish or offer to bring me another one. We ACTUALLY PAID for the appetizer and drinks we'd had while waiting a full 90 minutes for our food. The girl however was in tears and her co-workers looked at us as if we had beaten her across the face with the cold meal. Moral of the story: if you don't like what you got--tough.
5. At the end of the meal, if you have any jingly change left over, you may leave it as a tip. For example, if your bill was €38.42, you may leave the .58 as a tip, and the server will actually thank you. On the other hand, if you do not choose to leave this .58, then you are a dick and the server's eyes will shoot nuclear bombs in your general direction. On the third hand, if you come from a tipping country, like I do, and tip say, six bucks on a €38 tab (unheard of in these parts) the server will take you to be the fool you are and sort of shrug off your existence, maybe feel a little sorry for you. Do not expect any gross displays of gratitude. Although these people make €5 an hour and depend on their tips as does any server anywhere, acting grateful goes against their beliefs and you may also be unfavorably marked as a groupie. Stick to tipping €3 or under, even if your bill is in the thousands of Euros. Rewarding good service is an alien concept here and disregarded as just more clueless, touristy behavior.
6. If you are unhappy with your dining experience, you must remember that you--in all probability--got what you paid for.
I used to cook a few times a month when I lived in Seattle because going out was such a pleasant experience and way of life. So in a way, Berlin's horrible, HORRIBLE restaurant scene has been beneficial to my life, because I cook literally every day now. I've learned tons of new dishes and am a whiz at serving and cleaning.
Too bad no one bothers to tip me for the effort.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Suicide Is Totally Not the New Black
Suicide is soooooo 90s.
I read a comment the other day on a blog featuring a picture of a girl in hideous pants who was smoking a cigarette. The comment said, "People still smoke?" Who says that? Yes, people still smoke. There do exist people who you know, are addicted to smoking? People who don't smoke Lucky Strikes just because Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco, and Is Toasted? What's next... "People still drink?" Indeed. Ten years after all you hipster wanna-bes have supplanted six PBRs per night in an overpriced scene bar with one glass of Shiraz per week with dinner, there will still be people in your graduating class who drink to forget. Not everyone is going through a phase, could you be any more naive?
I must admit that when I heard Siobhan* broke down into tears and confessed her suicidal thoughts, I marvelled at the passé-ness of wanting to kill yourself. You couldn't get more cliché if you wanted to--getting shitfaced drunk, dancing and singing, being pushed in a shopping cart to your favorite bar, laughing and playing with complete strangers, having the time of your life, then slumping against the wall in a crowded club toilet on a Saturday night and talking about ending it all. Streaky mascara tears and requests for "one more drink" while you seriously consider what the point of anything is.
Yaaawwwwn.
I'm glad I wasn't there for that. I don't reckon I have a lot of time for suicidals, and certainly not ones with no major complaints. Your husband didn't leave you for his 22-year-old secretary. You're not losing your house. You didn't gamble away the family fortune. Your dog isn't dead. All you've really got to deal with is sorting out why you're here on this spinning rock and how you plan on making sense of it all. In what way you plan on "organizing your personality" (love that term) around the ostensible senselessness of the human existence. I'm glad that I just pushed the shopping cart, then took myself home to eat some pasta and sleep off the vodka.
What happened later was even more miss-worthy. At the second bar, Lucretia* gets a phone call which prompts her to hail a taxi and drag Siobhan and Mary* along with her on her crusade to prevent a FOURTH party from offing herself that night. When they arrive they notice the girl looks a bit sleepy and has cut marks all over her arms. So what do Mary and Siobhan to do give the girl a reason to live? Thrust their tongues down her, and each other's throats--just to give an authentic Foxfire-esque edge to the whole sordid saga. Oh, to be a fly on the wall of that room. The stench of three sweaty drunk bitches with rivers of make-up oozing down their necks coupled with the odor of desperation, blood and aloe vera moisturizing strip. Mary evidently wrapped up the evening by delivering the sound, life-affirming advice that only a 22-year-old who was raised on a horse farm can give a suicidal stranger from an urban hellhole.
Now Mary is my good friend and told me all about this nonsense the next day. When she finished her story, she exclaimed in a self-satisfied tone, "Isn't that crazy? I mean, wow."
I said: "The only crazy thing about that story is that you let your fool self get dragged into a cab at six in the morning to go save the life of some bitch you've never even met. All I know is that if I were trying to kill myself, the last thing in the world that I would want is some girl I've never set eyes on trying to talk me out of it. Why you involved yourself in that hot-ass mess I really don't know. I hope you learned your lesson."
Allison, to whom I later relayed the highlights of the story, mused, "Who knows? Maybe she does have a reason to kill herself. Maybe she's a child-rapist or something. Some people need to die." I could do nothing but concur.
I reckon suicide is corny as well as out of style, but I am by no means insensitive to the realities of it. There are tons of valid reasons why a person might not want to wake up the next day, but if they're not my good friend or relative, and I know nothing about that person, I am not getting in a cab out to the middle of fucking nowhere and making out with them until ten the next morning. I am going home to eat pasta and sleep off the vodka.
Another friend told me about some men she knew who had succeeded in killing themselves. Knowing already the answer, I asked her how they went about it. One shot himself in the face, the other hung himself. Fairly fail-proof methods of dying. Giving yourself minor lacerations with a Lady Bic or swallowing twenty-five aspirin and a thimble-full of cough syrup just ain't going to cut it. Don't cry for help, ask for it. Call me insensitive, but I really can't be dropping everything every time you want to cry wolf.
I think suicide is horrible. I also believe in God. I also believe that most people with some sort of spiritual awareness are less likely to pretend to want to kill themselves than someone who can't stay sober long enough to contemplate the possibility of an existence divorced from the (ab)use of drugs, alcohol, and prime-time politics. There really is more to life than partying and ideology, but understanding that takes a bit of patience and certainly is not to be worked out while hunched over a filthy sewer of a toilet sniffing moist cocaine through a crumpled €10 bill.
The moral of the story is: smoking, drinking and gambling away the family fortune may not be phases, but wanting to kill yourself probably is. Do me a favor and leave me out of it, unless you want one last shopping-cart ride before you go.
*names changed to protect the sloppy-drunk.
I read a comment the other day on a blog featuring a picture of a girl in hideous pants who was smoking a cigarette. The comment said, "People still smoke?" Who says that? Yes, people still smoke. There do exist people who you know, are addicted to smoking? People who don't smoke Lucky Strikes just because Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco, and Is Toasted? What's next... "People still drink?" Indeed. Ten years after all you hipster wanna-bes have supplanted six PBRs per night in an overpriced scene bar with one glass of Shiraz per week with dinner, there will still be people in your graduating class who drink to forget. Not everyone is going through a phase, could you be any more naive?
I must admit that when I heard Siobhan* broke down into tears and confessed her suicidal thoughts, I marvelled at the passé-ness of wanting to kill yourself. You couldn't get more cliché if you wanted to--getting shitfaced drunk, dancing and singing, being pushed in a shopping cart to your favorite bar, laughing and playing with complete strangers, having the time of your life, then slumping against the wall in a crowded club toilet on a Saturday night and talking about ending it all. Streaky mascara tears and requests for "one more drink" while you seriously consider what the point of anything is.
Yaaawwwwn.
I'm glad I wasn't there for that. I don't reckon I have a lot of time for suicidals, and certainly not ones with no major complaints. Your husband didn't leave you for his 22-year-old secretary. You're not losing your house. You didn't gamble away the family fortune. Your dog isn't dead. All you've really got to deal with is sorting out why you're here on this spinning rock and how you plan on making sense of it all. In what way you plan on "organizing your personality" (love that term) around the ostensible senselessness of the human existence. I'm glad that I just pushed the shopping cart, then took myself home to eat some pasta and sleep off the vodka.
What happened later was even more miss-worthy. At the second bar, Lucretia* gets a phone call which prompts her to hail a taxi and drag Siobhan and Mary* along with her on her crusade to prevent a FOURTH party from offing herself that night. When they arrive they notice the girl looks a bit sleepy and has cut marks all over her arms. So what do Mary and Siobhan to do give the girl a reason to live? Thrust their tongues down her, and each other's throats--just to give an authentic Foxfire-esque edge to the whole sordid saga. Oh, to be a fly on the wall of that room. The stench of three sweaty drunk bitches with rivers of make-up oozing down their necks coupled with the odor of desperation, blood and aloe vera moisturizing strip. Mary evidently wrapped up the evening by delivering the sound, life-affirming advice that only a 22-year-old who was raised on a horse farm can give a suicidal stranger from an urban hellhole.
Now Mary is my good friend and told me all about this nonsense the next day. When she finished her story, she exclaimed in a self-satisfied tone, "Isn't that crazy? I mean, wow."
I said: "The only crazy thing about that story is that you let your fool self get dragged into a cab at six in the morning to go save the life of some bitch you've never even met. All I know is that if I were trying to kill myself, the last thing in the world that I would want is some girl I've never set eyes on trying to talk me out of it. Why you involved yourself in that hot-ass mess I really don't know. I hope you learned your lesson."
Allison, to whom I later relayed the highlights of the story, mused, "Who knows? Maybe she does have a reason to kill herself. Maybe she's a child-rapist or something. Some people need to die." I could do nothing but concur.
I reckon suicide is corny as well as out of style, but I am by no means insensitive to the realities of it. There are tons of valid reasons why a person might not want to wake up the next day, but if they're not my good friend or relative, and I know nothing about that person, I am not getting in a cab out to the middle of fucking nowhere and making out with them until ten the next morning. I am going home to eat pasta and sleep off the vodka.
Another friend told me about some men she knew who had succeeded in killing themselves. Knowing already the answer, I asked her how they went about it. One shot himself in the face, the other hung himself. Fairly fail-proof methods of dying. Giving yourself minor lacerations with a Lady Bic or swallowing twenty-five aspirin and a thimble-full of cough syrup just ain't going to cut it. Don't cry for help, ask for it. Call me insensitive, but I really can't be dropping everything every time you want to cry wolf.
I think suicide is horrible. I also believe in God. I also believe that most people with some sort of spiritual awareness are less likely to pretend to want to kill themselves than someone who can't stay sober long enough to contemplate the possibility of an existence divorced from the (ab)use of drugs, alcohol, and prime-time politics. There really is more to life than partying and ideology, but understanding that takes a bit of patience and certainly is not to be worked out while hunched over a filthy sewer of a toilet sniffing moist cocaine through a crumpled €10 bill.
The moral of the story is: smoking, drinking and gambling away the family fortune may not be phases, but wanting to kill yourself probably is. Do me a favor and leave me out of it, unless you want one last shopping-cart ride before you go.
*names changed to protect the sloppy-drunk.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
A Fully Qualified Layabout
Being unemployed is ass, but the upside of it is that everyone and his dog is out of work at the moment (misery loves company)--even if the dog has a double degree in something smart, like architecture, and not something stupid, like Teaching English as a Foreign Language.
Berlin also happens to be one of the worst places a retail-slave-turned-pretend-intellectual-with-a-very-limited-visa could be while on the job-hunt. There are a crapton of English teaching jobs, but just like salmon or airline tickets, you have to snatch them up at precisely the right moment, or else both the quality and quantity are either faltering or outright lacking. But even salmon season lasts longer than a couple of weeks. In Berlin, because everyone is certified to teach English (and usually with much better/smarter-sounding certifications than mine), you have to be bam! front and center, some time between July 29th and August 1st, in order to be not too early and not too late to sign contracts, get basic training, and a full class schedule. Otherwise you're up shit creek in early March, applying to companies whose total vacancies comprise of three classes twice a month but if you'd like to sign a contract binding you to them until July, and don't need to eat or pay bills until the next school year, maybe they'd have a few more classes for you in September?
No thanks.
Since September I have been "retired" from the Berlin English-teaching scene. Too many fishermen, and just not enough fish. I've done a seminar, and worked in a kitchen, but for the most part I've just been... gainfully unemployed.
Fast-forward to March 2, 2009. I am no longer gainfully unemployed. I am now gainlessly unemployed. So when I'm woken up by some yahoo in a vertically-striped shirt, blue jeans and brown loafers on the other side of my phone, asking me to interview for a €400 job washing dishes part time, I practically oozed with enthusiasm.
Went there today, didn't get the job, cos I'm illegal. That's life.
When I got home today from not-working, I thought to myself, "I ought to just go up and stand in front of the shopping center and stand around drinking cheap beers and smoking rollies. But because I'm not German, I, as an able-bodied, childless person, cannot apply for welfare and stand around all day getting drunk and eating pommes with tiny plastic forks."
But--as I so often do--I digress.
The job listings here are something akin to madness. There are--literally--thousands of jobs available in the fields of which I have pooled most of my expertise (haha). Retail, waitressing, bartending, barista...ing. I can do all of that.
The catch? To do any of those things here, most employers wanna see a certificate of completion. Not like, a mixology diploma, but like, a piece of paper that says you worked for three years at half-pay "learning" how to make a fucking latte. That attests and affirms that you are now a professional and therefore worthy of being hired on at €5 an hour and no tips in their establishment.
Wow. And I could have sworn I learned how to make everything on a coffee-shop menu in under eight short hours.
I could have sworn I learned how to use a cash register in five minutes, and had perfected it in a week.
I could have sworn that even a monkey can stock a shelf, and a polar bear can count change.
Three years? Three years of your fucking life, gone, to prove that you are now a professional juice-presser? Apprenticeships are either for jobs with no official regulation (like tattooing, body piercing, and shamanism) or which just really require a lot of hands-on experience in order to get right on the first try (like plumbing, carpentry or electric work). I may also say that I feel that jobs which genuinely require apprenticing are usually good, honest, humble careers--note that word, career. Bussing tables is not a career. Working the cash register at the grocery store is not a career. I mean, even a bank-teller is not a proper career. You are just doing a job that any monkey can do. Or polar bear.
I don't mind my job requiring only slightly more skill than can be offered by zoo animals, nor do I mind commanding half the respect afforded to said beasts. It doesn't matter to me if I scrub toilets or flip burgers. I'm not too proud for that. But I'm also not planning on doing any apprenticeships to prove I can do it. Not any time soon.
A friend of mine recently applied to a small hotel for a position as a chaimbermaid. The owner of the modest inn was doubtful that the girl would like working there very much, because the pay was only €800 before taxes, and with only €620 take-home, most people would rather just collect unemployment. My friend, being German-born but Canadian-raised, found the idea of staying home doing nothing for doing-nothing's sake distasteful and told the lady so, but the lady wasn't buying it. She'd confessed that she'd actually rather find a Polish or Czech immigrant to work for her--someone not so well provided-for by the social system.
Everyone likes to shit on America and our social services system ("Did you know a baby dies of AIDS every three seconds in the States? It's true. It's the highest cause of infant mortality in America, right after high cholesterol and gunshot wounds"), but at least when healthy, childless Americans are out of work, they, like... look for a job. No 18-year-old with "too much of a conscience to work at McDonald's" is going to fund his kind bud and used-bookstore habits from his welfare check.
And after all this complaining... I still don't have a job.
Time to head up to the shopping center and knock back a few lukewarm ones.
Berlin also happens to be one of the worst places a retail-slave-turned-pretend-intellectual-with-a-very-limited-visa could be while on the job-hunt. There are a crapton of English teaching jobs, but just like salmon or airline tickets, you have to snatch them up at precisely the right moment, or else both the quality and quantity are either faltering or outright lacking. But even salmon season lasts longer than a couple of weeks. In Berlin, because everyone is certified to teach English (and usually with much better/smarter-sounding certifications than mine), you have to be bam! front and center, some time between July 29th and August 1st, in order to be not too early and not too late to sign contracts, get basic training, and a full class schedule. Otherwise you're up shit creek in early March, applying to companies whose total vacancies comprise of three classes twice a month but if you'd like to sign a contract binding you to them until July, and don't need to eat or pay bills until the next school year, maybe they'd have a few more classes for you in September?
No thanks.
Since September I have been "retired" from the Berlin English-teaching scene. Too many fishermen, and just not enough fish. I've done a seminar, and worked in a kitchen, but for the most part I've just been... gainfully unemployed.
Fast-forward to March 2, 2009. I am no longer gainfully unemployed. I am now gainlessly unemployed. So when I'm woken up by some yahoo in a vertically-striped shirt, blue jeans and brown loafers on the other side of my phone, asking me to interview for a €400 job washing dishes part time, I practically oozed with enthusiasm.
Went there today, didn't get the job, cos I'm illegal. That's life.
When I got home today from not-working, I thought to myself, "I ought to just go up and stand in front of the shopping center and stand around drinking cheap beers and smoking rollies. But because I'm not German, I, as an able-bodied, childless person, cannot apply for welfare and stand around all day getting drunk and eating pommes with tiny plastic forks."
But--as I so often do--I digress.
The job listings here are something akin to madness. There are--literally--thousands of jobs available in the fields of which I have pooled most of my expertise (haha). Retail, waitressing, bartending, barista...ing. I can do all of that.
The catch? To do any of those things here, most employers wanna see a certificate of completion. Not like, a mixology diploma, but like, a piece of paper that says you worked for three years at half-pay "learning" how to make a fucking latte. That attests and affirms that you are now a professional and therefore worthy of being hired on at €5 an hour and no tips in their establishment.
Wow. And I could have sworn I learned how to make everything on a coffee-shop menu in under eight short hours.
I could have sworn I learned how to use a cash register in five minutes, and had perfected it in a week.
I could have sworn that even a monkey can stock a shelf, and a polar bear can count change.
Three years? Three years of your fucking life, gone, to prove that you are now a professional juice-presser? Apprenticeships are either for jobs with no official regulation (like tattooing, body piercing, and shamanism) or which just really require a lot of hands-on experience in order to get right on the first try (like plumbing, carpentry or electric work). I may also say that I feel that jobs which genuinely require apprenticing are usually good, honest, humble careers--note that word, career. Bussing tables is not a career. Working the cash register at the grocery store is not a career. I mean, even a bank-teller is not a proper career. You are just doing a job that any monkey can do. Or polar bear.
I don't mind my job requiring only slightly more skill than can be offered by zoo animals, nor do I mind commanding half the respect afforded to said beasts. It doesn't matter to me if I scrub toilets or flip burgers. I'm not too proud for that. But I'm also not planning on doing any apprenticeships to prove I can do it. Not any time soon.
A friend of mine recently applied to a small hotel for a position as a chaimbermaid. The owner of the modest inn was doubtful that the girl would like working there very much, because the pay was only €800 before taxes, and with only €620 take-home, most people would rather just collect unemployment. My friend, being German-born but Canadian-raised, found the idea of staying home doing nothing for doing-nothing's sake distasteful and told the lady so, but the lady wasn't buying it. She'd confessed that she'd actually rather find a Polish or Czech immigrant to work for her--someone not so well provided-for by the social system.
Everyone likes to shit on America and our social services system ("Did you know a baby dies of AIDS every three seconds in the States? It's true. It's the highest cause of infant mortality in America, right after high cholesterol and gunshot wounds"), but at least when healthy, childless Americans are out of work, they, like... look for a job. No 18-year-old with "too much of a conscience to work at McDonald's" is going to fund his kind bud and used-bookstore habits from his welfare check.
And after all this complaining... I still don't have a job.
Time to head up to the shopping center and knock back a few lukewarm ones.
Friday, February 20, 2009
The Grass Is Always Greener--And More Desirably Situated--On The Other Side
So, Berlin. A city of neighborhoods, just like my hometown of Seattle. Except the difference in Seattle is that the neighborhoods are characterized more by who patronizes which clubs, bars, and restaurants; and what sort of view of the Cascade/Olympic Mountains, Elliot Bay, or Lake Washington they command. Or how hard it is to get to work when it snows; which unscalable hills it contains; how many Satanists, LaRouchies or Republicans live there. Its Trader Joe : Burger King ratio. And so on.
But in Berlin, the bezirks, or kiezes, are defined more by lines on a map. As a matter of fact you can live right across the street from a different kiez. You may live in Neukölln (as I do) and have the same bike guy as someone who lives in Kreuzberg. But the most visible difference between parts of town are, of course, their political standings during the years 1947 - 1990.
The former East is full of old, gray, deteriorating buildings with improvised toilets (referred to as Altbaus) and weird communist ideas of new buildings, which usually take up two city blocks and are made of uniform concrete slabs which have only in recent years been painted happy shiny rainbow colors in an effort to stave off the stench of Stalinism. The former West is much more densely inhabited and has its share of renovated Baroque-era Altbaus and newer buildings that look like every other building in America built after 1965 i.e. boring but suitable to your average capitalistic tastes. But none of this is the point. The point is that nearly everyone in this whole damn city lives somewhere cooler than I do.
Do you ever go for walks in your neighborhood and wish that you lived in the building with the blue door, or the one with the twisty baroque staircase, or the one on the tree-lined promenade, or the one next to your favorite bar? Chances are, if you live in North America, the answer is: not so much. Everything looks the same, nothing has any cool old pre-WWII charm about it. Seattle in particular is a developer's heaven; any time a single chip of paint falls off of a structure there are cranes on the spot to tear it down and put up a new stainless-and-glass monstrosity. Or they drench the new building in a coat of paint meant to closely resemble the shade of burnt sienna cast on sun-bleached stucco at sunset in Tuscany. Barf.
This town is great because most of the buildings have some sort of individual flavor. The 'Stoph's ego, as he picked out and furnished our apartment before I got here, always seems to suffer a blow when, outside of a foreign building, I jump up and down and clap my hands and exclaim that if we ever move, we're totally going to move here. With a dreamy expression and eyes like saucers, I envision coming home from whichever fancy-pants grocery store is in the immediate vicinity, heaving open the impossibly heavy wrought-iron and glass door, gliding lightly through the fresco-tiled foyer, tripping up the carpet-clad steps to my third-floor apartment, inhaling the fresh scent of hardwood, enjoying the luxury of 14-foot high ceilings, and placing my groceries on the spacious marble counter next to the window which looks out on the vine-draped and lilac-scented Garden of Eden we call a courtyard.
Then reality sinks in. I live in a 37 meter squared flat, on the ground floor, with cheap carpet and no counter space, that someone tried to break into not long ago, and which smells funny if you don't air it out every other day.
Maybe someday I really will live a posh life in the neighborhood across the street.
But in Berlin, the bezirks, or kiezes, are defined more by lines on a map. As a matter of fact you can live right across the street from a different kiez. You may live in Neukölln (as I do) and have the same bike guy as someone who lives in Kreuzberg. But the most visible difference between parts of town are, of course, their political standings during the years 1947 - 1990.
The former East is full of old, gray, deteriorating buildings with improvised toilets (referred to as Altbaus) and weird communist ideas of new buildings, which usually take up two city blocks and are made of uniform concrete slabs which have only in recent years been painted happy shiny rainbow colors in an effort to stave off the stench of Stalinism. The former West is much more densely inhabited and has its share of renovated Baroque-era Altbaus and newer buildings that look like every other building in America built after 1965 i.e. boring but suitable to your average capitalistic tastes. But none of this is the point. The point is that nearly everyone in this whole damn city lives somewhere cooler than I do.
Do you ever go for walks in your neighborhood and wish that you lived in the building with the blue door, or the one with the twisty baroque staircase, or the one on the tree-lined promenade, or the one next to your favorite bar? Chances are, if you live in North America, the answer is: not so much. Everything looks the same, nothing has any cool old pre-WWII charm about it. Seattle in particular is a developer's heaven; any time a single chip of paint falls off of a structure there are cranes on the spot to tear it down and put up a new stainless-and-glass monstrosity. Or they drench the new building in a coat of paint meant to closely resemble the shade of burnt sienna cast on sun-bleached stucco at sunset in Tuscany. Barf.
This town is great because most of the buildings have some sort of individual flavor. The 'Stoph's ego, as he picked out and furnished our apartment before I got here, always seems to suffer a blow when, outside of a foreign building, I jump up and down and clap my hands and exclaim that if we ever move, we're totally going to move here. With a dreamy expression and eyes like saucers, I envision coming home from whichever fancy-pants grocery store is in the immediate vicinity, heaving open the impossibly heavy wrought-iron and glass door, gliding lightly through the fresco-tiled foyer, tripping up the carpet-clad steps to my third-floor apartment, inhaling the fresh scent of hardwood, enjoying the luxury of 14-foot high ceilings, and placing my groceries on the spacious marble counter next to the window which looks out on the vine-draped and lilac-scented Garden of Eden we call a courtyard.
Then reality sinks in. I live in a 37 meter squared flat, on the ground floor, with cheap carpet and no counter space, that someone tried to break into not long ago, and which smells funny if you don't air it out every other day.
Maybe someday I really will live a posh life in the neighborhood across the street.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Alarm! Alarm! Danger, Danger!! The "Digital Age" Is Becoming the Ruination of Society!!
First of all, how absolutely short-sighted and vain is it to name the age you live in while you live in it? I mean there are like Protozoic and Jurassic; Bronze, Iron and Stone Ages or whatever, with an Ice Age or two thrown in there for variety and flavor, but you don't get to make up a new Age while anyone who lived in it is still alive. And you also don't do it so your current generation can fellate itself while congratulating itself on how innovative and cutting edge it is. Like, I don't seem to recall there being a Compass Age, or a Poetry Age, or say, a Democracy Age, then a Christianity Age, or a Scientologist Age, or the Plastic Age maybe, how about we throw in the Analog Age and the Sitcom Age or the SUV Age.
You don't get to call it an Age until it changes some basic tenet of everyday life, all across the human race. I tell you what--when every last Honduran and Tibetan and Papua New Guinean can't function day to day without their iPhone then I might concede that we are living in a Digital Age. More than anything we are living in the Capitalistic Age, and every last person on earth can feel the effects of that one.
However! I digress.
The Digital Age is a convenient scapegoat, but not a very good one, if you bother to think about it for longer than the two seconds it takes to spout off your "subversive" viewpoints. Before the computer and cell phone made people anti-social, it was video games. Before video games it was headphones and answering machines. But computers, cellphones, video games, headphones and answering machines don't actually sound like very sturdy beasts of burden if you're looking for them to lug around the blame for why you'd rather text an absent party than look at the person in front of you. And it would be difficult to prove that these instruments of the "Digital Age" do anything but bring us closer together--sometimes closer than we'd rather be.
Social networking sites are fantastic examples. I can keep up with people I never see anymore, or haven't seen in a while, or wouldn't even think about were it not for my Facebook page. I've gotten back in contact with people I thought I'd never see again but as we were both so accessible through the internet, the friendship will be saved or re-kindled.
And remember when you would leave the house alone, and stay alone until you either met someone on the street or got back home? You didn't have all of your friends living in your pocket, accessible at the touch of a button. If you went out to run errands no one could ask you at the spur of the moment to come have a drink. You would get home from your tasks, listen to your machine, and find out you had been two blocks away from where all your friends had been congregating and have now missed out on the best kickin' it session of the year, the one that will be constantly referred to from now until forever... all because no one had a cellular leash around your neck.
Sometimes I think about the amount of time I spend on MySpace and Facebook and wonder if it's all a bit unhealthy. But the fact remains that I spend the majority of my socializing doing face-time with friends who live in the same city as I do. I have a cell phone but I much prefer talking in person--I actually really hate talking on the phone, whether at home or out and about. Without my phone and the text message I would lead a pretty predictable and unspontaneous social life.
Obsessed gizmo fans are nothing new. Guns don't kill people, coffee doesn't maliciously scald, televisions don't make you lazy, McDonald's doesn't make you fat, and technological novelties don't make people apathetic and anti-social. Society has been all about the Next New Thing That Will Make Your Life Easier/Cooler/More Like Something Out of a Movie for ever and ever.
Ages, even.
You don't get to call it an Age until it changes some basic tenet of everyday life, all across the human race. I tell you what--when every last Honduran and Tibetan and Papua New Guinean can't function day to day without their iPhone then I might concede that we are living in a Digital Age. More than anything we are living in the Capitalistic Age, and every last person on earth can feel the effects of that one.
However! I digress.
The Digital Age is a convenient scapegoat, but not a very good one, if you bother to think about it for longer than the two seconds it takes to spout off your "subversive" viewpoints. Before the computer and cell phone made people anti-social, it was video games. Before video games it was headphones and answering machines. But computers, cellphones, video games, headphones and answering machines don't actually sound like very sturdy beasts of burden if you're looking for them to lug around the blame for why you'd rather text an absent party than look at the person in front of you. And it would be difficult to prove that these instruments of the "Digital Age" do anything but bring us closer together--sometimes closer than we'd rather be.
Social networking sites are fantastic examples. I can keep up with people I never see anymore, or haven't seen in a while, or wouldn't even think about were it not for my Facebook page. I've gotten back in contact with people I thought I'd never see again but as we were both so accessible through the internet, the friendship will be saved or re-kindled.
And remember when you would leave the house alone, and stay alone until you either met someone on the street or got back home? You didn't have all of your friends living in your pocket, accessible at the touch of a button. If you went out to run errands no one could ask you at the spur of the moment to come have a drink. You would get home from your tasks, listen to your machine, and find out you had been two blocks away from where all your friends had been congregating and have now missed out on the best kickin' it session of the year, the one that will be constantly referred to from now until forever... all because no one had a cellular leash around your neck.
Sometimes I think about the amount of time I spend on MySpace and Facebook and wonder if it's all a bit unhealthy. But the fact remains that I spend the majority of my socializing doing face-time with friends who live in the same city as I do. I have a cell phone but I much prefer talking in person--I actually really hate talking on the phone, whether at home or out and about. Without my phone and the text message I would lead a pretty predictable and unspontaneous social life.
Obsessed gizmo fans are nothing new. Guns don't kill people, coffee doesn't maliciously scald, televisions don't make you lazy, McDonald's doesn't make you fat, and technological novelties don't make people apathetic and anti-social. Society has been all about the Next New Thing That Will Make Your Life Easier/Cooler/More Like Something Out of a Movie for ever and ever.
Ages, even.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
At Least It's Not Baseball
Sports are sports. (Or if you like, Sport is Sport.) Sports enthusiasts have preferences and favorites, of course, but a sport fan is a sport fan. Almost the only game a self-professed sports enthusiast claims to despise is baseball. Take me, for example. I'll watch any game that doesn't bore me to tears, and I'll play any game for which I'm fit enough. (This prerequesite excludes many of them.) My favorites to watch are hockey, basketball, thai boxing and sumo wrestling, and I'm not averse to rolling up my sleeves, drinking eighteen beers and screaming at a soccer game.
Americans love to hate on soccer, claiming that it's a pussy game for pretty boys with long hair and manicured fingernails. Or that it's a communist sport that everyone in the world with an inferior grasp of the capitalist philosophy plays in order to stave off the hunger pains (Cuba, Poland, Argentina, Ethiopia, Turkey, insert poor nation here). But seriously... baseball?
On Eurosport, you can watch anything that includes competing and points. You can watch ski jumping, field sports, sumo, K1, snooker, darts. Watching a fat bald guy swilling beers and swaggering about a darts stage on a sports channel is always one of those "I am so glad to be in Europe" moments. They also do the boring sports like tennis and soccer, which usually take up a couple of weeks while they cover an entire tournament. But so be it. They treat all sports the same.
One sport I have never ever seen on Eurosport is baseball. I've watched some valiant attempts at basketball and hockey (by definition quite unEuropean, both of them), but even people who consider fucking darts a sport have to draw a line somewhere.
So, soccer. It's no basketball or hockey or even rugby, let me tell you. Relatively few Americans have ever sat in a bar, or anywhere for that matter, and watched a soccer game in its entirety. Or even in its fractionality. Or anything. But once you step three milimeters over the American border, you will find yourself in a land where everyone watches soccer on TV. What I mean to say is, at all the customs offices along latitude 49 and the Rio Grande, the Canadian and Mexican officers are in shorts. And "football" scarves. Yes, even Mexican customs officers wear football scarves, even in the desert. What? Were you there? NO you weren't. No you shut up.
OK. I'm lying. But the point is, everyone watches soccer except us, and no one watches baseball except us. Six billion people versus Jed and Jethro. Who's right?
So, me. I'm not a big fan of either sport. But consider this. One time I went to a game--yes, that age-old scapegoat of boring sports (It's so much better when you're actually there, you have to get the stadium experience)--a Mariners game. Now, at the time, the Mariners were doing very well on the national baseball scene and at great taxpayer expense were enjoying a shiny new stadium. My boss got us fantastic seats and bought me as many $7 beers as I could hold. I'm pretty sure I had a hot dog tossed at me, or some peanuts or something else appropriately authentic. And it still blew. I have been to ballets that were more stimulating.
On the other hand, during the epic Turkey vs. Germany match, the one which decided who would go on to play Russia for the European title last year, a couple friends and I went to a bar up the street from my house, sat on benches on the sidewalk, and sipped beers while peering in through a dirty window at a screen that was twenty feet away--and had a blast. Because I live in a Turkish neighborhood, the streets were electrified with the vibe of excited sports fans from both countries. DIY parade floats, i.e. beat-up convertibles with streamers (in red and white for Turkey; red, yellow and black for Germany) and flags all over them, and people sitting atop the seats, cruising through the streets shouting and honking horns and shooting off firework guns; people setting fireworks off in the middle of the streets, dropping them from balconies. It was madness.
Now when was the last time anyone got that excited about a baseball game? After a baseball game all anyone wants to do go get more Bud Light and watch the highlights on FOX news.
Lame.
Americans love to hate on soccer, claiming that it's a pussy game for pretty boys with long hair and manicured fingernails. Or that it's a communist sport that everyone in the world with an inferior grasp of the capitalist philosophy plays in order to stave off the hunger pains (Cuba, Poland, Argentina, Ethiopia, Turkey, insert poor nation here). But seriously... baseball?
On Eurosport, you can watch anything that includes competing and points. You can watch ski jumping, field sports, sumo, K1, snooker, darts. Watching a fat bald guy swilling beers and swaggering about a darts stage on a sports channel is always one of those "I am so glad to be in Europe" moments. They also do the boring sports like tennis and soccer, which usually take up a couple of weeks while they cover an entire tournament. But so be it. They treat all sports the same.
One sport I have never ever seen on Eurosport is baseball. I've watched some valiant attempts at basketball and hockey (by definition quite unEuropean, both of them), but even people who consider fucking darts a sport have to draw a line somewhere.
So, soccer. It's no basketball or hockey or even rugby, let me tell you. Relatively few Americans have ever sat in a bar, or anywhere for that matter, and watched a soccer game in its entirety. Or even in its fractionality. Or anything. But once you step three milimeters over the American border, you will find yourself in a land where everyone watches soccer on TV. What I mean to say is, at all the customs offices along latitude 49 and the Rio Grande, the Canadian and Mexican officers are in shorts. And "football" scarves. Yes, even Mexican customs officers wear football scarves, even in the desert. What? Were you there? NO you weren't. No you shut up.
OK. I'm lying. But the point is, everyone watches soccer except us, and no one watches baseball except us. Six billion people versus Jed and Jethro. Who's right?
So, me. I'm not a big fan of either sport. But consider this. One time I went to a game--yes, that age-old scapegoat of boring sports (It's so much better when you're actually there, you have to get the stadium experience)--a Mariners game. Now, at the time, the Mariners were doing very well on the national baseball scene and at great taxpayer expense were enjoying a shiny new stadium. My boss got us fantastic seats and bought me as many $7 beers as I could hold. I'm pretty sure I had a hot dog tossed at me, or some peanuts or something else appropriately authentic. And it still blew. I have been to ballets that were more stimulating.
On the other hand, during the epic Turkey vs. Germany match, the one which decided who would go on to play Russia for the European title last year, a couple friends and I went to a bar up the street from my house, sat on benches on the sidewalk, and sipped beers while peering in through a dirty window at a screen that was twenty feet away--and had a blast. Because I live in a Turkish neighborhood, the streets were electrified with the vibe of excited sports fans from both countries. DIY parade floats, i.e. beat-up convertibles with streamers (in red and white for Turkey; red, yellow and black for Germany) and flags all over them, and people sitting atop the seats, cruising through the streets shouting and honking horns and shooting off firework guns; people setting fireworks off in the middle of the streets, dropping them from balconies. It was madness.
Now when was the last time anyone got that excited about a baseball game? After a baseball game all anyone wants to do go get more Bud Light and watch the highlights on FOX news.
Lame.
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