If you’re traveling to the US from Europe, you can enter without a prearranged visa via the Visa Waiver Program.
However, if you plan to do so, then it’s worth noting that US authorities reserve the right to put you in shackles and throw you in a jail for 10 days, based on nothing more than a "hunch".
This is not a theoretical right, it’s one they’ve happily made use of.
Well, at the weekend I had my first SXSW experience, and it was a good one. Last year I managed to miss John Watts, but this year I was prepared. We went to The Hideout downtown about an hour early, and waited in line. The rule was SXSW badges first, then wristband holders, then if there was still space in the venue proletarians could pay $8 each to get in.
The band before Watts was Asakusa Jinta, a kind of psychedelic heavy metal marching band from Japan. They apparently had a lot of buzz, as the venue was full to capacity and there were 20 or 30 people lined up in the hope of getting in. From what we could hear from the corridor, Asakusa Jinta are indeed pretty awesome, but not necessarily a band you want to share an enclosed space with, even if you have earplugs.
Eventually the band stopped, and lots of people left. John Watts wandered past with his promoter handing out flyers. The line thinned out, and we were left standing with some Germans, and two local girls who were apparently hosting Mr Watts during his stay, but were unacquainted with his music.
Back in the late 1970s, John Watts founded Fischer-Z. At the time they were compared to Talking Heads and XTC, but for some reason they never had the commercial success of those bands. The original band broke up after 3 albums, but Watts then reformed Fischer-Z with a new lineup.
The style of music is the usual pop/rock range, but sprinkled with the musical twists that keep my interest. The lyrics are sometimes melancholy, occasionally angry, but there’s always humor there that prevents things slipping into punk (or Depeche Mode) territory.
It all strikes me as very English, but for some reason their biggest fans were in Germany. If you want to hear some Fischer-Z right now, your best bet is either to switch the iTunes music store to think you’re German (using the drop-down at the bottom of the front page), or to head to FineTunes Music Shop, a German MP3 vendor. [Update: Fischer-Z albums also available from Audio Lunchbox.]
Anyhow, John Watts has now moved into solo performance, and seems to have taken on a kind of “wandering troubadour” role. For his latest album, he bought a 30 day railcard and traveled around Europe talking to random people—and then wrote songs about their stories.
His SXSW performance was just him with an amplified acoustic guitar. I particularly appreciated that he was picky about the sound, and insisted on getting it to a loud-but-comfortable level, with the vocals clearly audible. If only all artists were prepared to argue with venue sound guys.
So all in all, one of the simplest—yet also, one of the best—live music experiences I’ve had. Hopefully he’ll be back next year.
I’ve encountered another of those real life true stories so bizarre that in a year’s time I’m probably going to think I dreamed it.
Herman Göring’s Nazi raccoons are invading Europe.
I think that’s even better than the Fanta story.
Hamburg sits on the Elbe river, a few kilometers inland. A cunning tax dodge in 1189 propelled it into becoming Europe’s second largest port, and a world class red light district soon followed, surrounded by dive bars and seedy nightclubs. These days the city is keener to present the area through rose-tinted John Lennon glasses, omitting to mention that the Beatles played the Star-Club mostly because they couldn’t get a paying gig anywhere else in 1962.
The Elbe is apparently pretty deep, because the Queen Mary 2 was there. She’s the largest ocean liner in the world, making the Titanic look small in comparison. She takes around 7 days to cross the Atlantic, at a price of $1000+. Mind you, that’s not much more than we paid for our tickets, and if they have broadband on the ship I wouldn’t even need to use up vacation days on the crossing. I bet the food’s nicer than Continental. If they toned down the swanky ballrooms a bit and made it cheaper, they could have a compelling business proposition. But I digress.
We like to think that we are immune to propaganda. Yes, other feeble-minded individuals may allow their attitudes to be shaped by the media and their surroundings, but we’re sure that we are far too smart for that.
In 1975, John Cleese savagely satirized British attitudes to Germany, in the classic Fawlty Towers episode The Germans. After a blow to the head, hotel proprietor Basil Fawlty loses his ability to self-censor. While taking a dinner order from some German guests, he proceeds to blurt out the names of Nazis; eventually he descends into xenophobic ranting.
The sad thing is that after 30 more years, nothing much has changed.
Yahoo added this area where people ask (mostly dumb) questions, and anyone can offer their (frequently uninformed) answers.
It’s strangely addictive. It’s a bit like the Internet Oracle, without the stale old traditions said institution picked up over the years.
I tend to alternate between useful and bizarre/smartass answers. Some examples of the latter:
Q: What in your toilet can make the water blue? I haven’t put tabs in for months.
A: Is it an atomic toilet? If so, it could be Cherenkov Radiation.
Q: Is there a differance between the sound of an emergency vehicle in Italy and one in the U.S.?
A: Yes. The one in Italy will sound a lot quieter, because it’s very far away. Unless you’re in Europe, in which case the one in the USA will sound quieter.
Q: My 14 yr old son is always masturbating … I have also caught him with dirty movies. Is he going through a phase?
A: Yeah, it’s a phase men go through. It’ll stop when he hits 65 or so.
Q: Does anyone have chickens?
A: No, nobody does. Chickens are a myth perpetrated by the egg conspiracy.
Q: Is there a way to develop psychic intuition?
A: I think if you concentrate you’ll know the answer.
The Guardian yesterday had interesting news from Iraq:
Babylon, a city renowned for its beauty and its splendour 1,000 years before Europe built anything comparable, was chosen as the site for a US military base in April 2003, just after the invasion of Iraq.
Military commanders set up their camp in the heart of one of the world’s most important archaeological sites and surrounded the enclosed part of the ancient city. At least 2,000 troops were installed, daily passing relics such as the enormous basalt Lion of Babylon sculpture.
In September 2003 the base was passed to a Polish-led force, which held it until today’s formal handover of the site to the Iraqi culture ministry.
Can you guess how it turned out? I think you can.
John Curtis, keeper of [The British Museum’s] Ancient Near East department and an authority on Iraq’s many archaeological sites, found “substantial damage” on an investigative visit to Babylon last month.
[…]
Among the damage found by Mr Curtis, who was invited to Babylon by Iraqi antiquities experts, were cracks and gaps where somebody had tried to gouge out the decorated bricks forming the famous dragons of the Ishtar Gate.
He saw a 2,600-year-old brick pavement crushed by military vehicles, archaeological fragments scattered across the site, and including broken bricks stamped with the vainglorious boasts of king Nebuchadnezzar.
Vast amounts of sand and earth, visibly mixed with archaeological fragments, were gouged from the site to fill thousands of sandbags and metal mesh baskets. When this practice was stopped, large quantities of sand and earth were brought in from elsewhere, contaminating the site for future generations of archaeologists.
The paper has photos of some of the damage, including “UT TEXAS” graffiti.
Still, at least we’ve achieved the goal of preventing Afghanistan from being the center of terrorism:
Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of “professionalized” terrorists, according to a report released Thursday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director’s think tank.
Iraq provides terrorists “a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills,” said David Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. “There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries.”
A few days ago I woke up and was thinking about caffeinated beverages, when I vaguely remembered how the current attempts to revive the Fanta brand were covering up the sinister secret–that Fanta was actually a drink invented specifically for Nazi Germany.
I mentioned this to sara. We laughed, both agreeing that it was obviously some crazy stuff I’d come up with in a dream.
Coke sponsoring the 1936 Nazi Olympics. Sales of Coke dropping after it was advertised as Kosher. The Nazis banning the importation of Coke syrup as a threat to Europe’s precious bodily fluids. Coca-Cola’s German operation coming up with Fanta as a drink more acceptable to the Third Reich. All completely ludicrous and very, very silly.
Except… it’s true. It’s all true. I’d obviously read about it somewhere, somewhen, and it had stuck in the back of my mind, only to surface like a bad dream.
Here’s another crazy stupid dream: Coca-Cola are setting up factories in villages across the country. As the Coke flows, the villagers realize the factory is sucking the village wells dry. Meanwhile, the factory pumps out a toxic sludge of lead, cadmium and chromium, source unknown. Eventually the local water supply is declared undrinkable, and all the villagers can do is drink Coke… or their bottled water product, Dasani.
It’s the half-remembered plot of a Ben Elton novel. No, wait, my mistake, it’s another actual news story. So’s the one about Coca Cola paying right-wing paramilitaries to kill troublesome union leaders and their families in Columbia.
This is it. This is the week when reality became so bizarrely horrific that I could no longer believe it was real.
We left our Christmas presents under the tree at home, so we come up with a special gift for ourselves in Las Vegas: we book a day at the hotel spa on the 25th.
Mandalay Bay spa is focused on a relaxing experience, rather than exercise per se; it’s all about reflexology, aromatherapy, massage, yoga, and so on. I’ve booked a back, shoulder and neck massage, but first I need to take a shower and soak in the hot pool to loosen up my muscles.
sara heads for the female side, I head for the male side. The locker room gives me a few moments of angst. A simple robe is provided, along with some rubber sandals and as many towels as might prove necessary. Everyone seems to wander around in the robe, and spend their time in the pools naked. I have no problem with nudity, but I do have residual nervousness about straight guys wandering around locker rooms.
I get over it, and spend a quarter hour soaking in hot, bubbling water. Next I try the steam room. It’s very dark and very hot; the steam is laced with eucalyptus, which clears out my breathing beautifully. At noon it’s time for my massage, which is provided by an old German guy called Wolfgang. After that I’m so relaxed I have trouble concentrating on tasks like standing up and walking, and he asks if I’m all right. Oh, yes, I’m more than that.
Spring water, fruit juice and fresh fruit are supplied in the spa, along with healthy high-fiber muffins. My body may be a temple, but unfortunately it’s a temple to the sacred bean, so I decide I’ll need to leave the spa to find lunch and coffee. Not a problem, as I can return later in the day.
I get dressed and emerge—at the exact moment sara emerges from the women’s locker room. We look at each other in amazement. We’re so in sync, sometimes it amazes even us.
The casino is the busiest we’ve seen it. It seems that everyone arrives on the 25th or 26th, and stays for the week between Christmas and New Year; that’s why the room rates jump on the 26th. There’s a huge queue of Asian people waiting to get in to the Noodle Bar. We go to an Italian café in Mandalay Place, the up-market mall area which stretches between Mandalay Bay and the Luxor.
After a relaxed lunch, we head back to our room for a while. I have never felt so completely relaxed in my life. I listen to the iPod for a while, and sara takes a nap. I head back to the spa in the late afternoon for a little more steam and soaking.
Channel surfing leads us to another Mormon documentary. This one is about Mormon missionaries in Europe. I imagine they must have a pretty hard time of it, selling the idea that the USA is the chosen land of the true people of Israel.
Anyway… not a conventional Christmas, but probably the most relaxing and enjoyable Christmas Day I’ve ever experienced.
Ho ho, tell me another:
In Europe last week, French fighter jets almost shot down a civilian helicopter that wandered over Lake Geneva, after a Swiss controller jokingly labeled the helicopter as “al-Qaeda” on his radar screen.
