Comebacks

It seems decided that the Spice Girls are going to have a comeback. I am wondering, if anybody was really waiting or hoping for it? Was their first time around not enough to heal us from the desire to ever listen to girl groups again? The same applies to Britney. Okay, her comeback is postponed now to probably 2008 or further, we will see for sure another pregnancy and another husband until then, more holidays in drug clinics and half naked appearances with her best buddy Paris (another comeback by the way that I am not waiting for). But “Baby, one more time”? No, thank you!
It appears to me that people with little or no talent are more likely to have a comeback than people who do. One of the most shocking comebacks in the music industry ever was pulled by Modern Talking. It remains a miracle to me that they had a career going in the first place, but getting ten years older and cutting one’s hair did not make their music any better when they made a reappearance in the middle of the 90s.
The only comeback I ever desperately hoped for (during my childhood) was for the Beatles to get back together again. I was born a couple of years after they split up, and was in turns so much in love with either Paul or John (or both of them) that I would include their reunion into my bed-time prayers. When John was shot, that chapter was closed for ever. No comeback of the Beatles for me without John Lennon. There are people out there who simply cannot be replaced...


But not only the entertainment industry is spoiling us every now and then with comebacks or second rounds nobody was waiting for, politics is another field of human activity in which some performers have the tendency to return as phoenix from the ashes. The worse the scandal or retirement has been in the first place, the bigger the comeback will be. Two examples of those "second rounders" who form together a duo infernal that is currently one of the biggest pains in the neck of German politics are Lafontaine and Gysi. We would be so much better of with both of them still being retired. Or what do you think of Bush senior? I remember how relieved I was that he only stayed for one term. Who knew that he had something much worse than a second round in petto? A son! Who not only managed to torture the world during one term but even showed up for a second time…

And finally, in fashion, a “gadget” is currently back that was already a sick fantasy turned into reality when it was invented and became a success during the time I was about to start secondary school. Together with basically everything that the 80s contributed to mankind’s fashion, even this piece of misguided design should have disappeared in the happy hunting-grounds of human body-wear never to return. I am talking about the leggings. These kinds of trousers only look remotely acceptable on women of the size of a match. Unfortunately they are worn for the bigger part by women, who (size-wise) are slightly closer to elephants or hippopotamuses than to young gazelles. I really do not need to know all about their cellulitis without seeing them naked. The possibility to see stuff that should be covered in lots and lots of fabric and not squeezed into stretch-containing garments is one that I could simply do without.

A lot of quality-people on the other hand have much less the tendency to pull comebacks or to show up for second rounds, sometimes because they just do not hang around long enough to annoy us so much that a longer break with a comeback with different hair design even becomes a possibility. They spoil us shortly with the abundances of their talents and then they retire for good (Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger) or kill themselves accidentally (James Dean), less accidentally (Janis Joplin) or willingly (Kurt Kobain) and live up to the saying “only the good die young”. And we’re left with all the ungifted who show up time after time after time…

Moderate temperatures

The last two days it has been rainy and sunny, and sunny and rainy, quite windy, with very moderate temperatures. I can’t help it, but this weather at this time of the year just reminds me of Amsterdam, and I am a little bit homesick today. Ten years are ten years, and a part of me will always belong to that city. Therefore: A big hello to all of you who live there! It's a treat! Enjoy it! And to all of the complainers who are enjoying Amsterdam-like weather these days: Just lighten up. It could be worse: You’re not in Athens or Sicily!

Longing for holidays

What do you think of that? Not bad, eh? I took this picture of the Great Ocean Road a couple of years ago. I can’t help it, but it’s the time of the year when one wants to go on holidays. It’s not that am longing for 30 degrees and sunshine, I am quite alright with some rain, wind and moderate temperatures, but this bad weather is somehow triggering my desire to pack my backs, not necessarily to find refuge in warmer spots of the world, but to get away from it all, travel, see something else. For budgetary reasons I am unfortunately glued to this place. When I still worked as a project manager I had money but no time, no working on my own, I would have the time but lack the money. Still, no one can keep me from traveling in my mind and one fine day I will go back to Australia. For the time being I am just enjoying my pictures…

Resurrection

Against all odds and my own conviction that something dead shouldn't be revived, here it is: The resurrection of The Chronicles from the German Province.
Bringing someone or something back from the dead is a strange endeavor, I am sort of reminded of that odd episode from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (yes, I used to be huge fan of the show), when she is brought back to life by her friends… she is slightly different than before… Let’s see what will happen to the Chronicles, since they have not even been too alive, when I first started them. Anyway, let’s hope that their fortune will turn out better this time.

More than a year has passed since I moved back to N., and of course quite a lot has happened. Since I am unable to summarize all of the events that went by without having been noticed or mentioned in this blog, let’s just pick up some of the stuff that went on. In March, the reform of the German spelling was changed. As with other reforms in this country, it always takes ages to get some sort of result, and when the opponents have finally reached a so called compromise, it usually stinks more than a French cheese left in the sun for a week. Therefore, reforms in Germany are commonly loved and appreciated as much as a bad form of stomach flue, and normally within no time a general outcry for the reform of the reform is heard throughout the whole country, and
we go from bad to worse…

In June the Football World Cup started, and for four weeks life was just one big treat. The weather, the atmosphere, our team, simply everything was even better than one could hope for. Now, one year later, even our relationship with the Italians has almost normalized. We still do not want to talk football with anybody born south of the Alps, but we stopped boycotting Pizza, Italian ice cream and Parmigiano.
July is worth to be remembered for its weather: Simply the hottest July since recordings. I renovated my apartment during that heat wave and have some very personal memories… my sweat dripping into the paint… the paint drying on my brush… me almost fainting on the ladder…
Well, August then was as wet as July was hot. Saddam Hussein’s trial started, and Fidel was operated on his bowels… (Was I the only one secretly hoping that he would not make it?)
September was the month of “Gammelfleisch”, Natascha Kampusch, and the Pope saying something about Mohammed that was generally not appreciated in the Muslim world. After the big crisis with the Danish cartoons, even a Pope should have known that these days one has to watch his mouth. More than 300 years after Spinoza and 200 years after Kant, the free world is forgetting about enlightenment and lets the mullahs tell us what to say or not. In general, I think one can conclude that it is recommendable not to say anything about Mohammed and his closest relatives. What else happened in September? Of course, André Agassi finished his career. Tennis lost its last great player and is finally no longer what it used to be. I am from the same generation as Steffi Graf and Boris Becker. I started to watch games when Mr. McEnroe was still playing, when Evan Lendel started his career and Navratilova already had one going for ages, still playing brilliantly. As with politicians, one wonders where did all the big players disappear, the one with charisma and character? Who really cares for a Federer or a Williams? Who cares for a Steinbrück, a Balkenende or a Blair? I want Steffi and John back and Brandt and Scheel and even Ms Thatcher. Politically not my cup of tea, but at least the bitch had an attitude!
I used to think that nothing worse than the cowboy Reagan could happen to the presidency of the United States, but boy, was I wrong. In comparison to No. 43, No. 40 almost seems reasonable... But I am losing track.
In October the government passed another reform that was not worth its name, this time on the sanitary system, and quite a lot of people went on the street to demonstrate that they were not amused.
November was living up to its expectations, with All Saints and its general morbid character, it was the month of death. It started with Saddam Hussein being sentenced to dead, went on with Alexander Litvinenko dying after having been poisoned with Polonium-210, and finished with Sebastian B. who killed 37 people, before shooting himself at his old school in Emstetten.
In December two of the most hated dictators left the face of the earth, Saddam was executed (not to my liking; one is either for or against the death penalty and this includes even figures as him) and Mr. Pinochet was killed as your regular Joe by a common heart attack. The world did not have too many tears for either of them.
This year, so far, was ruled by three big topics: Knut, the ice bear, Paris Hilton and all of her endeavors, and the climate change. The focused changed over the months slightly from Knut to Paris and with G8 to climate change, now with her little prison episode Paris is back at the centre of attention. It’s kind of amazing that an ice-bear-baby and the blond inheritress of a Hotel chain, both with a brain activity lower than that of a chimpanzee, are able to fill the titles of newspapers and magazines for months. However, this is exactly what happened. Welcome to tittytainment. We are already there.
But to come back to global warming, it kind of grew on me during April and May, when I was lying on my roof terrace, enjoying an early summer. But now, in late June, everything is back to normal. It’s raining cats and dogs. Just when everybody started to expect the nice weather to continue until autumn, it gets as unpredictable as ever. Let’s see what July holds for us…