Where have you gone, Franz "Schani" Mitterhauser? A nation turns its fuzzy eyes to you

Tomorrow sees the start of the World Beard and Moustache Championships in Berlin.














Be sure to check out the Beard Team USA blog for some of the most in-depth beard competition analysis I have ever seen.

Strategy! Infighting! Show-downs between fading champions and young turks!

And the predictions for our furry home-town boys?

"Realistically, the Americans have little chance of taking home top honors at this bi-annual event. After all, the Germans are hosting the contest, make the rules, choose and pay the judges, and define the categories. With 31 contestants traveling to Germany, Team USA hopes to establish itself at this year’s worlds as a force to be reckoned with in international facial-hair competitions.

This is a momentum-building year. The team is looking ahead to London 2007. Some day Team USA will be the team to beat."

Blue his house with the blue little window and a blue corvette...

The Frame by Frame project is back, but the first 29 frames (the first second and a bit) were deleted by accident.

"So: I will begin here again with frame 30 (the sky blue, still!) and include frames 2-29 in an appendix, at the end of this project, when I am very old."

It's Blue! Azure! .... um .... Gone!

The Frame by Frame project has been taken down.

Either that or it sped up considerably and is now finished.

I remember back in the day, when the D&D players were the sad losers

The pecking order always seeks its own level, I guess.

It's like the universe is daring me to say something snarky

Now you can sign up to take a tour showcasing the "history of the Minneapolis Riverfront area from 10,000 BC to present."

On a Segway.

Sign him.

It's a sunny, woodsy millennium in Lumberton, so get those chainsaws out.

The Frame by Frame project is an attempt to post, with commentary, every single frame of the film Blue Velvet.

In order.

"A frame-by-frame analysis of Blue Velvet would take 473 years assuming one frame is presented per day. . . I hope to offer 2 or 3 frames per week."

Sleep Easy, London

The Dukes of Hazzard sequel is off the table.

It's Blue! Azure! Cerulean!

One of Alfred Hitchcock's favorite pranks was inviting people over for an amazing gourmet meal and then watching their reactions when they discovered that he had dyed all of the food blue. Although the food coloring was tasteless and oderless, nobody (at least the story goes) would touch the blue food.

A Japanese company has taken this idea and turned it into a diet aid. Just dye your rice blue! Then you won't eat too much!



I don't think that this will be viable in the long term, because the reason it works as a prank is that nobody is used to blue food. If you see it every day, then you will be used to it, and it will slowly become palatable.

The next level will be to get the struggling petrol industry involved. Just pour gasoline over your rice! Then you won't eat too much!

Little tidbit for you Arrested Development fans

Oscar's website is real.

One minute without you - Thought I'd forget

I was talking up the One Minute Vacation project to some friends the other day. Cool stuff to download and shuffle between the songs in your music player.

Arrr, I say, arrr. Um. Me hearties.

I forgot about talk like a pirate day

Vacation blog experiment thing

Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting about my vacation, but in "Real Time" -- The posts will be backdated to when they "happened" rather than when I actually post it.

When I'm done I'll do another post saying that I'm done.

I have returned to bring you culture

I'll be talking up my time away as soon as I get all the dust off my shoes.

In the meantime, I shall try to maintain my level of thoughtful dignity by directing you to photos of a man drumming on cheese.

Return Flight

We got an opportunity to see the Christmas episode of "My Dad's the Prime Minister" again!

It's going to be a classic!

Monuments

One of the neat things about going to London is that there is always something happening. I suppose that it's easier to notice things when you are a tourist on the lookout for something to do, but nevertheless, here it was our last day and stuff was happening all over the place. Today it would be centered around Trafalgar Square.

As part of the commemoration of the bicentennial of the Battle of Trafalgar, there was a re-enactment of Admiral Lord Nelson's funeral procession. Mindful of the time our flight was to leave, we set up camp in front of the Tower of London and hung around until the procession showed up.

I had misread the paper. The time I was expecting it to go by was, in fact, the time that it was preparing to leave Greenwich. On the bright side, it was a lovely day, and we had a decent head start in getting a good place to watch along the riverbank.

The procession itself was a bit odd. I understand that when the real one happened, the official procession was joined by just about every other vessel on the river, making for what must have been an overwhelming sight. The problem is that when the folks in their pontoon boats came along, their demeanor seemed to be more of a happy cocktail parade then a somber moment of remembrance, provoking the office workers who stepped out on their lunch break to watch the event to engage in the following banter (more or less):

Person A: "Just what is it that causes people to want to wave at a stranger just because they are on a boat?"

Person B: "I think it's because they want a ride and are hoping that the boat will come by and pick them up."

P A: "So why do people on boats wave at people on other boats?"

P B: "Because they have a special bond in that they know how happy they are to be on a boat and not being forced to pick up some useless stranger from the shore just because they're being waved at."

An attempt to return some amount of anachronistic dignity to the proceedings occurred when the HMS Belfast gave a fifteen gun salute. The jolly cocktail parade was at once transformed into a thrilling cocktail parade with noise and smoke. Everyone went "Hurrah" and then loped back to their respective offices and tourist trails. The lack of a sense of mourning was understandable when commemorating someone who has been in the ground for two centuries, but in retrospect I wanted one. This was the end of a fine trip, and I was a little sad about that.

The procession continued past us towards some ceremonies at Trafalgar Square, where a different event had occurred earlier in the day. The Square contains four statue plinths, one of which is used as a rotating venue for contemporary statuary, the most recent of which was to be unveiled that same morning. I am not sure if it was just coincidence that Alison Lapper Pregnant was chosen to coincide with the Nelson remembrance, but I'd like to presume that it was. Statues of war heroes are rarely put up until after the fighting has long ceased. It says something about the world that we live in now that the place of a hero can be taken by someone who is battling a few odds and giving life.

Trafalgar Square had also just days before been host to the culmination of celebrations for the English Ashes victory. At this event one of the cricketers, a gentleman named Freddie Flintoff, seemed to be rather amazingly disconnected. The British press, jumping at the opportunity to roll up their wonk sleeves and crunch hard data, reviewed all of his public appearances during the eighteen or so hours between the end of the victory match and his arrival at the feet of the Nelson Column and calculated that in the interim he had consumed his weight in champagne.

I believe the proper term from a more heroic age would be "tapping the Admiral."

point taken.

I would be remiss if I didn't provide you with a link to http://www.itsnotcrap.co.uk/, but it seems to be down. I'll keep it up anyway, because whatever gets put up there next is most likely going to not be crap either.

That's very funny. Now put it back the way it was.

This is a photo of one of my favorite stops in London, the Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus.



As I was taking the picture, I did not see the cab going by with what seems to be astroturf on it. I googled "london cab astroturf" and found no reason for it. Probably better then sod.

Questions? Lets go the the skycam.

Floating in the middle of the Thames is this interesting contraption:


On the side it says "I Eat Rubbish." It seems to be some sort of trash collecting filter thing, but I haven't been able to find any information on how it works. Here it is on Google Maps.

A bit up stream we can see this set of structures:


An interesting set of structures, don't you think? A look from the satellite helps to show that these columns line up with the bridge on the left. Is it coming down, or going up, or halfway between?

Something is moving in the Turbine Room...

When we arrived at the Tate Modern, we found the Turbine Room (the immense open half of the building) was blocked off from view. The first photo is from the entryway, looking up to the platform area.

The second is from one of the upper levels, taken through a hole in the cardboard that was blocking all of the interior windows.

I feel like some sort of Super-Art-Spy!

And the crowd goes somewhat wild....

On the way back to Oxford from Blenheim we were looking forward to stopping in the pub that was in the building that we were staying in. It had for the previous couple of days seemed rather a cavernous, empty place, and that seemed like precisely what we needed to sit and discuss dinner plans in.

When we arrived the place was packed. Jam packed. Chairs full, people sitting on the floor all along the wall, estimated time from entry to barman twenty minutes and try not to step on anyone packed.

The Ashes were wrapping up, and things were going well. Unless you were an Australian.

We figured out where the nearest Pizza Express was. Two reasons for that:

1) We like Pizza Express

2) They don't have televisions

Two thirds of the way through the dinner cheering erupted in the street and crowds of people began pouring in for dinner.

England Won!

The walk back to the room was spent greeting happy weaving people, some of whom had decided to play what was the most festive drunken impromptu football/soccer match I've ever seen. In the middle of the high street.

The pub was deserted, but for a few souls who seemed delighted for a chance to hide from the revelry. We decided to get the beers that we were looking forward to before dinner. Almost all the beer was gone - which explained why the clientele had left. As I ordered, I noticed that the barman was American.

"So there was some cricket in here?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes and looked around. "God, yes." He leaned closer. "Do you understand it?"

"Some. Well, a little," I admitted.

"I'm glad it's over. Everyone thinks it's fun to quiz me."

"All over but the parades and the woo-ha. And all the commemorative recaps."

He started to look pale as he handed me my beers.

On the news that night, they already had the parade mapped out for the next morning. We would not get to London until after it was over.

Blenheim

There are hundreds of reasons to visit Blenheim Palace. It is an amazing building, brimming with history. The grounds are vast and amazing. There are exhibits and events of all sorts. Unlike many British manor houses, you can go there and spend an entire day and not only not be bored, but actually consider going back for more.


The reason I wanted to go was because the Branagh Hamlet was filmed there.

Me = Dork.

Many of the rooms used for filming were not part of the tour, but the grounds were quite recognizable and the strange mini-train that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up on is actually a fixture on the grounds.

Even more oddly, Blenheim Palace has its own wine! More of a pizza place type of wine then a storied English palace type of wine. There's a wide variety of "country" wines that we didn't try, as we weren't in the mood for lugging bottles all over the place.

I Know Those Rocks!

An earlier trip that I took to England included a swing through Avebury. This was something I found to be mildly thrilling because I was under the impression that an episode of Doctor Who was filmed there.

We arrived just as a hard summer rainstorm was starting up, so, after a few minutes of sitting in the car, we ran into a gift shop (specializing in crunchy druid art), then a pub (specializing in crabby locals who detest the sort of people who would stop by to purchase crunchy druid art), then the car again when we realized that the rain was not going to let up.

Ten minutes after we drove off, the rain let up.

So anyway, I was still sort of happy to have knocked something interesting off of my Doctor Who tourist checklist, and this was one of the happy brags that I had with my Doctor Who friends when I got home.

Until about a year later, when I found out that I was completely wrong. The episode in question had been filmed someplace else.

Bah.

So driving around on this trip, I was given the option of stopping to see the Rollright Stones. And look at them we did.


I kept my mouth shut concerning any Whoish connections, and just concentrated on the fact of a stone circle, which is quite interesting in and of itself. When I came home, I hit my research materials.

Success!

Victorian era brewery

This is the Hook Norton Brewery:


It's even cooler looking in person.

The date on the side of the wall is 1896. I imagine that the water to make the beer is pumped to the top of this amazingly cool building, and as the process goes on, the wort is drained to successively lower tanks. I don't know for sure, because while there are tours, there were no tours going on when we showed up.

Just up the street was an equally nice pub where we had the opportunity to have some of the beer from the brewery. So it all sort of worked out in the end.

Oh boy. That's a turn-on.

Learn about Burke and Hare

And did these feet, in one weeks time...

It started out with a clever packing trick. What I would do is pack a second pair of shoes for walking around in, some old comfy ratty ones that were about ready to get chucked anyway. Then I would throw them out before the flight home. This way I could have more space for the books, CD's, and etc that I bought. So the night before we left, I reached into the closet and grabbed a pair of old black sneakers.

See how long it takes you to notice the thing that I failed to notice even though I wore this pair of shoes for a week.

Lost Horizon ... of food!

Here is a scan of the menu from a very good Nepalese Restaurant that we went to. I include it for multiple reasons:

1) It gives the information about the restaurant better than I can (although their website seems to be down).

2) The interesting writing on the side there. We didn't write it. That's how it was in the takeaway menu rack. Prank, recruitment, or absent-minded musing on the need for a change in life or its possibilities. I was not going to ask.

All the waiters carried gurkha knives. I didn't want to upset them.

The food, meanwhile, was wonderful. It was our first time having Nepalese, which turns out to be roughly 75% Indian and 25% Chinese stylistically.

We were also delighted at the opportunity to try a Nepalese beer, until a closer look at the bottle revealed that it was brewed in Manchester.

Sunset in Edinburgh

The hidden benefits of train travel

Just a note for the record: One of the things I was terribly worried about with this trip was getting around if my back were to go out. Sure enough, the day I was supposed to take a six hour train ride, I woke up and started to feel everything go haywire.

I decided to cowboy my way through the six-hour journey from London to Edinburgh and try to deal with getting myself back together once I arrived, a plan which caused consternation and gritting of teeth in my significant other.

Imagine my shock! The combination of ergonomic seating and gentle train-related vibrations put my back to right without any effort from me. Upon arrival, I was right as rain.

The rivermouth that roared

One of the stops on the train ride to Edinburgh was the town of Berwick-Upon Tweed.

I was sort of interested in stopping there for an hour or two because of a bit of strange history that happened in the town.

To quote from wikipedia:

Since Berwick has had the distinction of having changed hands between the English and the Scots so many times in its history, it was traditionally regarded as a special, separate entity, and various proclamations promulgated before 1885 referred to "England, Scotland and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed". One such was the declaration of war against Russia in 1853, which Queen Victoria signed as "Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Ireland, Berwick-upon-Tweed and all British Dominions". But when the Treaty of Paris (1856) was signed to conclude the war, "Berwick-upon-Tweed" was missed out. Technically, one of Britain's smallest towns was officially at war with one of the world's mightiest powers for over a century! In 1966 a Soviet official waited upon the Mayor of Berwick, Councillor Robert Knox, and a peace treaty was formally signed. Mr Knox is reputed to have said, "Please tell the Russian people that they can sleep peacefully in their beds." To perpetuate the issue, some have noted that Knox was not the successor of Queen Victoria in competences of foreign relations, and therefore exceeded his powers as mayor in concluding a peace treaty.

So who wouldn't want to visit that! Is there a plaque? A statue?

As it came time to arrive I became aware of three things, in roughly this order:

1) The train I was on was not going to stop in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

2) The town is quite lovely, at least from the vantage point of the train on the rail bridge situated a ways upstream and quite a bit above the town.

3) My camera was in my suitcase, so there is no picture.

The wicket on the hearth

Whenever I go to the UK, there is always one story that I can follow in the news that helps to define the trip for me.

This year, it was The Ashes.

The story goes that the first time the Australian national team beat the English national team, the English were so despondent that they burnt up the dohickey that holds the wicket together to symbolize "the death of English cricket." Rumors of cricket's demise were premature and the matches continued every other year or so until the present day.


Before I arrived I was aware that the summer of 2005 had been an abnormally exciting one for cricket -- one discussion list I am on took particular offense to the proclamation that "cricket is the new rock and roll." I tend to be disappointed in whatever the new rock and roll du jour is, and I've had a taste of cricket before (and like 99.9% of all Americans found it surprisingly incomprehensible) so for a bit of local flavor, I found it initially lacking compared to the news-flotsam of previous visits (General Elections, murder trials, Tragic Mandy and her Heroic Octuplets), but there was excitement in the air as England had not won for twenty-odd years.

I heard the mews today, oh boy

This is the view out the hotel room window of the mews behind the building. A mews is an alleyway used as a stable, and is really only worth mentioning so I can use the snappy title. To be fair though, there was a bit of commotion in the middle of the night.

As a touch of trivia: In the Avengers, John Steed's address (for the color seasons, at least) was 3 Stable Mews, or literally, "Stable Stable." Poking through the AtoZ, I found that there really is a "Stable Mews" in metropolitan London. I didn't go. It was quite a distance to go just to giggle at an alleyway.

In Flight

For reasons that I barely understand, I always look forward to a long plane flight because of the in-flight entertainment. It feels like my brain says to me "Here is an opportunity to watch five hours of stuff that you normally wouldn't touch with a ten-foot barge pole."

For the flight over, this meant the new Love Bug movie.

Two things I have to make clear:

1) When I was a young-un the Love Bug movies were on TV a lot. And I watched them a lot. Particularly the Monte Carlo one. My memories of these movies entering my brain over and over again: nothing. I've been trying to nudge any particular scene out of my head, just one, and all I can remember is the texture of the carpet in the living room. Perhaps if I were to sit down with the newly released DVD of Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, the memories will come flooding back, but honestly; I don't think I need them that much.

2) The screen that I had control of was not watching the Herbie movie constantly -- I was changing channels a lot for that one. The big screen in front of the cabin had it on all the way through as well as just about every other screen within my peripheral vision. It was not that hard to follow along with the plot.

I spent most of my energy watching the BBC offerings. Three shows stood out in my memory:

A documentary about two bunches of British public school students challenging each other to a swimming race across the English Channel. (Actually, their school administrations came up with the idea, the kids just sort of went "oh" because they were young and had no idea what they were getting volunteered for.) I particularly enjoyed this one because by the time the actual race came around, it looked like some of these pompous young yutzes would actually drown themselves for the glory of their school. I also enjoyed the stoic parents explaining how this will be a fine learning/growth experience for the young muffins while cradling them as they vibrate out of their hypothermic semi-comas (though some seemed a little miffed that they were being pulled away from their course work).

A different documentary about a woman who deals with the death of her dog by going out into the woods and watching the adorable forest creatures kill and eat each other.

A sitcom, presented from the point of view of a pre-teen boy who is the only voice of pure reason amongst his daft sitcom family and his father's daft sitcom co-workers. The twist here is that the father is the Prime Minister. We learn this from the title: "My Dad's The Prime Minister." The episode that we were shown was the Christmas episode, which was sort of strange for September. I hope that this was just some random thing, rather than an indication that this was one of the better episodes, which would be rather sad. I was particularly happy to see that in these days of high security issues, the sister's comedy boyfriend, a grocery store clerk, can just wander into 10 Downing Street unannounced.

Well a holli-holli ho and a holli-holli hey

Don't expect to see terribly much for the next two weeks...

Fall Already!

Time to start thinking about freezing the herbs from the back yard garden.