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Reiting

Skatan — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:15:58 +0000

… vårt “hemmaberg” när vi bodde i den lilla byn Schardorf och Skatan flaxade kors och tvärs med Sonen och lilla e till skolorna i Leoben och Trofaiach … låg dolt där i dimman när vi gästade Klaus och Patrizia i Windischbühel, byn som ligger lite lägre än “vår” by. Det var just den här dimman som omslöt oss … och inte bara Reiting under hela november … varje dag så gott som … som gjorde det så tungt och alls inte lättare att bo där bland bergen än hemma i Borlänge … ända tills snön kom och allt blev ljusare … (Den meningen visste var den satt …)

Korna stod där i alla fall som vanligt och glodde … på min Morgonrunda utan StinaFina …

Efter en jättegod måltid hastade vi iväg till en Välgörenhetsfest till förmån för de utländska studenterna som läste vid Montanuniversität Leoben och levde knapert på sina stipendier.

Studenterna hade lagat sin hemlands mat, konstnären Andrea Radinger, som var eldsjälen bakom festen, hade samlat ihop konstnärer som dels sålde sin konst, dels auktionerade ut den till högstbjudande. Själv lottade hon ut ett av sin smycken.. Det gick till så att den som var hugad la 10 euro (ca 100 SEK) i ett kuvert, skrev sitt namn därpå och … simsalabim … en lott. Man minglade och åt av rätter från Pakistan, Frankrike, Japan, Etiopien ja … 16 olika nationer.

Den långe mannen som skymtar över vimlet har sin egen historia. Han lockades hit från Afrika, Senegal, tror jag för att läras upp att spela basket i Kapfenberg, tror jag. Men han blev sjuk … slutade inte att växa … och då kastades han ut. Ut i kylan. Andrea Radinger med familj tog hand om honom, skaffade honom jobb och bostad och så blev han kvar där i Leoben …

Kvällens höjdpunkt var en konsert med en känd Wiener-entertainer, skådesplaren Adi Hirschai – (und die kleinste Big-Band der Welt.) Om jag skall jämföra … hmm … en österrikisk tungekvilibrist som Owe Thörnqvist med lite mer skådespelar-utspel … Helt fantastisk … Suverän.

Vi lyssnade och drack Gösser … och tog lotter men vann ingenting. En fantastisk kväll i Leoben. Och vi träffade faktiskt också en hel del gamla bekanta …

(Mannens näsa, Patrizia, två av konstnärerna och så Klaus lyssnar på Adi Hirschai och dricker Gösser …

det bästa av öl – framställt i Göss i Leoben … och skall drickas på flaska (som alla öl), inte fööör kall, som oftast i England, utan lagom så att man inte bara känner kylan … utan ölets alla smaker (sprit/ölromantik))

Tack för mig och oss … nu skall StinaFina och Skatan hasta ut i snön på Morgonrundan … något sena … enligt StinaFina …

PS Ni glömmer väl inte dagens röst … på Daxbloggen DS

WILLIBALD OSKAR MOESENBACHER alias O.W.MOESY VISIONAER UND MEHR A - 8990 BAD AUSSEE STEIRISCHES SALZKAMMERGUT AUSSEERLAND TRAUNTAL OBERSTEIERMARK BEZIRK LIEZEN GEOGRAFISCHER MITTELPUNKT ÖSTERREICHS AUSTRIA Hatte Jenseitserfahrungen, schönster und interessantester Art! Bin autodidaktischer Kunstmaler, Schreiberling, Spaßvogel, Aktionist, Verteiler, Nonsist der Willichbald und INHABER DER FIRMA RAST & RUH – welche hat immer ZU. Many millions of human souls are excited by Jakob Lorber his written works. See: http://www.j-lorber.de/ . Viele Millionen Menschenseelen sind begeistert, von dem Jakob Lorber seinen Schriftwerken. Siehe: http://www.j-lorber.de/ . Bin auch total begeistert! Hast Du mich, Willi Mösenbacher, am 28.02 .2000 etc. in RTL Explosiv, jahrelang in und zwischen den RTL Nachrichten, vielen Jahresrückblicken, Willkommen Österreich, ORF2, BBC, Wahre Liebe, Was guckst du, Steiermark Heute (Rückblicksendung/en) oder in vielen, anderen Berichten - Sendern (auch heute noch) gesehen? Zur Sache: Als der Schnellste flitzte ich, splitternackt bei Celsiusgraden, mit vielen Menschen welche es mir gleichmachten, in ein Kleider Geschäft in Graz! Warum ich das machte? Frag mich! Teilantwort: HAUPTSÄCHLICH MACHTE ICH ES, UM MEINEN KOMMENTAR IN DEN MEDIEN, GEGEN DIE BRAUNFÄRBUNG IN DER REGIERUNG, ABZUGEBEN. http://owmoesy.praya.eu/38f-O-W-MOESY-VISIONAER-UND-MEHR-A-8990-BAD-AUSSEE; http://owmoesy.cms4people.de/; http://www.facebook.com/O.W.MOESY; http://owmoesy.klack.org/index.html; http://owmoesy.npage.de/foto_18297034.html; http://visionaer.npage.eu/owmoesy_a_8990_bad_aussee_90137570.html; http://home.pages.at/jingjang/tipsfkind.html;

moesy — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:56:25 +0000

WILLIBALD OSKAR MOESENBACHER alias O.W.MOESY VISIONAER UND MEHR A - 8990 BAD AUSSEE STEIRISCHES SALZKAMMERGUT AUSSEERLAND TRAUNTAL OBERSTEIERMARK BEZIRK LIEZEN GEOGRAFISCHER MITTELPUNKT ÖSTERREICHS AUSTRIA Hatte Jenseitserfahrungen, schönster und interessantester Art! Bin autodidaktischer Kunstmaler, Schreiberling, Spaßvogel, Aktionist, Verteiler, Nonsist der Willichbald und INHABER DER FIRMA RAST & RUH – welche hat immer ZU. Many millions of human souls are excited by Jakob Lorber his written works. See: http://www.j-lorber.de/ . Viele Millionen Menschenseelen sind begeistert, von dem Jakob Lorber seinen Schriftwerken. Siehe: http://www.j-lorber.de/ . Bin auch total begeistert! Hast Du mich, Willi Mösenbacher, am 28.02 .2000 etc. in RTL Explosiv, jahrelang in und zwischen den RTL Nachrichten, vielen Jahresrückblicken, Willkommen Österreich, ORF2, BBC, Wahre Liebe, Was guckst du, Steiermark Heute (Rückblicksendung/en) oder in vielen, anderen Berichten - Sendern (auch heute noch) gesehen? Zur Sache: Als der Schnellste flitzte ich, splitternackt bei Celsiusgraden, mit vielen Menschen welche es mir gleichmachten, in ein Kleider Geschäft in Graz! Warum ich das machte? Frag mich! Teilantwort: HAUPTSÄCHLICH MACHTE ICH ES, UM MEINEN KOMMENTAR IN DEN MEDIEN, GEGEN DIE BRAUNFÄRBUNG IN DER REGIERUNG, ABZUGEBEN. http://owmoesy.praya.eu/38f-O-W-MOESY-VISIONAER-UND-MEHR-A-8990-BAD-AUSSEE; http://owmoesy.cms4people.de/; http://www.facebook.com/O.W.MOESY; http://owmoesy.klack.org/index.html; http://owmoesy.npage.de/foto_18297034.html; http://visionaer.npage.eu/owmoesy_a_8990_bad_aussee_90137570.html; http://home.pages.at/jingjang/tipsfkind.html;

Harper's Island comes to its frustratingly almost-great conclusion Here Be Spoilers

topazbean — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:43:30 +0000

‘I’ve always had certain impulses. I just didn’t understand them until I met my Dad.’

He's behind you! John Wakefield's mystery assistant is finally revealed

So, the 13-episode ‘event’ that was Harper’s Island (CBS) has finally come to its grisly end in what was a thrilling, suspense-laden two hour finale. It turns out Henry, a.k.a. ‘The Groom’, a.k.a. (by me) ‘The Fit One’, was the killer-with-ick-inducing-incestuous-desire-masquerading-as-best-friend who had been secretely assisting oldtimer John Wakefield. It was always a fairly safe bet that Christopher Gorham was going to make it to the end of the series, with the Ugly Betty star being easily the most famous of the younger cast (and one of the better actors by quite a long shot) and all, and he was fan favourite for the killer, but I have to say I had been gunning for Sully to be the bad apple ever since he acted like a royal douche towards Cal in episode 2. Not being a die-hard fan of the show I hadn’t been paying much attention to all the little plot contrivances so for all I know his guilt had been ruled out long ago, but I was feeling pretty smug in my own correctness when Entertainment Weekly did not even bother including Sully in their ‘who’s the killer?’ pre-finale poll. So that showed me.

The reveal was disappointing on the count that Henry was always one of the more sympathetic characters on the island and really the only one left after sweethearts Cal and Chloe kicked the bucket last week. Episode 12 saw the first real moment of suspense for me when Henry left Trish in the shower to go and get his luggage. I actually found myself sitting up in my chair saying ‘no, please not Henry. Please not Henry.’ Though that might have been because his death would left me with no real incentive to keep watching. He was also the most fleshed-out of the bunch – despite her tortured past, Abby always felt like a bit of an unconvingly-well-adjusted-given-she-found-her-mother-hanging-from-a-tree-and-was-then-sent-away-permanently-by-her-father-who-could-hardly-bear-to-look-at-her blank slate. Jane Eyre she was not. Still, it could be said, for those same reasons, that the writers made a daring choice in Henry that more than paid off in the final hour, where we saw Henry repeatedly double-cross his friends, dashing back and forth across the island to make his kills, with Wakefield carting the bodies off into the shadows and Henry moving swiftly on to his next victim, definitively proving his serial-killer-mettle when he turned on his maker and stabbed John Wakefield in the chest, to John’s horrified surprise. More than anything else, though, the general awesomness of this episode only served to highlight the many flaws that the rest of this series has suffered from.

The show never strayed much beyond its original brief – that each week one or more characters would be picked off until only a few remained, one of which must be the killer. It sounds great as a pitch, but even the most gruesome death isn’t going to be stretched much past a few minutes, and then you’ve got another forty minutes or so to try and fill in the meantime without, for the first few weeks, being able to offer any rhyme or reason for the killings. It became apparent pretty early on that they had never really found a solution to this problem, and it does make you realise why, in most slasher movies, the kills come thick and fast and you don’t have time to think about how thin the material really is. It’s like those volunteers currently standing on the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square as part of the One and Other project (that you can watch live here). They get up there keen as anything in their pigeon costume and wave a sign around with something witty written on it, and then you slowly see the enthusiasm fade from their faces as they realise that what seemed like a great idea when they started is never going to stay interesting for an entire hour. Watching their ever-more apparent discomfort can be gruellingly amusing for a certain kind of person (that I would count myself among), but I’m not sure it quite works as mainstream entertainment. And so is the case with Harper’s Island.

The other central appeal of the show was supposed to be that we were guaranteed to have all mysteries solved in the finale. That promise was met, but the problem is that once we found out who had been scheming in the background, and were able to watch him at work, we suddenly realised what we had been missing all this time. To Gorham’s credit, he played off the sweet-natured hero persona he has built up over his acting career in Popular, the short-lived Jake 2.0 and Ugly Betty to keep us rooting for him throughout and then, when it finally bubbled to the surface in the final two hours, played his ruthless alter-ego to subtle and chilling effect. It is interesting to note, though, that in a way this dichotomy parallels how the entire series has unfolded. While we thought we were watching a trashy TV take on the slasher format, complete with two-dimensional cannon fodder and campily imaginative death scenes, the finale revealed that a much darker, deeper tale has been unfolding in the shadows that, to my infinite frustration, we were never actually allowed to see.

With what we now know, Henry is so obviously the most interesting character on the programme that it’s a crying shame that all we got were a few flashbacks to try and figure out what made him tick. The way that he manipulated the people around him was exciting and tantalising in the same way that Dexter (Showtime) can be at its best, with the added bonus of the promise of an open-and-shut case and character study within thirteen episodes and therefore minus the need to make us relate to the killer by being ‘arch’ all the time. He should have been revealed earlier. I would happily have watched him at work for at least four or five episodes. How brilliant to have seen him stab Trish’s stepmother while at the same time playing hero and dashing off into the tunnels to find Shay’s daughter – who he already knew was stashed away in a room down there. How fascinating, and terrifying, to have seen him in conversation with his mentor – to see how they planned and dissected their next kill, to understand their attitudes to their victims, or to watch him try to rationalise both the murders and his obsessive yearning for his own half-sister. This would also have given us a chance to learn a little more about the original island killer, John Wakefield, who never felt like more than a robotic murder machine, ironically made doubly disappointing by the same actor’s attractive and scary performance as Leoben the cylon in Battlestar Galactica. Henry’s interactions, once we knew he was the killer, with the other characters also gave them more depth than they had ever had before, as we peered more closely in order to observe how he played off their fears and relative levels of trust in him, and to listen out for any possible trips he might have made to expose himself.

Ah Danny. We never even knew you. Oddly.

But, instead, all we got was a show that was mildly entertaining for a Saturday night but fed us almost exactly the same not-as-scary-as-we-would-like meal each week, divided only by the time when people didn’t realise there was a murderer on the island, and the point when they (finally) figured it out. Stupidly, the big advantage that a slasher tv show should have had over a slasher movie – to really explore all of the characters and make us genuinely fear for their safety, was completely missed as they went for cheap types and single defining characteristics (a fact overtly, if bizarrely, acknowledged in the marketing campaign, which identified each character by singularly uninspiring monikers. Cal, for example, was thrillingly referred to as ‘The Outsider’ – because, you know, he was British, ‘n’ stuff) – the fat one was selfish and inept, the bride was sparky but helpless, the best man was cowardly and obstructive, the stepmother was a nymphomaniac adulteress. Harper’s Island had pretensions of taking these characterisations to an extra level, but really did no more than you would expect from your slightly more upmarket slasher fare – think Deep Blue Sea or Hollow Man without the CGI. Or pace. Most of them were not only over-simplistic but also utterly unmemorable. It’s like that moment halfway through a series of Big Brother or The Apprentice when you look back at old contestants and realise you actually have no recollection whatsoever of half of them. Then you look at the remaining contestants and realise that you don’t know most of their names either. I was particularly impressed by their ability to keep Danny (I actually had to look up his name) going for an entire twelve episodes without imbuing him with a single outstanding personality trait, ensuring that Harper’s Island adhered to that most sacred of slasher-movie staples – the token black dude. Admirable, artistically motivated stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.

This laziness was similarly transferred to their last-minute explanation of Henry’s motivation for going along with Wakefield’s plans for destruction, epitomised in the quotation at the start of this review, and their insistence that John Wakefield was just ‘born bad’. It annoyed me as much here as it did when it was used to explain Alpha’s killing sprees in the season one finale of Dollhouse (Fox). The notion that, regardless of whatever else you strip away, the inherent evil of a person will always remain is at once facile, depressing, unoriginal and, worst of all, boring. It is also devastatingly disappointing when it it is being presented as the explanation for an entire season’s worth of atrocities. At least in Dollhouse, even if I don’t agree, it shows a certain consistency of philosophy as to the nature of the soul on the part of Joss Whedon, stretching back to his Buffy days. The writers of Harper’s Island have no such excuse. It just gave them a convenient way to write off a character’s actions in time for the close-of-play.

I didn’t hate Harper’s Island. In fact, I quite enjoyed it, and I hope to see more in the future from its largely talented cast. It’s also great to feel the sort of closure at the end of a season run that you usually only get with British dramas. I always feel more generous to a show when they’re only aiming to retain your loyalty for the length of a few pre-planned episodes rather than to keep you slavishly watching with the aid of a few contrived cliffhangers for however many years the network deems it worthy of staying on air. But as is the case with so many network TV shows these days, ambitions were set too low, the execution was lazy, and I was left with the feeling that in all the running and gunning, all the unconvincing motivations, half-cocked explanations and arbitrary conflicts, we had all somehow missed a much, much better story.

Links will be embedded in the next day or so…
Other good posts on the series finale:

The Rebel Prince: A bittersweet (mostly bitter) review

Entertainment Weekly: I now pronounce you man and…knife!

Television Without Pity: Notes of an assassin

Leoben and Starbuck Reunited

Chris — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:21:58 +0000

After the season 7 finale of 24, I have to admit I’m excited to see whats next. We know they

The 'Jesus Prison' or A Prison John Wesley might have approved of?

mikeoles3 — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:14:02 +0000

I was in Michigan City, Indiana this weekend. Its one of my favorite places in Indiana and a place where the future and past of the midwest are colliding.

There are a few landmarks that dominate that city’s skyline. The Blue Chip Casino can see it from miles away, the Nipsco coal-powered cooling tower dominates and nearly ruins the view from the Indiana Dunes’ National Seashore. Lastly, Michigan City is home to the Indiana State Prison, which is home to Indiana’s letal injection table.

In a way, Michigan City might be a Methodist’s worst nightmare, a place dominated by gambling, environmental destruction, and prison injustice.

I want to focus on the prison part right now. When we got home last night, I opened up the New York Times Magazine and was amazed to see this headline, “Rethinking Prison Design.” Here is a quote from the article about this remarkable prison in Austria:

Inside the prison it felt like Sunday afternoon, though in fact it was a Tuesday. There was a glassy brightness over everything, and most surprising, an unbreakable silence. Prisons are usually clamorous places, filled with the sound of metal doors opening and closing, and the general racket that comes with holding large numbers of men in a confined space. Noise is part of the chaos of prison life; Leoben was serene. I mentioned as much to Hohensinn, and he smiled and pointed to the whitewashed ceilings. He had taken great care to install soundproofing.

The article continues but you get the point. This is a place that replaces violence with silence; inhumanity with community. The author, Jim Lewis, is quick to warn that “that the Leoben facility isn’t the Jesus Prison: It’s not going to single-handedly heal us and carry us up to Paradise.”

But still?!?!?!

John Wesley and the early Methodists were concerned about Britain’s prison’s system and I bet he would be shocked to see our contemporary American one. But this prison in Austria–if we need prisons–might be a place for Methodists to start thinking about how we think about our role in this current prison madness.

Fekter möchte Asylwerber röntgen

hejio — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:26:08 +0000