message from a student

its yust a soundtrack
and i understand not anything
but i what the lyriks are, everything!!!
=)

it is a joke for the movie
but i think the song shows us the situation of oure (the amercan) musik buissnis :
the woman should be very sexy and she should say horny thing an so on. ist a musikbuiniss fore stupid people. but the problem is that the most people are stupid. so you have to make this musik to become famous.... its so stupid
but its funny ^^

Ein abgefahrenes Halloween

As Halloween approached I pretty bummed that I couldn't be in Austin for a spectacularly weird weekend. Sure, I could have planned a Halloween party here in Dresden, but it would have been any other costume party. What is irreplaceable is how the whole city of Austin, with adults and kids alike, transforms itself into an eccentrically costumed Halloween wonderland for an entire weekend. It's so much more than the candy and sweets.

Unexpectedly, however, I did experience an utterly weird and fun Halloween... at the DINO PARK. The park dates back to the DDR and is situated in a foresty area outside the city. There are no flashy rides, sugary treats, neon advertisements, or mind-numbing children's music. (We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto!) Instead, there are gigantic dinosaur sculptures and an elaborate series of wooden playgrounds where you can climb and swing like a monkey. And climb and swing I did! But the real icing on the cake was the erotic Neanderthal structures. Yes, really! You read it correctly. What can I say, it's never too early for sexual education in Germany.

Under entirely normal circumstances there are always uncontrollable fits of laughter with Micha and his family, so you can imagine how hilarious and unforgettable Halloween '10 was at the DINO PARK.

Proof!

Claire & Justus, a one-of-a-kind 3 year old Kunde (dude)

Typical

What's in there?

Not as cruel as it looks

Swinging!

Glorious Autumn

Exchanging jokes

The sculptures are really BIG

Codo: a new interpretation

Codo - Ich düse im Sauseschritt from Michael Klarfeld on Vimeo.

Epic song + film project at school + cheap beer + a friend who is even weirder than me and knows how to work with adobe premiere

Sunny Afternoon

Hallööööö liebe Kunden,

IT'S A SUNNY DAY. I'd be a fool to stay indoors for too long on a day like this. My sunny days are, like, numbered as November nears......

I'm wrapping up my 2-week fall break and on Tuesday I'm going to start teaching 4realz. I took trips to Berlin, Kiel & Flensburg. The latter two northernly cities are 30 minutes apart, but Germans consider the difference to be profound. Actually they're right.

Berlin is wild! There's Germany and there's Berlin. It's super international, very funky, and the scene is constantly changing. In spirit, it's like a cosmopolitan version of Austin. Since it's only 2 hours away and I know plenty of people living there, I'd like to visit fairly often. I'm very glad that I live in Dresden though-- in Berlin it would be hard to meet German people, oddly enough.

In Kiel and Flensburg I was reunited with Frederike & her family & her spectactular friends. We had a MUSTACHE PARTY and I got reacquainted with Fernet Branca y Coca, which is what people drink in Argentina. Listen, I think it's stupid to talk about drinking, but I'm going to make a brief exception: Fernet is something else. It's actually nice on your stomach and you'll have an opposite-hangover the next day. It is, however, an "acquired taste". (OK I'm done now)

Another memorable part of the trip occurred at the grocery store. I was buying said drink and some old man started pushing his shopping cart against me (instead of asking me to kindly move or going around me). Then after I grumbled some insults, he took out his knife and starting sharpening it. Fuckin weirdo.

In a little bit I will go to a "Hochseilgarten" with my housemates. It's tough to describe. It's a place where you climb shit and are connected to ropes, but it's not rock climbing. It's like an obstacle course high up in the trees!

That's all for now, folks. L8R!

And check out this sweet Chilean music playlist that NPR compiled.

My German face

Exhibit A: I'm posting this picture for a few reasons...

1) You can see my kitchen at my new apartment.

2) Tall boots and a trench coat? But it's only September 18th!

3) However the main reason I took this was to show you a unique phenomenon which I call the "German face." This is the preferred expression of many Germans in public settings, like when walking around the city or waiting for the train. You have to look like you're contemplating your mortality or something. No smiling.

Exhibit B: another girl on my program took this concept to new heights. I can't look at this without erupting into laughter.

I've been living in Dresden for about 10 days now and I'm enjoying it a lot. I'm excited to discover more of it. :-)

PS: Another hilarious factoid is that I hear "It's Raining Men" on the radio at least once a day!

Ágætis byrjun, a new beginning

Dear friends,

Liebe Grüße aus Kiel! Kiel is seaside town in Northern Germany, in a region that is the love child of Germany and Denmark. I'm staying with the Schwarz family, who are kind of like my adopted German family. Being here cancels out many of the overwhelming feelings that come with moving to a new country. It's good to be in a familiar, inviting home.

Dear reader, do you know how I met the Schwarz fam? This story began when I was an angry teenager, about 13 or 14 years old. At this time I was in the (ahem) formative stages of a deeply-seeded hatred for Plano, Texas. I spent a lot of time daydreaming about escape, particularly to Germany and Denmark. Then one day, thanks to an AOL penpal website, I came into contact with a nice German girl named Frederike. We wrote each other emails every day (no kidding) and became good friends in spite of distance in these pre-Skype days. After a year or so her family invited me to spend the summer at their home in Kiel. It was, like, the coolest thing ever! Since then, we've met up several more times in both Germany and Texas... and this week commemorates the first visit since 2006. Is this like a fairy tale or what?

Frederike has expertly taken on the role of being my German mentor... teaching me useful words and phrases such as: asisch, karrieregeil, Schluss mit lustig, Aus die Maus, Ende im Gelaende, verpeilt, Spiesser, and all kind of fabulous adjectives to describe people. Here's a good phrase that she taught me: "5 Minuten vor der Zeit ist die wahre Pünktlichkeit", a rhyme which translates to "Arriving five minutes early is the true punctuality". If this holds to be true in Germany, then I'm in trouble.

In spite of the inevitably of punctuality problems, I'm feeling optimistic about the next year (or longer?) in Germany.

1) Frederike and I in Dresden
2) The Schwarz family (Frederike wasn't there)