I Heart The Mudflats

A couple of years ago The Other Half and I were thinking about buying a new car. Our dream car was a Ford Focus XR-5 Turbo but we did not think we could afford it. When we visited the car dealership and The Other Half test drove the car, we knew it was meant to be, and so we worked out a great deal with the guy which made it affordable for us.

As we picked up the car the dealer said to us “Drive it like you stole it” and we have done exactly that. Of course if you stole a car you would be careful to stick to the speed limits and follow all the road rules so that you were not noticed by the police.. We have owned it for two years and have not been pulled over once.

Not long after we got the car, we went on a car cruise with 19 other identical cars. They put together a video of the day which our car appears in – but because there are 19 others, you won’t know which one is ours. Enjoy!

Germans find a lot of reasons to party, Last night, ambulances drove up and down Frankfurts Club mile Hanauer Landstr. to pick up the victims of this years Tanz in den Mai-Dance into 1st of May. This night resembles those Christian churches you find all over Europe, which were erected on former pagan sacred sites.

When I grew up, everybody in our village spent the afternoon of the 30th of April clearing the yard from anything moveable, because the night to come was the night of practical jokes. In the dark, the male village youth would gather and look for wheelbarrows, carts, or machinery left alone under the open sky.

The next morning, negligent owners would find their possessions high up in a tree, fixed to a lamppost or heaved onto a roof. My parents always where proud of securely stowing away everything. Nobody could get the better of them, nobody.

Till one First of May, when my mother wanted to drive to a “Kaffee und Kuchen” invitation. At three a clock, she went out to get her car she parked on the curb. “Call the police”, she cried when she rushed back in 30 seconds later. “My car is stolen”. My father grabbed the phone. While he dialled, he looked out of the window. His eyes hit a red object sitting on the garage roof: my mother’s tiny Fiat 126.

In my village, this night strictly was “boys only”. Later I learnt that the 30th of April for centuries was the night out for the women. In mediveal belief, at Walpurgisnacht, witches mounted their sweeps and rode to the Brocken, a montain in the Harz, where they were to meet their master, the Devil, to a wild orgiastic dance.

Goethe wrote about this myth in his “Faust”, the most classical of German classics. A he did it in part 2, which nobody ever reads, this Tanz in den Mai was forgotten for two centuries. The feminist movement dug the legend out again, dusted it off, and made the 3oth of April a night out for the girls. This time, strictly no men. In lila dungarees I danced to Patti Smith or listened to Ina Deter wailing: Neue Maenner braucht das Land-what we need are new men.

As the new man still were in the making and the old type of men struck back in the conservative 90ies, the feminist movement lost power. The trade unions tried to pick up the newly neglected date and declared it the opening night of First of May, workers day, a public holiday in Germany. Now I drank beer for a good cause and listened to the Songs of International Solidarity.

As we got globalization and international recession instead, Tanz in den Mai was orphaned again. Today, the Club scene adopts the idea. As I walk through the streets, posters like this announce Tanz in den Mai in many of the many hip clubs in town. I was stempted to try the one shown on the photo. I don´t know the message of DJ Maxi, but at least this club admits people over 30, as the sign Ü30 tells me.

These age-brackets sprang up during the last few years. As nobody wants to get old but gets old anyway, the entertainment industry adapted to unchanged habits. Recently I even spotted a Ü40 sign, for all those who lived through the Ü30 parties of the last decade and still don´t want to give up on partying. I´m one of them, though for a long time I didn´t go dancing because I wasn´t energetic enough any more to go out at 11 0´clock at night, dance till 2 0´clock in the morning, and then go to my office the next day – and even work there.

For people like me, the club owners invented the after-work party: it opens at 5 o´clock in the afternoon, dance starts at 8 o´clock. Thus, I can leave, pleasantly exhausted by hard dancing, at 10 o´clock. Sometimes I even can kiss my son good night. Though I would prefer a Ü40 option here too. Last time I queued to get in the guard told me: “Madam, if you are here to get your son, maybe you would rather call him on his mobile.” But this is another story. @Truegerman

You can read more from Truegerman at Letters From Germany

A guest post from Mudflats Moderator Jamie:

In this day and age, friends are often hard to make, hard to keep. We move around so much, changing careers, changing towns, moving across state or to another continent. We have less and less time, time taken up by the hustle and bustle of daily life, work and family. Friendships are often fleeting, it seems to be so complicated to find the time to meet people, join groups, machete through the jungle of rules and constraints put upon us by an ever-changing society. And then internet happened.

From the beginning, since my husband set us up with e-mail addresses and a google search engine, I have always been somewhat afraid of all the new technology, funny thing coming from a girl whose father helped put men into outer space and eventually onto the moon. But little by little, I grew into bigger shoes, understanding my computer’s potential for opening up new worlds to me, allowing me to learn about the world beyond my doorstep or create my own space or talk and debate with other people outside of my own city. I created my food blog and connected with fellow foodies all over the world, I followed a passionate Presidential election alongside fellow political animals and caring Americans (and fellow citizens of the world), I wended my way over to Facebook, hooking up with old school and youth group friends, friends made through the Flats, through various great food blogs and friends met through friends. And now I have found my place among them.

I think that behind the safety of our computer screen, we open up faster to people met over the waves, we are less afraid to show our true selves without the social functions and free of all societal barriers and rules. We met here on The Mudflats with a common passion and a common cause, trying to work together to jump-start a flagging country and find our true American soul, buried under 8 years of lies and greed, entire communities left out in the cold, our collective back turned against the rest of world.

Mudflats gave us a place to share and express ourselves, debate and disagree or inform and share common ground. Coming here we already started as something of a family, long lost or unknown relatives at some huge family reunion, never having met before yet having a common tie, a bond, a unifying factor. We made friends easily, finding like-minded souls and kindred spirits. Passionate and engaged, we none of us had trouble revealing our true selves or seeing each other as we are. And change did indeed come and here we still are thanks to the tidal wave of hope and excitement that has swept through the Mudflats family. And family we have become, supporting each other, laughing together, creating a network in Cyberspace that overflowed to real life!

I was rather shy and extremely self-conscious growing up, never really feeling as if I had anything in common with those around me, always searching for something bigger. I had a hard time fitting in, dressing the part, going along with the crowd. I buried myself in books and bided my time until I could escape. Yet everywhere I traveled I still felt as if I hadn’t quite yet found my place in this world, a place alongside fellow idealists, people willing to shake things up a bit and change the status quo, a place where people were less interested in what job you had or what school you went to or how you dressed or how many cars you owned, but rather interested in what made you tick, what you believe in.

This I finally found here at Mudflats. The folks who gathered around AK Muckraker and her golden pen had no pretensions, didn’t judge, listened carefully, shared openly and laughed together, cried together, and worked together. This is what real friends do. And I had finally come home. Isn’t it an amazing thing, internet? For those of you who follow my blog, you know that I love to cook. Cooking and baking are my pleasure, they are both soothing and invigorating at once, my way of offering a bit of myself to all who sit at my table, my way to say everything from “have a great day” to “thank you” to “I love you”.

So to show my love of Mudflats and everything it has brought to my life, the friendships I have forged, the people that I have come to love and consider family, I have created a special treat, a treat I would love to share here in my virtual kitchen. This is my own version of the mud pie which I have dubbed Mudflats Pies in honor of my first internet friends found here on Mudflats : a deep dark chocolate base like the mud deposits on the bottom of the coastal wetlands and mudflats found both in Alaska and outside of Nantes, a creamy layer of coffee ice cream, representing both the murky waters of Alaskan politics and all the coffee drunk by nameless bloggers and forum members over at the ‘Flats, and topped off by barely sweetened whipped cream, a fluffy layer like newly fallen snow through which tiptoes chocolate moose and other political animals. For the recipe, follow me over to my blog Life’s a Feast.

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is one of my favourite movies. The film is directed by Baz Luhrman who is an Australian director and also responsible for Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge, and the recent film Australia.
I’m just going to tell you a few of the reasons why I love this film – and I did all the screenshots myself, so enjoy.

Leonardo’s hair. Boy, that were no cheap haircut. Seriously, a hairdresser knew what they were doing there. The color is one of the best pieces of work I’ve seen, ever. See how the light catches the streaks? Lovely!

Mercutio. Harold Perrineau to be precise. It is extremely brave to take on this role in this movie because Mercutio was to attend a party as a drag queen – wearing silver high heels and even dance in them. When you see the dancing scene, Mercutio’s high kick is simply stunning.

John Leguizamo plays a wonderful Tybalt and as you see, many of the costumes in the movie involve one of my favourite things – sparkly stuff.

The fishtank scenes. Adding to the color and beauty of this film overall, and really cool to have fish swimming between the actor and the camera. Pretty!

The pool grotto – very beautiful!

The overall colorfulness of this movie is one of the things that makes it a success in my opinion. The beauty of the cast, the locations, the language, it’s all great. When the beach scenes of Mercutio’s death were shot, there was actually a huge storm blowing in – what is happening to those trees is completely natural. The actors made it through even though they were being completely sand blasted.

If you go and read reviews for this movie on the interwebs, you’ll hear all these comparisions to some previous version of Romeo and Juliet done by Zafarelli or some such name back in the 60′s. This is ridiculous. Why compare two versions of something to each other? Clearly Baz Lurhman was not trying to *replicate* the previous version. Nobody would bother to do that.

I have not seen the other version and I have no real desire to. I’m fairly happy with this version of it. And to be honest, so are *millions* of school kids who have seen this movie as part of their traditional Shakespeare lessons instead of some old and dodgy version which would not grab their imaginations the way this movie does, or contain music which is interesting, or use color in such incredible ways as this movie does..

But the ending is the real triumph of this film, in my opinion. Of course I’m not going to spoil it by telling you they both die, that’s a pretty well known thing, but there have been changes made to the death scenes which improve **hugely** on the story. Not to mention the fact that the scenes are visually beautiful (love the blue neon crosses) and Leo’s emotion is heartbreakingly lovely, if that’s possible.

I have seen this film a *zillion* times, and yet every time I see it I somehow hope the ending will magically change and Romeo will take his Juliet off to Mantua and they will live happily ever after.

For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo. I think this colorful and artistic version tells the centuries old story in a way that will inspire students who really have no interest in Shakespeare to get interested, the way that Dead Poets Society gave students like me who had no interest in poetry a love for poetry.

Over to you!

Have you seen this film? Will you seek it out now after reading this review? Do you love Leonardo DiCaprio? Claire Danes? John Leguizamo? Harold Perrineau? Have you seen any of the other Baz Luhrman films? What did you think of them?

If you have a favourite film that you would like to review here on the blog, you can guest post – click here to find out how. And let us know in the comments if there are any films you would like us to review here on the blog.