Jolly Old St. Nicholas

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Cora

December 6th is St. Nicholas Day in Germany and the Netherlands. The weather was pleasantly Christmassy, cold with a light dusting of snow, and I celebrated in style by baking yet more Christmas cookies.

As dusk fell – which in December happens around 4 PM in North Germany – the so-called “Nikolausläufer”, children dressed up as St, Nicholas who go from house to house, sing a song or recite a poem and get a treat in return, began to arrive. I go it bit deeper into this tradition in this post from 2010.

Because the weather was nice, 2012 was a good year for Nikolausläufer. I got 21 kids on my doorstep, from toddlers to teen boys stuck in the middle of the puberty voice change (being a cruel person, I made them sing for their treat). Since I only bought 20 Kinder Surprise Eggs, that meant that one kid had to make do with two bars of Ritter Sport mini chocolates and a bag of gummy bears I found in the cellar. No idea where it came from – I never buy gummy bears, cause I’m allergic.

Interestingly, the gender balance in my neighbourhood seems to have shifted from lots of little boys to lots of little girls. At any rate, I got a lot more girls than boys on my doorstep. So the “pretty in pink” eggs were not such a bad idea after all – in fact, they went faster than the regular edition.

There probably would have been more Nikolausläufer, but at quarter to seven in the evening I had to leave to go to the monthly translators’ meet-up at Leo’s restaurant. I had a rather seasonal filet of deer, served with red cabbage, potato dumplings and chestnut sauce.

Celebrating St. Nicholas Day is mainly a German and Dutch tradition, but the tradition also survived in Pennsylvania among the descendants of German settlers, though St Nicholas is called Belsnickel there. Kathleen Valentine shares some of her childhood memories of St. Nicholas Day on her blog. There’s also a follow-up post, in which I’m quoted. She has also written a lovely St Nicholas day themed novella called The Reluctant Belsnickel of Opelt’s Wood. It’s not just the perfect holiday read for the day, but also free at Amazon at the moment, so get yourself a copy.

In other news, Oscar Niemeyer, the Brazilian architect who built Brasília, the UN headquarters in New York, the Serpentine Gallery in London and many other world famous buildings, died today just a few days short of his 105th birthday. Until very recently, he was still working as an architect, too. The Guardian has an image gallery of some of his works. I was never the biggest fan of modernist architecture, but Niemeyer’s work I always liked. His buildings have the sweeping futuristic look of golden age SF cover or a Bond villain’s HQ.

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Snowy Day Linkdump

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Cora

We had more snow last night and this time around, the snow even stayed, because the temperatures hovered around zero all day long.

And because the weather was so conductive to the holiday spirit, I baked cookies today. I made butter cookies and oatflake fruit balls. The oatflake cookies were supposed to contain either raisins or dried cranberries, but since I had run out of both, I substituted some tropical fruit mix instead. The results taste great either way. I probably would have made even more cookies, but unfortunately I ran out of flour and butter. Ah well, there’s always other days.

In other news, Amazon apparently opened a Brazilian store today, so now all my e-books may also be bought at Amazon BR. The full list of available titles is here, while links will be added to the respective book pages as I get around to it. Meanwhile, you can always look up all retailers where my books are available at the brand new retailer page.

And of course, I’ve got some links for you as well.

Over at the little visited ABC Buhlert blog, I talk a bit about green energy as a job engine today.

At the Guardian, Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, offers his appreciation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Now I vehemently dislike Paul Krugman and vehemently disagree with his pro-debt, pro-inflation, anti-costsaving idea of economics (I made a swipe against him in this post) and his constant anti-German rhetoric drives me up the wall (never mind that he’s wrong, because Germany is doing very well economically, unlike other countries I could name). And of course, he has to go into all that crap about how debt and inflation are good yet again, marring an otherwise good article. But at least Krugman’s taste in literature is better than his economic concepts. It’s also interesting that a man I usually dislike has been influenced by the same books as me, because the Foundation Trilogy was hugely important to me as a teen (coincidentally, Osama Bin Laden allegedly was a fan as well, so make of that what you will). Besides, it’s always nice to see an appreciation of Isaac Asimov’s work, since it’s fashionable these days to diss Asimov, while lionizing Heinlein whose works I never liked.

Kathleen Valentine wonders about the popularity of BDSM billionaire erotica and what this says about women. I totally agree with her, since I have stated before that I find this trend hugely problematic. BTW, do not click on the article she links to, unless you have a very strong stomach, since it’s woman-hating bullshit of the worst sort, the sort of thing that makes internet censorship briefly seem like a good idea.

The annual cover contest for the best Christmas romance cover is open at the Cover Café. Once again, I find myself liking the covers of the Christian romance novels best, which always surprises me, since I barely read that genre at all.

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Gendering and Kinder Surprise Eggs

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Cora

Tonight, I went grocery shopping. Among other things, I also bought a pallet of twenty Kinder Surpise Eggs, because St. Nicholas Day is coming up and Kinder Surpise eggs are ideal for handing out. For more on the North German custom of kids going trick or treating on St. Nicholas Day see here and here.

In my opinion, Kinder Surprise Eggs make ideal St Nicholas Day treats. They’re affordable even in larger quantities, particularly if you get them at a reduced price like I did. What is more, all children love Kinder Surprise Eggs, as evidenced by their worldwide success. Well, worldwide with the sole exception of the US, where Kinder Surprise Eggs are banned, because they are supposedly a choking hazard. Attempts to illegally import the eggs carry hefty fines. So guns and marijuana, medical or not, are okay, but Kinder Surprise Eggs, now that’s a horrible danger. Sigh!

Another thing to love about Kinder Surprise Eggs is that they’re not just a treat for all ages from toddler (since German parents actually do their job and don’t let very young kids play with Kinder Surprise Eggs unsupervised) to teenager (my otherwise so grown up eighth graders insisted last year that they weren’t too old for Kinder Surprise Eggs) but that they’re also gender neutral. Or at least, they used to be.

For when I was at the supermarket tonight and found the display with the price reduced Kinder Surprise Eggs, I thought, “That’s strange. Since when are Kinder Surprise Eggs pink?” Still I packed twenty eggs onto one of those plastic trays, put them into the shopping cart and continued towards the check-out. Then, directly next to the check-out, I saw a different display of Kinder Surprise Eggs in the traditional red and white packaging. I was a bit taken aback and went back to the first display to check whether I had accidentally grabbed some limited edition eggs, which would be more expensive. But no, the price for the red and pink eggs was exactly the same. Only that the pink eggs were labeled with a sign (which I had previously missed) saying “Kinder Surprise Eggs – For Girls Only.” Cue a lot of grumbling about sexism and aggressively gendered toys, while I swapped out the pink eggs for red and white eggs.

“What’s the problem?”, my Dad, who happened to be with me, asked, “Why don’t you just hand out pink eggs?”

“Because the pink eggs are labeled and marketed as ‘for girls’. Now how do you think an eight-year-old boy will react, when given something labeled as ‘for girls’?”

I’ve talked a little about the aggressive gendering of toys and the potential problems before on this blog. But this bugs me more than pink princess Barbie dolls and the like, simply because Kinder Surprise Eggs used to be such a great unisex toy/gift. Yes, the toys themselves are gendered on occasion, e.g. the sets of collectible plastic figurines include boy and girl figurines, other eggs contain little cars or – back when I was a kid, tin soldiers in historic uniforms. I loved those. But because you never know what you get when you buy them, the eggs themselves are gender neutral.

Of course, it’s possible that the toys inside the pink eggs are absolutely lovely. And come to think of it, Kinder Surprise Eggs did tend towards more boy-associated toys. There were always more cars and tin soldiers and male figurines than dolls and horses and girl figurines. And in the end, I did buy ten pink and ten regular eggs – after all, I get Nicholas girls, too.

But still, it’s kind of sad that even Kinder Surprise Eggs are gendered now.

I took some photos of the eggs side by side, which you can see behind the cut: Continue reading →

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Snow and Seasonal Cheer… and Klingons?

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Cora

Today, just in time for the first advent Sunday, it started to snow here in North Germany. Of course, the snow was very wet and it only lasted for two hours maybe, but it was still snow. Photographic evidence may be found behind the cut.

Over the past few days, I put up my Christmas decorations in keeping with the season. Among other things, I also dressed Else, the vintage department store mannequin I bought at a going-out-of-business sale a while back, in a seasonally appropriate outfit. You can see last year’s photos of Else’s Christmas look here. But department store mannequins tend to gather dust just like everything else. And before I could dress up Else in holiday style, I first had to clean her. And while I was standing in my front window, wiping down a naked department store mannequin with a wet towel, I wondered what the passers-by would make of that sight. Cause nobody expects department store mannequins in residential areas, so Else frequently gets mistaken for real. Little children sometimes even wave at her, which is very cute. So anybody who watched me cleaning naked Else – including her breasts and between her legs – probably thought they were witnessing a lesbian sex act in a display window.

In other news, my Dad gave me a newspaper clipping from the local paper today. It was an article on the Klingon language and Klingon classes. Now my Dad shows very little interest in TV shows in general and I’m not sure if he’s ever seen a full episode of any Star Trek show. Hence, I was very surprised that he knows what Klingons are, especially since the article wasn’t even illustrated with a photo of Klingons. Of course, my Dad was in the audience when I presented this paper on language and science fiction. But I’m surprised that he apparently had some idea what I was talking about, much less that he remembers.

And now for some photos of snowy North Germany: Continue reading →

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Scotland Photos Part 5: Crathes Castle

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Cora

I promised on last Scotland photo post and here it is with photos of Crathes Castle, a 16th century building with a large estate and stunning gardens located some twenty kilometres west of Aberdeen. The castle is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a wronged servant girl. As usual, I didn’t see anything, though the room she is supposed to haunt was uncommonly gloomy.

Still, we got lucky and the weather was gorgeous when we visited, so there’s lots of beautiful autumn foliage to see behind the cut: Continue reading →

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At last, Barnes & Noble… and some other links

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Cora

The biggest news of the day (well, for me at any rate) is that my e-books are now finally available at Barnes & Noble. You can find the full list here – individual links will also be added to the individual book pages in the next few days. What is more, I have also added a Retailer page listing all the places where my books are available to the menu bar.

And now for some links:

The Atlantic has an article on the crisis of the Belgian comics industry and attempted countermeasures. Now Belgian comics played an important part during my teenaged years (my Dad used to work in Rotterdam and since my Dutch wasn’t so great, comics were all I could read), so my initial reaction was “What crisis? What are they smoking?” Though to be honest, the Belgian comics I loved during my teens – not just TinTin and Spirou, but also Suske an Wiske, Blake and Mortimer, Corentin, Bruce J. Hawker, Yoko Tsuno, Franka, Natasha, Rik Ringers, The Red Knight, De Geuzen, Michel Vaillant, Aria and many more – were often decades old by the time I found them. And while a visit to a comic shop during my last visit to Belgium two year ago had me going home with a bunch of intriguing new to me comic albums, I have no real idea whether the creators of those comics are Belgian, French or Dutch. And come to think of it, I never did. Stylistically, I differentiated between Franco-Belgian-Dutch comics on the one hand and American comics on the other and manga as a third big group, once it became available. Still, Belgium was always the comic country for me (even if I subsumed the occasional French or Dutch comic under Belgian comics) and I love the fact that their ministry of culture has a Comic Book Commission.

Also at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers some insights on the link between masculinity, vulnerability, fear of rejection and ridicule and misogyny using the works of Raymond Chandler as an example. Found via Jay Lake.

Now personally, I don’t find vintage Raymond Chandler nearly that bad with regards to background noise misogyny, homophobia and casual racism (though it’s been a while since I last read Chandler). It’s there of course, but there’s stuff out there that’s much much worse. Nonetheless, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ observations about male vulnerability are spot on, speaking as someone who once had to break up a fight between two 13-year-old boys that broke out because one boy had caught the other masturbating in the school toilets and then had to inform the entire school about that discovery.

Regarding Marlowe’s legendary invulnerability regarding the charms of the many femme fatales he found himself faced with, German singer Heinz Rudolf Kunze already caricatured this in his song Finden Sie Mabel (Find Mabel) way back in 1986 (the YouTube clip is from 2009 though). The song is narrated from the POV of a man who hires Marlowe to locate his missing girlfriend Mabel and who wishes he could be invulnerable like Marlowe “just for one night”, though he knows he will inevitably fall for the charms of the treacherous Mabel once again. It’s a brilliant song, particularly since you don’t known who’s the more pathetic figure – the narrator who will be cheated and robbed by Mabel once again (and knows it), because he’s too much in love with her, or the cold and distant Marlowe who never had such feelings in the first place.

At the Guardian, Adam Roberts offers his list of the best science fiction works of 2012. So far, so unremarkable, if not for one name popping up on the list, namely that of German writer Juli Zeh. Now Juli Zeh is a frequent guest in cultural programmes on German TV and her novels are extensively reviewed. However, so far no German critic seems to have cottoned on to the fact that Juli Zeh writes SF, at least on occasion. Even more remarkable is that the novel Adam Roberts recommends is not Dark Matter, Juli Zeh’s most SFnal novel about quantum physics, parallel universes and time travel, but her dystopian novel The Method (Corpus Delicti in German).

Finally, there have also been two deaths which will affect anybody who watched TV in the 1970s and 1980s.

German cartoonist Wolf Gerlach died aged 84. German TV viewers will mainly remember him as the creator of the Mainzelmännchen, six happy cartoon gnomes who starred in short clips broadcast inbetween ad breaks on the public TV station ZDF. However, Gerlach also created similar ad break cartoon characters for other TV stations such as Ute, Schnute and Kasimir for the WDR, because German law required that public TV stations clearly differentiate between ads and editorial content and those little cartoon clips were a way of saying “This is an ad”. And just for fun, here is a compilation of old Mainzelmännchen clips on YouTube. If anybody wants to know what they looked like in context, here is a complete mid 1980s ad break with Mainzelmännchen. Is it me or does the model in the Fewa washing powder ad bear an uncanny resemblance to Peri from Doctor Who?

Finally, actor Larry Hagman also died last week, aged 81. Pretty much everybody will immediately associate Hagman with J.R. Ewing from Dallas, the part that made him a worldwide star. However, I saw him first as Major Tony Nelson from I Dream of Jeannie, astronaut and hero of a paranormal romance long before it was a genre, which always coloured my view of Dallas. Because here we had the Man from Atlantis, which had always freaked me out as a young kid, in the one corner and Major Tony Nelson himself in the other – three guesses whose side I was on. This is a common pattern BTW, because not only were the “villains” in those big budget 1980s soaps inevitably the most memorable characters – who could ever forget J.R. Ewing, Alexis Morell Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan (yes, I had to look that up), Angela Channing and Richard Channing? – but they were also inevitably the characters I latched on to and adored (and in the case of David Selby’s villainous Richard Channing from Falcon Crest has a huge crush on) when allowed to watch “adult TV” is a kid in the 1980s. There’s a lesson for writers in this: Make sure that “Good” is not bland at best (Bobby Ewing, Krystal Carrington) and unlikable at worst (Blake Carrington whom I fucking hated) unless you want audiences to sympathize with your villain, particularly if the villain is the coolest person in the book/film/show.

Because J.R. Ewing was such a marvelous character, it is easy to forget that Larry Hagman was not really the Texas Republican oil baron he played on TV, but a man who supported numerous charities and was a proponent for renewable energy.

In memory of Larry Hagman, here is a clip that few people outside Germany will have seen, namely Larry Hagman in his J.R. persona doing a cameo appearance on the German soap Lindenstraße and encountering Mother Beimer, a character who is about as iconic for the Lindenstraße as J.R. is for Dallas. There’s plenty of in-jokes here, e.g. that Mother Beimer’s second husband (whose name I have forgotten – been a while since I watched) asks J.R. whether he wants a ticket to Denver (where rival soap Dynasty was set) or that the young female clerk (no idea who this character is – she wasn’t in the show back when I used to watch it) is the only one who recognizes Larry Hagman/J.R. and is in fact a huge fan of his – alas, as Tony Nelson.

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New Story Available: Cartoony Justice

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Cora

As the post title indicates, I have a new story available. This one is called Cartoony Justice and it’s very dear to my heart.

As you can tell by the cover, Cartoony Justice is something of a departure from my usual fare. After all, it’s a story that features magic, talking pigs, flying anvils, singing and dancing bananas and cartoons. In fact, Cartoony Justice is an homage to the Saturday morning cartoons of my childhood and a bit of virtual revenge against those pundits who wanted to ban them.

Cartoony Justice is the sort of story that indie publishing was made for, because it’s the story that gained more “Love it, but don’t know what to do with it” rejections than any other.

So here it is, the story that was too weird for New Weird, too bizarre for Bizarro:

Cartoony Justice
Cartoony Justice It’s Saturday morning. Time for the Dead End Show, everybody’s favourite cartoon program. Hosted by Linda and Dead End Cat, with special guest star Diane, the Vitamin Queen.

It’s Saturday morning and Stella is trying to sleep. When she is rudely awakened, she tunes in to watch the Dead End Show but instead finds an infernally boring film about… bananas?

Something nefarious is going on here and Stella is determined to get to the bottom of it. And considering that Stella is the most powerful sorceress on Earth, nobody in his right mind would stand in her way.

Frederick J. Waardehem PhD has not been in his right mind for a long time now. What is more, he really hates Saturday morning cartoons. They are loud and crude and violent and have absolutely no educational value at all. Which is why they should be banned. After all, won’t someone think of the children?

Waardehem has persuaded the TV station to cancel the Dead End Show and replace it with educational and wholesome programming, starting with Waardehem’s personal favourite, a documentary about bananas.

But trouble is heading for Frederick J. Waardehem. Trouble in the form of Stella, mighty mistress of magic, and her friend Diane, Vitamin queen and alien amazon warrior. They’re angry, they’ve got magic and they will soon make Waardehem regret his banana fixation.

This is a 5300 word short story of cartoons and talking pigs, singing bananas, flying anvils and magic.

For more information visit the Cartoony Justice page.

Buy it for the low price of 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Japan, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, DriveThruFiction, OmniLit/AllRomance ebooks, W.H. Smith, Casa del Libro and XinXii.
More formats coming soon.

By the way, in case you’re wondering about the links that are not yet live – some distributors take more time than others. And yes, Barnes & Noble is not a typo, since I’m distributing to Barnes & Noble now. So my books should show up there sometime soon (I hope).

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An Interview with Cora, a German cinema scandal, vintage German pulp fiction, writing tips and more

Posted on November 24, 2012 by Cora

First of all, I’ve been interviewed once again and answer 5 questions for authors and talk a bit about Murder in the Family at Randomize Me. You can also find links to other interviews I have done around the web archived at my Interviews page.

First of all, here’s a fascinating untold story involving Rainer Werner Fassbinder, probably the most famous director of the new German cinema of the 1970s and early 1980s. I freely admit that I’m not a fan of Fassbinder’s work, with two exceptions: One is the stageplay Bremer Freiheit, based on the case of Gesche Gottfried, a 19th century female serial killer and last person to be publicly executed in Bremen. Fassbinder worked at the Bremen theatre in the late 1960s and early 1970s and came upon the story while here. I played the lead in a school theatre performance of the play some twenty years ago.

The other Fassbinder work I like is his 1974 film Angst Essen Seele Auf (Fear eats the soul), the story of a German cleaning lady, played by legendary actress Brigitte Mira, who falls in love with and marries a much younger man from Morocco. Predictably, it doesn’t end well.

Now director Viola Shafik has uncovered the secret behind Angst Essen Seele Auf and tells a fascinating tale of gay love, racism among supposedly enlightened 1970s intellectuals and a broken family. In short: Fassbinder, who was gay (one of the few openly gay public figures of the time), met El Hedi Ben Alem, the actor who played Brigitte Mira’s Moroccan lover Ali, in Paris. The two of them had an affair, even though Ben Alem was married and had a family in Morocco. Fassbinder, who apparently dreamed of a family and children, brought two of Ben Alem’s four children to Germany, only to turn out to be utterly useless as a father. One of the kids was stuck in Germany for several years, neglected and alone. Meanwhile, Fassbinder’s supposedly so enlightened leftwing friends were showing their racist backsides. The story did not end happily for anybody involved. Fassbinder and Ben Alem eventually broke up. Both died young, Ben Alem in 1976 in a prison in France and Fassbinder in 1982.

On a slightly related note, Strange Horizons has a great article by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz about writing, identity and how difficult it can be to break free from western and more specifically US storytelling tropes as well as from western/US expectations how an authentic [insert nationality here] story should sound. At some level all of us writers from outside the US (as well as writers from minority cultures in the US) struggle with this, even those who like me come from countries that are considered part of the western world.

Nick Mamatas responds to the latest “literary fiction is superior to genre fiction” article by Arthur Krystal, who seems to specialize in such fare, in the New Yorker.

Pulp scholar Jess Nevins has an interesting article on German SF pulp fiction between approx. 1900 and 1945 at iO9. The headline about totalitarian regimes is a bit hyperbolic, because of the three different political systems that existed in Germany between 1900 and 1945 only the Third Reich was unabashedly totalitarian. You could probably make a case for the Second German Empire as a totalitarian state, though personally I’d view it more as an attempt at a constitutional monarchy that did not work very well. The Weimar Republic, meanwhile, was a democratic system, though again one that did not work very well and turned into a quasi-totalitarian state from 1930 and a fully totalitarian one from 1933/1934 on.

But otherwise it’s a good comprehensive overview of early 20th century German pulp fiction, though there’s a lot more to the story of Walter Kabel and his creation detective Harald Harst. I’ll probably write an essay about that some day and put it in the collection of my scattered essays on German pulp fiction (check the bibliography for an overview) that I’m planning to self-publish someday. It’s a complete for the love project, since I doubt a collection of essays about obscure German pulp characters will sell more than a handful of copies. But there is so little information about many of those characters and writers out there and even less in English that I still think collecting my own essays, now all out of print, will be worthwhile.

The Washington Post has an article on the impact Nora Roberts and her books have had on her hometown Boonsboro in Maryland. I’m always happy to see writers stay wherever they feel at home rather than pack up and move to Berlin or Brooklyn or some other supposedly hip place.

Lynn Viehl at Paperback Writer has some great tips for how to create portraits of characters for personal usage. This might come in handy for someone as artistically challenged as me.

Wordplayer has a great article by Stephen King on writing description.

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A lexical oddity or how a 1970s cop left its mark on the German language

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Cora

I actually have one more photo post coming up, but for now here’s a short linguistics post inspired by happening upon a rerun on TV.

I supposed you all know those magnetic beacons that can be attached to the roof of a plainclothes police vehicle in times of need. They’re becoming somewhat less common now that more and more plainclothes vehicles are equipped with grille or dashboard flashers. But until approx. 6 years ago, magnetic beacons were very common indeed.

Now I didn’t actually know what those magnetic beacons were called in English – I had to look it up. I didn’t know the official German term for those things either and again I had to look it up. It’s “Rundumkennleuchte mit Magnethalter” by the way. However, nobody in Germany actually calls them “Rundumkennleuchte mit Magnethalter” outside official documents. Because the German slang term for magnetic beacons is “Kojak”, named after the 1970s cop show starring Telly Savalas.

Kojak, the TV show, was hugely popular in Germany in the 1970s. And the title sequence used on German TV (which to my surprise is completely different from the US title sequence) consists of random stock footage images of New York City (obviously dating from different years, too, considering that the stunning Singer Building can still be seen in some of them, though it was demolished in 1968, five years before Kojak first went on air) intercut with a scene of Lieutenant Kojak putting a magnetic beacon on the roof of his car.

Now I don’t know if magnetic beacons were already in use in Germany in 1974, when Kojak first aired on German TV. But most Germans first saw them on TV in the Kojak title sequence. As a result (and because “Rundumkennleuchte mit Magnethalter” is such as monster of a term(, magnetic beacons are commonly referred to as “Kojaks” in Germany. Though Germany isn’t the only country where Kojak has left a linguistic impression. According to Wikipedia, “Kojak” is a slang term for a bald man in Brazilian Portuguese.

As for the show itself, I came upon a rerun on late night TV yesterday (which prompted this post) and was pleasantly surprised. My vague memories of watching Kojak in the late 1970s and early 1980s had it filed away under “boring show with ugly old men”. Okay, so neither Telly Savalas nor anybody else on the show is going to win any beauty awards anytime soon. There’s also a distinct lack of woman – the only recurring female character I could make out was a woman who ran a bar frequented by many of the regulars. However, Kojak does a surprisingly good job of showing New York City as a diverse place that is not just populated by WASPs. The protagonist is Greek American, played by a Greek American actor, other police officers are Italian American, Hispanic or Jewish. There are black characters, though none in the main cast sadly. Still, by 1970s standards this was positively progressive.

The plot of the episode I watched was a mash-up of Taxi Driver and Play Misty for Me (unscrupulous host of a call-in radio show inspires mentally unstable taxi driver to kill the people who offend her), both films which were big successes in the early 1970s. Interestingly, this hearkens back to the practice of having TV episodes borrow the plots of popular films that was common well into the 1980s (Remington Steele even made fun of it by having the protagonist identify which films they had borrowed from this week). American television stopped doing that sometime post 1990 (though there are occasional throwbacks, e.g. Criminal Minds has a few) and switched instead to offering “ripped from the headlines” cases, which are a lot less interesting IMO.

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Scotland Photos Part 4 – Harbour, Beach and Footdee

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Cora

Aberdeen is a harbour city and since the 1970s, Aberdeen harbour has been the main hub for supplying the oil platforms in the North Sea. Indeed, Aberdeen was one of the cities that were always mentioned in the maritime weather report every day at midnight on the radio news when I was a child.

The importance of the North Sea oil industry for the city of Aberdeen became very obvious as soon as the plane touched down at the airport. For starters, Aberdeen Dyce Airport is also one of the busiest heliports in the world and you could see the large helicopters carrying crews out to the oil rigs in the North Sea waiting on their landing pads right next to the runway. One of those helicopters actually crashed into the North Sea while I was there – luckily, there were no casualties, though it wasn’t the first incident of that sort.

And just in case you somehow missed the helicopters and their significance, the posters inside the airport terminal left no doubt whatsoever that this city defines itself via the oil industry. Because there were lots of posters of oil rigs silhouetted against the setting sun, including one emblazoned with the words “This is home”. Interestingly, Aberdeen Dyce Airport also had the most skewed gender ratio among passengers I have ever seen. I estimate the passengers waiting at the terminal were approx. seventy to eighty percent male – ship and oil rig crews as well as the oil industry in general is heavily male dominated.

Another thing that’s striking about the harbour of Aberdeen is that it is located right next to the city centre. This is actually pretty rare – most harbour cities have their harbours far outside the city centres these days for all sorts of practical reasons. Antwerpen in Belgium is the only other city I can think of where the harbour extends right into the heart of the city.

In the following, there is a bunch of photos of Aberdeen harbour, ships, the coastline as well as Footdee, a charming fishing village quite literally in the shadow of Aberdeen harbour: Continue reading →

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