German TV will never be the same again

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Cora

It’s the end of an era in German television in more ways than one.

First of all, Austrian singer, actor and entertainer Peter Alexander died yesterday aged 84. Here is a longer appraisal in German.

If you’re a German person of a certain age, you grew up with Peter Alexander. You’ve seen him in films, you’re parents probably had at least one of his records (mine did) and the music and variety shows he hosted were a fixture of Saturday evening TV. I didn’t particularly care for his “Schlager” songs, though he was a wonderful operetta tenor. I used to think the film adaption of Ralph Benatzky’s operetta Im Weißen Rössl (The White Horse Inn) from 1960 was the best movie I’d ever seen, when I was ten year old. I still like the music and the 1960 adaption starring Peter Alexander is the definitive version for me. This is the Peter Alexander I will remember, the gifted comedian and operetta tenor.

However, Peter Alexander’s death will be overshadowed by another entertainment headline, for Thomas Gottschalk has announced his retirement from hosting Wetten dass?, the most popular show on German TV, after 24 years on the show’s 30th anniversary. Gottschalk’s announcement. Gottschalk’s announcement is connected to the tragic accident on the show in December which left a 23-year-old contestant paralyzed. Here is a more detailed article in German. Continue reading →

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Winter Returns

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Cora

After the almost spring like weather of the past few days, winter is now making a comeback.

Right now it’s snowing outside and we have maybe one or two centimeters of snow. It’s probably not going to last, but it is rather nice to look at.

And considering that my hayfever already started acting up those past few days, I’m not sorry to see winter lasting a little bit longer.

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Brief Writing Update

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Cora

I just finished a short story. It’s SF, about 1400 words long, the preliminary title is Children of the Stone Gods.

Now I’ll let it rest for a few days, revise it and send it out.

Writingwise, my productivity hasn’t been too bad this year and since I have been mixing short piece in among the longer ones, I’m also finishing more stories. Now I only have to sell them.

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Link Round-up for a Cold Weekend

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Cora

First of all, the news of the day: Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak has finally resigned. Let’s hope that this marks the beginning of a true democracy for Egypt and not the changeover to the next multi-decade dictatorship. And yes, I am actually old enough to remember Mubarak taking office.

My memory and awareness of political world events gradually kicks in between 1978 and 1980. I think that’s earlier than for many others, but then I grew up in a household where the evening news were watched religiously and very much like a church service – you were not allowed to talk, comment or ask questions until after the news was over. Of course, the late 1970s and early 1980s were also a time where a lot of new political leaders and heads of state came in (which bothered me a lot at the time, because I had problems remembering all those new names – why I felt the need to remember them at age 7 I do not know). Meanwhile, the 1980s were largely static with very little changeover.

There is a lot of commentary on the situation in Egypt everywhere on the web. I quite like this post by Ursula K. LeGuin.

***

Meanwhile, there is a new story from the department “fans can be jerks”:

Carla Kelly is an author of regency romances and in fact one of the few living historical romance writers whom I trust to deliver the goods. Recently, however, Ms. Kelly has decided to venture into new territory, namely historical western romances about Mormons*. Many fans were not pleased, they wanted more regencies instead of historical Mormon romances. Never mind that Ms. Kelly is still writing regencies as well, she is just branching out. And at least one fan posted a vitriolic Amazon review including what may or may not be a veiled death threat.

Crap like this makes me angry. Yes, we’ve all had favourite authors who changed direction and wrote books we didn’t like nearly as much as the previous ones. It happens. Trends change, authors change interests or just plain want to write something different. I completely sympathize with that – I would quickly burn out if I only had to write the same sort of story (regardless what sort of story) for the rest of my life. And if a favourite writer changes direction and writes something that no longer appeals to me – well, no one is forcing me to buy it. Besides, I am not averse to giving Borrowed Light a try, since it’s about a piece of history that – being German – I don’t know a whole lot about.

Anyway, once again Neil Gaiman says it best: “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.” And neither is Carla Kelly.

*I know the official name of the denomination is Church of Latter Day Saints, but that’s a very long name to type. Never mind that most of my German readers won’t know what it is.

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Nothing to say

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Cora

I have nothing to say right now – and the fact that I nearly spelled that as “nuthing too say” should be a tip-off as well.

So stand by for more content tomorrow.

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The many different ways of getting inspiration

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Cora

Today I came across two very interesting posts about writers and inspiration:

Here is a post on visual inspiration and character specific colour palettes from Paperback Writer.

And here SF writer writer Adam Israel describes how he uses tarot cards for inspiration at Inkpunks. (Found via Charles Tan)

I always find it fascinating how different writers ignite their imagination and what tools and methods they use.

For example, I am a visual writer and I collect all sorts of images related to whatever I am writing. Not just photos of actors who look somewhat like the characters*, but also photos of buildings, cars, clothes, furnishings, tableware, anything that might pop up. But unlike Lynn Viehl of Paperback Writer, colours and colour palettes aren’t that crucial to my process. Though come to think of it, there often are certain colours that determine the look and feel of a given project. In fact, I might just run some of my project images through that colour palette generate to see what comes up.

The tarot as inspiration is also interesting, because it’s such an obvious idea. I have a tarot deck, but I have for affinity for rune casting. My favourite lecture I held at university was the one about runes and English linguistics – though I suspect my students would beg to differ.

I have also used runes for inspiration on occasion, but usually to generate story ideas. I haven’t actually done a casting for a character, though it’s an interesting idea.

* This can be a problem, when the actor in question mainly appears in historical films, but you need him in contemporary garb. Or if an actor is known for playing a doctor, but you need him as a soldier. What is more, when you put the name of an actress, any actress, into Google image search, you will get lots of nude photos and scanty underwear photos.

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Recently Read Books – Holiday Edition

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Cora

Crap, I’m really behind with the recently read books discussion, because this is what I read over Christmas and New Year. Since it was the holiday season, I decided to take a break from speculative romance and read something a little lighter and seasonally appropriate. So I turned to a Mills & Boon 2-in-1 Christmas romance, namely:

Their Christmas Family Miracle by Caroline Anderson and Snowbound Bride-to-Be by Cara Colter

What is most notable about both novels is that they have the same plot. And not just the same plot in the sense that all romances have the same plot of “girl meets boy, faces and overcomes obstacles, they happily ever after”, but the exact same plot. In both novels we have a young woman disappointed by love, laden with trust issues and financial woes who struggles to make a perfect Christmas for herself and others. We have a dark hero overcome by grief and unable to love, both of which manifests itself as an irrational hatred for Christmas. And we have cute orphaned children (and in one case an infirm spaniel) looking for love, family and connection. Circumstances involving copious amounts of snow and ice throw these characters together, love blossoms and the Christmas spirit makes everything all right. Continue reading →

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Pondering the new TV

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Cora

I’ve been gradually organizing the channels on my new TV, so that TV channels I actually watch are at the front of the channel list, the German language channels I don’t watch except under certain circumstances come next, then the international news channels, foreign language channels (French, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, etc…), duplicates (usually regional variations of the same program), shopping and porn channels and finally radio stations and then open slots. All of those encoded pay-TV channels were deleted altogether. I pay my license fee and nothing more. Never mind that I doubt I’ll ever get the hankering to watch Spanish or French pay-TV.

I find it very depressing that I can get approximately twenty free porn channels on my new digital satellite TV, but channels that specialized in TV drama are encoded and pay-TV only. Okay, so those porn channel are more like endless loops of those annoying late-night phonesex ads, but it is porn and there are approximately twenty satellite channels specializing in that sort of thing. Back when I last had digital satellite television, there were only two or three. I mean honestly, how many nigh identical porn channels does anyone need?

Lots of channels that used to be free are encoded these days. For example, MTV is encoded. Do they honestly imagine that anyone would pay for MTV? Especially MTV as it is now, a wasteland of stupid reality shows? Though I’ve found two music channels that actually still play music, which is a pleasant surprise.

Even more absurd, Fox News is encoded. I thought you’d have to pay people to watch Fox News, not the other way around. Honestly, when Fox News first showed up on the Astra satellite network shortly after September 11th, 2001, lots of people thought that it was supposed to be a parody of the US-biased and overly patriotic news coverage of CNN. And as a parody, it was absolutely brilliant. Quite a shock to realize that they were dead serious.

Though it seems to me that Russia Today, a new-to-me channel, is even worse as a news program than Fox News. Because every time I land on Russia Today, someone is peddling some new utterly insane conspiracy theory. Yesterday, it was that old standby of Muslims waiting to overrun Europe, today it was something about the Chinese trying to poison the world with fake plastic rice.

Finally, the most depressing thing is that of the hundreds of TV and radio channels broadcast via the Astra satellite, there’s maybe only twenty or so that are actually watchable. Honestly, if I didn’t already have the satellite dish, I would have stuck with digital terrestrial TV and missed almost nothing. I initially got the satellite dish to be able to watch English language TV, but the only free English language channels left are news programs, everything else is encoded. And they wonder about illegal downloading.

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While I was away – Link Roud-Up

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Cora

Since the Internet didn’t stop, while I couldn’t access my site, here is a link round-up:

Steampunk as viewed from a romance perspective at All About Romance.

Star Wars tie-in novels viewed from a romance perspective at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

The second part of Marissa Day’s series on how to write sex scenes at the Book View Café.

The next installment in Lilith Saintcrow’s series on how to write fight scenes.

Here is a long interview with China Mieville at the International Socialist Review.

At the New York Review of Books, Daniel Mendelsohn explains why he doesn’t like Mad Men. His issues with the show mirror my own, particularly the bit about the captions. Because at times, the “Look at those people. Aren’t they backwards and primitive and aren’t we much more enlightened” message in Mad Men is so heavy-handed that you expect a flashing caption to pop up on screen.

At the London Review of Books, Peter Pomerantsev explains why Russians don’t like reality TV. In short, they aren’t fooled by it and don’t see the points. Which officially makes Russians smarter than most Western TV viewers. Yes, I hate reality TV.

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I’m back! – now with extra Zeppelin porn

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Cora

Yes, I’m back. Turned out the problem was caused by a WordPress plug-in. Oddly enough, the plug-in had been working just fine for months, then it suddenly fails.

In other news, my new TV was delivered today. I have now joined the ranks of the monster-sized widescreen Full-HD 3D screen owners. To be honest, I was perfectly happy with my old tube TV with its 4:3 image ratio. But it died on me, which isn’t all that surprising considering that it’s almost twenty years old (it used to be my parents’ and they bought it in the early 1990s). And since I needed a new TV anyway, I decided to splurge for the monster screen, since HD will probably become standard in the future (though it’s still pretty rare in Germany) and widescreen already pretty much is standard. I don’t care for 3D at all, but apparently 3D screens have a higher image quality in 2D and the price difference between 3D and non-3D wasn’t that big.

I decided to inaugurate the new TV by watching part 2 of the Hindenburg two-parter, which is one of the most expensive German TV productions ever. I had missed part 1, but that didn’t really matter, because everybody knows that all of the interesting stuff happens in part 2 and that part 1 was likely just set-up for the soap opera melodrama that usually accompanies disaster films. And honestly, does anybody ever care about the star-studded soap opera melodrama at all? I mean, let’s be honest, the reason people watch disaster flicks is to see stuff blow up.

Spoilers under the cut: Continue reading →

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