ON STANDBY…

Since the Stones concerts were postponed, I check their website about 30 or 40 times a day. No new date for Vienna yet, but look who opens for the Stones in Germany:

Wow!!! Guns ´n´ Roses!!! Please God, May Axl open for the Stones in Vienna, please. Should Guns ´n´ Roses & Rolling Stones materialise for Vienna, I will then be able to rest in peace. Impossible to get any closer to heaven (unless you unite Led Zeppelin again or resurrect Jim Morrison).

The first 15 shows on The Rolling Stones "A Bigger Bang" European Tour from Barcelona, Spain on May 27 through to Zagreb, Croatia on July 5 have now been postponed. It comes from their official website. That includes Vienna, where it was scheduled to take place on the 20th of June. Shite. I´m buying a flight ticket to Fiji to fell off that bloody palm tree… World tour concert promoters TNA/CPI ask all ticket holders for these shows to retain their tickets until the rescheduled dates are announced in the next few days. The tour will now kick off at the beginning of July at a venue and city to be announced. If I happen to be out of Vienna that day, I will then have to kill somebody. The turk of my German course, who never shuts her mouth, has got possibilities…

I did not watch that devilish horror called Eurovision, yet it seems that the Finnish orks won. Bloody good show, a rock band! Is that really so? Okay, it is great that they won. Nevertheless, what the fuck has a rock band lost in Eurovision? Someone that intends to make serious rock and roll would never lower themselves to show up there, ever. Well, the song is not a total loss, judging by their outfit, one could be misled and suppose that LORDI are just another Scandinavian Black Metal band that sounds like a pneumatic drill.

Nothing of the kind. The winning song, HARD ROCK HALLELUYAH, is totally mellow and melodic, prone to be aired in any radio station, closer to Europe than to far harder sounds. Call it commercial or marketable if you like.

Whatever. Let´s aim where the crunch is, shall we? Does this mean that the people want more rock and roll? I beg to differ. Real rockers do not give a fuck about Eurovision. Anyway, LORDI´s victory might make the people realise that Scandinavia rocks. People voted for LORDI to represent Finland; that would never happen in Spain nor, I daresay, in any other country in Continental Europe. But something is stirring in Scandinavia. There is rock and roll there, and I am bloody not taking about LORDI (a very ordinary melodic band outfitted as idiots) or Europe (ti-ri-ri-ri, ti-ri-ri-ti-ti… the final countdown!! Aye, though I was vey young, I also endured that). I am not talking of the droves of Scandinavian Black Metal bands (devil worship and all that, downright funny and preposterous, but when it comes to playing they are zilch), either. I mean real rock and roll, that smells of bourbon and Marlboro, old school, that feasts on the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and the other dinosaurs. Scandinavia has given birth to bands of such calibre as Hellacopters, Turbonegro or Backyard Babies.

But before all this, before the black metal boom, there appeared, roaring out of Finland´s gutters, another band, something huge: HANOI ROCKS. Born in Helsinki in 1980, they soon moved to Stockholm where they began to kick the local scene. These were hard days, yet their perormances were incredible. Success was just a stone´s throw away. Heirs to the ROLLING STONES, AEROSMITH, LITTLE RICHARD, NEW YORK DOLLS, IGGY POP or the best DAVID BOWIE, they blended and polished up a sound that included all that and provide it with their own personality. That, alongside a shocking glamurous image and a guileless rock and roll attitude, make them something enormous. A thing like this had never been seen or heard in Scandinavia before, ever. On the stage, they were simply awesome; their record "All Those Wasted Years", recorded live in the Marquee, London, shows the band sounding as perfectly sharp and deadly as a razorblade and displaying a hardly ever seen overdose of energy. They finally signed a contract with the multinational CBS. „Two steps from the move“ opens them the doors of the U.S.A. and Hanoi Rocks are hailed, along with others like Ratt or Mötley Crüe as founders of the “Sleazy Rock”, a movement that mingled big doses if glamour, the best of rock´n´roll and punk and a careless attitude. Hanoi Rocks were all the rage, and they seemed to be heading straight into the History of the Greatest. On the 9th of December Motley Crue vocalist Vince Neil and Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle went for a ride in Neil’s new sports car. Drunken, Neil suddenly lost his control of the car and crossed into the northbound lanes and was struck by two other cars. Razzle was taken to the South Bay Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 7.12 p.m. The band was left totally devastated and it took but a few weeks until it was blown to smithereens.

The sad story of a cult band. But we´ve still got diamonds such as "Bangkok shocks, Shaigon shakes, Hanoi Rocks“, „Self destruction Blues“ or "All those wasted years". They are again recording and touring, 20 years after their time. Yet hanoi rocks: the revival is not HANOI ROCKS: THE LEGEND. Not by far. I hope Finland puts puts up a statue to singer Michael Monroe in Helsinki. He deserves it.

Guns’n'Roses vocalist Axl Rose once said that: "If Hanoi Rocks had reached the success they should have had, no-one would have ever heard of Guns’n'Roses.”

You arrive home at 21.00. You left at 8.00. Used up. The laptop hanging from your shoulders, for you work on a ground floor and someone could rob it should you leave it there. The bastard becomes ever heavier. You gather it already weighs 5 pounds. Little bit by little bit yet steadily it puts on weigh. You can feel it, tough it keeps on looking the same size. You peel your ass off for consultancy and the access of SMEs to Information Society. You give everything you´ve got. You arrive home, check the mailbox. No sooner have you opened it than a bloody mountain of shite flies out. A load of brochures and propaganda. Zielpunkt, Hofer, Solarium Sonnenfreude, Bezirksblatt (Vienna´s first district paper), your average ordinary everyday Chinese Restaurant (Sushi for 2 for 15 €). You name it. Since you just want to arrive home and take the frigging laptop off your shoulders, you pick up all that rubbish, lock, stock and barrel, and take it home. There could appear, amongst all that stuff, the debit card you ordered days ago and is still to be sent to you because the former one simply died. (Post Sparkasse Österreich, quality above all).

You arrive at your apartment door and behold in sheer amazement that not only did the perfidious arseholes overfill your mailbox but they also got here and left the same brochures and propaganda hanging from your doorknob in a very nice bag… that blocks the way of the key into the lock.

To open the door you take it home because, obviously, you cannot leave it there on the floor. Bastards.

Forget the bloody crowds that loot the shops in Kärnter strasse or the buzz around Stephansdom. They make Vienna look like a mall. Forget the guys outfitted like Mozart who try to scrounge a few euros from gullible tourists. Blast and damn all that to hell!

Am Hof on a lazy Sunday afternoon, when it´s already dusking. A glimpse of the decadent, imperial Vienna.

I even thought I heard the cobblestone sigh…

Zoological sensation in Schönnbrunn Zoo! The panda bears have made love for the first time! These animals happen to be very very lazy when it comes down to sex; an Italan zoo once tried to help them along the way with videos… Yet the Viennese pandas did not need any pandaporn! How efficient! The first Panda born in Austria is now a reality, we can count on it by autumn. “It was a real copulation, doubtless”, stated Dagmar Schratter, Schönnbrunn´s Zoo Vizedirektorin. At the beginning of the year the pandas had already “played with each other”, but it had never come to insemination.

Panda she-bear Yong Yong and her partner Long Hui were a gift from the Popular Republic of China and have been in Schönnbrunn zoo since 2003.

The Viennese call the Pandas “Franzl” and “Sisi”.

I´ve founded a Doom Metal Band, something really hardcore.No further comment.

Great morning, I´ve done NOTHING. Toyed a bit with the blog, uploaded a pair of pics. Almost two months blogging, and I like it. I live alone, and (though I´ve got no connection to the Internet, I normally write things then post them) blogging was a way to vent the daily ups and downs that might otherwise be told to the walls. But blogging is also about style. It makes me excel to write the things so that they communicate something. It motivates one. A blog is something completely personal yet totally public at the same time, Therein lies the greatness. It provides blogs with a raw, unpolished authenticity and individuality. This excludes the blogs that firms, public-relations people or newspapers set up nowadays. If an editor vets, softens or otherwise messes about with the writing, it is no longer a blog.

Jung von Matt, a German advertising firm, had come up with a campaign in the (old) media called “Du bist Deutschland” (“you are Germany”). The advertisements were intended “to fight grumpiness” about the country’s sluggish economy, said Jean-Remy von Matt, the firm’s Belgian boss. But German bloggers found the idea kitschy, and subsequently dug up an obscure photograph from a Nazi convention in 1935 that showed Hitler’s face next to the awkwardly similar slogan “Denn Du bist Deutschland” (“because you are Germany”). In the ensuing online conversation, Mr von Matt’s campaign was ignominiously deflated. Outraged, he sent an internal e-mail to his colleagues in which he called blogs “the toilet walls of the internet” and wanted to know: “What on earth gives every computer-owner the right to express his opinion, unasked for?” When bloggers got hold of this e-mail, they answered his question with such clarity that Mr von Matt quickly and publicly apologised and retreated.

I doubt whether many people will ever visit my blog. It is meant to be something personal anyway. Although I´d blatantly lie if I said I don´t give a toss. After all, being something totally public is too the essence of blogs. And why the version in English at all if I did not care? Well, the version in English signals towards my ultimate goal: world domination…

In a nutshell, I´m a bit hypermotivated. I look around and see it is not only me. Today a new blog is created every second of every day, and the “blogosphere” is doubling in size every five months. There is no denying that this is something big. From teenagers to corporate executives, the new bloggers all have reasons of their own for engaging in this new pursuit.

Blogging rocks!

No, it´s not James Bond´s, but just some pictures 

This shows what I see when I sit by my window in Vienna and gaze upon the streets.

Kunsthaus Wien and Hunderwasserhaus, colourful, is it!

We´ve also got Spitelau Incinerator, designed by the same bloke, Hundertwasser. The contract was given to him so that he should turn a very ugly building into a happy, hippy, colourful thing. The smoke it belchs tells us that it is still used for industrial purposes, yet nowadays it is possibly the least industrial-looking industrial building on the face of the earth.

For a bit of more classic Vienna now…

Frankfurt airport, 5 German yuppies near me, one has just eyed me suspiciously, as if I were eavesdropping; fearful of industrial espionage. I couldn´t care less. 90 minutes to go until I board my plane to Vienna. A direct flight was not feasible (it cost a bomb). Leastways I´ll be witness to Austrian Airlines magnanimity: a chocolate (Mozart brand, of course). After that feast, I very much doubt whether I will be able to eat anything in the next 3 days. Maybe it is for the better, after a turbulent landing and Lufthansa´s lasagne, I feel as though I had battery acid wreaking havoc inside my guts.

Lovely long weekend in Spain. The people I work for decided to invite me to a “summit” in Madrid and paid the flight, so I took advantage of it and booked the return for Monday. I landed in Madrid on Wednesday at 23.30, was let out of the plane at 00.45 because we had to wait for the police to come and hold a pair of “undesirables” who were on the plane (I saw nothing yet noticed the stewardesses and pilot´s progressions along the corridor during the flight); subway, greetings, and a piece of Sacher cake put off my going to bed until 3.30. I woke up at seven, no time (hence, no shower), must take a cab to the “summit”. The event went on relentlessly through the whole day and is not worthy of this blog. Business ended at 17.30… for me; there was a party scheduled, corporative stuff, get to know your colleagues, a trendy pub, lock, stock and barrel. A lot of bollocks. Not my cup of tea. Besides, I was used up and the velvety night of Madrid held a far more appealing promise: friends and catharsis.

Met Requejo and for the first time in months I just enjoyed the simple pleasure of going out. We gulped the beers at breakneck speed, helped by the sparkling pace of the conversation. Talked about things that are dear to us, important things. No need to fake. I miss it, I seldom go out in Vienna, I´m on an introspective trip here. The people I know here are great, really, yet you know, they are not my people. Not now anyway. I lack that certain something that makes one want to stay out, crave for more. In Madrid I was with a friend, I was feeling happy, relaxed, drinking because I really felt like it… There was that certain something. Requejo did not let me down, he took me to two great pubs I didn´t know: Tupperware (the waitress had a T-shirt of Brian Jones) and Garaje Sónico. The guy has done his homework in Madrid. To my chagrin, we stopped at 1.30. I had to wake up early to endure another presentation on some website. Thank God this was downright interesting, even after four hours of sleep.

Then freedom. Freedom for almost three days in Spain.

I ate with friends I got to know in Budapest (uhh, no, tears are falling…) then we picked up Inma at the airport. In a nutshell, I spent the day with people I care for. In a nutshell, I realised again that a pair of buddies with whom I really connect is just what I miss in Vienna.

20´ less when I hopped off the bus in Burgos at 1.00. The same old quiet, cold night. The same old cold gust of wind caressed my face in a familiar greeting, revitalizing, purifying. I was home. Throughout the next two days I let my family take care of me. My mum did all but spoonfeed me. Again I realised that, after a year and a half of wandering, I missed it. My family, my house, my things.

I´m boarding my plane within minutes. After the bus and the first plane, I just want to arrive home. It is only when I think of going to work tomorrow that I begin to understand the words “frustration” and “homesick”. Surely work has stacked during these days. Surely it will be boring, hateful. When one does not like what he does, it becomes more than ever a trade off: I trade my hours for a bloody handful of dimes. And ye Gods, how I loathe my current job!

I feel restless, suddenly; dissatisfied. The drone of the planes annoys me. Sick to death of this airport, actually. What the chuff am I doing in Vienna? Well, we live and learn, and not all the decisions one takes are perfect. I´ll try nonetheless to make the most of it.

I guess those are the dreary routines of this noisy century and its bludgeoning drive towards progress.