Why I Hate 3-D (And You Should Too) | Print Article | Newsweek.com.
Manipulation like this is why I so rarely go to see movies in the theater. It’s just nonstop extortion, and it was even worse in Germany, where the moviegoer is expected to pay an additional fee for any movie over 2.5 hrs, or to sit in the back half of the theater. Plus, I’m part of the 15% (although I think it’s probably a lot higher) who get nasty headaches from the visual assault of 3-D movies.
Booo, 3-D!
I know I’ve been Berlin bashing lately, and I’m sure a large part of it is a subconscious attempt to distance myself emotionally from my soon to be ex-city, but living here has clarified a few questions I had about myself living in Los Angeles.
For one, am I a car person?
This is the longest I’ve gone without a car since I was 17, and after sitting in traffic and dealing with crazy ass drivers following me home to start fights, I wondered if maybe public transit would be a better solution–after all, I spent many years hoofing it around many other large cities growing up. Maybe it would be a nice change?
Well, I’ve concluded that I am, indeed, a car person. And here are a few reasons why:
First, I don’t like being in crowds. I don’t like outdoor music festivals, amusement parks–generally any place that involves a lot of shoving, standing, and smelling of other peoples’ sweat. And since Berlin’s trains and buses are packed full of smelly, no-shower-taking-because-hot-water-is-a-luxury-item Germans, I’ve had my fill for a good long time.
Second, if I’m going to get lost, I’d at least like to have the opportunity to make a U-turn and get back on course. Today I got on a bus which had a list of stops including Treptower park, but that skipped over about 5 stops, including mine, in an area I don’t know. Why? I don’t ask these questions any more. Ask any good German why anything is the way it is here and they’ll tell you to just accept it and stop asking so many questions. So I had to wander through the typical Berlin wintry mix of slush, ice, and poor traffic control to find another stop. Wah. Also, Berlin hasn’t gotten the memo that Germans are obsessively punctual–most of the time, the buses are either early or late, and sometimes don’t bother showing up at all.
Third, yes there is traffic, it takes forever, and it sucks. But having to take 3 different trains/buses to go 3km while freezing your ass off sucks worse. There are certain things you can do to kill time in a car that you can’t do in public transit, namely sing and/or practice material. Yes, you can do this in public–typically accompanied by a hat and polite request for change–but given my lack of enthusiasm for crowded trains, you can imagine my lack of enthusiasm for the people on those trains staring at me (which they do anyway–wtf are you looking at, Germans? Jesus h.). One might argue that you can read books on trains and buses, but I get dizzy and hate carrying heavy things around all day while climbing the millions of stairs between S bahn stations.
Other miscellaneous reasons I miss driving include the fact that Berlin drivers will hit pedestrians just to prove a point, keeping a barrier between myself and any crazy, vomit-filled drunk wandering around (and here people can drink everywhere! Hooray for puke on trains and buses!), having a place to take mobile naps in the middle of the day should the need arise, not having to carry a small suitcase as a purse, eeetc.
I forget what specifically provoked me to write this, except for missing the ability to sing in my car. Oh, and because I forgot to bring an extra pair of pajama bottoms from Naomi’s apartment, which is now 45 minutes away grrr.
So in summary, I look forward to sitting in traffic in the sun beneath LA’s gloriously thinned ozone layer, especially right now because it’s so unbefreakinlievably cold in here. I am sorry that cars are hurting the environment, but I need one. I promise I will not buy a Hummer, Escalade, Expedition–in fact, I would like a more Euro-style compact after seeing so many cute lil buggers driving (badly) around town.
I was walking to a friend’s house in Prenzlauer Berg of all places, and happened upon this super cool mural off of Marienburgerstraße. It’s a combination of, like… Everything. I can’t even describe it. There are chickens in suits.
So yeah… Enough bitching–this is what I love about Berlin.
I’ve recently announced my decision to move back to Los Angeles from Berlin, and I can’t believe how hard of a decision it was considering the simple fact that:
I… Hate… Living… In… Berlin….
Wow, did I really just say that? Am I allowed to say that?
Here’s the thing: Berlin is cool. Berlin has cred. I think we’re completely brainwashed to believe that it is so completely uncool to say something like “I hate living in Berlin” because that automatically makes me uncool and, um, uncredible (?). So it took me a while to sack up enough to say out loud the reason why I, and so so so many other people, constantly complain about living here.
But uncoolness aside, the fact that it took me so long to admit that I hate living here has to do with another type of brainwashing, which is this idea that I’m supposed to be super effing happy with everything all the time.
So despite the fact that living here has put me in a perpetual bad mood for an entire year, I tried to convince myself to be positive about Berlin, and yadda yadda yadda. And there are things I love about Berlin, namely my friends, colleagues, students and the aesthetic buffet that is the prolific street art covering most surfaces. But I can feel in my bones that personally and culturally, I don’t belong here.
So what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with admitting that this is a place I don’t relate to–if for nothing other than the simple reasons that I don’t smoke or drink beer–and a place in which I cannot envision myself thriving in the long run?
I don’t care what anyone says any more. I no longer believe that admitting that I hate living here is a negative thing to say. It’s another way of saying “I don’t belong here”, which to me is just a fact. It’s a fact that will help me get closer to the place where I do feel like I belong, just like trying on clothes that don’t fit will help find the ones that do. What’s negative to me is the constant bitching that goes on without any real accountability; I’m not saying that I hate it here only to perpetuate the compulsion to say it. I’m getting the f outta dodge.
For the record (whoever is keeping one), Berlin is a fantastic place to visit. The street art is just amazing, and it’s a place everyone should experience just for the environment.
BUT–and not that it matters–there are some things about this place that my GOD I just do not understand:
1. The Germans are fanatic about collecting and returning bottles for the recycling deposit, and yet there is broken glass EVERYWHERE, because the trendy (and passive aggressive) thing to do is to throw your beer bottle on the sidewalk like a duschbad when you finish it, to show your friends how kuhl you are.
2. Not only is there dog shit everywhere, because Germans have a lot of dogs and apparently no aversion to or compulsion to be accountable for their dogs’ refuse, but I have on many occasions actually seen people pull down their child’s pants, lift them up, and hold them over the sidewalk–ie, that place where humans all walk with the shoes they also bring into their houses–until the kids crap right there. What… The… !@#%$#???
3. If you need to call a company, be it your phone company, internet provider, or even to buy tickets to a show, not only are there no 800 numbers, but they actually charge you money, usually around 14 cents/minute. I honestly can’t believe people tolerate that sort of shit, but…
4. If someone at a company that you pay, like a restaurant, taxi service, internet provider–anything, really–makes a mistake, they will argue with you til eternity about it to try and get out of fixing that mistake. I once had a five minute argument with a waitress because I ordered a plain cup of coffee and she brought me a latte. “Why the hell would I order a latte when I don’t drink milk?” I asked. “Because that’s what you ordered,” she said.
There’s plenty more. Again, not that it matters. And why doesn’t it matter? Because I’m leaving. If I were staying, I would be a negative duschbad for living in a place I can’t stand and bitching about things I can’t or won’t change. It’s not my country or my culture, and I’ve had enough experience with immigrants complaining about my country and culture to know that I believe anyone who is determined not to integrate with the culture of the country to which they have immigrated is just being an ass.
But now that that’s done, I’m going to dedicate the next post to the most awesomest mural I found a couple weeks ago.
at a comedy show last week, a comedienne interviewed some audience members, asking where they were from, what they did, and so forth. one man sat grimly in the corner of the front row with his wife, who thought it was all delightful. the comedienne asked this man where he came from, and he very smugly and slowly said, “America.”
i knew right away that he was not, in fact, American, not only because of his badly imitated accent, but because i don’t know any Americans in Europe who would say, “i’m from America.” we all, including me and all the other Americans at the show, say, “i’m from the U.S.” turns out, the man was from Scotland, and being a smartass.
it’s mostly the Brits who say that someone is “from America.” pretty much every Brit i know here says it out of habit–it goes back a few hundred years (many also still call us Yanks). a lot of people give us crap about calling ourselves Americans, on account of the north and south portions. it’s the only decent adjective for us (what else would we say? United Statesians?). but i don’t know anyone who travels and says they are from America. my generation was taught that it is an inappropriate thing to say, and that our country is called the United States. they even changed the name of the pageant. but this issue is one of those cultural divides between the scorching reds and everyone else. i’m sure Glenn Beck would vomit in his mouth hearing that Americans living in Europe aren’t ranting about how great “America” is. (personally, i rant about how great the United States of America is.)
the other comedienne made lots of jokes about Americans and how we all ski because we’re idiots, and so on. i laugh at American jokes, because they’re funny. we are usually insulted as ignorant, stupid, culturally lacking, judgmental, racist, etc., and not to say that it’s not true some of the time, but it’s ironic that the people who accuse us of prejudice are doing the same thing to us.
every time i meet someone from the middle east, as soon as they find out i’m American, they say something like, “oh so you must be really scared of me then.” one guy made a big deal of telling me that there’s an Arab living in my building, and doesn’t that frighten me… i usually just blink at them incredulously and say, “um, no.” i would apologize for the racial profiling of middle eastern people in my country, but we were attacked by an Islamic terrorist group, which consists of middle eastern people. if we were attacked by Irish redheads, we’d be strip searching them, too. i was detained for an hour both ways on my trip to Israel–they actually took me into an office where i had to show them my picture on my comedy group’s website before they would let me through. people get paranoid when they think they’re living under a bullseye. that doesn’t mean we think all middle eastern people are terrorists.
it’s often much dumber than that. i was telling some friends that my sister and i traveled from Vienna to Prague to Dresden to Berlin by train, stopping in each city for a while. this guy i’ve never met turns to me and says “that’s soooooooo American.” i blinked incredulously and said, “they’re in a straight line, and we only had 5 days. it’s an extremely logical trip to make.” i don’t even understand what he was implying–that Americans are smart travelers?
but generally, peoples’ prejudices about Americans are extremely vague and uninformed, because most of the people making these statements have never actually been to the U.S. how would the Germans feel if everyone in the world assumed they were all Nazis because there is still a neo-Nazi movement here? the NPD actually won enough support to be on the ballot this year.
a lot of Americans don’t travel outside the country, and for that we are insulted and dismissed as xenophobes, or arrogant duschbads*. before i actually lived in Europe, i never really formulated a response for this assumption. a few months ago, i was talking with a Belgian guy who again brought up the “i heard most Americans don’t even have passports” line. it didn’t take me long to respond once i thought about it. i said that despite what people like to believe, most Americans are not rolling around in money, and international travel is prohibitively expensive for a lot of people. we do go to Canada and Mexico, just like the Europeans skip around to their neighboring countries, but the reason this “Americans don’t get passports” thing started is because until 9/11, we usually didn’t need passports to go to Canada and Mexico. if you didn’t look suspicious, they didn’t make a big deal out of it if you had a state ID, sometimes less. one time i took a bus to Montreal and forgot my passport. they let me through because i had a note from my mother wishing me a good time. i even boarded a plane once with no ID–they accepted my checkbook.
so i’ve tried to explain this to Europeans, and they usually just say, “huh. i never thought about it like that.” i also try to explain that many of our states are larger than their countries, and going from state to state is sometimes a bigger ordeal for us than jaunting from Switzerland to France to Italy, etc. i tell them i’ve lived in an Islamic country and studied Norwegian recreationally, and that we generally aren’t isolationists. i’ve often been told that i’m not a “typical American”.
my point is that it doesn’t make me feel special to be told that i’m not a “typical American”, as if i’m somehow the exception to the “Americans are idiots” rule. most modern Americans are paranoid as anyone else being threatened, but overall very tolerant and open to other cultures. our country is big, and contains a few hundred million people, including millions of immigrants and children of immigrants. get to know more of us before you call any of us “typical”.
phew. that’s been bugging me all year.
*duschbad=literally means shower bath, but sounds like something much funnier.
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