Fitter happier

Last night Betty, Manu, and I went to the restaurant up the road about 30 meters that tortured me every day the last two weeks once the grill started up around 7. At this hour every evening wafted into my room the odor of grilled ribs from Extremadura pigs, the purest example of the porcine family, they are fed solely on acorns and wild black truffles that they smell and dig up. Since I had no functional credit cards, and thus no money, I was starving a bit and the hedonism of the aforementioned restaurant was painfully acute. I could hear every clink of glass, every gulp of Alentejo tinto (a wine region just a few miles to the south of Lisbon known for its thoroughly quaffable reds), every piece of meat being ripped from the bone by unworthy teeth and indifferent palette. Anyway, I finally made it up that hill in a triumphant surge to plant the Minneapolis flag on this uncharted territory. When we got there I discovered they weren’t serving the entrecostos on this night so I had to get a kabob of the same meat. It was a delirious moment when I finally tasted the flesh of this exquisite beast.




When I finished the meal Betty noticed I was wearing my broken down coal miner boots with the soles coming apart from the toe to mid-foot and asked me if I "would please throw those away". I started flapping my boot in her face and did my best interpretation of a Portuguese Skank (the very vulgar sock puppet) and told her where she could shove her high ideals and such with the disconnected sole flapping up and down to mimic talking. Before I knew it I had a relatively large group of 3 to 6 year-olds around me enjoying this crude Portuguese puppet show. They laughed at some jokes I thought they would be too young to get, but then my Portuguese is still a little simple so maybe that’s why it was a little too easy for them to understand. When the show was over the kids went back to their seats but the youngest one sitting next to me kept looking under the table to see if the shoe was saying anything to himself. He got out his toy cars when he realized that the shoe had fallen asleep. I took some pictures of him because I thought he was a real adorable chap, but for some reason every shot I took his eyes would go all funny. I’ve included them here because I thought it very odd that a normal kid would turn into Thom Yorke only when photographed. I imagine this is problematic when its time for family pictures…

Late Night, Maudlin Street

So before I forget, this Portuguese movie I saw on Friday was brilliant. It’s a 1964 documentary by Fernando Lopes. It’s about a Portuguese champion boxer named Belarmino Fragoso and, the way it was shot it almost seems more of a tragic drama than a documentary. I'm pretty sure Scorsese took some notes from this film to make Raging Bull. I’ve always been a huge fan of boxing movies. Some favorites you must see: “Requiem for a Heavyweight”, “On The Waterfront”, “Raging Bull”, “Rocco E I Soui Fratelli”, “Rocky”, etc. This may be a new favorite in this genre for me.










We watched it at a mutual friend’s (Pedro) pad, who is paying nearly half of what I am and yet has a beautiful art deco apartment, completely spotless with wood floors, ceilings, and a great view over Alfama. As we watched the movie I sat next to the window so I could occasionally glance at the half moon shining over the old Moorish labyrinth as the smell of smoked ribs and grilled sardines wafted in with the sounds of some beautiful Fadista voice singing of the torturous melancholic longing of a husband seafarer lost somewhere in ultramarine conquests. The word for this is saudade, and it is a distinctly tragic Portuguese sentiment, perhaps why so many people here still dress in so much black (I mean besides the fact that black is the new black (as it always was and always shall be.))


Belarmino was a boxer (that looked a lot like Jack Kerouac) who shoulda been a contender. He went from a shoeshine boy to an amateur pugilist to a Portuguese champ in short work and never saw much of the money he won because he had a third grade education and all of his managers grifted him. He ended up touching up pictures for a living when he was too old to box. In all the interviews he was amazingly profound while talking in the most brutish street Portugese and whistling at literally every woman who passed by. The film has the prettiest camera shots of the neighborhoods I haunt filmed back in the 60s, and the smokey jazz club shots have a real “Lamotta’s” feel to it. I swear I found the secret of the Scorsese sphinx.


Last night I had a dream that I was walking toward a restaurant where Bobby & Steve’s should be on Washington Ave. for my birthday with my friends Ehsan and Ryan. Natasha was conspicuously absent since, although I had known it was her birthday, I hadn’t written her due to the fact that, instead of just saying “hey, happy birthday” I wanted to compose a well-crafted tribute to all of her brilliant/neurotic qualities. So I put it off, and then off some more, then my internet went beserker, then it was ridiculously late and I found I couldn’t put into words what I had to say anyway. So I sent an apologetic happy belated birthday email to her and was haunted with different dreams that same night. The only one I remember was this one where Ehsan, Ryan, and I walk by two guys that I immediately recognize as important restaurant figures in the Minneapolis scene: Tim McKee, and Steven Brown (which I’m sure never hang out). We talked for a bit and then, as we proceeded, we ran into two other famous people who Ryan immediately identified as Keith Haring (who is dead) and Woody Harrelson. I told Ryan that he was correct that they were famous, but he had wrongly identified them. The man he thought was Keith Haring I said was Keith Harrington (I don’t know who that is) and the guy he thought was Woody Harrelson was actually Luke Wilson. I realized after I woke up that the first guy was Mike Ditka, and the other guy was Matthew McConaughey. So when I said this to Ryan I immediately woke up as if my subconscious was so revolted by my lack of knowledge of pop cultural references that it was like “Fuck it, if you don’t even know the names of these people how am I supposed to teach you the lesson about the distractions of the ego and the city and the importance of friends”…or whatever problem it was trying to resolve. And so I went back to sleep and I think for the rest of the night my subconscious sort of treated me in a real infantile manner because all I could remember when I awoke were images of like Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald, etc. So anyway…sorry Natasha. I am paying the price now for my carelessness, day and night.

Perfect Day

There is an Asian girl in my class and she is the first person I’ve ever seen with a purplish skin tone. I can’t decide if she is more lavender or like choking-person purple, but she is definitely within that palette. Which is weird, I always heard them referred to as yellow, and although yellow and purple are obviously good matches (I believe these are still the Viking’s colors), I don’t think most Asians are anywhere near yellow, and some are purple. So chew on that a bit…

I am greatly disturbed about the European eating habits as displayed by my flatmates. Gerald, the French who says Third Eye Blind is a punk band, is accustomed to eating most nights a pasta which he tops with shredded Emmenthal cheese and large amounts of catsup. Duncan, the English artist, I’ve never seen eat. I think he gets most of his nutrients/calories from beer and whiskey. In fact the only evidence I have that he has ever cooked anything is the story of when he put a frozen pizza in the oven and then fell asleep for a bit. Somebody else woke up when the smoke was pouring out of the veranda and now the charred remnants of the still circular food is nailed to the wall, and I always mistake it for a clock when I’m running late for school. The other English person is a young lass named Betty, she is a vegetarian, so I don’t pay attention to what she eats. Manuela, the Italian and only one who regularly speaks Portuguese with me, is a pretty good cook. She says "all good Italian food will have one or all of the three Ps: Pesto, Tomato, and Cream." I only count one P. The only thing that bugs me about her cooking is the fact that, instead of using fresh tomatoes, she always uses this gross bottled tomato sauce. So if she is cooking with the P-food that is tomato, I pppass. Mintu, the Finnish girl who likes to surf and roll her eyes at nearly everything, seems to have a pretty healthy diet of fruit, soup, salads, pancakes, or pizza—the pizza she makes from scratch (cooking the dough first in a frying pan—which made Manuela nearly pass out. Katia, who would have made a great femme fatale in a Bond movie, I haven’t seen in two weeks so I don’t really know. Josue, the Dutch with the Scarlett Johansson doppelganger girlfriend who visited for two weeks, just tried cooking a frozen foods filet of salmon wrapped in puff pastry by taking it directly out of the freezer and putting into a smoking skillet. This didn’t come off well.

Anyway, last night I did some research on the music scene of the night and ended up going to a band that was part Sonic Youth, part Nick Cave, and part Einturzen Neubauten (I’m sure that is spelled wrong) at the Braça de Prato. It was nearly impossible to find since its hidden away in some industrial wasteland and used to be where the dictator Salazar constructed and stored munitions and sometimes interrogated and tortured dissidents (so it had a real chilling feel to it when we finally found it). I went with Betty, the English vegetarian. Anyway we went to Bairro Alto after that and had a bunch of Mojitos and all the international dudes (does anyone remember international night at the Loring Park Café? Bairro Alto is like that every night past 11 p.m.--always packed with a bunch of sweaty, swarthy, obnoxious, drunk dudes--the ratio of men to woman is 99:1) were hitting on her while I sort of scratched at the ground with my foot for about an hour. Then some group of other internationals wanted to take a bunch of pictures with me. I guess they thought I was a celebrity...I couldn't understand what they were saying since they didn’t speak Portuguese and their English was intolerable. Of course I was in some wicked duds since I had a Keenan Duffy Bowie dress shirt, my CC Club tie (2 generations of Arnolds have been kicked out of this exclusive club on 26th and Lyndale--3 decades apart), and this new black and grey argyle sweater vest with skulls and crossbones sewn into the grey diamonds--so maybe they wanted to see some true American style.

Today I finished my homework early and was inspired by the song “Perfect Day” by Lou Reed, so Betty and Manuela and I are going to make some white sangria and tosta mista (this is fancy talk for a melted ham & cheese), and go to the Parque Florestal de Monsanto (this has nothing to do with the company Monsanto)-basically cause we are all without money and this seems like the cheapest solution for a lazy Lisbon Sunday.

The video included here has nothing to do with anything I wrote about in the text above. Its a little bit of Fado and some guitar work I need to fit into my repertoire.

Souvlaki Space Station

So if Pawlenty becomes VP does that mean we get to pick a new guv’ner?

I just got my hair cut today. It looks pretty fit everyone agreed. Normally I get my hair cut by Jen Hughes who travels across the country giving lectures on new styles for Juut and Aveda. Only the most extreme metrosexuals in the cities get their hair cut by her because her fee starts at $100. I, of course, do not fit into that category, and wouldn’t dream of paying that much for a haircut. We worked out a deal years ago when I was still schlepping wine that would get me a cut for three bottles which cost me next to nothing back then. Now I have to pay retail, like a sucker. Even still, it’s a pretty good price for her services. But today I spent 5 euro for an Indian dude in Freguesia Socorro to cut my hair. It was the fastest cut of my life. I’m used to about two hours, and this cut took 10 minutes. While my barber was watching the Olympic ceremonies, the entire time he whacked away at my pompadour and shag with alacrity and precision. The scariest moment was when he took out the straight edge and, as he glanced now again at the areas he was cutting, I kept having visions of the opening scene of “Un chiên andalou” by Buñuel in which the director himself slices open a woman’s eye while the scene is montaged with a skinny cloud cutting across a waxing moon. He slipped the blade across my forehead, ears, neck, spinal cord and cheeks. Not a drop of blood. I was pretty impressed. So score 1 more for the Portuguese service sector, albeit not at the hands of a Portuguese.

So everyone from the prior semester has left the country. Pictured right is my former class. The only people that are left are the two Asian kids on the left of the photo. I still don’t know either of their names even though we have become good friends. I think I need to be able to spell out a name in my head in order to remember it, and I can’t even start spelling their names. Every trick I’ve been accustomed to using in Minneapolis when I forget someone’s name doesn’t seem to work on them. Apparently they don’t like saying their own names. So this guy (he's the one with his thumbs up (which I guess still means "heeeyyyy, all's cool...")--his squeeze is in red next to him, they're a couple from Macau) I think has some weird ideas on the nature of relationships in the United States. I don’t know which American TV programs he is watching, but he seems to think that American men always hug and one guy should always put his arm around the other and sort of slacken himself a bit when they are talking to each other or others. Sometimes he puts his whole arm around my shoulder and sometimes he puts his hand on the back of my neck. No matter what its very awkward, and since he doesn’t speak English, and I can’t understand a word of his Portuguese nor he mine, I don’t know how to explain this concept to him except by slowy shifting myself away from him when we are hanging out. I have lots of Asians in my class and now I can do a super-wicked Asian Portuguese accent that I hope I can remember when I get back because people die laughing when I do it. Well, not the Asians yet, but I’ve been careful not to do it around them because I really don’t think they would get it, or maybe would even be offended. ‘Twas all in good fun. This other Chinese guy who sits next to me in class who’s name is Henry, but calls himself Harry—“Is Harry, you know like Harry Potter”, is an extreme close-talker and always gets my attention by doing this fluttering movement on my shoulder which I find a bit disconcerting since I’ve only known very coquettish girls to do that. Harry and I are involved in many scholarly projects together since we sit right next to each other. Today he suggested to me (as we were walking a foot behind the professor during the coffee break) in very clear and loud Portuguese that, instead of doing the writing assignment we had been assigned for the weekend, he will just copy it directly out of the book he has with all the answers. I am looking directly at the Professor who just looks back at me as Harry is saying this and gives me this look and wry smile as if to say, “Yeah I know ridiculous, right?” while at the same time saying “this is a very standard practice for a guy like Harry.” I tried to insinuate that maybe this wasn’t really the point of the assignment, but he wouldn’t have any of that and then immediately left to go see the opening Olympic ceremonies instead of returning to class. So I guess that assignment is taken care of.

On a final note, I recently came to the realization that if the gods are practicing a slow food movement, this could explain the amount of beaches there are in Portugal. If one considers the fact that typically, the longer it takes to cook most of the foods that are really worth eating (as opposed to a micro waved wiener) the better they are, then the beach scene is the divine equivalent to a demi-glace. As they lather themselves with oil and bake for years under the perfect convection oven, they are making themselves into an exquisite human confit. As they smoke cigarette after cigarette while sunbathing they are also basically smoking themselves inside out (although I imagine the gods prefer the non-additive brands like American Spirits to reduce their exposure to harmful chemicals). The ocean provides the right salinity and seasoning to effectively cure the flesh at a glacial pace. And the Caparinhas, Caparões, Margaritas, and Mojitos we drink are a very efficient pickling method. I couldn't be the first who's picked up on this...

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime, or Life on Mars

I was swimming in the Atlantic today and forgot I had a 5-euro note in my back pocket. The waves weren’t crashing like the final scene on Point Break or anything, but they were certainly strong enough to whisk away, in a final symbolic cruel and cold European manner, the little that is keeping me afloat in a city that I often feel is completely backwards.



I can’t get a good meal in this town, because I can’t really afford to get one. Of the few restaurants that I have visited, on the whole, I could say I can cook better and faster than probably most or all of the kitchen. The service is almost always slow, impatient, and lacking in knowledge of their own nation’s food and wine. This típico restaurant scene can serve as a metonym for the entire service sector of Portugal. And of all the goods a country produces (be it in the agriculture, industry, or service sector), services seem like they should be the lowest on the learning curve and the most readably adaptable to any nation. The United States now depends mostly on the service sector for growth of its GDP, and we’ve got that shit down, at times to a fault. Portugal, likewise relies heavily on its services for its own GDP (for instance, tourism is huge here right now.) However, I have not yet received anything near acceptable service from any place I go to except for the two small grocery shops near my flat. The taxi drivers are cranky (which is typical anywhere), the bus drivers seem suicidal, the mid-size grocery clerks homicidal, the barristas are deaf mutes, the servers are currently (as always) on a smoke break, the bartenders, well they’re o.k. (but who wouldn’t be when you have constant access to an infinite array of alcohol?), the lifeguards (when they aren’t hitting on skinny blonde internationals) read the newspaper or take a nap, the doctors give you about five minutes then say, “how bout you just tell me which drugs you want”, the professors are brilliant, cultured, and hilarious (and of course are the lowest paid of any of these), and the black market, its alive and well (mid-day on the busiest street in my neighborhood some dude apologized after turning around and running straight into me and spilling half the bag of heroin (or coke?), he just couldn’t wait to dip into, on my t-shirt—I imagine this happens often.)


All of this makes me wonder how our dollar is trailing so weak in comparison to the currency of Portugal, the Euro. Although I understand most of the economics behind the multi-national Euro compared with the sub-prime loan, war debt, no longer internationally desirable, crushed Washingtons, I still can’t help but be at a loss when I feel like some impoverished immigrant in a country the size of Mississippi (and with an economy that seems to match.) That is why the following article in the New York Times yesterday made me spin a bit as I saw myself on the flipside of this new role reversal of Prospero and Caliban (I know this might be stretching the metaphor a bit far.) The following article looks at the pound/euro strength and its aftermath in our beloved Big Apple.

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From the NY Times August 3rd 2008 (About Brits in New York): “Back home they’re just run-of-the-mill cubicle people,” Ms. Farsad added, “but here, they’re like three parts Kimora Simmons and two parts Oasis, circa 1995.”


This summer, New York is awash with visitors from abroad, who are expected to top last summer’s record number, tourism officials say. Thanks in part to home currencies that are holding strong against the dollar, even middle-class vacationers from Hamburg, Yokohama or Perth can afford to scoop up New York style — the clothes, the hot restaurants, the nightclubs — at bargain prices.


But for New Yorkers trapped on the other side of the currency imbalance, it’s easy to feel ambivalent about the invasion. An infusion of foreign money is welcome in a city faced with a wobbly economy and a possible budget gap in the billions. But even some locals who consider themselves cosmopolitan and internationalist confess to feeling envy, not to mention territorialism, in watching a outsiders treat their city like a Wal-Mart of hip.


Their party is raging just as the hangover has started to set in for Americans. Frictions do arise — especially in a summer of looming recession, where many locals do not feel rich enough or secure enough to travel abroad themselves. (And let’s not even get into their weeks of summer vacation).


“It’s Psych 101 — jealousy,” said Randi Ungar, 30, an online advertising sales manager who lives on the Upper West Side. “I’m jealous that I can’t go to Italy and buy 12 Prada bags, but they can come here and buy 18 of them.”


Steven Schoenfeld, a 45-year-old investment manager who lives near Lincoln Center, said that he welcomes the influx of visitors, in theory, as a boost to the local economy, but “sometimes you feel like it’s going to become a situation where they stop and take picture: ‘Look at that endangered species — a native New Yorker, with a briefcase, going to work.’ ”


Polly Blitzer, a former magazine beauty editor who now runs a beauty Web site, said she believes that a turf war is going on this summer between free-spending Europeans and locals over the chic bistros, spas, boutiques and department stores that she, a native New Yorker, used to consider her playground.


Manhattanites without Bergdorf budgets often find themselves working overtime — figuratively and literally — to keep up with their visiting friends from Europe or Asia.


Jessica S. Le, an executive assistant at an investment banking firm who lives on the Lower East Side, said she recently started moonlighting as a dog-walker, in part to earn extra income she needs to see friends from abroad, who are dining at WD-50 or Suba, or drinking at Thor.
These friends from Europe and Asia “come over and play in New York like it’s Candyland,” she said in an e-mail message.



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Well my friends, I am not in Candyland. I am the thimble in a Monopoly game, and I just landed on the hoteled Park Ave. space. And though I must pay the ridiculous rent, I can’t help but feel I am somehow stuck in a Crackland version of Park Ave. As my 5-euro note slips into the fierce Atlantic currents, so go I.

A Night at the Carousel

I was going to leave this city for a bit during the break in between the two summer semesters. I really wanted to drink some Albariño in Galicia with the Percebes (Gooseneck Barnacles) that are ungodly expensive everywhere, but worth trying once in life I guess. I did some calculations with where I stand financially and realized I probably couldn’t even afford the Percebes, much less all the vacation expenses required to get to the north and sleep somewhere involved in the pilgrimage. I guess in the end I couldn’t justify the fact that I am still paying rent for my room in Minneapolis, the studio my band practices in, the apartment I have here in Lisbon, and then a hotel room in northwestern Spain as well. There has to be a limit to the impoverished American decadence I believe. So instead of heading for gastronomic heights I opted to further my academic goals by hitting the beaches of Cascais (while reading about the introduction of rock & roll in Portugal as well as the best Portuguese punk, post-punk, metal, and new-wave albums that are completely impossible to get even here). This neglect of national cultural history is maddening to me. Have they never heard of reissues?!!? Jesus Christ, I’m not going to spend 150 Euro for an original 45 of Aqui d’el Rock! Who’s with me? So in order to do my primary research of this time period I will need to start robbing banks. Wouldn’t that be a great new take on the outlaw? “No, I’m not mugging you to get my heroin fix, I just need to get some LPs so I can finish my dissertation.”

After the beach I went with some flatmates to see (in the Lisbon version of movies in the park) “Roxie Hart”, which I realized after a few minutes must have been what the musical film “Chicago” was based on. I gleaned some new old-timey vocabulary from the film at least—when the prisoner Roxie Hart (played by Ginger Rogers) is sent food from the glitzy Chicago hotel called The Ritz, she says “ooh they even sent alligator pears” which are never shown, but from the Spanish (instead of Portuguese for some reason) subtitles that translated these as “aguacates” I realized that this was the name for avocados back in the day. From now on I will only refer to avocados as alligator pears. So the night isn’t a complete loss. I also love the fact that during the fight scene in the female prison between Roxie Hart and 2-Gun Gertie Baxter was highlighted by some grip that caught a lively cat fight. They actually laid the sounds of two alley cats fighting over the main prison fight seen. How delightfully un-p.c.

On our way back we saw some live Portuguese neo-funk band playing in the Praça de Figueiros. Everyone who was left in Lisbon (most natives split in August) was gathered to watch this brilliant (purposeful?) confusion of genres. I was finally convinced that no matter where/when a band plays throughout the world there will always be one dude who will let loose in all drunken splendor. The video I post here is the Lisbon version of this internationally loved/despised character. Although I didn’t get it on tape, for one entire song he did a fascist salute/ Nazi high kick soldier dance that would make John Cleese jealous. Absolutely Fabulous. I love Lisbon. Why should I leave this haven of freaks for some overpriced parasitic delicacy?

A New Low In Getting High

A couple minutes from my apartment I got a nice terrazzo bar overlooking the Tagus that I like to go to on the weekend to get a coffee and read a bit. Today isn’t a weekend but I did just finish the first semester so I went for a bit to relax and some guy came up to me and really excitedly starts speaking Ukranian to me. Now I’m obviously an American since I’m drinking a latte at midday so I didn’t know what made him think I could understand his language since Americans are monoglots primarily (although some I would consider without any proper language since they haven’t yet figured out their mother tongue—what would that be called, semglots? Nonlingual?) Anyway, I was confused because I at first thought he was speaking Portuguese to me in some weird accent and I didn’t understand any of it. So I asked him in Portuguese to repeat what he said and then he realized that I wasn’t his long lost Ukranian friend and that he had mistaken me for. So I guess I look a bit Eastern. I can add that to my list. I’ve already been told by several Germans here that I look like their grandfather or great uncle when they were young. A few have told me they will send me pictures to prove it. This is a little disconcerting for me because given the age of these people that would place me as a late-twenties/early-thirties male in Germany during the late 30s/early 40s--not exactly the look I’m trying to pull off.

Yesterday we had a big feast pot-luck during the last day of classes and so the day before I decided to make Guacamole since apparently no one in this continent has any clue about Mexican/Caribbean cuisine. So I decided I would go to the terrace with my computer and while Betty and I prepared our dishes we could watch the 2nd episode of the current Project Runway. Unfortunately I couldn’t hear shit because at the same time the 75 year-old owner of the house decided to do some couch repair (read: random over-zealous hammering) right next to us. So I watched it but was often confused as to what was happening because when he wasn’t hammering his old ball chain would be yelling at him about everything from leaving the stove on to his stupidity in clinging to the antiquated communist party line in Portugal. I wanted to say something like, “would you fucking shut up so I can watch this show” but since I’m a visitor I kept quiet. Afterward a group of us went to see the new Batman (O cavalheiro das travas) since it just arrived and somehow I had convinced a group of ten Europeans to see a Hollywood action/fantasy film with me. Whenever I have an idea to do anything I usually end up with a large group along since if you invite one person in the house you really need to invite everyone if you don’t want dirty looks and cold shoulders for the rest of the week. I don’t mind of course since I love travelling in small communities, but when I went to the movie my French buddy talked through the whole thing. I’m used to this because my sister likes to go to movies more for the purpose of catching up than actually watching whatever is displayed before us, much to the dismay of those around us. Gerald was more interested in commenting about the ridiculousness of every scene which made it even harder to understand the film due mostly to the fact that, although it was subtitled, I can’t help but read the words at the bottom of the screen even if it’s an English-language film. So the following commentary maybe a bit confused since I may not have captured some of the subtleties intended by the author.

I thought the film in itself was an interesting abstraction of the grey areas of morality and heroism and it’s opposite. The most brilliant introduction to the latter in any film ever was the self-conscious Joker stuttering uncomfortably in a room of mob heads. With the pencil trick he displays the spectrum of schizophrenia and composure, false nerves and controlled chaos. Throughout a lot of the movie I couldn’t help but sympathize with what he was saying. The heroes (or anti-heroes?), however, were all plagued with questions of control vs. liberty. O cavalheiro became big brother to find the Joker, his commissioner buddy decided to bury history to further the hopes of humanity, every cop dismissed prisoner rights in an instant, and Gotham clandestinely colluded to extradite an international outlaw without a second thought. So Morgan Freeman took the high road, Dent took the low road, and a mass of floating civilians and prisoners took the middle. What does that tell us except that, in this day in age, there is no correct path. All humanity is deluged with multi-faceted unanswerable dilemmas that leave us politically paralyzed and socially stagnant in the face of the pseudo-threats that face us today. There are none of the black and white heroes of old in this movie, because the present era has left us with a broken compass and a moral map that looks like the streets of Alfama. After the fall of 19th century humanism, and the subsequent political rift amongst fascism, communism, and capitalist democracy, we have discovered that we can’t trust anyone, and no one is going to save us from ourselves. So even our superheroes are confused as how to deal with a society in which corruption has affected all levels of the body politic and any leadership that is at all human will sooner or later fall into the same trap. So do we target the whole system or just the free radicals that are rotting the system like a virus? The joker seemed sort of like the latter with designs on the former. What does this movie mean politically to Europeans as opposed to Americans? This I would like to discuss.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t really talk this stuff over with most of my friends here because geopolitics seems to evoke exaggerated yawns amongst many Europeans. The European youth today must seem pretty disappointing when seen through the eyes of the older generations that lost limbs, lives, loves, and basically gave up everything for wars fought mostly over political ideology. Even when seen through their parent’s generation who were often indulgent, self-righteous Eurohippies, the kids today lack a cause for which to get high. These disenchanted digital boys of the 21st century represent the culmination of all the blood and toil, as well as death and destruction, of the generations before. And they don’t give a flying fuck about anything. That’s why I think the Batman movie has an interesting chronological movement as a metaphor for the 20th/21st century. The movie starts with heroes wrapping up the last vestiges of organized crime and tyrants, but then (when the joker is let out of the box), as soon as control is slipping from the fingers of the heroic they desperately grasp at methods that are morally questionable and their paranoia (combined with the quick-thinking, quick-acting trait of the superhero) ends up causing more problems than if they had done nothing at all. In the end, all of their efforts, all of their politicking and policing, big brother vigilance, lies, and preaching end in complete destruction of Gotham with no end in sight to the violence and no hero to save them, but rather some vague concept of “more than heroism” which seems to me to be somehow intimately tied with “more than villainous”. As Mick Jagger said, “cause saints and sinners are quite the same”. I think that the 20th century, if considered at all by the youth of today, is perceived this way which leads one to question why have any beliefs at all. And this is very evident in Europe today, a society in which almost everyone calls themselves Catholic but don’t really believe in anything more than some superficial idea of an indeterminable God, and in which the many socialist and communist parties that run the levels of government here aren’t that readily distinguishable from the rest of the more “central” political parties. Family as well has little impact on their daily lives, and so all the prior institutions Europe had held dear are of little import to kids today. So is this the answer then--we just all pop some prozac, turn up the ipod and let the joker be wild? I wonder what Heath Ledger was thinking the night he fell asleep for the last time. He may have had the answer.