JDrama: The season wrap up (summer ‘08)

Monster Parent (モンスターペアレント)

This one is rather hard to understand and I think I haven’t been able to figure out what this will lead up to in the end yet. Yonekura Ryoko plays a successful lawyer who works with big shot clients at a huge law firm. She gets a notice from her boss that she is supposed to help out a friend who is working for the School Board. What she ends up doing is helping the School Board with cases of so called “Monster Parents”,

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Merauder + The Ice + Cheap Thrills @ Underground, Cologne

I haven’t been to a hardcore show like this in a long long time, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Usually Cologne doesn’t host shows where people do the kickboxing dance moves, it never has. Cologne always was more of a punkrock city, hardcore was done by the guys slightly up north. Though strangely enough in the middle of the 1990s someone tried to set up hardcore shows at the BüZe Ehrenfeld. Name some New York hardcore band, they surely must have played there.

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Grand Hotel Van Cleef Festival @ Odonien, Cologne

Hamburg based indie label Grand Hotel Van Cleef might have been the biggest success story in German indie music over the past few years. If I remember it correctly it arose from the ashes of B.A. Records, the band-owned label which put out the records of German punkrock legend …But Alive in the 1990s. They also released some other bands, most notably The Weakerthans first two full length LP versions.

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To pay or not to pay: TV sports in Germany

There has been a lot of talk over the past few months about how the coverage of the German Bundesliga was supposed to be set up for the 2009/10 season. The threat of a torn matchday were dangleing in front of the fans’ eyes, “British circumstances” where you have games starting at various times of one day, some at noon, some in the evening, some in the afternoon.

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Only a few weeks to go until the Summer Koushien

While browsing through the listings at WordPress I came across an article dealing with the prelimenary stages of the Summer Koushien Baseball High School Tournament. A very interesting one. I had read a few articles by the same author on another blog called East Windup Chronicle, a great site if you are interested in Asian baseball and Asian culture. I always enjoy reading the articles there a lot.

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Düsseldorf’s finest – Free Yourself

This was a very pleasant surprise. I was searching for music and stumbled across a Greek website which offers free downloads of some long out of print or not very well known Greek bands. Now the reason I found this site is because I was looking for the records of Free Yourself. I own all their stuff on vinyl but while moving with the flow of time it’s rather inconvenient to carry around a portable record player.

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The lost generation of German football

Because of all the hype around the German national football team people tend to forget or not realize that there is a whole age group missing at the party. If you look at who played during the last Euro championship there are players who are in their early twenties and some who are already in their thirties. What’s entirely missing is the generation/age group of players around the age of 27-29. While this is something that is of no importance to the German team at all it is still somewhat interesting to see that this generation is not nominated to the national team.

Why is that? Is it because there is noone playing professional football who is a member of that generation? Is it because the players in that generation are simply not talented enough to be nominated to the German national team?

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Leaders of the pack: Hanshin Tigers ふれふれふれ！

While MLB teams resume their play after the Allstar break their Japanese counterparts still have a few days to go before they play their version of the Midsummer Classic. And on both sides of the Pacific it seems that two teams are giving it their best shot at the championship in a long time. The Chicago Cubs lead their division although they lost yesterday to the Houston Astros. In Japan the Hanshin Tigers （阪神タイガース）are on a mission it seems. Their record reads 55 wins, 27 losses, 1 draw which not only is the best record in Japanese baseball (The Pacific League leaders Seibu Lions stand at 47-38-1), but it also gives them an 11.5 games lead over their archrivals, the Yomiuri Giants. The Tigers haven’t won a championship in the Japan Series since 1985 and that was their only title. Last year they lost in the first round of the Central League Climax Series to the Chunichi Dragons who would go on to win the championship.

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Mouth Of The Architect – Quietly

I wonder who recommended this band to me. Somehow I am not quite sure, but uit must have been a friend a few years ago while we were sitting at the plaza in front of the Dom, Cologne’s huge cathedral. I found the first record “Time & Withering” (2004) at our local recordstore, a 4-track monster that drags itself on for almost 40 minutes. Usually I would have backed off from music like this, but there must have been something (of which I really don’t know what it is) which kept me listening to the record quite a lot. Guess what, I even bought their second album “The Ties That Bind” (2006). Six songs this time, and maybe it’s just me but I felt this one was slightly easier to listen to. Still very thick and slow, but yet a little lighter, at least what I thought.

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MLB Allstar Game: Now I know why it’s called the "Midsummer Classic"

Well, you have to give credit to the Americans for at least one thing: they know how to put up a great show and celebrate things. Although for European ears the ever present glorification of their home country might sound a little odd, but nonetheless they know how to great an atmosphere where everybody who is watching the event feels at least a little touched.
So I tuned in for the annual MLB Allstar Game last night which was scheduled to start at 2 am MET in the morning. Little did I know they were honouring quite a few people before the first pitch.

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