What's He Doing Way Over Here?

Germans love Barack Obama. LOVE. They think he's Ghandi and MLK and JFK and Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa and Bono and Jesus Christ all rolled into one convenient, charismatic package. As soon as my English students find out I'm American, I can assume that the next words out of their mouths will be something to the effect of, "How about that Barack Obama, huh? Isn't he great?" They can pontificate at length about how much they adore him and how they can't wait for him to become president of the United States so that he can unite the whole world give everyone a free puppy.

The rush of emotion always comes to a halt, however, when I ask them, "Why do you like him so much?" They puzzle over this for a moment and eventually shrug and admit that they don't really know. The best they can muster is that he seems to be a lot better than Bush (who, I have to remind them, isn't on the ballot this time around) and that he says he wants to patch things up with Europe.

And then I ask them what they think about John McCain, and the response is, inevitably, "Who?"

So I hope I don't sound too jaded and cynical when I say that Obama speaking in Berlin to 200,000 people who can't even vote for him looks a lot like an attempt to say, "See, America? All the cool kids over here in Europe are into it ..."



JEM

I Will Now Take a Few Questions ...

Jake recently coined the phrase "having a malaise attack" to explain the sensation we occasionally get, usually on Saturdays, when it's gray outside, we feel vaguely fatigued but unable to sleep, and our lives more or less become black holes of motivation and energy.

I'm having a malaise attack today.

Yeah, OK, so I've been having a malaise attack on and off for about five days now. Jake left me early Friday morning to go to a conference in Toronto. He'll be home tomorrow. So, that's six days (the longest we've been apart in five and a half years of marriage) of padding around the apartment, with no English classes to teach, battling my mounting malaise and self-loathing.

To be fair, I have done a few things, and some kind-hearted friends from church have invited me to a few activities. That's always good because, in addition to getting me out of the apartment, it helps me practice German and further hone the useful skills I've gained in Germany of being, what I like to call, a Labrador-retriever-style friend — meaning I'm loyal and obedient, I smile a lot and don't speak much, and although I don't understand a pretty large portion of what people say to me, I'm very attentive and relatively good at picking up on non-verbal cues. (All our kind German friends deserve medals for the patience they endlessly exhibit with me. And for managing to stick to German as much as possible when speaking to me although their English is light years ahead of my toddler-level German. They're all saints and entirely worthy of my Labrador-calliber loyalty.)

But I'm nearing the end now, and I'm dragging my feet. So, in an effort to do something other than eat Peanut M&Ms and watch YouTube, I'm going to answer a few reader questions (some expressed, others merely sensed).

Q. How is your mom?
A. She is doing so much better, and thanks again for everyone's thoughts and prayers. It has paid off. In one week she went from being unable to sit up, much less do anything else, without help and excruciating pain, to being able to get herself from her bed to her wheelchair and back all by herself. She also requested a decrease in her pain medications. Last weekend she started practicing getting around with a walker, and I just learned she's coming home today! (My dad, who returned to Idaho Falls without her and who has proven to be a truly miserable bachelor — and I quote: "All I eat is junk and I stay up too late" — couldn't be happier to have her back.)

Last weekend when my dad went back to Jackson to be with Mom, he brought a laptop and a webcam and set Mom up with Skype. We talked all weekend and she looks and sounds as chipper and cheerful as ever. Her message to AD readers: "Never go 10 days without having a bowel movement." I'll spare you the details she did not spare me. Suffice it to say, getting back on that horse is apparently a pretty harrowing experience.

Q. How is the pregnancy going?
A. Boy, thanks for asking! It's going great. The baby's moving around a lot and kicks hard enough now that if you put your hand on my belly, you can feel it. It's totally cool.

I went to a pregnancy information thing at the hospital last night with a friend and that was interesting. For starters, I felt like sort of like an unwed teenage mother. I was wearing dirty U2 T-shirt and hammered Nikes and surrounded by classy 30-year-old ladies in tasteful designer maternity wear and their glasses-wearing husbands in their slick just-got-off-work-from-my-upper-level-position-at-a-software-company duds. They all looked like they've had the baby room furnished for a year and read dozens of parenting books already. I'm sure they were all looking at me and thinking, "Oh, sweetie. Do you know what you're getting into?" I probably looked like the kind of person who'd bring the baby home from the hospital and put him to bed in a shoebox painstakingly lined with clean sweat socks.

Shockingly, I actually understood most of presentation and, during the tour, was able to stand without flinching next to all manner of horrifying-looking birthing contraptions. (I swear on my own grave, there were ropes hanging from the ceiling.) At one point, the nurse was explaining the birthing bathtub in one room and she flat out said that, although the warm water helps a lot with the pain, it's not really the tidiest method of birthing. She actually used the word "Schleim", which I'd never heard before, but was able to deduce immediately as "slime", and I totally busted a gut. And then noticed that no one else in the tour had cracked a smile.

Anyway, birth is going to be a riot. Can't hardly wait.

Q. How angry are you that Jake saw "The Dark Knight" in Toronto without you, considering you've been dying to see it for about two years and it doesn't open in Germany until Aug. 21 and even then you're going to have to go to Berlin to see it in English?
A. I'll be honest, at first I was a little peeved. But that was quickly replaced by overwhelming depression. Between you and me, though, if our positions were swapped, I totally would've done the same thing.

Q. On a scale of 1-10, after five days alone, how sick of yourself are you?
A. Excellent question. I'm going to go with 30.

Q. After reading this entry, we, your readers unanimously join you in that assertion.
A. Good to know.



JEM

Feel It in Your Bones

On Brühl's Terrace, a beautiful strolling place in the heart of Dresden's old city that overlooks the Elbe River, you can find a handful of these inconspicuous plaques on the terrace's railing.


It's an interactive art exhibit called the "Touched Echo", which, strangely enough, we learned about after it was featured on a few (non-German) technology blogs. Last Saturday we decided to pay it a visit.

Here's how it works: A device is attached to the fence that transmits sounds, specifically, sounds simulating the Feb. 13, 1945, air raid on Dresden — explosions, falling bombs, low-flying aircraft and the like. The interesting thing is that the sounds are completely inaudible unless you lean your elbows on the railing and put your hands over your ears. The sounds are conducted through your bones. Here's a picture of me demonstrating:

It's like there are ghosts trapped in the ironwork. Very creepy. And cool.

You should totally come try it out.

And on a completely unrelated note, several minutes after experiencing the Touched Echo, we saw this:

A Trabi limousine. Awesome.

That is all.



JEM

Animatronics: Exactly Like Being in Rock 'n' Roll

Wow, thanks everybody for the sweet well-wishes and offers of help and prayers on my family's behalf. Really. That means a lot to me. As Amy, my sister-in-law pointed out, my mom is indeed young and tough and healthy as a horse, and I have no doubt she'll pull this off in record time and amaze her doctors. My folks also have a huge support system of family and friends who are doing a super job of making sure they're looked after. It's a rotten situation, for sure. But it could've been a lot worse, and in the end, everything will be OK. Mostly I just needed a moment to gush. But thanks so much for the prayers. That stuff works.

Because I don't like having a depressing story as my lead entry, I'm going to go ahead and move on. What I want to talk about today is this:



Jake saw this recently on one of his millions of tech geek blogs and totally froke out. They're making a movie about the Rock-afire Explosion! he said. Isn't that awesome?! he said.

What's a Rock-afire Explosion? I said.

Turns out I missed out on a few things growing up in Idaho. One of these things was watching animatronic bears perform "Black or White" by Michael Jackson in a dingy, noisy pizza parlor that's filled with screaming children covered in pizza grease and seizure-inducing arcade games. Even if there had been a Rock-afire Explosion in Idaho Falls, which I'm going to guess there wasn't, I wouldn't have seen it anyway. My mom didn't allow our family to patronize establishments like that. I distinctly remember her picking me up from a birthday party at a place like that once and telling me in the car on the way home, "Jaz, that is what Hell is like." That was probably the wrong thing to tell a kid because I immediately thought that, if that's really case, Hell rules.

Jake agreed to sit down with AD and talk a little more about the Rock-afire Explosion and what it meant to him.

AD: How old were you when you first encountered the Rock-afire Explosion?
Jake J. Michaelson: Probably 8 or 9.
AD: So the late '80s?
JJM: Yeah.
AD: Was it at a Showbiz Pizza Place?
JJM: Pistol Pete's Pizza.
AD: Your mom allowed you to enter these dens of sin?
JJM: Yeah. Actually, maybe she didn't even know about it. I don't think we ever went as a family. I think it was somebody else's party.
AD: But the Rock-afire Explosion made an impact on you.
JJM: Yes.
AD: Why was that?
JJM: There were a couple of reasons. They did a few songs I'd never heard before, for example "16 Tons" and now every time I hear that song I think of that big, creepy black gorilla singing it. I don't even know who actually sang it. More in general, I had very conflicting feelings because on one hand I was terrified. It looked like something out of a horror movie. Like "Chucky" or something. But I was also mesmerized by them. I couldn't look away.
AD: Judging from the trailer, it sounds like they had a pretty huge effect on some people. Does that surprise you?
JJM: Frankly, I did not know until I saw the trailer that it was a chain thing, so I had no idea there would've been such a cult following.
AD: Why were you so excited to see they were making a documentary about it?
JJM: It was really the people who were the fanatics about it. I found them more interesting than the animatronics. I was interested in the human story behind the Rock-afire Explosion show.
AD: Bull. You just want to see that gorilla again.
JJM: (ignores AD, continues surfing net on laptop and melts into mournful baritone rendition of "16 Tons")
AD: Yeah. That's what I thought.



JEM

P.S. After watching this video again, Jake just pointed out that this Chris Thrash guy absolutely IS J.F. Sebastian from "Blade Runner".

The Unanticipated

When you decide to move 8,000 miles away from your family, you have to anticipate that you will miss things.

Before we left the States (exactly one year ago tomorrow), I knew that it was financially unlikely that I would set foot on American soil again during our three and a half years in Dresden. I mentally prepared myself to miss my youngest brother's LDS mission send-off, and I told my other brother, Ford, who will be 23 next month, that, should he meet the right girl and feel so inclined, he should not postpone a wedding for me. He said I had nothing to worry about, and from the vague reports I receive regarding his romantic exploits, I think that promise is holding.

We also had to prepare for death. As morbid as it sounds, Jake and I had to make peace with the distinct possibility that when we kissed our grandparents goodbye, it could be for the last time. That possibility has already become reality for us once, with the passing of Jake's beautiful grandmother last winter.

It hasn't been easy being absentees in the lives of the people we love, but it has been tolerable. Until now, nothing has happened that we didn't anticipate.

We didn't anticipate this.


Last Friday, July 4, my mom was in an accident. She and my dad were four-wheeling — their apparent favorite past time as empty-nesters — in Wyoming, when Mom attempted to turn her machine around on a precarious patch of trail and rolled it. By the time her spill was complete, she was pinned beneath the four-wheeler in a stream with several broken ribs, a broken ankle and (the worst of her injuries) a pelvis broken in four or five different places. My dad managed to get the four-wheeler off her, and she, despite spectacular pain, managed to pull herself out of the stream. Naturally, they were 30 miles from the main road, and cell phone reception was null. Fortunately, my dad found a ranger camp with a radio nearby and help soon arrived.

My mom was gingerly hauled to a small hospital in Jackson, Wyo., where she was checked into the ICU. She just left the ICU, but as far as I know, has yet to leave her bed or eat solid food. She goes in today for surgery on her ankle. My dad has been sleeping in their camper in the hospital's parking lot. They don't know yet when my mom will be stable enough to be shipped back to Idaho Falls, where my folks live, but when they do, Mom most certainly won't be going home. She's currently staring down the barrel of a long and painful rehabilitation that could last up to 6 months. She will make a full recovery, they're saying, (thank God) but it will be rough.

Meanwhile, I'm in Germany. Gnawing on my own insides.



JEM

P.S. Thanks so much to friends and family who may be reading this who have visited and checked up on my sweet mom. It's so comforting for me to know there are people caring for and looking out for my parents. I owe you all a lot.

Land of the Free

Things I love about America:

1. Open highways

JEM on US Hwy 91, Southern Idaho, 2004

The Extraterrestrial Highway, Southern Nevada, 2006

2. Greasy spoons

Jake at the Ensenada Grill, Beatty, Nev., 2005

3. Ghost towns

JEM at Rhyolite, Calif., 2005

4. Big views

Rainbow Vista, Southern Nevada, 2006

5. The 4th of July

JEM's family including never-before pictured youngest brother Spencer, Rexburg, Idaho, 2007

Happy birthday, America. We're thinking about you today. And missing you.



JEM

My Lovers

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a long and rambling musical journey that many readers will find unbelievably boring. My apologies to these readers, but this is my blog and if I want to talk about Lynyrd Skynyrd, I'm going to talk about Lynyrd Skynyrd. So chew on that. And enjoy the '70s-tastic bikini babes, Billy Joel's pompadour, Three Dog Night's über-tight pants and David Bowie's blond, snaggle-toothed ambition.

I have torrid love affairs with songs.

I have relationships with albums and song-creators, too, but they're more long-term arrangements. More stable, steady things. But it's weird with the songs. They come out of nowhere. Usually they're songs that are older than I am. From artists and eras I have no real connection with. They've just been quietly existing in the ether my whole life, and then I hear them, sometimes for the first time, sometimes for the 100th time, and my mood and the temperature and the scenery and everything is perfectly tuned, and they'll knock the wind out of me. And for weeks, sometimes up to a month, that solitary song — that four minutes of melody and music — will be the only thing I want to hear. I'll listen to it over and over and over. I'll dream about it and wake up singing it. Usually I spend ridiculous amounts of time picking it apart, learning every word, working out arrangements on my acoustic guitar.

And then, as suddenly as started, it will end. I usually forget how to play it. I forget most of the lyrics. But I always have fond memories of it.

The first affair I remember clearly struck when I was 13 or so and just learning how to play guitar. I stumbled on some documentary on TV that included Lynyrd Skynyrd's entire 10-minute live rendition of "Freebird". The last four minutes or so, with the dueling guitar solos and the crazy build right at the end, floored me. The '90s bands I was listening to at the time didn't play like that. They couldn't. They could try for decades and never be able to pull off that kind of energy. Fortunately my dad had the album on vinyl. I don't think he'd listened to it in years. But I warmed up the turntable and sat in the living room with the headphones on and played it until I was capable of rocking out to that song with the best of the bearded Confederates, who, I would later learn, were the primary sharers of my enthusiasm.



The next most vivid affair struck some years later, my freshman year of college. I'd caught a ride back to Idaho Falls from Logan, Utah, where I was studying, with a friend from high school who was a huge Billy Joel fan. We were listening to a greatest hits compilation, and the only Billy Joel song I knew from Adam — "Piano Man" — came up. And I realized, all at once, that I loved this song. The waltzy beat, the theatrical vibe, but mostly the dark, storytelling lyrics. It's a fantastic song. I promptly learned it and played it several times in coffee shops. (I thought I was being terribly clever: a girl with a guitar singing about being the piano man.) I still get an adrenaline rush when I hear Billy sing, "Aaand the PEEE-AH-NO sounds like a CARRR-ni-VAHL ..." That was my favorite part to sing.



A couple of years ago I'd taken up listening to the oldies radio station in town, which had taken up playing "One" by Three Dog Night on a pretty steady rotation. I must've heard it before, but the stars were in alignment this time. I found myself sitting in parking lots, unable to turn off my car's engine until the song's whopping three minutes were over. Something about the tension of that one-note guitar riff against the thumping bassline and splashy drums, and especially that snappy break toward the end. For such a stereotypically mellow band, the song rocks. Hard. I love it. If only it were a couple of minutes longer.



I once again find myself in the throes of a new passion.

I'm not entirely sure how "Life on Mars?" by David Bowie ended up in our iTunes library, but it did. And a few weeks ago our eyes connected from across the room for the first time. I'm not sure if it was the recent news that there really might be life on Mars, or if there was some other cosmic force at play, but I woke with the ethereal chorus in my head one recent morning and knew it had begun again. I've been humming the haunting melody for two weeks straight and have almost mastered the bizarre chord progression. As I was practicing it the other evening, slouched on the couch with the guitar lying across my stomach, the baby went berzerk, kicking and punching at the guitar and tickling me like crazy. I don't know if that means he's a fan or if he's had enough of the Bowie already. It doesn't really matter. The affair hasn't run its course yet and until it does, baby's gonna be gettin' more.

I still haven't the foggiest idea what Mr. Bowie is singing about, but it's something big. I mean, just listen to him. You can't fake drama like that.






JEM