Saturday

We went here and saw this:



Now then: I am a former Catholic schoolboy (and briefly, a goddamned altar boy!) who in his adult years giveth not a shiteth for anything religious. But I have to give credit, these dudes can chant.

We didn't witness this exact kind of chant, but instead a more pedestrian type of chanted prayer. I wish I could have gotten a pic of my favorite monk, an old guy with a ZZ TOP-length beard. Coolest. Monk. EVER.

This monastery claims to have a piece of the actual cross Jesus spent time hanging around on, but I dunno. Most of these claims you have to take with a grain of salt. On ANTIQUES ROADSHOW they tell you it pays to have documentation to back up your claims of having a famous bit of junk, and if you ain't got the paperwork, then the default assumption is: BOGUS. Still. Neat place to see on a rainy Austrian afternoon.

LEFT: If you're a monk and you die in this monastery, this is where you lie in state.

Check out the cool skeleton candelabras! Every punk-rocker and metal-head's dream bedroom.

B, who knows all the differences between architecture of various eras, says that this is the "grotesque baroque" style.

Grotesque, sure enough.


BELOW: After monks are through lying around in the grotesque baroque room, they lie around here.


















We drove home, hung out a while, then drove into town to watch INGLORIOUS BASTERDS.

I don't know what to think of Quentin Tarantino, really. Every time I've seen him interviewed on TV, I wanted to jump through the screen and kick him as hard as I can in the nuts. The guy seems wired at all times, excited (or coked up out of his skull) about the latest turd he shit out, but on the other hand I have to give him credit for writing some pretty good stuff.

Like a lot of people who have never had their asses kicked really hard, Tarantino seems a bit too enamored of violence. He just goes over the top with it.

Still. B says nobody ever portrayed the Germans more accurately than Tarantino, and I give him a lot of credit for using real-life German (and Austrian!) actors who really know their stuff both as actors and bi- or even tri-lingual speakers. Very nicely done.

There were some Italians in the theater and they laughed hard when Brad Pitt's character, who claimed to "speak some I-talian" "spoke" it in the most atrocious Tennessee accent. I give Brad credit---he plays the comic scenes pretty well.

The Austrian who played the SS colonel, Christoph Waltz, said Tarantino revived his career, and Waltz deserves an Oscar if anyone does. He really did well, speaking not only excellent German (as you'd expect) but also English and French. B (who speaks French also) says his French was pretty good. The fucking guy even spoke some Italian in the film. He ought to win an Oscar just for knowing how to speak more than one language!

All in all, I give it an 8.5 out of 10.

BTW, it was strange sitting directly behind an elderly couple who surely were old enough to remember WWII----the lady cringed at the violent parts, but that was about it. If they spent the war in Vienna (or anywhere else in Europe) then I give them credit for being able to sit through the film. A Tarantino romp through Hitler's exploits is one thing, but actually living through it is another. Wish I could have talked to them about it...