Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Cover, NOV 05


by AMY CHOU, cover artist.

Exclusives, NOV 05

PATERSON - An American in Berlin
Our exclusive interview with the director of Berlin's 'CABARET'
by SIMONE KUSSATZ, special guest writer

Well. It wasn't my decision. It was the decision of the producers. It was their idea. They approached me. But I was enthusiastic about the project from the start. First, I always wanted to be in Berlin. Second, when I walked into the “Bar Jeder-Vernunft,” I was fascinated, and thought [that] this [would totally be] the place for CABARET. And third, I don't get involved with many musicals, except for the ones with deeper messages and [have] a darker edge to them, so "Cabaret" was something that intrigued me greatly.



BEN-HUR - The Creation of Art as a Mosaic of Methods
An interview with Israeli artist Daniel Ben-Hur
by Simone Kussatz, special guest writer

I then came across an ancient mystic and Kabbalah teacher by the name Abulafia. He lived about 700 years ago in the 14th century. He told his students to sit on the floor and to start thinking, however not in words, but letters. It could be one letter, or several, as long as they didn’t build a word. This seemed like meditation to me. He got back to the source of things, because before any word, any thought, or any theory could be established, there were only letters.



GERMANY – It’s the World’s Largest Pumpkin Exhibit!
Not in America . . . but in Ludwigsburg
by Simone Kussatz, special guest writer

Jucker was right, I had never seen wood-crafted cows, sheep, wagons, pigs, goats, oxen, or even a tractor (a Lanz Bulldog) decorated with pumpkins. What I had learned about Halloween and the pumpkin time in America was that one dressed up and went for a trick-or-treat.

Here, however, I had come across a pumpkin spectacle to an extent that I had no idea even existed. The menus were filled with everything from pumpkin sparkling wine to pumpkin jam, pumpkin noodles to pumpkin mustard, and the tables, likewise, were filled with people eating and drinking.

Features, NOV 05

AMERICA - Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville
New Orleans, Louisiana
by RYAN JOE, columnist

He said, Damn, I shouldn't've come from Pittsburgh. Now I have to get enough money to make my way back home to Santa Cruz.

So that explained it. I hear Santa Cruz is notorious for drugs. Like you don't have to buy it there so much as pluck the junk ethereally out of the air. I wasn't sure why he told me this, though. I felt as if he wanted me to invite him in, offer him the bathroom as a safe harbor in which he could shoot up and vomit.

I closed the door and kept watch until he left. My roommate told me later, "If I'm sitting outside and I see someone coming down the street with crazy in their eyes, white or black, I just go back in. And if you see them loitering outside, you just have to use profanity. Tell them to get the fuck up and fucking walk. There was a guy who used to go through the trash, but he's gone for now. Man, I really wish we had a balcony."