A Counting Jack

Remi is very intelligent. She knows a couple a dozen words, knows to look at the light when she wants it turned out, and I keep finding a paper trail of schemes and diagrams on how to catch the cat next door. I believe she drags out a diorama to work on when I'm not at home, placing the cat in our yard and the model showing various quick exits from the house to the yard.

In any case, she can't count. At least not as far as I know. Not like the Jack Russell in this incredible video.

About John Kascht

After I moved to Chicago, John Kascht used to call me at the Trib and pretend to be my allergist: The madman, out-of-control, There's-a Pill-For-Everything-and-If-Not-There's -Always-Surgery allergist John and I both went to back when I lived in DC.

Ringring.
"Hellooo. Paddymccracken"

"Hi Pat (he knows how much I hate "Pat"). Hi Pat. You have asthma. That's the bad news. The good news is, we can correct it by removing your lungs."

"Hi John."

And he and his wife Dolores--also a good friend of mine-- came to visit when I lived in Bratislava. One night we stood near the town square, watching a man crack a six-foot whip outside a small cafe.
For entertainment.
He had a top hat out on the ground in front of him, in case anyone wanted to drop a few korunas into it.
However, having to cross in front of a six-foot-whip to give money to the bully holding it was simply too much to ask of any Slovak.
The three of us looked at each other. I had no explanation. Not my country.
John said, "Patti, what the hell are we doing in Bratislava, watching a man crack a six foot whip outside a restaurant?"
The best I could give him was a shrug of the shoulder and a re-direct to another cafe.


We also stayed at the Creepy Inn in Levoca, where someone had paid a local to paint portraits and hang them throughout the hotel--Scooby Doo style- but didn't bother to check whether the artiste was much of a hand at rendering hands, so all were misshapen claws.

Anyhow, this great Washington Post video shows Kascht--who has his work on display at the NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY!!--in his element, sketching a caricature of John Edwards... and proves the frightening reality that artists really do see people as things, albeit fun, animated things.

Danube and Dog

Remi and I were wandering about untethered through nature again this morning, this time along the banks of the river--a small shoreline and lightly wooded areas. She hasn't like it before because of the noisy tugboats and cargo ships that creak through there.

Today she was delighted. Lots of frolicky running, delight at broken sticks, heightened delight when I broke them in front of her, investigation into areas that only small dogs can fit.
The sun came through. I found a fallen log to sit on that had been cleaned of its bark. It wasn't too long before she bounded out of somewhere to come join me there. She stood on my lap and leaned her body into mine. We both just watched the river.

A good morning, all in all.

Daytime TV, Thai Style

The only TV more entertaining than your own film stars dubbed into another language, is watching local TV.
After an earthquake in Moldova, I watched the news the following night, in which a 5-foot tall military man with a square head, dressed in full regalia, crabwalked across the platform to demonstrate what to do in the event of another earthquake. No standing in doorways was mentioned, only crabwalking/creeping along the side of a wall (which was presumably still standing) was the cure all for a 5.8 scale earthquake in a densely populated urban environment.

And then to the soap operas. Vietnam imports Chinese soaps and I weep with mirth.

Thai Airways is up in arms about a new soap opera about Thai flight attendants. There are lots of catfights and the surprising revelation that male flight attendants have torrid love affairs with... female flight attendants. Who knew?

Get out the popcorn. In this episode a wonky-eyed stewardess and her hunky sidekick play some kind of cell phone trick-- in which she holds her nose to disguise her voice--on her clearly sweeter, fawnlike, albeit somewhat neurotic, coworker (who also has a hunky sidekick). The episode evolves/devolves into chasing, crying, restraining then elbowing for release. There's lots of bitch-slapping for my female readers, cat-fighting for my male readers, and backstabbing for both. Here's a look:

Born to Run? Really?

Remi and I breezed across the bridge this morning to get in a morning romp through the woods in Stopfenreuth before I settled in to work.

I popped in a CD that I hadn't listened to in ages. Years. I used to listen to it on my late night drives from DC to Baltimore. Crank it up and feel the American dream of breaking out wash over me.

So I'm here to declare that Thunder Road doesn't have the same affect in provincial Austria as it does in Anytown, USA.

So I skip forward a few. A scarf-wearing, pullover, legwarmer/boots-wearing, babushkaesque Oma is outside sweeping her sidewalk. A rabbit hops across her back garden, while The Boss is inside my car belting out Born to Run.

Run from what? The lil bunny?

There's something here--there's something to this. How songs define a nation, spring forth from a psyche. And I know how often I've tried to be patient as a Ukrainian, Bosnian, Vietnamese, Moldovan has tried so hard to impart not the meaning of a song, but the feeling of it, and how I just don't get it. I never get it. I can't. I'm not Ukrainian, Bosnian, Vietnamese, Moldovan or Austrian. I am American.

Ah, To Be Young Again. And Full of Piss and Wind.

When I was a kid growing up in Virginia Beach, snow days were announced at the last possible second. My schoolteacher mother, ever the optimist, wouldn't get out of her pjs, JUST IN CASE, and on the off chance that our trace of snow actually did get us a Get Out of Jail Free Card, we'd all do a little jig together and my mom would celebrate by making us a big breakfast.
Since mom never celebrated anything with food and we grew up on Stouffer's boil-in-bag meat, this should give some indication of her unbridled joy at not having to face, uh, "snotty-nosed brats"*. Other people's, that is. Not hers. Hers, she was feeding a big breakfast--which did not involve slipping a bag-o-meat into a pot of boiling water.

But wait. There is a new era of "snotty-nosed brats"--the ones who call a school official's private home number to bitch about having to go to school in the snow. And then get called a *"snotty-nosed brat" when the official's wife calls back and leaves an irate message on the S.N.Brat's cell phone.

To those that questioned the behavior of the high school kid (a.k.a. S.N.Brat) who placed the now infamous call to the school official's home, he gave a snotty-nosed, thumb of the nose remark about his right to call anyone, anytime, anywhere, day or night, labeling it a "generational thing."

You just don't get us, he claims. We are the cell phone generation, he says. We are the YouTube, Facebook generation. We are the internet.

Hey kid. My generation INVENTED the cell phone. INVENTED the internet. We just let you use it. So suck it up and mind your manners. As the Washington Post suggested, it's not a "generational thing," it's a "civility thing."

Plodding Along

I know, I know, post have been scarce recently. It's been rough going here with the McCracken family and we're just trying to hold strong. Whine, whine, what can I say. Except: Wine! Wine!

In any case, last month I wrote a STELLAR article (my, my) on Austrians and sex and am amused/tickled/pleased/high-fiving myself/doin' a jig now that the editor has pointed out to me that it was picked up on one of the Gawker blogs.

Go, Smokers! Go!

As of the new year, France towed the line and banned smoking in public places.

Austria seems to be the last holdout, and proudly.

A headline today in one of the country's leading newspapers: "Austria the Last Smokers' Paradise"

Excuse me while I go cough up a pretty little black lung.

Oh, To Be Intoxicated On a Wednesday Morning

A writer friend of mine came across a language she didn't recognize and put a call out to others to see if they could identify it. Turns out it was Turkic.

Then she decided she would use a translation dictionary to get the gist of the article. Good luck, sweetie. When you translate something like Out of Sight, Out of Mind into German, you get Blind, Crazy. Unless you have at least a remedial understanding of the language, it'll be a hilarious venture into verbal anarchy.

When I was in Chisinau, I was at the Independent Journalism Center, wondering why it was 10 am and Nina was still not in. Everyone spoke English well there, so I was lucky not to need a translator at the Center.

"Where's Nina?" I asked.

"She stayed at home today because she's very intoxicated," Corina said. "Why? What's wrong?"

I couldn't see it. Nina the Bookish is drunk in the morning. Apparently very so. On a weekday.

"It's just that... well. Nina? Intoxicated? On a Wednesday morning?"

"VERY. She's really intoxicated. It can happen any day. It all depends."

I'm really trying to grasp Nina's intoxication, and thinking maybe I should introduce Moldovans to the practice of interventions. Starting with Nina.

I press on. "So... was it vodka... or..."

"Vodka? No, of course not! She say's it was bad fish. And now she's intoxicated."

And this is why translation dictionaries cannot be used except in parlor games.

Saturday Evening at the Local

Remi and Max had a great time at the Danube earlier today... they ran so fast and so far and so long that their beautiful legs started to stumble, but they kept on because there was simply more running to do. When they stopped, it was to roll in something delightfully smelly.

Just now Remi and I met Uncle Billy at the cafe. His cousin runs it and always lets Remi into the kitchen for a special treat.

Rudi and his cousin talked about their other cousin who joined the circus. Then the undertaker and his wife joined us. We talked a bit about another cousin who was sick and how the undertaker prefers vacations in Lanzarotti.

I told them about my first days in Hainburg--when I stood in a tiny cemetery, looking at a medieval Jewish tombstone, while the archaeologist talked about the town, and the finance minister and the priest followed us around like puppies.

On the way home I saw the priest going in for the evening. Lyle Lovett was singing his weird-haired head off in my car.

Remi has just had a bath. Dinner's on the stove.

Schlimm, schlimm, schlimm

Yep. A dirty face.
Nope. She didn't get what she was after.

A First Class Life in a Coach World

First Class or Coach. First Class or Coach.

Freelancers and priests are liberated from that decision, thanks to poverty.

Except, of course, when a babushka population is factored in, and then bottomfeeders like me get bumped up the social strata quite a bit.

A few years back, we were in Somewhereovka, Czech Republic, trying to decide the best way to get back to Prague. We'd taken the special edition steam train, coach seats, and didn't really want to travel all the way back that way. Too much soot in economy class.

So we discussed, back and forth, whether to trade in for First Class tickets, a soot-free zone. We just didn't know if we should do it. I mean, we already BOUGHT the tickets. Buy NEW ones?

Five minutes of discussion in the town square, the wind whipping around, and still no answer. I was ready to walk back to Prague.

Then someone asked a brilliant question.
"How much does it cost to upgrade?"

A dollar.

......
A few years ago it was the same situation in Ukraine, except John and I were dying for first class tickets and our Ukrainian hosts were trying to talk us out of it.

"It's VERY expensive. Economy class is quite nice. And fun."

Okay. We knew what we had to do. We just didn't know how. We knew we had an overnight train from Kharkiv to Kiev, and that economy class was filled with borsht-eating, card-playing, layers of wool-wearing extended families of 17, which is still better than drunken, lederhosened, singing Germans who I was stuck with on a Vienna-bound train--but for 10 dollars more, we could have a compartment to ourselves. No climbing over bodies to get to the toilet, no smell of soggy ham sandwiches that emerge from crumpled paper sacks at 2 a.m.

Angelina, our host, was a master at the Disapproving Look. When John and I mentioned upgrading, we were her children, going down to the casino to gamble away our paycheck; buying fresh bread, when day-old loaves will do. Senseless, reckless kids.

But we stood our ground. We did it. We plunked down a whopping $20 as Angelina clutched at her heart, told her we'd "expense it" --which Angelina still found utterly wasteful--and then walked past all-night family fun parties to our compartment.

It was small-- a bed for him on one side, mine on the other with a small nighttable in the middle. Like Laura and Rob Petry, Ukraine-style.

John was a good friend of mine. If he hadn't had a girlfriend already, I might have let myself have a little crush. The kind of guy that, when someone mistakes the two of you for a couple, you don't correct them.

We tucked ourselves into our little beds and, like an orphanage, lights were out at 11. We talked in the dark. A slumber party. Every time a conductor opened our sliding door we could hear the Ukrainian folk music playing in the walkway, and I swear I could smell the borsht.

And we talked. We'd nearly nod off but when the other of us had something else to say, let's here it, this one more thing.

Somewhere between Kharkiv and Kiev, we slept.

Mine

"The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together."
-- Erma Bombeck

Time to Take Down the (New Year's?) Tree

A bit late, but since we're all still wishing everyone a Happy New Year when we pass each other in the hall (or Alles Gute in the case of Hainburg), I have something to say about how a Christmas Tree transmogrifies into a New Year's Tree.

When I was in Kharkiv, Ukraine a few years ago, Aleksey and his mother, Angelina, took me through the town center on a cold, cold winter's night, to show me the town.

Aleksey said it was ashame I couldn't see it all lit up with a New Year's tree.

Never heard of a NY tree, I said. Nope. Sure haven't.

And then Aleksey told me it all started under Communist regime. "We weren't allowed to have Christmas trees because it was a symbol of religion. So we got around it by renaming it and putting it up anyway. So it's a New Year's Tree to us."

Austrians Love Sex

Here's my latest article, written for The Smart Set

That Thar's a Peacock

Yesterday I'm driving around to do a little stalling before finally getting back into work mode. Remi and I had already scavenged around the ruins at Petronell
and we just needed a drive.

Head out on the highway.

Looking for adventure.

So she rode shotgun while I tested the mettle of my little Renault (Sir George doesn't do snowy winters). Putt, putt.

Coming out of Rohrau, I came 'round the bend at the palace and saw two peacocks amiably crossing the road. Chatting happily, taking in the brisk, cool air and watching their step in the ice.

I swung around into the palace entrance, into the courtyard, past the closed up cafe (winter) and toward the museum.

A cleaning woman was standing in a doorway, tugging on a cigarette. Austria.

"Excuse me, but I was just driving past and I saw two peacocks out wandering around."

Puff, puff. A hard glance at my license plate to see where I'm from, the Austrian version of a head to toe.

"I mean, do the peacocks belong to the palace grounds?"

"Not really, no."

"Is it safe for them to be outside? It's dangerous for them, no?"

"Yes," said the cleaning woman. Puff, puff. "and dangerous also for the cars."

I asked her if it was normal that they were outside, and if someone should try to round them up.

"They're just out for a midday walk."

When we left the palace grounds, our two peacocks were still chatting away, stopping to peck at the ground, tweedling along.

A Have-Done List

I'm back.

During the last week, I:

Bought a Christmas tree.
Decorated a Christmas tree.
Wrapped gifts.
Made a lot of Christmas cookies
Unwrapped gifts.
Thanked people for gifts.
Stomped in the English rain.
Missed my dog.
Feigned knowledge/interest of nephew's games.
Worried about nephew's apparent addiction to games.
Reminded nephew that his virtual friends were not real.
Inexplicably flew into/out of different airports in London.
Screamed and cried at Austrian Airlines for flying me into/out of different airports in London.
Noted both flights departing at same time from both airports (Heathrow, London City Airport).
Screamed to be put on the flight from Heathrow, which I had booked.
Was hung up on by Austrian Airlines.
Trekked two hours into London on public transport, with luggage.
Flew out of London City Airport.
Only seven people on the plane.
Wondered why two flights were necessary if no one on plane.
Flight attendant frowned, offered bottle of champagne.
Accepted bottle of champagne from frowning flight attendant.