Spain pt.4

The night after I posted my last entry my brother and me decided to
have dinner in front of his tiny little tv on the top floor of his
tiny little house. I haven´t watched tv in a while and I was curious
what Spain has to offer. We switched it on and there it was, a new
show I have never seen before or even heard about called: Identity.
12 people standing on little platforms looking awfully bored, a
showmaster, a contestant, 2 family members of the contestant as some
sort of back up, 3 super bored independent experts functioning as a
joker and an audience. As far as I understood the show the contestant
is confronted with several things that people have done or what
people are, like: won a flamenco dance competition or works as a
dentist or hates green monsters... and the contestant has to guess
who of the 12 people could this statement belong to. Various facts
will be revealed about the 12 people in the course of the show which
he needs to remember in order to make all the right guesses. His 2
friends (in my show the contestant was a guy and one of the back up
helper was his girlfriend and the other was his best buddy) can help
him to memorise all these little hints and facts. Also the show
starts with the 12 people making a certain pantomimic gesture that is
supposed to describe their job.
But most of the time the contestant is just staring at the 12 people
and the camera goes very close and shows us close ups of their legs,
hips and breasts, clothes, face and hair so that it might be easier
to guess who plays soccer and who is the hairstylist.
A show based on the outer appearance of a person suggesting that this
is all we need to look at in order to win the jackpot. Wow.
I can´t wait until this show comes to Germany - I guess I am going to
need a tv again in order learn to judge a book by its cover and then
make the real big money.

In the new book I just started to read the main character Toru Okada
is also dealing with the same questions: Will we ever be able to
completely understand someone else? How far can we go or come to
actually get to know something of importance? ...
It is a book by Haruki Murakami called "Mister Aufziehvogel" (which I
really cannot translate into english) but the original title is
"Nejimaki-dori Kuronikuru" and it was first published in Japan in
1994. I am not exactly a big fan of Mister Murakami but it was the
only book lying around which I haven´t read, yet. It has 765 pages
and I hope it is going to last me a bit longer than the last books.
Murakami´s stories always seem to be a little over ambitious. There
is everything in his books: explicit sex scenes, horror, anxiety, a
bit of philosophy, fantasy, adventure and so on... I do like his kind
of naive writing style and how easy one can float through his stories
but like I said sometimes it is almost too much.
The last super thick book I really enjoyed reading without getting
bored at all was "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen. A book sharp
and to the point and really detailed full of little side stories all
connected to one monster story. I can really recommend this to you.
At the moment I am waiting for the movie "Possibiltiy of an Island"
after the book by Michel Houellebecq. He wrote the screenplay and
directed the movie himself. I loved the book and I am always thrilled
by his writing genius and now I am excited to see if he is also a
good director. I saw a few screenshots on the internet a while ago
and it looked a bit like a low budget production but we will see - my
expectations are not too high - I am just curious.