German researchers have determined that six-year-old children are loving angels, but eight-year-olds regularly indulge in a "hatred for opposing groups." Especially boys. Relax, though! It's not your fault.
America's worst ambassador, Kermit the Frog, has come under fire for violating German law after he appeared on television hawking the theatrical release of his film The Muppets.
The Germans have a long history of, well, "dabbling" in every sort of racism or prejudice imaginable. Much like every other country! But they have a special, recurring knack for representing Barack Obama in ways that they think are innocent, but are actually casually racist. It's sweet, in a way. (Maybe not.)
A board member of Germany's central bank told the German paper Welt am Sontag that "all Jews share a certain gene." As you might imagine, everyone is feeling just great about a powerful German just sharing his opinion about Jews.
Now, our pretend knowledge of German is a bit rusty, but it looks as though Bill, the lead singer of the band Tokio Hotel (made-up of anime characters who, through a wizard's wacky magic, left the television and became real "boys"), is unhappy. He's on the cover of this month's week's German Vanity Fair and seems to have angst about something. Or, wait. I think in autobahn-talk "angst" means "fear." What's he sad/scared about? Maybe it's his hair? His tight pants? His bizarre resemblance to that annoying "'burn this dress' gooood" Yoplait ad girl? The world may never know. Because no one in the world speaks German. Oh, he's also apparently having sex mit groupies. (Wait, like this groupie?) (Click through for larger cover image.)
Germans: they have so much time on their hands! Some German guy with a website took the time to photograph the pictures of 100 different food items on their own packaging; then, photograph the actual food item inside. Then, post the whole mess on the internet [Funtasticus via Coudal]. The results, as you might imagine, are frequently disgusting. So we've culled the list for you down to the five biggest disparities between the advertised product and reality. Before you eat any more packaged German food, you must see this:
Oh dear. It seems the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI" for short), which normally just looks into reports of alien abductions or sends lone rogue agents to kill terrorists, has made a little mistake on a big international operation. The Bureau is on the hunt for James "Whitey" Bulger ("BUHL-jah"), the notorious South Boston mob boss, who is believed to be hiding out in Europe. Last year they'd received a photo, allegedly of Bulger and his girlfriend, taken by an American tourist in Italy. So, they showed it on Aktenzeichen XY, Germany's most popular crime show (well, second only to Tokio Hotel's What Is The No No?), and thousands of people began calling in saying they'd spotted the villainous couple.
This is being the cover for Tokio Hotel's super great American States album disc debut. It's sure to be a smash jam. Scream!
· In earning $27.4 million on its first full day of release, Transformers sets the utterly meaningless record for the biggest Tuesday ever. Equally exciting and inconsequential box office milestones are sure to follow the conclusion of the movie's six-and-a-half-day "opening weekend." [Variety]
· Following an unexpected volume of complaints about how many commercials clogged the feeds of MTV and VH1's Live 8 concerts in 2005, NBC Universal pledges that the ad load for this weekend's Live Earth telecasts will be "significantly lighter than what a normal hour of network television would be." Hooray for somewhat reduced corporate greed! [THR]
· Can Tom Cruise and the German government fuck already and put all this weird tension behind them? It's really getting a little uncomfortable for everybody at this point. [Variety]
· 8 million shut-in pyrotechnics fans tune in to NBC's Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular, giving NBC a Wednesday night ratings win. [THR]
· Foreign nations are enjoying American cultural imperialism about as much as the military kind. [Variety]
While the German government long ago named acting legend and adult-contemporary pop idol David Hasselhoff its Honorary Chancellor for Cultural Affairs in recognition of his many contributions to the arts, it has largely ignored the work of onetime international megastar Tom Cruise because of his controversial association with Scientology, a faith they narrow-mindedly refuse to recognize as an official religion, even though it has provided many generous American celebrities with a safe place in which to charitably invest their excess wealth. In addition to this ongoing and profound institutional slight, the government is now refusing to allow Cruise's latest movie, Valkyrie, the story of a WWII plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, to film at their military sites, denying exacting director Bryan Singer the Teutonic verisimilitude required to properly execute his cinematic vision:
