Angry Sascha is angry.

“It’s so bloody frustrating to return from a romantic week-end and not be able to chat with your coworkers about it.” – “I’ve really had it with staying in the closet. But I don’t dare to come out on my fellow employees at the office.” – “People are always asking me about my lack of boyfriends, but how could I ever tell them about Sharon?”

Looks familiar? Mirroring your thoughts? OK, perhaps save the Sharon bit, but basically, sounds a lot like you after one beer too many on a rainy afternoon while sitting huddled and shunned in a bar sporting tasteless decoration and low-level 80s pop on the stereo? (The bar, not you. Even though that might be the case, too.) Well, if you like to get things done properly, rejoice: as every year, there’s a National Coming Out Day, well, coming your way. Last year’s motto having been “gay at work,” I should add. Like, be gay and be able to work at the same time. Wow, what a novel idea.

This joyful occasion is supposed to make it easier for (working) queers to leave the sticky embrace of the closet by feeling Accepted and Understood By Other People You Have Never Met But Share Your Very Same Problem, i.e. not being able to bloody make up your own mind if and when to introduce coworkers and friends to your secret sexual identity.

So everybody, don your power suits, get your rainbow ties and pink triangle pins out of that secret compartment in your closet, and be sure to greet everybody at work with the words “good morning, I am gay, how are you?” Don’t forget to pointedly stick out your little finger when having coffee, and whistling some George Michaels under your breath while signing contracts can’t be wrong, either. And mince. Mincing is important. Generally, just be as annoyingly gay as you’ve always wanted to be but never dared because, well, there wasn’t a date that told you to do so.

Use the weekend afterwards to arrange for a new identity and dye your hair a different colour. Get an accent, too, and nobody will remember that you’re actually the guy who was caught in the broom cabinet with much of John from Private Accounts in your mouth that last Thursday or whenever this year’s Coming Out Day will be. Fool-proof.

Actually, the very idea of communal, organised coming out is so sensible that I have to ask: why stop at gay coming out days? Where are all those other occasions that enable all those other sexual minorities to tell people about their hobbies and emotional landscapes? What about foot fetishists? What about geriatrophiles? What organisation cares enough to help compulsive undressers to drop their pants at the world, figuratively speaking? I suggest the introduction of a Coming Out Day for BDSM people, too, and I am looking forward to the Extreme Body Modification Weekend (explaining your attraction for cutting bits off you or your partner might be too complicated to be covered by one day only). And let’s not forget the Hetero Pride Parade everybody has been waiting for with bated breath. I’m sure the Catholic church would endorse it.

Hello. This isn’t Yemen. This isn’t 1950. Hello. If you define yourself this strongly by your sexuality to feel the urgent need to communicate your sexual orientation to each and everybody and his dog, do so on your own terms. If you worry about possible mobbing in the office – as if your coworkers actually gave a damn about who gets shafted or doesn’t get shafted, for that matter – but then accept a special date set by a third party (that’s probably too old to realise times have changed) for when to come out of the closet, well, in that case you should strongly consider joining the Skoptsi anyway. You’d probably have more fun, and I’m told the music’s better, too.

The acts of terrorism of 11 September 2001 have spawned much controversy, emotion, and pointless American patriotism all over the planet, and we here at nggalai.com didn’t really want to be part of the global stupidity that has been so manifest in the media as of late. Nevertheless, a sadly disregarded component of the post-attacks reporting forces us to dig deeper into the wound to unearth a swelling conflict of colossal proportions, and present the only viable solution to this problem. I am not talking about the Terrorists/USA thingy, as this really has been beaten to death and shot to hell, at length, and not even very creatively so by so many others. I am talking about Music, or in other words: this is about something that matters, for a change.

It all started a week or so after the incidents in the United States when Karlheinz Stockhausen, enfant terrible of the European contemporary music scene and self-proclaimed daddy of Techno Music, made some apparently outrageous claims about the meaning and aesthetic quality of those attacks. Just as I personally subscribe to much of Stockhausen’s statement, I can also understand pretty well how people could get offended by it. Well, have a look:

“This is the greatest work of art, the greatest ever undertaken in the whole Cosmos. Imagine what happened. All those people, concentrating on the performance, and suddenly 5000 people are transferred to resurrection, in one go. I couldn’t do that. Compared to this, we are nothing, as composers. […] It’s a crime for the one reason that the participants weren’t free to chose. They didn’t come to the ‘concert’, that’s pretty clear, and nobody warned them about the possibility of biting the dust. But the things that happened on a mental level, this leaping out of security, out of the Generally Accepted, out of life itself, those things sometimes occur poco a poco in art as well. Otherwise, art would be nothing.”

Oh, Stockhausen regretted those words, apologised for them, and was finally somewhat relieved by the journalist who taped the interview – Karlheinz was talking about the “Devil’s work on Earth” during that part of the interview –, but it’s not very surprising that his reputation and public image remain somewhat compromised. To phrase it a bit differently, many columnists and other easily excitable people are pissed off and screaming for the German composer’s blood, holding above statement to be a worse offense to both good taste and tact than Stockhausen’s “Helicopter String Quartet” ever was.

The stool hit the rotating thingy when Austrian composer György Ligeti publicly attacked his longtime colleague, mentor, and competitor:

“If he really perceives this base mass-slaughter as a ‘work of art’ I am afraid I have to say this man should be locked up in a psychiatric ward.”

One could say that bad vibes are all over the place, and that’s not always the best climate for composers. What’s even worse, those two individuals have such a huge influence both symbolically and factually on the contemporary non-pop music scene that the Bad Blood might infect the whole organism and bring it to convolutions and, ultimately, down to its knees. I think it is clear that this grave situation can only be remedied by the one thing, at the one place that has proven itself to be a more than appropriate forum for musical disputes on this scale:

This calls for MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch. Yes indeed.

Just imagine it …

Nick: “In the right corner, aged 73 years, pioneer of electronic music, bearer of the UNESCO Picasso medal, postmodernist composer, performance artist, and overall aesthetic scapegoat: KAAARLHEIIIINZ STOOOCKHAUSEEEEN !!!” Johny to Nick: “This is one mean motherfucker I tell you, Nick. Imagine what a man who used not one, not two, but THREE orchestras in one piece of music is capable of coming up next with! He is clearly insane!” Nick: “And in the left corner the challenger–aged 78 years, distinguished holder of both the Bach- and Grawemeyer Prizes, composer-in-residence at Stanford University, contributor to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and here to tan his former idol’s hide–GYÖÖÖÖRGY LIGETIIIII !!!” György: “You shouldn’t have said those things about the poor victims of the New York attack. I will give you a Requiem for good, Techno-boy!” Karlheinz: “Better watch your smart mouth or I’ll make sure you won’t destroy the voices of unskilled bass and soprano singers ever again. Come to think about it, I rather be artistic on your ass anyway. Be prepared to be detonalised, Dodecaphonic Gimp!”

I know I am pushing the envelope a little bit with this configuration, and please forgive me if I get a bit carried away, but the prospect of two of the greatest living composers kicking the shit out of each other is almost too exciting for me to contemplate. And before you ask, yes, I am perfectly aware of the fact that Stockhausen would never call Ligeti a “Dodecaphonic Gimp”. Still, I think it is of uttermost importance for the musicologist world to have this enmity settled with blood and guts spraying a stage, and as we probably won’t get Damian Hurst to do it, I submitted the following to the Celebrity Deathmatch crew:

“In the light of Stockhausen’s statement regarding the happenings of 11-09-01 and Ligeti’s rebuttal, this seems the only logical choice for a celebrity deathmatch.”

And that’s what I want you to do. Join the case, fight against culturally challenged TV programs, and bring some more style to the goggle box. Let’s Get it On! It’s not important what explanation you may give as long as you don’t misspell the names too badly. Hells, I’ll even give you a couple of texts to chose from for your copy/pasting perusal:

[COPY] Yo, Karlheinz Stockhausen, he’s da man. But that mofoLigeti, what he do for the real music? Eh? Not a damn thing I tell ya! Put them in the ring I say, and lessee who rocks za house! [/COPY]

[COPY] I’d love to see Stockhausen get his ass whopped by Györgi Ligeti for what he said about those AMERICANS that were killed by a COWARDLY ACT OF TERRORISM that shall be retaliated soon. God bless America! [/COPY]

[COPY] OY BRUJO, STOCKHAUSEN VS/ LIGETI !SATANISMO ! [/COPY]

Well, ok, come to think about it you should probably make up your own submissions. However, I implore you – please do submit, and submit manifold. I mean, “MTV” still stands for “Music Television” last time I checked, so it would be a crime against all reason NOT to make this happen.

Good fight, and goodnight.

Obviously, this blurb was written in 2001. But hey, I like it, so there you are. Cheerio.

So The Hurt Locker beat Avatar to both “Best Picture” and “Best Director”. Well, happens. So what’s the big deal?

Ah, I see. Disgruntled ex-wife owned the Big Bad Wolf Husband who got on our nerves with Céline-Dion-infested movies. Well, one was bad enough, wasn’t it? And, and, dancing-with-giant-smurfs-in-outer-space! For chrissakes! Cameron can’t direct his way out of a traffic jam! Without CGI, he would be nothing! Thank goodness his latest ordeal only received three Oscars. Think of the marketing campaign we’d be subjected to otherwise!

And anyway – ’twas about bloody time a woman earned herself Best Director! The suppressed larger part of our society finally got what it deserved! Feminism, raaaah!

And so on, and so forth.

Seriously, folks: Bigelow had shown great promise with Strange Days already. I don’t give a bloody damn what genitalia swing (or don’t) between a director’s legs. Gender doesn’t come into it – either you are able to write and/or direct a film that the Academy Award voters enjoy, or you don’t. Bigelow would rock even with, err, rocks.

I have to admit, though: For a short while, I too was wondering whether “directing” had played a substantial part in Cameron’s/Bigelow’s former marriage. Disturbing mental images ensued, whips and ball-gags were involved. But that’s probably just me.