How Much Is The Fish?

The first time, I thought I might have been dreaming. Here I am, in Ljubljana in 2009. It is 6:53 on Tuesday morning. I am woken by my radio (which is 7 minutes fast; hence the 6:53). First, I hear the tail end of some pop song. Then, I hear a techno intro. "No, it can't be," I think. A voice speaks. Then another line of techno, this time with words. "But it is!" The voice interrupts again and another line of techno plays. "Yes, yes, it absolutely is!" Here, in Ljubljana in 2009, I'm hearing clips of a song (interspersed with heaven-knows-what) that my sister and I listened to in Madrid in 1998. It is the great/awful German techno group Scooter, singing their hit song, How Much is the Fish? This morning, at 6:53, it came on again. It was real.

If you didn't pick up on it, that link up there goes to the music video of How Much is the Fish?, which Natalie and I watched constantly on Canal+, and you should absolutely click on it. Considering the video has nearly 3 million views, maybe it's not so strange that it's showing up as intro-outro on the radio. One of the great features of the song is that its first line (of many nonsensical lines), "Transforming the tunes," sounds much more like "Transforming the Jews." Oh, Germany!

I went back to Salon tonight. I think it could be my place. I like the server there...he's a stern-looking muscle-bound fellow around 30 who doesn't condescendingly speak to me in English whenever I stutter out "vroča čokolada s smetano" or laugh nervously and try to work with me. He just leans in, eyebrows furrowed, and I repeat it, and he nods gruffly and walks away. Then he brings the hot chocolate (or Irish coffee, as was the case tonight), and I sit in my ridiculously comfortable leopard skin chair and read. Tonight I was sitting next to a group of 20-something girls and trying to pick out their language. It's possible it was an extremely non-nasal Portuguese, but I think it might have been Catalan. Which is kind of awesome.

Maybe I can start wearing my leather jacket at Salon. I stopped wearing it after a day and a half when I realized if I wore the jacket, people assumed I was Slovenian, but if I wore my North Face fleece (yay for the serendipitous North Face outlet in freezing-cold Berkeley, CA a couple of weeks ago), people assumed I was American. Having someone speak to you expectantly for 20 seconds before you can tell them you don't speak the language ("um...angleško?") is kind of embarrassing. So I'm sticking to the fleece for now. I tempered my wearing of the jacket in New York for different reasons...the first day I ever wore it, I got hit on by these two women as I walked from the subway to work. And not just flattering hit on: if-they-were-men-I-would-have-called-the-cops hit on. Blocked-my-path-as-they-walked-with-me-for-two-blocks-asking-if-I-had-a-girlfriend hit on. If there's one thing I enjoy less than telling people I don't speak their language, it's telling people I'm not interested in going out with them. So, depending on where I am, the jacket makes me look either native or gay. It is a very powerful jacket. Don't mess with it.