How to pig out in Japan. Dazzled by the dining options of the Dotonbori, Osaka's restaurant district, my husband set and I set out to find a doofus food joint that won't challenge our soon to be drunken brains. He led me to discover kushikatsu, fried stuff on a stick—true Osaka drinking food. Over the course of a week, we discovered we could dine in Japan and still stay plump. Lots of food porn in this post, if that's your thing. Continue reading

German father's day celebrations have a slightly different flavour from the rest of the world. For one thing, you don't have to be a father to join in. Being a man is enough. Continue reading

In Osaka, appetites are big. Giant edibles burst from billboards everywhere. We take a stroll down the Dotonbori as we decide what Japanese fast-food we need to soak up our beer. The choice is paralysing, in more ways than one. Continue reading

What does it take to unleash your indignation? Eight years ago, a calendar and a couple of beers did it for me. It came to my attention that some busybody proclaimed the second Monday in January as National Clean Off Your Desk Day. This impertinence provoked me to declare the following day, January 13, The International Day to Bite Me. The busybody in question was one Anna Chase Moeller, daughter of Bill Chase, who co-founded the Chase's Calendar of Events in 1957. Rumour has it that Anna helped in the family business, and in so doing, shared a desk with her father. As is the case with pretty much all entrepreneurs, forward-thinkers, creative personalities, and productive people of every stripe, the desk was a mess. In a snit, Anna declared National Clean Off Your Desk Day to humiliate her father's habits. Once a year, Bill was forced to sacrifice a day of personal productivity to appease his daughter, who no doubt could have worked on the goddamn kitchen table if the sight of actual work upset her so goddamn much. Neat-freaks have used it to shame us normal people ever since. In 2017, The International Day to Bite Me falls on a Friday. By coincidence, the first Friday the 13th of every year is National Blame Someone Else Day. (It's also National Rubber Duckie Day, but that's another story.) On Friday, August 13 1982, a sleepy Michigan woman found that her alarm clock had failed to ring. This set off... Continue reading

A group of Britons discussing international travel: "A lot of locals carry their money in in their arse-cracks. The criminals are so afraid of looking gay, they won't touch another bloke there." "They say you should get your cash out of the machine in the morning, put it in your pocket, and jump in the swimming pool." (Murmured agreement) "Yeah, the chlorine cleans it right up." Continue reading

Above, smoking trout in a cabinet at the elegant Käfer deliatessen in Altbogenhausen. Below, Steckerlfisch smoke in the open air at the Auer Dult in Haidhausen. Both snapped in the summer of 2012 Continue reading

Every language borrows from other tongues. What happens when you can't figure out where a foreign word comes from? In English, not much. But in German, where loan words follow the gender of the source language, you can't be so lassiez-faire. Continue reading

It's time to vote for das Jugendwort, the 2015 German Youth Word of the Year. Crack Munich lexicographers Langenscheidt—famous for those bright yellow dictionaries so beloved by students of German—have sharpened their pencils and opened their ears in pubs, on sports-fields and street-corners, at universities and Diskotheken. Read what it means to merkel, to rum rust, to be a Swaggetarian or an Alpha Kevin, and much more. Continue reading

For your information, every open container has been weighed! Please, on hygenic grounds, use our one-way gloves. Please put only organic items in organic bags (Bio-logical!) !!!Attention!!! The Federweißer is not provided with a fermentation lock, so the cover is not completely closed. We therefore ask you NOT to lay the bottle on its side because otherwise it will run out. Many thanks, your Supermarket Team. Please always line up at the Meat Counter! Thanks. (Clown Smiley) Honoured Customers! Please lay your entire shopping on the conveyor belt. Thanks. Trust is good, checking is better No sale of alcohol to youth Young people often don't look their age. Please understand if, when selling alcohol and tobacco, we ask for age identification—for the protection of all children and youth. And note the excellent checkout belt divider hygiene. Continue reading

Peace. We heard that word a lot over the recent holiday season. Prayers for it, wishes for it, regret at how little of it seems to abide. Heavenly peace, peace on earth, the prince of peace, peace to all men, peace was on everybody's lips. Isn't it ironic that the new year always begins so peacelessly? Continue reading

Bettole, Tuscany, 2007 Continue reading

German law allows teenagers to drink slightly more than it allows them to dance. Continue reading

When I came out, it meant more than just being able to bring a bloke to a dinner party. Someone had given me a licence to find the world an erotically-charged place. I ogled, I slobbered, I saw immense beauty in the men around me. I found it easier to keep all this arousal respectful if I could actually talk about it, in a relaxed way, with anybody in earshot. Still do. Continue reading

Order is Half of Life, part IV. The Honourable Husband pays an orderly visit to the tax office!! Continue reading

Where is he gay today? Edinburgh "Quick, come over here and take a picture of the Invisible Man!" said my companion. And what a handsome devil he is, too. Continue reading

When I told people in Edinburgh that I'd performed on the Fringe thirty years ago, they grew curious. It must have been very different back then, surely. I shocked them with my reply. No. In my observation, here's what's changed. Lager drinkers can choose from a wide array of bottled craft beers. American university students majoring in theatrical administration or arts publicity often work on the Fringe as a course requirement. We met several flyering. Edinburgh's quality broadsheet, The Scotsman, once provided the most authoritative critiques. The paper remains an authority, but nowadays a mammoth website called Broadway Baby overshadows it. Curious, since the Fringe is about as un-Broadway as you can get. That's about it. Here's what hasn't changed since 1985. Busking bagpipers on the Royal Mile love the theme from Star Wars. You can take your drinks into the theatre. Restaurants in most parts of the world will bundle leftover food in a doggie bag; in Edinburgh, they decant leftover drink into a Starbucks-style doggie cup. Have you ever sipped beer through a straw? Not my preferred means of suckage. Snooty, sensitive, arty types hate the atmosphere. Australian acts thrive. American and Japanese artists enjoy the looser rules. Scots like to vomit. Billy Connolly's most famous routine even jokes about it. Drinking Scots should be required to carry airsickness bags, in the same way owners must carry plastic bags as a measure against their dogs fouling the pavement. Continue reading