file under: Germanification of American business
(alternate - German sex in America)
excerpts from a recent article about a bid to acquire Penthouse:
German sex shop chain makes $62m play for Penthouse group
Guccione faces battle that could upset his rescue plan
Mark Milner
Friday January 30, 2004
The Guardian
Bob Guccione is facing a battle for control of Penthouse, the magazine he founded in the 1960s as a rival to Hugh Hefner's Playboy.
Beate Uhse, the publicly quoted German company that owns a string of sex shops, has tabled a $62m (£34m) bid for General Media, which publishes the magazine.
The offer comes at a time when General Media, of which Mr Guccione is chairman and chief executive, is seeking backing for its own reorganisation plan...
General Media filed for Chapter 11 protection from its creditors last August as it struggled to compete against new, more celebrity-orientated, magazines and the increasing availability of pornography on the internet...
Beate Uhse, which has been quoted on the German stock market since 1999, is keen to use the Penthouse name to expand its mail order business internationally.
The spokeswoman said: "Penthouse is a very, very, well known brand in the world, especially in the US. Beate Uhse is more a German brand."...
Beate Uhse has about 300 shops in 13 countries as well as its mail order operation.
It was named after the former Luftwaffe pilot who founded the company in 1946... Her mother, who was one of the first woman doctors in Germany.
She started her business by distributing information on birth control... and set up a mail order company in 1951.
Her first sex shop opened in 1962. She died in 2001 aged 81.
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Interestingly enough, I saw Beate Uhse, in person, when I happened to visit the Frankfurt stock exchange the day her company went public. In fact, I picked up a box of candy breasts that were being given out to commemorate the occasion.
went down to DC Chinatown, last Sunday, for the New year festivities... As usual, the day was quite cold (did it reach 20 degrees?). I got there after the parade with the dragon, but snapped some pictures of the dignitaries on stage.
One of 'em was Congressman David Wu, a Dem. from Oregon. I walked away from the speeches to reconnoiter the rest of Chinatown and to see what events might be happening at the Goethe Institute. (Their Wash.,D.C. office is located, there.)
When I walked back onto H street, towards the stage, I noticed this guy about to walk into a restaurant. I'd seen him on stage, earlier. He noticed me looking at him and smiled and waved. I think I smiled back.
I should've snapped a shot of him, as it was Congressman Wu. But I only realized that after the fact. Wasn't sure if he was smiling and waving at me, and couldn't immediately recognize him. He had a tan and seemed to be light-skinned around the eyes, so he probably had gone skiing, recently.
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About the only politicians I'm able to readily recognize, these days are POTUS (i.e., Bush) and some of the Dem. candidates.
Maybe that's why I thought I saw a picture of Dennis Kucinich on the cover of a classical cd in a music store. Actually, it was a recording by the pianist, Murray Perahia.
So you heard it here, first -- Separated at Birth:
Murray Perahia : Dennis Kucinich
From an AP story on Monday, Jan. 19:
...
It was a monkey year when the onetime star of the movie Bedtime for Bonzo, Ronald Reagan became the 40th president of the United States in 1980.
In 1992, the last Year of the Monkey, Queen Elizabeth II suffered her "annus horribilis'' when a fire gutted 100 rooms at Windsor Castle and Prince Charles and Princess Diana's marriage publicly broke down.
Korean Pastor Lee Jang Rim also - mistakenly - promised the world would end and the Michaelangelo computer virus threatened to wipe out millions of hard drives, but passed over, affecting only a few thousand computers worldwide.
Apart from bluffs, tricks, and mayhem, the coming year may be a boon for babies among the many Chinese who use the 12-symbol Chinese horoscope as a guide when planning pregnancies.
Expectant mothers in Shanghai are already trying to delay their babies' births so that they will be born under the sign of the monkey, the English-language China Daily reported last week.
They "superstitiously believe that people born in the current Year of the Sheep are deemed unfortunate,'' the paper said.
This doesn't surprise Pearl Chen, a Singapore-based writer from China who was born in a monkey year.
"In the Chinese zodiac, it's one of the favorite signs,'' Chen says.
"People believe babies born in Year of the Monkey will be very smart and have a very lively character.''
Chinese basketball superstar Yao Ming, former New York city mayor Rudy Giuliani, American actresses Lucy Liu and Jennifer Aniston and New Zealand opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa are among those born in the year of the monkey.
But according to Chinese lore, a person is more vulnerable to bad luck every 12 years when their astrological sign comes around.
Chen plans to buy a bracelet or earrings in jade or gold when she returns to China for the new year holiday to wear throughout the year to protect herself.
The monkey business has begun early for Singapore's Chinese majority - who are snapping up men's red briefs and pink panties emblazoned with monkey faces to bring them luck in the new year, says Jeannette Cheong, owner of the underwear store ButtOn Trendy Undies.
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Please! No monkey-faced undies for me!
Think I might pop down to DC Chinatown on Sunday to partake in the New Year festivities. Hope it's not too cold.
from Ludgar Schadomsky's blog, "Cape to Cairo" #6 on the Deutsche Welle website. (DW is the German international broadcaster.)
[To set up the following excerpt, Schadomsky has traveled to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and meets a local policeman]
Augustin is a tourist policeman. He is called Augustin because he was born in the month of August. He was sent here from Bulawayo a year ago and is trying to get used to the place . "The women in Bulawayo are more attractive" he says in a somewhat despondent tone. But he says he enjoys working at the Falls as "you meet interesting people from all over the world". On asking him which countries they come from, he thinks for a moment and then says he doesn't know because "all white people look the same".
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Now there's a fellow who's either watched way too much tv or hardly any.
I'm very happy for Redskin fans with the news about the return of Joe Gibbs. I must confess that I was never a die-hard fan, even though I lived in the DC area during those glory years. (Even met Joe Theismann, once, at his restaurant in Camp Springs, MD.)
But it makes me wonder whether it would be possible to bring back an even more fabled coach, John Wooden of UCLA. I don't have anything against the current UCLA basketball coach, who's said to be fairly decent. But just like the fact that no one has been able to fill Gibbs' shoes, even more can be claimed in the case of Wooden. His teams won many NCAA championships in the 60s and 70s, so it's not surprising that his successors in the past decades have felt the pressure of his legacy.
Well, I don't know how mobile he is, these days, but even if he needs to get around with a walker or motorized cart... that sad excuse of a basketball team has long needed to benefit from his disciplined and sound approach to the game.
(Tina Delgado Is Alive! Alive!)