German Fest 2010 - Milwaukee Über Alles

German Fest 2010

Moderately wise
a man should be
not too crafty or clever.
A learned man's heart
whose learning is deep
seldom sings with joy.

                             - The Hávamál (Sayings of the "High One")

Why were Odin's words now haunting me?

As Simone and I careened and stumbled the mile home from the Henry Maier Festival Grounds - through the damply lit streets of a steamy, humid Milwaukee night - we began to sense the significant chafing that was occurring in our nether regions. Simone's friction had been caused by the slick of mud (and perhaps human sewage) clinging to her Capri pants and shoes from a fall she had taken earlier. My issues of fleshy abrasion were from the torrents of sweat streaming through my pores from the osmosis of pilsner and the body's perspiratory defense mechanism against overheating and, in my case, probably stroke.

Simone's tumble was still the elephant in the room. It was far too early to begin cackling like a hyena over the ungraceful upending she took some thirty minutes prior. I could feel her fiery pupils on me as I stymied a laugh. It was no time to suggest the hilarity in it all or how we would soon be chortling and retelling this minor humiliation to our compatriots.

"Not a fucking word, Motherfucker", She warned.

"I was simply about to ask if I could carry anything for you, Light of My Life", I snickered.  

"I will cut holes in your soul!"

She buckled then and stopped. She had been pushing hard on the walk home. Mostly out of a fierce need to urinate, which struck her moments after we had exited the no-readmission gates. But also out of a social concern to not be seen in public with a wide brown swath of slime extending from ankle to ass cheek on her white pants. The chafing was not cooperating with her precipitancy either. We were tired, silly with drink and in need to relax and put the events of the past hour into some proper perspective. We had been having so much fucking fun at German Fest we had lost ourselves in the hasty retreat home.

She pulled from her purse one of the 34 ounce plastic shoes (referred to as "Das Boots" at the festival) we had been sucking Pilsner Urquell from all evening and the two of us burst into howls of laughter. We had imagined the drunken parents we had seen coming home from the festival who - upon realizing they had spent all their monthly budget on beer, brats and trinkets - would cruelly force their children to use the "Das Boots" as makeshift footwear; the sharp plastic contours of the ersatz flagon cutting deeply into the flesh of their tiny feet and ankles.

"Mommy, my feet hurt from the beer shoes", they would cry, blood collecting amongst their toes at the bottom of the see-through container. Mommy and Daddy's dipsomaniacal shame made practical through neglect and pain.

We collected ourselves as best we could and headed home for talc and some more beer.

Five hours earlier, the world had been our oyster. Well, more like our schnitzel, but it was ours. We had attended two ethnic festivals weeks prior (Polish and Italian) with largely unenthusiastic results. Polish fest was just too small and uneventful and Festa Italiana was - how to put it - appropriately hindered by a mafia-esque stranglehold on the pizza concession by the local capos by the name of Palermo. A shitty frozen pizza company here in Milwaukee who had somehow made an offer no one could refuse which allowed for them to be the sole proprietors of pie at the festival despite serving the most inauthentic, ketchup-slathered cardboard with insultingly miniscule amounts of cheese. Think about that for a moment. An entire city is celebrating the heritage, culture and food of a people and the only business allowed to sell that country's most famous culinary offering at an ITALIAN FEST does not even have a pizza parlor in the region except for their company cafe. They make pressboard for the frozen aisle of grocery stores. And the event coordinators decided that they alone should possess the corner on the pizza market and force out all the rest of Milwaukee's Italian pie makers. That's some fucking foresight right there. And some graft. And some payola. And I better stop carping on about it or I'll be found on a hook in the meatpacking district.

Anyway, fuck you, Palermo. I didn't even see one Italian working their booths.

But we were at German Fest (the original "Haus Party"), goddamnit, and if there's one thing about Milwaukee which is undeniably true it is that this is a Kraut town. As New Orleans is a chocolate city, Boston is Irish, Miami is Latino, Provo is Caucasian and L.A is whatever the fuck it is, crazy and awful I suppose, Milwaukee is noticeably Teutonic in its traditions and culture. Which is why German Fest is the biggest ethnic blowout of the summer. Summerfest draws the bands (and the teens and the lepers and the litter and the scum and the derelicts that the devil's music enthralls) - actually it's quite tame and enjoyable for a festival of its size - but German Fest draws out the serious drinkers, eaters and ethnically prideful masses for a rollicking good time and a chance to retake the Sudetenland. I don't think I have to remind you what happened the last time so many fervent sons and daughters of the Fatherland gathered together to celebrate a vision of ethnic unity, do I?

That's right! The Kraftwerk reunion concert in Bonn in 2003. A good time had by all. And very few casualties.

Simone and I had been to Bastille Days as well. A silly tent city down on Cathedral Square that did feature The Dirty Dozen Brass Band (a French/New Orleans tie, I imagine) but overall, was simply pandering to a hodgepodge of Gallic deceptions that were strained at best. And hot. Miserably hot with little cover. Reminding me of my favorite joke at the expense of my French heritage:

Q: Why do trees line the Avenue des Champs-Élysées?

A: So the Germans can march in the shade.

                                                             * * *

Small and white, clean and bright

You look happy to meet me.

To say that the festival was predominantly Caucasian would be to say that Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin will not be attending any Freakniks soon.

I haven't seen this many blondes since I raided my Saudi Arabian friend's porn stash.

The designated children's play area looked like a casting call for extras for Village of the Damned. Towheaded little monsters with piercing, icy eyes, ready to give all for Fuhrer and Fatherland.

I saw six African-Americans during our five plus hours there. Four were staff on the grounds and the other two were obviously adopted children from the Dark Continent, clad in lederhosen and dirndls to appease the cultural fascists now raising them.

Speaking of dirndls and those beautiful low-cut frill tops you see on the St. Pauli Girl bottles, I love Wisconsin. When warm weather comes, in a reaction to the seven plus months of cabin fever and bundled layers of clothing throughout the winter, the women unbridle themselves and unashamedly unleash their bosomy gifts to mankind in all manner of skimpy outfits from May to September. It's like some absurd reward for the male oglers of this state who have no worthwhile fodder to contemplate for the majority of their masturbatory annum. I should add that these are dairy fed girls. Rosy cheeked and eager to let the sun bake their supple, sallow skin. If they would just ditch their fetish for leg tats and tramp stamps, all would be well with me.

I did find it odd that at a collective fete which amassed so many Germans together at once, there was little mention of The Holocaust. I'm not saying someone should have killed the vibe of the grounds or profusely apologized for their race's mass slaughter of another's, but a brief acknowledgment to the dangers of this many Aryans getting together, drinking and contemplating their history might have been appropriate. There wasn't even an exhibit tent dedicated to what amounts to the culture's definitive act of the past one hundred years. I wasn't exactly asking for them to don sackcloth and ashes or commit self-flagellation here - just a nod to the darkness and shame that encompassed their country for twenty or so years when they brought about the events which led to the greatest slaughter and most concentrated loss of human life which the world has ever seen. No. No. Please. You go ahead and enjoy your pfannkuchen. Life is too short for redress. 

With this in mind, my paranoia swirled and I began to furtively look around for Mossad agents; similarly eager to case the joint and gauge the temper of the crowd. This is where they'd be. Keeping a vigilant watch. Making sure there are no revivals of that former élan. If you know what I mean.

But my worry was eased by a handsome passerby who gave me a pretzel and happily regaled me with an old German saying:

"Marschen de Juden nacht und versicht sei dunnelfraub aust mein ruchtensten." 

Which, I believe, vaguely translates to:

"That Jew's teeth would look good on my daughter's bracelet."

When asked what was the fatal flaw in the German character, Günter Grass did not hesitate in stating, "Obedience". Looking around at the festivities (and the orderliness of it all) it was literally impossible to distinguish these proceedings from what Nazi Germany must have been like before that horrible winter in Stalingrad in 1942. Proud, joyous, stalwart wiener-eaters eyeing a bright future of Lebensraum and world conquest through denial, greed and fanatical patriotism. That this exact scenario had replicated itself via the government of the United States of America some seventy years later was a bit of irony not lost on either Simone or I.

There were the fat, sweaty, laughing red-faced men with slitty pig eyes arguing about Socialism and decrying the Reds. There were mousy women, dressed humbly and dancing the dances of centuries prior. There were people gnawing meat off the skull of a boar. There was even a booth selling pig's heads both small ($5.25) and large ($8.25). 

Every male looked like Martin Bormann or Hermann Goering, only fatter. Most of the women looked like MILF pornstars from Hamburg. A facet of the festival I underestimated and greatly appreciated as the night wore on.

Despite all of the food - the knoedel, rollbraten, kartoffel, spanferkel, strudel, kasseler rippchen and the wurst - and bier and big-titted blonde mommies and grown men in boy's clothing and girls with black nail polish, Simone and I had actually attended for one reason only. To catch our favorite Thüringian party band. A classic oldies cover quartet (the Huns are hardcore lovers of the old American rock and roll from the '50s and '60s) called appropriately "Golden Sixties Band". We had stormed the gates of Henry Maier Park just seconds before they were to take the Miller stage. Quickly grabbing our boots of beer ("These boots were made for drinking!", Simone exclaimed) we raced to the area, panting and screaming for them to hold the show. We arrived just in time to hear the first chords of Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence, their traditional opener.

Und in zee naiked light I sawr

den tzouzand peepul maybe morr

Mein Gott in Himmel!

Hello darkness indeed, my old friend.

                                                         * * *

"Whatever goal man has reached is due to his originality plus his brutality."
                                                                                     - Adolf Hitler

The boys pounded through a few more classics from The Monkees ("I taught luff vas only twoo in fairy tailz"), Roy Orbison, The Beach Boys, Creedance Clearwater Revival, The Beatles (Hey Jude sounding eerily like "Hey Jew"), etc., entering into some fun between-song banter to woo the ladies (they are suave motherfuckers as Frank Booth would say) and providing exactly, EXACTLY, the cornball, kitschy time we had expected.

We staggered around for hours after that, steeping ourselves in heavy drink, pointing at things and people and mocking them openly. We had become as brazen as the Brown Shirts; gorging continuously on Bavarian cream desserts, skull meat, and sausage and lashing out at the weak, the fallen and the puking. I felt like a fucking Viking. Our schadenfreude was out of control. I had gone so mad with drink and power at one point that I was sure I envisioned a small army of Aryan children, riding motorized pretzels, following behind me, ready to be led into the maw of hell if need be to give back this country to its rightful citizens and...

"Jesus! Snap out of it!", cried Simone, "You're spouting gibberish at no one at all".

It was true. I found myself on the large rocks on the shore of Lake Michigan, on the very outskirts of the festival grounds. I had been screaming something about purity, the failure and systemic cruelty of capitalism and children feeding only on pretzels. I told Simone I had relished in the thought of snapping her femur, leading to its amputation, so that I could finally realize my dream of being with a one-legged woman. While gathering myself, it began to rain. I began to whimper and softly sob.

                                             * * *

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."
                                                         - Adolph Hitler

Simone led me to an isolated picnic area encased by concrete blocks. We rode out the brief storm there, chatting about the bunker and what it must have been like in that similar structure in Berlin in early April of 1945 with the pounding of the Russian bombs overhead. The dust, the stale air, the desolation above, the stench of defeat everywhere.

It had been a particularly vicious vision of the world that that madman acted upon. A foul ether that came and, for a time, overwhelmed an otherwise proud race of people; causing them to commit atrocities or stand idly by while they were committed in their name. Simone and I reflected on that and could not help but connect the dots to our situation now, as Americans. For the past ten years our nation has been steering ever further off its moral course. Indulging in behavior once reserved for tyrants and monsters and warmongers. And we sleep beside it; pay for it even, griping here and there, voting against it when asked, but never really sacrificing anything to try and make the madness stop. In that sense, we are all Germans from those dark years in the '30s and '40s. Helplessly pushed forward into the mire by the leaders we choose, the fear and apathy of our fellow citizens and an all too powerful war machine whose hunger will never be sated.

Ah, fuck it. Simone needed some leberkäse.

She secured her spiced, meaty treat and we began to beat it back to the bunker to feed.

That's when it happened.

My Chuck Taylors slid briefly on a patch of scum as we took a shortcut behind the mini-donut wagon. I turned quickly to warn Simone (a natural klutz anyway) of the approaching precariousness, but it was too late. She hit it like a stoner at a mud-soaked Bonnaroo.

I remember thinking, "Oh, no, the leberkäse!", but I shouldn't have worried. Simone may be the clumsiest person I have ever met. She trips on every other sidewalk crack. She moves like someone who has just had their eardrums shattered. I have come to terms knowing I will ultimately lose her to a shower tub accident.

But the bitch is a master with knives and regards food as a sacred entity.

She may have sludged the entire right side of her frame from the spill, but that plate of leberkäse, sour potatoes and rye remained as pristine and undisheveled as a placid mountain tarn.

Which returns us to the street-side chafing. And those words of Odin that I will try my damndest to live by. All this thinking and hand wringing is a pain in the ass and sure can shit on a good time. The rain. The parade. The festival. Choose your metaphor.

So, I become a man of moderate wisdom? Dumb things down for a while and relish in the moment. Concern myself only with those things that bring me happiness, even at the expense of others. Live like a Viking, as it were. That's what the "High One" was getting at. Strive to be simple in a complex world. And don't over-think things.

Sounds like a plan.

I don't fancy having to vote Republican, though.