What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Wednesday, April 02, 2003

THE NEXT WORST THING

Can one really recommend the Museum of Tolerance? It was an astonishing experience I hope never to repeat. After two days of strolling through LA's soothingly-vapid outdoor promenades (Pottery Barn! J. Crew! Barnes & Noble!), the descent down the Guggenheim-like spiral walkway of the MOT dropped us back into sad reality. The Bertolt Brecht quote painted on one wall made me smile though: "If you do not like this world you see, you will have to change it."

The centerpiece of the museum's exhibits is an hour-long tour through a brilliant recreation of Germany circa 1923-1945. You visit the newstands, eavesdrop on café conversations, listen to the early speeches of wannabe Chancellor Adolph Hitler and feel the encroaching hopelessnesses as Jews lose each freedom, a piece at a time. The walk through the darkened tunnels of the exhibit increases in tension until you yourself are ushered through the gates of a concentration camp and led down narrow passageways to the showers.

It's a curious experience to experience something on an intellectual level -- cooly comparing facts I've grown up knowing with new ideas I've never considered -- while your emotions are simultaneously, wildly, in flux. My breath caught when we rounded the corner into our final destination, a large bunker with sealed doors and numerous gas vents. I knew it was all fantasy and remained calm during the video presentation, but still I kept one eye fixed on the door as a voice in my head kept screaming, "Open. Open. Open!" When the attendant abrubtly opened the door to release us after five or ten minutes, I jumped in my seat, almost hollering.

I'm not sure I could urge anyone I know to put themselves through such a simulation but I'm glad the Museum is trying to ensure that history doesn't repeat. As for Gil and me, we raced off to cheer ourselves up at the Japanese pop culture store, Giant Robot, and then went out to LA's oldest Mexican restaurant, El Cholo. White supremicist idiots don't want racial mixing but we say domo origato and olé!