Drifting from Alexandre Dumas to candy bars to the Three Musketeers - which were the mascots of one of the local breweries when local breweries still existed1) - I stumbled across the historical tidbit that in 1900 the Wicküler Brauerei was contracted to supply the troops of the Eight-Nation Alliance to quench the thirst they worked up suppressing the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists in China.
1) The brand still exists and has changed hands a couple of times. Currently owned by the Radeberger Gruppe.
1 Creepy corporate chants give me Nazi vibes
2 Forced jollity is parsed as annoying insincerity by me
3 No. I do not want you to ask me if there is anything you can make me buy if you pass three metres from me. I’m capable of asking should I require assistance.
I do remember talking to Chinese people decades ago about their corporate songs that they had to sing and say it could never take off in Ireland (the only way you could get people to sing it is if they had lewd alternative lyrics lined up) and they, hearteningly, told me that they did precisely that.
I’m amazed that Wal-Mart had to find all that out the hard way. They could have talked to German retail executives and learned that forced smiles and intrusive helpfulness would annoy customers. They could have listened when their German lawyers told them that their employment contracts might be unlawful.
Ha! I think I had this as a kid. Or maybe one of the neighbour’s kids had it.
They also had cutout sheets of that blimp (and several historic dirigibles) for making paper models; I know I still have one of those… somewhere.
The Pina Bausch Zentrum (PBZ) will build on the radical ethos of Pina Bausch for a new generation of leadership and the pioneering choreography of Boris Charmatz. The shared DNA of their work, which resists the rigid boundaries of dance, requires an architecture that challenges institutional norms.
