Well, Jacques, if you don't send those three women and a case of champagne to my room, I guess I'll just have to call in the Arkansas Mafia to pay you a visit.
Posted on 10/03/2002 5:23:17 AM PDT by eabinga
A diva will be disrobed in the centre of the German capital this evening, assisted by the former US president Bill Clinton who is being flown in for the unzipping ceremony.
In a huge fireworks and champagne extravaganza, Berlin's 18th-century Brandenburg Gate, dubbed "the diva" by locals, is to be revealed to the public for the first time in more than two years, following an extensive facelift.
The unveiling of Germany's most famous monument - it is the main symbol on the country's nine-month old euro coins - will be witnessed by hundreds of politicians, celebrities and members of royal families from around the world.
The Munich stuntman and fashion designer Willy Bogner plans to begin the ceremony by arriving in a hot-air balloon, abseiling on to the gate and unhooking a silk drape covering the Quadriga, a bare-breasted goddess of victory and peace who rides a chariot pulled by four horses on top of the gate.
Then he will give Mr Clinton the signal to open the 21-metre long zip running down the monument, allowing its slinky robes to slide to the floor.
"It's a striptease in stone," Mr Bogner told Die Welt. "We have been practising it for weeks and I just hope the weather holds."
The unveiling will form the centrepiece of celebrations to mark the 12th anniversary of German reunification today. City officials hope it will finally give Berlin the natural centre it has desperately lacked since the city was reunited on October 3 1990, and will reclaim the monument from its associations with Nazi brownshirts who marched through its six portals.
When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, the pictures of east Germans streaming through in their Trabants from east to west past the gate went around the world and turned it overnight into a byword for German unity.
The capital's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, said he hoped the transformed gate would encourage understanding between east and west Germany. "Berlin is still the only place in Germany where east and west have grown together," he said.
The gate was built by Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia from 1788 to 1791. It spent 30 years sealed off by the Berlin Wall and barbed wire in a no man's land before the collapse of communism.
For the past two years the gate has been closed to traffic and covered while a team of restorers has replaced 14,600 pieces of loose stone, filled 100,000 bullet holes inflicted during the 1945 battle of Berlin and blasted it clean with lasers.
A public-private partnership scheme headed by the former communist president of east Germany, Lothar de Maiziere, has seen the gate swathed in advertising. It is this which has made the €3.9m (£2.5m) restoration possible in the bankrupt capital.
Stealing a sneak preview of the monument, the Berliner Morgenpost wrote: "She's more beautiful than she has been for years - and she won't have to visit the beauty parlour for another half century."
There's nothing in the article or The Guardian to indicate that this is "humor".
Most astounding is that X42 is a willing participant and indeed an integral part of this obvious attempt to humiliate the US.
Luckily, intelligent people mentally and morally long ago disowned this wretched parody of a human being, leaving Slick once again, embarrassing only himself.
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