a berlin blog
|
a berlin blog |
|
|
Thursday, March 31, 2005 Good News 2The new bottles showing up on your local shelves of German Riesling from 2003 -- the warmest year in these parts since 1540 -- are supposed to be epically, historically good. I never touch the stuff, but listen to the experts, who down to the last red-nosed vineaste sound as if they've stepped out of the movie Sideways: "Not since vintages such as 1959, 1937 and 1921 have we witnessed such glorious, naturally sweet Rieslings without a speck of rot and with just the right amount of botrytis to give the wines a sensuous complexity that is utterly beguiling." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:32 PMGood News 1The death toll in the Nias Island quake, in spite of a smaller one yesterday measuring 6-point-something, has been revised down to about four or five hundred. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:28 PMTuesday, March 29, 2005 8.7 is also big... and Surfers Village has a trove of details about the Sumatran earthquake, as well as a photo of Nias Island, and an even more detailed page about the December tsunami. The Financial Times is reporting up to 2000 dead. The Surfers Village relief-operations page is here. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:25 PMMonday, March 28, 2005 Still Fighting the Cold WarThe El Segundo city council has killed a plan to name a library room after Jack London because, "Quite frankly, he was a world-renowned Communist," according to a press release put out last week by Rodger Jacobs. Amusing. In Berlin we'd call that Ostalgie. In El Segundo it seems to just mean being an old fart. Now they're casting around for some novel or writer with an El Segundo connection. They're welcome to name the room after me, if they want. I'm not a Communist, and Too Much of Nothing has a pretty good Dockweiler scene. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:42 PMSunday, March 27, 2005 Ave Salami The outdoor market at Kollwitzplatz in Berlin has a salami stand that Mark Jackson has raved about for the last two months, and I admit to harboring some hard skepticism. How good can salami get? I know there's a difference between the refrigerated cold cut that goes by that name in America, and the dry, sweating, flavorful stuff you find on your plate (at room temperature) in good cafes around here. But yesterday I bought a couple of nuggets of French walnut salami at Kollwitzplatz, just on a lark, and oh my God. Eating it with bread and cheese is actually an insult, like mixing wine with soda or something. It needs to be mainlined in small doses -- a slice at a time, thoroughly chewed -- to let the sea salt and garlic seep into your blood. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:14 PM Saturday, March 26, 2005 Kids TodayThe rule for students who shoot up their high schools isn't shyness, or anti-social behavior, or a video-game addiction, or a fascination with Goth music, or warped scribblings in a notebook, or even neo-Nazism. The rule is that they're suicidal. A study by the Secret Service claims that about 78% of all kids who went after their parents or classmates -- from Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine to Kip Kinkel and on and on through the pathetic (and lengthening) roll of names -- "exhibited a history of suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts." A lot of them, including Jeff Weise in Minnesota, had been treated for their depression with some kind of drug. Prozac, Ritalin, Zoloft. Most of these drugs have never been tested on teenagers. Lately they carry a warning, but it seems clear that the untested drugs are at least a possible answer to the question, "Why'd this all start happening in the '90s?"My novel was a brooding moral grapple with teenage violence and nihilism; but Arianna Huffington's practical response from six years ago should be a national conversation by now. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 5:49 PM Friday, March 25, 2005 Pop QuizQ: Where does Trader Joe's get its stylish assortment of European foods? Who is Joe, anyway? And why's his stuff so cheap?A: Theo Albrecht, owner of the mundane (and cut-rate) Aldi supermarkets in Germany, bought Trader Joe's while it was still a smallish Los Angeles concern in 1977. Here's an Aldi store in Berlin: 
posted by Michael Scott Moore |
2:32 PM
Thursday, March 24, 2005 "Native Nazi"The kid who shot up his reservation school in northern Minnesota was both Native American and Nazi, a strange contradiction. It may be hard to imagine a Chippewa at the Munich Beer-Hall Putsch, even if Hitler liked to read schlock Westerns by Karl May; but Orcinus has insight. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:04 PMTuesday, March 22, 2005 Williams in TranslationThe results of the First-Ever Radio Free Mike Tennessee Williams Re-Titling Contest are in! The challenge was to agree on a better German title for A Streetcar Named Desire, since Endstation: Sehnsucht had the cadence and sensuousness of a three-pound liverwurst.It was almost a dead heat between the most literal choice, Eine Straßenbahn Namens Verlangen, and a write-in candidate, Eine Straßenbahn Namens Sehnsucht. "Verlangen" means longing, sexual or otherwise. "Sehnsucht" is almost the same and consists of two evocative roots -- sehnen (to yearn) and suchen (to seek) -- but it has too many consonants and that awkward trochaic clonk. So Verlangen, which gives the title a nice rolling rhythm, wins by the slimmest of tie-breaking votes -- mine. I still think German lacks a good word for "desire." Begier and Gelüst and Trieb all sound unsinuous and bony. Geilheit is a thing for animals; which didn't prevent Die Geile Bahn from chugging happily up in third place. In German slang it also means "The Cool Train," so I guess it deserves to be the title of maybe an Ice Capades show. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 1:23 PM (1) comments In the NeighborhoodMost of you Berlin readers know about this site, but it's everyone else who needs it: signandsight.com serves up daily English translations of the German press. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 1:13 PMMonday, March 21, 2005 A Vato in Paris Joe Loya gave the French a rousing excerpt from his memoir, The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell, last Monday at Shakespeare & Co., in Paris, and the place was so packed his wife and I couldn't find chairs. A regular Monday-night crowd shows up for poetry readings, but I think the people who came expecting to hear expatriate free verse were braced and surprised to hear a former bank robber from East L.A. talk about the American prison system and his own conversion to a life of peace. Joe's a friend from San Francisco; he blurbed the novel; he's an all-round good guy. During the inevitable bull session afterwards he said a bank robber was "a kind of bad writer" -- a peddler of clichés and sentimentality. "Every guy I knew in prison was sentimental," he said. "It didn't matter how tough they were." Joe and his wife Diane had never seen Paris. We spent the week in an apartment near the Eiffel Tower, which these days sends a bright revolving beacon across the city at night, like a lighthouse, and sparkles like a firecracker every hour. God knows how long it's done that. Maybe fifteen years ago I climbed the tower at midnight with some other hooligan, and made it to the first level (using a utility ladder along the elevator track in the western leg) before we both decided it was a stupid idea and climbed back down. The tower didn't sparkle in those days. And I'm pretty sure it didn't have the beacon. The title of this post comes courtesy of Diane, who told Joe over a crepe: "We should move here so you can start a blog and call it 'A Vato in Paris.'" I'd visit them every weekend if they did. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 5:45 PM Sunday, March 20, 2005 Two LadiesI just spent most of last week abusing Berlin to my friends because of its foul sleety weather, its dull potato color, and its deadening architecture. (Not all the architecture -- just the apartment blocks thrown up in a hurry to fill in plots of rubble after the war.) Paris is so much more graceful, majestic, seductive, and light. It's a big city that feels, in places, like a provincial town: Whereas Berlin, like LA, is a bunch of provincial towns crammed together to feel like a city. Or so I kept telling my friends. But now I have to gnaw on my words, because I got off the S-Bahn late today and saw how I'd missed an afternoon of crisp spring sunshine, which can make Berlin feel grand and coquettish. Here's Oranienburgerstraße just before sundown:  Of course Paris is hard to argue with when she does things like this, in the 5th, at dusk:  Ah, well. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:00 PM Tuesday, March 15, 2005 Williams in TranslationThis week in Berlin a version of A Streetcar Named Desire will open at Tacheles. I'd see it if I were in town, in spite of the horrible title, which in German is the unfortunate, Endstation: Sehnsucht. This translates literally as, Terminal: Yearning -- a title Tennessee Williams would've choked on, if he hadn't choked on a pill-bottle cap. So for this week I'll open the comments section to gather votes on the first-ever Radio Free Mike Tennessee Williams Re-titling Contest.Select a more poetic name for a German version of Streetcar: 1. "Sehnsucht," die S-BahnResults in a week. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:09 PM (12) comments Sunday, March 13, 2005 Beach Culture in Berlin Around the corner from the apartment is a decent breakfast joint called "Strandbad Mitte," with big cheese plates and good coffee served up in a beach-club atmosphere that has nothing to do with Berlin, or Germany, at this point in the year. Which is part of the joke: Here we are in the iron-cold Chicago of Mitteleuropa, in the middle of a sandy prairie nowhere near a proper beach, unless you count the lakes and riverside clubs people go to in the summer; and the proprietors want us to feel all sunny and shit. Note old-fashioned Strandkorb on the sidewalk. OK. Now I'm going to Paris. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:19 PM Saturday, March 12, 2005 Letter from IraqI have a friend, or really an acquaintance, doing Christian missionary work (of all needlessly dangerous things) in Iraq's Kurdish area. She sends e-mail now and then; this is from her first epistle since before the January elections:This newsletter would not be complete if I didn't mention Election Day. I considered it a privilege to be here to see the Kurds, some dressed in their best traditional Kurdish clothing, usually worn at weddings, celebrating in the streets after casting their votes. And days later when the results were announced celebratory gunfire could be heard.posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:43 PM New BlogrollI've rearranged things over on the right. Now other blogs are listed by relevance to Radio Free Mike readers. If you run one of these sites and don't like the way you're categorized, let me know -- some "friends" are of course also "writers," and some people in Los Angeles or Berlin are also "friends," blah blah blah -- but I've tried to organize the list for total strangers.Also, two cool new Berlin sites: hemmungen, via Austin, Texas; and Girl From Mars, auf Deutsch. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 5:07 PM Thursday, March 10, 2005 Fog Crows Berlin has ill-tempered, butt-kicking scavenger birds which go by the beautiful name of Nebelkrähen, or fog crows. They're at least as tough as their all-black American cousins, the ones that strut along Interstate 5 and stare down cars for a bit of sunflower seed. The common English name for Nebelkrähe is hooded crow, but I plan to mount an official request that the name be changed toot sweet. That's after I get back from Paris, where I get to show off my French. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:01 PM Readings for the International SetIf you're in Boston tonight, Thursday, you're expected to see our good friend Lisa Drostova read from the new essay collection Under Her Skin, an anthology about girls and race in America. (It's actually in Cambridge at the Center for New Words, 186 Hampshire St., Inman Square, right by Ryle's.) Lisa has a funny, moving essay about growing up white in 1970s Detroit.If, on the other hand, you're in Paris next Monday, you should see our good friend Joe Loya, former bank robber from East L.A., who reads from his memoir at Shakespeare & Co. in the shadow of the Notre Dame. Our editor will be there, trying not to steal the free cheese. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:07 AM Wednesday, March 09, 2005 Your Library Has ArrivedBefore moving to Berlin I sent about 10 boxes of books ahead, which I now realize is like throwing a bunch of baseballs really high and then running to the edge of the field with your mitt to catch them all. The mitt being my apartment: Ten boxes of books won't fit in here. No way.The amusing part is a tale of German bureacracy. After four or five parcel notices came in the mail I went to visit my books at the customs office, where I chatted with an official about what was in the boxes and then asked him to put them back in the mail because I couldn't carry all 200 pounds of books on the U-Bahn. He said they'd arrive in 4 or 5 business days. (From across town?) I asked if we could conduct these little pleasantries next time by mail, or by phone, since all 10 boxes would only drag in the same boring story; he said no. I came home the same day to find another notice in the mail. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 1:39 PM By the wayThe good citizens of Mainz and Wiesbaden did not feel especially honored by Bush's visit last month. For a while there they hardly felt welcome in their own homes, because government agencies basically closed the area down. One correspondent from Wiesbaden writes:1000s of people from mainz and wiesbaden couldn't go to work on wednesday... (OPEL in rüsselsheim for example closed the whole day!) friends of mine who live in mainz said that the police came to every household in their house to see if the people really live in this house ... also the streets and highway were closed until 7 p.m. - it was like on sunday: no people, no cars, they even were not allowed to open their windows for a few hours (not only to stay at home!!!) and a lot more ... (of course most of the shops were closed - even in wiesbaden ... really strange..."I really think their foreign policy goal is to spread irony around the world." -- Jon Stewart posted by Michael Scott Moore | 1:15 PM Monday, March 07, 2005 For Anne Fleer Fans Anne (that's "Anna" to you Californians) dropped in on Berlin this weekend, but without her gloves. The weather on Sunday required gloves. So we went to a flea market in search of something suitable. At first I misunderstood the problem: "Wait, you left your gloves at home? You mean at the apartment?" (Anne and her boyfriend keep an apartment in Berlin.) "No, in Hamburg." Christ on a stick. I wouldn't get ten feet out the door without gloves. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:59 PM Sunday, March 06, 2005 Die Berliner BlogosphäreThis excellent U-Bahn map organizes Berlin bloggers by subway station. That's a bit like organizing bloggers in Jersey by turnpike exit. Curious readers can locate the Radio Free Mike megacomplex by mousing over "Hackescher Markt," just to the right of the map's middle, between "Friedrichstr." and "Alexanderpl."Cool German-American blogs now on the roll: Berlin Blog (Senefelderplatz), and La Entropista (Schönhauser Allee) -- by an ex-Santa Cruz surf chick who could have stepped out of Calaveras Beach. For some reason I had to fly to Berlin to meet her. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 4:18 PM Friday, March 04, 2005 Bury the Rag Deep in Your Face The court in Indonesia that convicted Abu Bakar Ba'asyir of "conspiracy" in the Bali bombings -- a lesser charge -- and sentenced him to 30 months in jail (he should be out a lot earlier) were just afraid of these people, above, who think of any anti-Ba'asyir noise out of Jakarta as evidence that the Indonesian leadership wants to suck up to George Bush. Convicting him at all seems to have raised the terror risk in that part of the world, so why the judges didn't spring for a longer sentence may be one of those deep systemic mysteries that Indonesia is prone to. Our editor dropped in on Ba'asyir's boarding school last year, for an ill-fated interview. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 5:23 PM Wednesday, March 02, 2005 Urban Überplanning Old courtyards in my neighborhood were built as factories in the mid-nineteenth century, when the middle of Berlin was an industrial warren of weavers and printers and other piece-workers who sometimes lived and slept next to their oily machines. The picture above shows the last unrenovated courtyard around. It hosts an alternative bookstore, a few artists' studios, an exceedingly hip (and secret), postindustrial, ironic-Gothic bar, and an Anne Frank Museum. This shabby dark aesthetic appeals to a lot of people who hate what Mitte is becoming -- a chic shopping and drinking district for wealthy tourists from London and Rome. The shabbiness is postwar, deep-Communist, and rapidly vanishing. It gives an idea of how the neighborhood looked in the glum years between 1945 and 1989. Of course, if denial's your thing, here's what a developer did to the so-called "Rosenhöfe," a courtyard mere footsteps away:  Nice if you miss Beverly Hills. I don't. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:54 AM Tuesday, March 01, 2005 I Heart My New German Dictionary 2poetaster N (pej) Poetaster m, Dichterling mOur friend Bobbie Jo has a new poetry blog, with fine original work and witty, minatory links. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:51 PM | |
|
|
 Too Much of Nothing, a novel  Politics and Prose  about our editor 
The Underground Grammarian  current Berlin blog page  |
