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a berlin blog |
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Wednesday, July 27, 2005 Yee HawDerick over at Berlin Blog inaugurates the Yoknapatawpha County of Amazon Customer Reviews, complete with curling accents and incest. But the really scandalous thing about Derick is that he's leaving Berlin next year. Christ, man. I hardly even know you. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:30 PM (2) commentsSaturday, July 23, 2005 Nein!Not only is Michael Jackson expected at his father's birthday bash in Berlin this weekend, the pop star is also rumored to be starting a new life in the German capital, complete with a copy of his Neverland ranch.Can't we keep him out? He's not a citizen, is he? Doesn't he need an Arbeitserlaubnis? Fuck. I moved here to get away from Michael Jackson, and other cliches of California. Fuck fuck fuck. Here's a Radio Free Mike file photo of the Hotel Adlon, at Pariser Platz, where Michael dangled his baby son out the window a few years ago: 
posted by Michael Scott Moore |
11:49 PM
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Productbeschreibung "Wurstteppich"In four models: Salami, Bierschinken, Mortadella und Blutwurst. Is tasteless the right word?(Thanks to Lisa.) posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:20 AM (2) comments I Have No Idea What This Was AboutSorry. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:16 AM (0) commentsOkay, LookIt's gotten fashionably political to argue over whether the bombings in London were "because" of the Iraq War or not. Great fucking Christ. Of course they were. Berlin is safer than Rome, for now, because of the complexion of troops in Iraq. The question is, Should the British put up with it? Or, should Americans (if something else happens in America)? The way Bush has led the invasion: No. If people start to get fed up with big-city bombings after his bungled leadership, and protesters take to the streets, and we pull out of Baghdad like we pulled out of Hanoi, and everything goes to hell, it will be on Bush's shoulders (not Sean Penn's) for failing to respect his own people enough to make a proper case for war.Which doesn't mean we should pull out just because the terrorists are fighting back. Good God, people. Imagine what would happen if we left The Land of the Two Rivers to the so-called insurgents. No, no, no. At Radio Free Mike we don't think that's a good idea. But let's be clear: London got bombed this month because London helped with the war. And if that makes Tony Blair's job a bit harder, it's not because anyone has forgotten -- or even misunderstood -- September 11. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 1:38 AM (2) comments Tuesday, July 19, 2005 Berliners Love SandMaybe because their city's built on it. Not only is the river lousy with "beach bars" in the summer, not only is surf music hip, but Berlin also hosts an annual sand-castle contest, right next to Lehrter Bahnhof:
posted by Michael Scott Moore |
6:27 PM
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Sunday, July 17, 2005 On a Sunday in Prenzlauer BergThe protest march against racism in Prenzlauer Berg happened today; a couple of hundred people turned up to make speeches and show their opposition to something a cafe did last April, namely, ban a certain type of black person from its tables. The cafe, An einem Sonntag in August... ("On a Sunday in August..."), countered with posters on "political correctness," a reading series, and even some very pretty anti-racist sidewalk graffiti chalked by a young blond girl. The cafe had plenty of business; I think the owners mustered a multicultural crowd to show up and support its image.In other words, something magical happened today: No one in Prenzlauer Berg was a racist!  We're not racists.  Neither are we! posted by Michael Scott Moore | 5:01 PM (4) comments Not Only is Karl Rove a Traitor... his story also re-opens an old image problem the White House thought it had solved. Back when George Tenet still had a job, there was a live debate in the U.S. over whether Bush "expected" evidence from the CIA of certain nasty weapons in Iraq. Then, when George Tenet resigned, the party faithful could say, Look, Tenet's leaving -- that's because the CIA made Bush think there were nasty weapons, when really there weren't. Bush didn't pressure the CIA! He got fooled! It was the CIA's fault!As the SF Chronicle points out, White House officials were aware of Plame and her husband's potentially damaging charge that Bush was "twisting" intelligence about Iraq's nuclear ambitions well before the episode evolved into Washington's latest scandal.By now we know why: The intelligence was hopelessly twisted. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 3:32 PM (0) comments Friday, July 15, 2005 Dogtown and Z-Boys Can Go to HellMike Purpus at the Easy Reader makes the case that the real California skateboard pioneers in the '60s and '70s weren't the loudmouthed Venice Beach Z-Boys, but a quieter, better-skating crowd from our very own South Bay.Skateboarding began in the 1950s when we took the metal roller skates we had gotten for Christmas, cut them in half, and nailed them to the front and back of a two-by-four. When the waves were bad we'd skateboard up and down Hermosa's back alleys.posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:36 AM (3) comments Don't Bother With That Potter BookOur sources can ruin the plot for you right here at Radio Free Mike. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:32 AMTuesday, July 12, 2005 Ah, Freedom of SpeechUnder the headline, "Shop sells new Potter book by mistake," a British news service reports breathlessly that "The offending shop quickly realised its mistake and whipped the wizardry tale off the shelves," but not before the book was sold to 14 people in the Vancouver area. The shop offered author-signed copies to any customers who brought them back, but, in case that didn't work,Justice Kristi Gill at the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordered customers not to talk about the book, copy it, sell it or even read it before it is officially released.Canadian readers are invited to send any advance tips on the book to Radio Free Mike. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:22 PM (5) comments Sunday, July 10, 2005 What a lovely day in Thueringia ... too bad these people are Nazis. Yesterday the neo-Nazi NPD kicked off its national campaign in Gera, Thueringia. Not that the Nazis have a chance in any national campaign. But they do have 12 people in a state legislature, and they're organized, so Mike was there to cover it. Goethe came from Thueringia; so did my professor in San Diego, Reinhard Lettau. The NPD puts on a conservative, nonracist public face. But the number of T shirts at this "Rock fuer Deutschland" concert that said "Master Race" or "Ku Klux Klan" or "Hatefilled Music for Hatefilled White People" war zum kotzen. The NPD mixed campaign-talk with bands like Eugenik and Radikahl. After six months in Berlin I've had, on occasion, perhaps too much to drink; I've had a few different kinds of questionable cheese; I've suffered the end of a solid marriage, and I've followed the Valerie Plame story right up to the part where Judith Miller goes to jail -- but I haven't wanted to puke quite so far as I did yesterday in Gera. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:06 PM (6) comments Friday, July 08, 2005 No! Last year a museum owner named Alexandra Hildebrandt set up a phony, white-painted Berlin Wall and 1065 crosses on vacant land across from the old Checkpoint Charlie, as a memorial to the 1000 or so people killed by East-German soldiers while they tried to escape to the west. She'd leased this land from the BAG Bank. When her lease was up, the bank wanted it back. She decided not to move. A monument to the victims of Communism was too important to the city of Berlin, she said. But she failed to raise enough cash to buy the land. She made herself noisy and inconvenient; she called for help from such prominent anti-Communists as George W. Bush; she had Christlike protesters chain themselves to the crosses. She even fooled some kneejerk types into treating her memorial as one of history's final victims of Communist persecution. But in the end nothing could stop the bulldozers, or the crane that hauled away pieces of an all-too-familiar wall. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:59 PM Thursday, July 07, 2005 London CallingDer Spiegel has quick & thorough coverage of the bombs in London, in German and English. And my sources in Britain have been sending a little color perspective:Lots of controlled explosions going on. Most of my friends have reported in ok. On the whole, seems that emergency services are doing very very well and the locals are well drilled. There was an interview with a US tourist saying that when the bus blew up, all the Brits just hustled everyone into side streets in case there was a secondary explosion. Can't fault their timing, can you? day after the Olympic win, first day of G8. Of COURSE they wouldn't bother with Gleneagles or Edinburgh. Of COURSE London was a "better" idea. If it is Al Qaeda, blowing up Edgware Road tube was a bit of an own goal - that's the Arab part of town!posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:37 PM Tuesday, July 05, 2005 QuestionI can think of a few cocktails named after writers, likeThe Hemingway-- and you could almost make up some others, like The Cheever (bourbon and laundry)But what about writers not associated with controlled substances? Could you still name drinks after them? How would you mix, for example -- 1) a Philip RothThis boggles me, so I'm leaving Comments open. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:40 PM (6) comments Sunday, July 03, 2005 Who Outed Valerie Plame?James Wolcott points to Newsweek and thinks it was Karl Rove; Marc at Misanthropicity has even better evidence that says it was Scooter Libby.UPDATE: I know, I know, Newsweek creamed the Washington Post on this one. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:42 PM Saturday, July 02, 2005 Prenzlauer Berg Letting Everyone DownA cafe in Prenzlauer Berg has been keeping out young black men since last spring. You Berlin readers know about this; I've been mulling a column on it, which is the reason it hasn't been blogged so far at Radio Free Mike.Really the cafe owners want to keep out drug dealers. But they described the dealers in a document, then asked all employees to sign it. If you worked at a hip cafe called "An Einem Sonntag in August," starting last April, you had to swear in writing to keep out all young, black, lazy-looking, unwashed slackers who sat around for hours on the patio, ordering as little tea as possible and talking to other shady characters on the street. Older black people, black tourists, or "black students with clever eyes" were exempt. I'm happy to report that some employees refused to sign this document. They got fired. They went to the local press, and now there's a street protest against racism planned for July 17. An Einem Sonntag in August has earned most of its ugly attention; but I wonder if it's true that the owners are racist? Are they, in other words, modern (and liberal) examples of the rot in the German character that Hitler exploited? What's kept me from leaping on this for a column in the States is how it would play as an international story: Do I want to throw meat to warbloggers, for example, who would only cluck, "Look, these Krauts who refused to invade Iraq with us are still a bunch of Nazis"? What happened at the cafe seems to be an idiotic mixture of the German mania for paperwork plus a general racial numbness, which you see on the street in restaurant signs like this --  -- even when the restaurants are run by Chinese people. But I'm too white to speak with authority about racism in Berlin. I also don't like the tone of comments from white people on the Indymedia site who seem to need a (yuppified?) cafe to bash just to salve their own liberal souls. So here's a translation of the most interesting comment on that site, from a guy named Tony: I have dark-brown skin and strongly-curled black hair, because my father came to East Germany from Mozambique.posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:00 AM (10) comments | |
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