a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Saturday, April 29, 2006 The End is Nigh I hear gas in America is hovering around three bucks a gallon, which sounds obscene to me until I do the math in Berlin and realize that 1.19 euros per liter equals almost six bucks a gallon. Still, Kevin Roderick at LA Observed found what may be the most expensive gas in the nation -- 4 bucks for full-service high octane in Beverly Hills -- which may help to explain the following story. A church group in Maryland has been praying for lower gas prices. You think I'm joking. But no: Standing at a podium in Washington DC, in front of an Exxon station, Bishop Donald Downing of the Heart to Heart International church prayed, "Lord, add more oil to this nation!" Church-sign photo above, however, is a joke. Thanks to Kuchen. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:31 AM (1) comments Friday, April 28, 2006 Free Debate in the WestHere's what William Pfaff wrote a few weeks ago about the infamous Mearsheimer-Walt paper.What are very striking are the virulence as well as the volume of the attacks being made on the authors. The Klu Klux Klan smear has been the least of it. Their paper has been compared to Nazi propaganda of the 1930s and to the czarist-era forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which still circulates in the Arab world).Israel isn't one of my big themes, but free speech is. That's the reason I wrote about Rachel Corrie. I don't have an opinion about the "Israel lobby" in America. But Pfaff is right -- dragging in the politically irrelevant David Duke, or Hitler, or neo-Nazis, whenever someone dares to criticize Israeli politics or mention Palestinian suffering makes rational debate impossible. Never mind the fact that the hard Christian right in America is a lot more loony and paranoid about Jewish conspiracies, Alan Greenspan, international banking, Paul Wolfowitz, and New York in general than the left -- whatever you might read on Little Green Footballs ... posted by Michael Scott Moore | 3:56 PM (0) comments Grandfather of the BlogI just found a cool page about Richard Mitchell, the brilliant late New Jersey professor who perpetrated The Underground Grammarian. Not only did I dedicate my first novel to him; the Grammarian section of Radio Free Mike is the oldest part of this site. It dates from 1997, long before "blog" was a word. If you follow that first link you'll find a picture of Mitchell at home with his printing press, which he replaced with a Macintosh in the 1980s. If he'd kept on publishing his ferocious little sheet beyond 1991, he might have been a blogger. But age, and diabetes, caught up with him. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:18 PM (0) commentsThursday, April 27, 2006 Thanks for the Flowers! Not long ago the Swiss fashion chain Telly Weijl mounted an ad campaign called "Totally Sexy," which included massive billboards of a mouth-breathing model sitting in a big pink bunny's lap. Yes, I know. It's creepy. This one overlooked Danzigerstrasse for a day or two until someone cut holes in the model's forehead, the model's crotch, and the bunny's forehead. Each wound bled red paint. For a day or two it looked to Berlin communters as though someone had failed to pay up a mafioso's ransom on the big bunny. Then flowers appeared where the wounds had been, along with a banner along the top: "Vielen Dank für die Blumen." Thanks for the flowers. I don't know what to think. Is that poetic? Quick thinking? Or just as creepy as the Easter bunny and his chick? After another day or two the whole thing was gone. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:30 PM (1) comments BabelsbergYou'll find this buried in the comments, but it deserves more play: Doughnut Boy has an excellent story about a Babelsberg soccer game (vs. Tennis Borussia) and the fans' reaction to the brutal racist beating of Ermyas M. in Potsdam outside Berlin on Easter Sunday. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:06 PM (0) commentsTuesday, April 25, 2006 Du Bist Deutschland... one more time. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:11 PM (3) commentsRachel CorrieA piece on the play is up at Spiegel. Sorry it doesn't sound like me. But at least I've seen the thing, dammit, which is more than most American critics have done. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:33 PM (3) commentsSunday, April 23, 2006 Stoked The caption on this photo, over at the Chicago Tribune site, which I can't access anymore because of their stupid sign-in rules, is something like, "a surfer fails to ride a wave in heavy backwash." Which only proves there's no surf in Illinois. Because, excuse me, that isn't backwash, and you don't get that kind of air after failing to ride a wave. It looks to me like homeboy just got his board stuck trying to pull off a fancy aerial. Some of my readers will want to know about the "urban surf culture store" in Berlin called Duckdiver. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:34 PM (2) comments Wednesday, April 19, 2006 Rachel Corrie in London... was not anti-Semitic, terrorist filth. It also wasn't especially good. But there's no reason for an established New York director to shy away from this stuff. I may write more about all this for another venue. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:30 PM (3) commentsSaturday, April 08, 2006 Krauthammer the Commie One of the most sinister and stupid things I've heard on the radio in a long while got into my living room on the new NPR frequency in Berlin -- 104.1, if you live here -- when the network gave air time to a member of the Minutemen, American "patriots" who want to turn back an "invasion" of illegal immigrants across the Mexican border. The Minutemen think a 2000-mile wall from San Diego, California, to Brownsville, Texas, buried ten feet into the earth, guarded by a Border Patrol with guns, will be just the thing to save America's traditions and institutions. Charles Krauthammer, a neo-conservative who isn't a Minuteman but fears both terrorist infiltration and a second civil war between Mushy-Hearted Liberals and the Patriotic Foes of Immigration, agrees: Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won't do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put cameras. Put sensors. Put out lots of patrols.Israel, Krauthammer may have noticed, is at war with a faction of its own people. North Korea is a murderous Communist regime. America, on the other hand, is a busy thriving nation built on immigrants, greater than Europe (neo-cons will remind people) not because of its money or power but because of its relative freedom and tolerance. America also has economic and historical contradictions that force it to absorb a lot of illegal workers. I'd argue that an American who doesn't like it hasn't grasped the point of his country. What the fuck -- you might ask -- is he doing there? The Minutemen, along with Krauthammer, may as well move to Europe, where in any case nations don't build walls to keep out foreigners. Of course it will be ugly [Krauthammer writes]. So are the concrete barriers to keep truck bombs from driving into the White House. But sometimes necessity trumps aesthetics. And don't tell me that this is our Berlin Wall. When you build a wall to keep people in, that's a prison.What a wall from San Diego to Brownsville would have in common with the Berlin Wall is both more and less obvious than the nature of the DDR. Everyone knows the U.S. isn't East Germany. But somehow the American wall suggested by the Minutemen, by Krauthammer, and (in a shorter, 700-mile version) by an anti-immigrant bill passed in the House last year, would have a) "a double set of steel walls with floodlights, surveillance cameras and motion detectors," i.e., a Todesstreifenand, c) roots in craven fear, something America has been flexible and big-souled enough to transcend in the past, which is one reason it still exists, and East Germany doesn't.These people can all screw off. They don't belong in my country. UPDATE: Submitted to the Carnival of German-American Relations. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:41 PM (8) comments Friday, April 07, 2006 I Take It BackScooter Libby is fast becoming my favorite figure in Washington. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:51 PM (3) commentsThursday, April 06, 2006 Dismantling the PalaceHere's what the Palast der Republik looks like these days: Berlin is tearing it down because it's ugly and loaded with asbestos. Oh, and ex-Communist. The East Germans put it up in the 50s on the (salvagable?) ruins of the old Hohenzollern castle. Now a certain cash-poor organization wants to put up a rebuilt, Disneyfied Hohenzollern castle, which pisses off some Berliners as much as the modern Palast pissed off nostalgic Germans back in the day. Good thing it sits on a river, though, because unloading "29,000 tons of steel, 83,300 tons of concrete, and 300 tons of glass," according to Der Tagesspiegel, would need 13,710 traffic-jamming trucks. Which would piss off me. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:41 PM (3) comments Monday, April 03, 2006 Fernsehturm as Soccer Ball 2 Deutsche Telekom didn't come up with the idea out of thin air, presumably. Here's a detail of a poster or something mocked up for Berlin's soccer team Hertha BSC by "company" in 2002. I'm not saying they came up with the idea; but maybe the picture at least proves that a black-and-white soccer ball would look better than maroon, as at least one Fernsehturm neighbor seems to think. All my Fernsehturmkunst comes from one book, Von der Partei zur Party, 1969-2003: Der Berliner Fernsehturm als grafisches Symbol. Which notes: "Die Grafik ist von der Kommunikationsgesellschaft company als eines von drei Motiven fuer eine Image-kampagne von Hertha BSC im Jahr 2002 entwickelt worden. In allen Motiven wurde ein Berliner Wahrzeichen mit einem Fussball verschmolzen. Der Illustration liegt eine Fotografie zugrunde, die digital verfremdet wurde." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:57 PM (0) comments Thanks,by the way, to everyone who listed some annoying German quirk in the comments below. Spiegel Online is running the feature now (and will be for months). Of course if we quote your blog we'll get in touch with you about a link, but feel free to write your own piece, too. No payment, but the results are fun. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:42 PM (0) commentsSunday, April 02, 2006 Diablerets Glacier ... above Gstaad, Switzerland, February 2006. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:33 PM (2) comments | |
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