...and a happy new year.

I Like Ike

A rather belated shoutout to Ike Turner (R.I.P.), who I had once spent three days of crazed fun. When he proved his drug credentials to me by sticking my pen through his perforated septum. When he raced me down to Tijuana in his ivory colored Lincoln. When he took me on a search for the bar, where he married Tina by signing some novelty marriage license he bought from a street hawker. When he took me to hotel lobby Karaoke bars in the suburbs of San Diego to show me his still happening vocal chops. When he flew in his quarterback buddy who tried to squeeze ten grand out of me. For that exclusive interview. When he told me that he never beat up Tina, that he never raised his fist against her, that he only used his open hand and only if she pushed his buttons, which she knew, so she wouldn't have to have pushed them. When he respected me solely on the base that I had played with some of his former musicians, who had jumped ship in Munich when they were on his tour with Tina, just like some communist country basketball players.

Full obituary in German here

P.S.: Turns out Ike died from a cocaine overdose after all.

The East

There's something ugly brewing in the projects of East Germany. It's neither neo-nazi (despite the look) nor Gangsta (despite the sound). It's pure East German anger.

Pessimistic

Of course when you have a new baby you will be showered with heartfelt congratulations and heartbreakingly sweet presents. One slight difference between German and American congratulations though. While both will congratulate you on the beauty/sweetness/cuteness/lookalikeness of your newborn, German congratulations mostly come with a disclaimer and/or damper. Our top five (plus variations) so far:

- Well, you can't tell, if it's a colic baby before it's four to six weeks old, can you.
- So have you heard about this East German couple/mother who starved/smothered/shook their baby to death?
- Juggling a baby and everyday life is pretty rough, no? So how are you gonna do that (from close relatives living nearby)?
- Now did you hear this about these friends of ours and they only discovered how sick their baby was after everything seemed normal for months?
- And the all-time German classic: Oh, he's really cute. And so sweet. Well, the problems mostly start later.

Yes, it's a German thing. Yes, it's genetic. No, neither me nor Fred have that gene, so maybe Karl's safe. But you don't know that until later, do you?

Pessimist's mug availabe at despair.com

Permissible Interrogation Techniques

Amnesty International has just released the first of three films, in which they enact interrogation technique permitted by the US government and the CIA handbook. They had an actor stand like this for six hours just like in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and countless other places, so all the moans and groans are realistic. All part of their unsubscribe campaign.

Optimistic

You bet I'm proud of being in an anthology called "What Are You Optimistic About? - The world's leading thinkers lighten up". Not just because optimism goes quite well with my current mood and situation. But also because being thrown together with the likes of Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Craig Venter and Freeman Dyson is quite flattering in kind of a hubris way. Is there genius by association? Rather unlikely, but I'll just bask in it for a moment anyway.

Born on the 9th of November

Karl Julius. Born on the 9th of November 3:11 AM

Yes, life changes right away. Yes, it's like discovering love for the first time all over again. Yes, Fred is a hero. Yes he's the most of everything.

I promised Rich never to tell any poop and fart stories. So I guess there will have to be another blog for that. But they did make fun of us coming home from America after all these years and having a child on the 9th of November. Which is like the big whoop date for Germans. They call it The Day Of Fate because of a all that history and shit. There's like 15 significant 9th of Novembers in German history. Ya know, Einstein got his Nobel Prize on a 9th of November. The pogroms started. The Berlin Wall came down. The first one was in 1313, when Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian defeated Friedrich the Beautiful in the Battle of Gammerlsdorf, therefore gaining power over all Dukes of Lower Bavaria. If your cared to know. But that's our privilege as parents now - to tell stories no matter if people wanna hear them or not.

Hyena Men

A while ago there were some images of a man leading a hyena on a chain popping up on blogs, that was shot from the back of a cab in Lagos with a cellphone camera. There was another blog shot of a few men with hyenas and baboons, also from Lagos. That inspired South African photographer Pieter Hugo go to Lagos and track them down. It turned out to be a group of minstrels travelling Nigeria with some hyenas and monkeys. Hugo accompanied them for a while. The result was an incredible photo essay. And some great travel tales:

"I agreed to travel with the animal wranglers to Kanu in the northern part of the country. One of them set out to negotiate a fare with a taxi driver; everyone else, including myself and the hyenas, monkeys and rock pythons, hid in the bushes. When their companion signalled that he had agreed on a fare, the motley troupe of humans and animals leapt out from behind the bushes and jumped into the vehicle. The taxi driver was completely horrified. I sat upfront with a monkey and the driver. He drove like an absolute maniac. At one stage the monkey was terrified by his driving. It grabbed hold of my leg and stared into my eyes. I could see its fear."

TED Talks

The annual TED Conference used to be an invitation only, very expensive meeting of the minds in Monterey, California. This year they published the legendary TED talks on the web. There's Steven Pinker's "Brief History of Violence" above, talks by Architecture for Humanity genius Cameron Sinclair, Wired's Chris Anderson on technology's long tail, legendary illustrator Maira Kalman, space-bound billionaire Richard Branson, philosopher and evolutionary theorist Daniel C.Dennett on his concept of Memes and copyright rebel lawyer Lawrence Lessig

Mental Health

More dubious internet humor:

MENTAL HOSPITAL PHONE MENU

Hello and thank you for calling The State Mental Hospital.

Please select from the following options menu:

- If you are obsessive-compulsive, press 1 repeatedly.
- If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you.
- If you have multiple personalities, press 3, 4, 5 and 6.
- If you are paranoid, we know who you are and what you want, stay on the line so we can trace your call.
- If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will be forwarded to the Mother Ship.
- If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
- If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press, nothing will make you happy anyway.
- If you are dyslexic, press 9696969696969696.
- If you are bipolar, please leave a message after the beep or before the beep or after the beep. Please wait for the beep.
- If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have short-term memory loss, press 9.
- If you have low self-esteem, please hang up. Our operators are too busy to talk with you.
- If you are menopausal, put the gun down, hang up, turn on the fan, lie down and cry. You won't be crazy forever.
- If you are blonde, don't press any buttons, you'll just mess it up.

This coming week is National Mental Health Care week. You can do your part by remembering to contact at least one unstable person to show you care.

Conservative Deserters

This mail was not even close to funny, smart or witty, but it came from a distinctively conservative friend, so frustration seems to run high in the US of A.

>>> Subject: think ahead

To be a Republican you need to believe:

1. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.
2. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's Daddy made war on him , a good guy when Cheney did business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.
3. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.
4. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.
5. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational drug corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.
6. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.
7. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.
8. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money.
9. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but providing health care to all Americans is socialism. HMO's and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.
10. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.
11. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense, but a president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.
12. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet .
13. The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.
14. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.
15. Supporting "Executive Privilege" for every Republican ever born, who will be born or who might be born (in perpetuity.)
16. What Bill Clinton did in the 1960's is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80's is irrelevant.

If you don't send this to at least 10 other people, we're likely to be stuck with more Republicans in '08.

Is Ze Party Over Here? Is Ze Party Over Zere?

A drag queen reporter at the national convention of the neo- and not so neo-nazi party NPD (in German).

The Parent Trap

Going to a birthing class in Germany is a rather strange experience. When the Germans will have died out, historians might find some of the reasons for the Teutonic demise in those weekends of organized rude awakening. First it was encouraging to see, that I won't be the oldest dad in town. Munich's definitely Germany's Striver's Row, so the young parents were mostly not so young, instead they exuded a sense of affluence and general happiness about starting a family at this point in their lifes. Well not so fast!

In comes the midwife. A mid-30s down to earth seeming lady with a strange approach to getting young parents ready. The majority of the class consists of separating the genders for therapeutic excersises. So all guys go to the other side of the room to write down the changes they expect. Now the lists on both sides of the room get long and longer. Nobody wants to seems oblivious to the strains parenthood will bring. Much to the delight of the midwife, who reads the lists aloud, just to exclaim: "Yes! It's gonna be so bad! But you ain't seen nothing yet! It's gonna be so much worse!". Same exercise model is repeated for - birthing pains, marriage troubles, work difficulties. All with a slight 70s slant of blaming patriarch society. When she demonstrates the unfairness of the parent workload and one of the young fathers dares to mention that he'll work 10 hours a day to support his family, he's met with bitter disdain. Last exercise for the weekend - write a letter to your partner, that she will send out in five months.

I guess I should've read the course's subtilte: "Welcome to 18 years of hell!" S & L are going to a class in New York today. Curious if they dish out extra helpings of pessimism and despair. But I guess we haven't learned anything. Still looking forward. Very much so!

Rambo

It's of course good Hollywood fortune in it's purest and most cynical form that the horrors of Burma made world news just when Stallone wrapped up shooting the Burma themed fourth installment of the Rambo series along the banks of the Salween River between Thailand and Burma. It must've been the first time he's seen real action, since he sounded rather startled in one of his first interviews:

"I witnessed the aftermath - survivors with legs cut off and all kinds of land mine injuries, maggot-infested wounds and ears cut off. We saw many elephants with blown off legs. We hear about Vietnam and Cambodia and this was more horrific." He also told the interviewer: "This is full scale genocide. It would be a whitewashing not to show what's over there. I think there is a story that needs to be told." Half of that quote is actually dialogue from the film (see trailer). The other must've been the pitch.

Watch the trailer for "John Rambo"

The History Of Religion in 90 Seconds

Guess who wins?

Oktoberfest

The Brooklynite on the Ice is right of course, demanding Oktoberfest updates. Gotta fess up though - we missed it. Might have to do with the fact that on the home stretch long distance travels and immobilizing intoxication are postponed until further notice.

Dominik landed a scoop for our weekend magazine though, getting Martin Parr to go on the prowl at the Kaefer Zelt, which is famous for being the Oktoberfest hot spot of the Munich heir and heiress scene. Photo essay came out as brillant as expected.

Otherwise all our observations were limited to the late night spill- and leftovers. After 10 PM you had to drive really slowly, so not to lose points on the slalom course between staggering drunks coming out of the dark rather suddenly. But in a mere span of five block you got to see all archetypes of conspicuous alcohol consumption - the happy barfer, the staggering stuporer, the mumbling hornyist, the keelover lady, the fist swinging part-time touretter. I guess next year we'll have to go. And be one of them.

American Gangster

Isn't this a movie, Scorcese should've made?

Third of October

What? It's national holiday over here in Germany and no fireworks, no barbeques, no parties, no parades, no fleets, no air shows, no sappy songs of national pride, no good natured flag waving, no silly hats, no moments of collectively loving the place you're at, even if it's a collective frustration of where things are going? Just somber speeches, awkward ceremonies and the usual George A. Romero style Oktoberfest debauchery in Munich, because that Bavarian barbarian thing's kinda politically correct? Ja, ja, ja, we lost the war. I know.We really don't like the place we live in, do we?

Listen to Funkmaster Flex's 4th of July broadcast, if you wanna know how to party for your country in style.

Or check out Ray Charles pull off righteous patriotism without flinching.

Or watch Johnny Cash having a not quite as benign patriot moment.

Iran

Looks like SNL can still be true to form (the white suited pop star next to Samberg is Adam Levine of Maroon 5. Not that I knew).

Burma

It's ten years ago that Tomo and were in Burma, where we met the student rebels in the refugee camps on the Thai border, dissidents in Rangoon tea houses, where we saw roads built by slave labor, talked to monks in Theravada monestaries, partied with opium war lords in Lashio and hung with the Palaung rebel army in their liberated territories. After we arrived at the Lashio hotel with tourist license plates and left the next day with plates for Burmese nationals we had SLORC's secret service on our tail. We split up. I pulled a Forrest Gump at the airport and got the first batch of films past security without X-rays by acting stupid and confused. Tomo got the seconds batch a few days later smuggled on board with the meal service. It was rough then. It got dangerously rough today.

Read an English version of our story about Burma

Read a German version

Get the latest news from the The Burma Campaign

Get the propaganda spin from the military junta's daily New Light of Myanmar

Deep In Bavaria

So finally the Free State of Bavaria officially registered us as infidels. I think that county clerk thought, if she delays bureaucratic procedures long enough Fred might go into labour and that way she would've saved an innocent soul from the dreads of secular humanism. In Bavarian thinking God's law tends to overrule the constitution. But the ways of the devil of secularism are merciless, and so we produced each and every document she asked for correctly, timely and in a courteous manner, until she reluctantly had to put that stamp under form number 666. Whatever number that form has, she sure made us feel like we just signed such a pact. So as of now our flat rate plan to talk to God is voided. Most likely lines were cut already, when I wrote favorable reviews of Chri Ofili's "Holy Virigin Mary" and recent works of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

But we haven't reached the deepest depths of Bavarianism yet. This weekend is the official kick-off for this year's Oktoberfest. Fans have been gearing up already. At the county clerk's office the cashier was already wearing a Dirndl. When we went shopping on Viktualienmarkt today the levels of mid-day public drunkenness and wearing of leather-made short shorts were impressively high. More to come. For weeks on end now.

In God's Country

Not being of faith is an active chore in Germany. After 20 years abroad I wasn't aware of the fact that I'm still considered a member of the Lutheran congregation, despite the fact that my hippie parents had me blessed by the Guru Maharishi Yogi when I was about seven (he's the one with the levitation trick, but hey - it was 1969 and he was the Beatles' guru, so I have to give them credit for being very much with it). Despite widespread resentment of America being a de facto religious state, the seperation of church and state in Germany is far behind the US. Church officials still sit on boards of public institutions all over Germany, including public radio and TV. Their are harsh penalties and steep fines for blasphemy. In Munich no building can be higher than the main church. On certain holidays it's against the law to dance and party, which almost got the MTV Europe Awards cancelled in Munich this year. Anyway - the law of the church caught up with me, because if you do not apply for non-religious status, a church tax amounting to five percent of your income tax is added automatically to your tax bill. Which I recently noticed.

We tried to correct this, but they don't make it that easy. The county clerk was a middle-aged, grey haired woman whose mood was about as bright as a Wackenhut guard's. She didn't even try to hide her disdain for all heretics wanting to leave the Christian faith, accompanying every step of the bueraucratic process with eye-rolling, grunting and sneering. We didn't take it personal, since a young, Turkish looking woman passed through the office who obviously just had been through the bureaucratic ringer. Anyway, after a lot of grunting and sneering she tried to explain to us, that the Bronx and Brooklyn, where we got married/registered are mere quarters, can not be seperate cities or counties (a classic German trait by the way, insisting on points made, but I was actually glad, because after twenty years in New York I can still get lost). When she finally had it with us godless pests she demanded to see a copy of our wedding license. Which we actually had in our car down in the garage, but she pointed out that we had to get it in two and half minutes, because then her lunch break would begin. So we gonna have to try again tomorrow.

More soon.

Raceway Crack

I always thought racing cars is one of the most radical sports. Now I know two guys who actually do it. Sebastian bought himself a vintage Porsche, which he's racing in rallyes around Europe. The true king of racing for sure is Joseph Fratesi, who's got a souped up 80s Volkswagen in his Park Slope backyard. Every other week he's taking his number 77 to the Northeastern tracks. Rich just went along to a race in the Poconos, where Joseph got silver. Sure sounds like a weekend after my taste. Right on Team Fratesi! Next year - Riverhead Raceway! The original track of champions, where I've seen some mean racings skills, before 'Whiplash' Joe finished a field of Demolition Derby contestants like a plate of juicy chicken wings. Let's be honest. Who wants to see some skinny tabloid stars race some oddly shaped scream machines around some mediterranean retirement resort.

Birdland (R.I.P.)

We were about 16, 17 years old, testing our musical chops with overly complicated fusion arrangements in the basement rehearsal room of our friend Wolfgang. His father was a big shot TV and commercial composer from Vienna and one of his best friends was Joe Zawinul, legendary Viennese sideman of Cannonball and Miles. When Zawinul was in town he would drop in for coffee and cake. Once he came down to the basement, highly amused that those skinny Germans would get all excited about meeting the composer of 'Birdland', which we had played a lot on the open air circuit around Munich. He jammed for a while, which was moist likely the most impressive musical experience for any of us.

Years later I ran into him at the Broadway Diner in Santa Monica. He didn't remember me, but he sure remembered the session with the German fusion fan teens. Which still amused him. This morning he died in Vienna.

Zawinul and Weather Report playing Birdland

Zawinul and the Cannonball Adderley Sextet

Zawinul and Miles Davis

Flowchart Philosophy

Kool-Aid Anyone?

For this year's 911 anniversary Bin Laden came out with a new video. Excerpts were broadcasted by Al Jazeera (see above). He dyed his heard and recommends books by Noam Chomsky and Michael Scheuer. What next? Is he gonna move to the Upper Westside and start a book club? He also asks all Americans to convert to Islam to avoid further terror. Kool-Aid anyone?

Download the English transcript as PDF

Lessons In Branding

After Naomi Klein established herself as the first prominent face of the faceless and non-hierarchical anti-globailisation movement with her branding critique "No Logo", the pressure was on to deliver a second global bestseller though. Now she delivers - "The Shock Doctrine" promises to be another hit for the knee-jerk crowd. Which might have something to do with the brillance Naomi Klein styles herself as her own brand including unique selling points, brand positioning and recognizable brand patterns. She's also pushing her book with the latest in modern marketing - a viral YouTube video. Although advertised as a short film created by Klein and director Jonas Cuaron it's not much more than a Fox News style commercial.

Summer Hit (1978)

Driving by former CBGB's the day Hilly Kristal died is not even in hindsight a particularly interesting story. But it wasn't called the "Blank Generation" for nothing.

Brooklyn Nostalgia

Sitting on the deck at 136 Coffey not getting a boat, driving down Cadman Plaza in a Dodge Charger with white leather seats, David's got a new poetry volume out, three rounds with Charlie, John's still sad, but very funny I still got credit at Sunny's, Zohey's and Ben's daughters name is Jasper, El Cantante's playing at the Cobble Hill, the soccer field vendors have not been driven out, but badly beaten by Rich's Caha China pork, Saturday afternoon beers at the Red Hook Pier Park watching the Seastreak pass by Liberty Island, hearing that Sniffy's in the pokey, dumplings at Do Wha with the heartbreak posse, collectively missing - Fred!, driving back from Connecticut with Freeman Dyson. And, oh yeah, Darwinian evolution was just a phase.

Furor of the People

While lounging the Sunday away a great drama of Munich style class warfare unfolded below our window. The tram car couldn't pass, because some Porsche with double wide sports wheels was parked just a bit too far into the street. Aaah, the furor of the people. Some tattooed mullet head coming to the help of the tram car conductor went as far as activating the Porsche's alarm, then tried to lift the car to no avail, which got him to resort to a wonderful tourette cascade of Bavarian expletives. When the blocked tram cars were finally four trains deep a rather embarrassed young yuppie in short shorts appeared and sped away in horrified silence.

The scene reminded me of one of the latest editorials of German Vanity Fair editor Ulf Poschardt. His editorials are a treasure trove of fun quotes somewhere between "Neo-conservatism For Dummies" and serious contenders for the Marie Antoinette Award (we read them to each other aloud almost every week). So there he was complaining in length how some "eco squares" let out the air of the tires of the Alfa Romeo he was test driving that week, not realizing how little gas such a sports car uses and how many solar panels can be found on the roofs of the mansions in the posh neighborhoods around Berlin. Hard to capture the brilliance of the original.

So far German Vanity Fair's been quite a fresh air in the German magazine landscape though, which has been dominated by lad mags and TV guides for the past ten or something years. It's weekly and has been projecting a kind of worldliness missing from German media. Well, it's not quite up to par with the US original. Besides the fact that the editorials make you wonder, if liberal doyen Graydon Carter knows what rabid neocon ideologue has been hired as his German equivalent, there's the chronic lack of glamorous celebrities in Germany (chancellorette Angela Merkel and orphaned polar bear cub Knut being the only German covers of international relevance so far).

The latest issue had fun failure of marketing though. Attached to the issue was a CD with 10 "Vanity Fair summer music hits 2007". Now American Vanity Fair has enclosed CDs before, which mostly featured music for people who are too rich, too successful or otherwise too busy to pay attention to the latest evolutions of pop history, i.e. white jazz vocals, maudlin indie Rock that has made it to the Top 10 or retro soul from Britain. So it's quite compatible to the brand and target group of Vanity Fair. Something went seriously wrong on the German compilation though, which starts with Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime" and ends with Kool & the Gang's "Celebration", two songs that have no redeeming values, no matter how much camp irony you put into it. Neither do Euro Dance classics like Chocolate's "Ritmo de la noche" or Shannon's "Let the Music Play". The key to this strange array of margarita party faves is found on the cover. "Selected by you", it says there, so there must've been some readers' poll or sweepstakes. Which reveals the real reason why there hasn't been a German equivalent to Vanity Fair or the New Yorker before, even though German journalists have been fantasizing about doing them for decades.

The reason for the lack of sophisticated general interest magazines other than two or three newsweeklies in Germany lies in Jean Baudrillard's quote: "America is the original version of modernity. We are the dubbed or subtitled version." As a consequence German glamour rags regularly run out of native celebrities to cover, so they always come back to the same geriatric cast of polo tournaments and product placement galas. This is the only reason, why oddities like the countess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis and her offspring can sustain their status as hipster celebrities, even though the countess' only claim to Pop fame were hairstyles which she wore in the 80s, that would've made A Flock Of Seagulls look like a bunch of skinheads. Now that she's a rabid catholic fundamentalist, very much opposed to secular democracy, she maybe shouldn't be given the type of adulating coverage normally reserved for harmless film stars. But what you gonna do.

A Good Day For America

Carl Rove resigns. And it turns out that Cheney said it all along: occupying Iraq will turn into a quagmire.

Christopher Street Day

It's Christopher Street Day and since we live around the corner from the local kind of Christopher Street the parade came by in full swing. It wasn't that much different than back in New York. Some of the floats still played the same kind of music like twenty years ago, mostly that slightly Eastern European sounding Schlager Disco like Marianne Rosenberg's anthem "Ich bin wie Du". But that has more to do with Munich, than with local gay culture. After all Munich radio plays the same music like twenty years ago. Mostly the slightly Eastern European sounding power ballad genre.

There was some local flavor though - a gay Trachtenverein with a whole contingent of Kraftlackeln decked out in Lederhosen and Janker leading the procession down the Munich streets. That subsubculture just opened their first own bar called Inside. A place where the tradition loving gay can go and have a cold malted beverage of choice. Despite the rabidly homophobic Bavarian Catholicism and the rustic macho posturing with all those massive moustaches and rough attire Bavarian cultural history has long been dominated by gay culture. It truly started with King Ludwig, followed by Bavaria's favorite TV actor Walter Sedlmayr (slain in a brutal murder that was made too look like a botched S&M orgy), Munich's couturier Rudolph Moshammer (slain by a gay hustler from Iraq - no, you can't make shit like that up), and the Prada shoe wearing Bavarian pope Benedict XVI. and his "private secretary" Georg Gänswein.

Smells Of New York

Great new service - the Gawker's New York City Subway Smell Map. Click on any station and read vivid descriptions of the fumes and odors to be found there. Hardly any outter borough entries though. Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx gentrified to the point of odorlessness already? As if. Most poetic - Union Square. Reads like the Tourette version of Warhol's musings on the topic in "The Philosophy Of Andy Warhol:

When I’m walking around New York I’m always aware of the smells around me: the rubber mats in office buildings; upholstered seats in movie theaters; pizza; Orange Julius; espresso-garlic-oregano; burgers; dry cotton tee-shirts; neighborhood grocery stores; chic grocery stores; the hot dogs and sauerkraut carts; hardware store smell; stationery store smell; souvlaki; the leather and rugs at Dunhill, Mark Cross, Gucci; the Moroccan-tanned leather on the street-racks; new magazines, back-issue magazines; typewriter stores; Chinese import stores (the mildew from the freighter); India import stores; Japanese import stores; record stores; health food stores; soda-fountain drugstores; cut-rate drugstores; barber shops; beauty parlors; delicatessens; lumber yards; the wood chairs and tables in the N.Y. Public Library; the donuts, pretzels, gum, and grape soda in the subways; kitchen appliance departments; photo labs; shoe stores; bicicle stores; the paper and printing inks in Scribner’s, Brentano’s, Doubleday’s, Rizzoli, Marboro, Bookmasters, Barnes & Nobel; shoe-shine stands; grease-batter; hair pomade; the good cheap candy smell in the front of Woolworth’s and the dry goods smell in the back; the horses by the Plaza Hotel; bus and truck exhaust; architects’ blueprints; cumin, fenugreek, soy sauce, cinnamon; fried plantanos; the train tracks in Grand Central Station; the banana smell of dry cleaners; exhausts from apartment house laundry rooms; East Side bars (creams); West Side bars (sweat); newspaper stands; record stores; fruit stands in all the different seasons—strawberry, watermelon, plum, peach, kiwi, cherry, Concord grape, tangerine, murcot, pineapple, apple—and I love the way the smell of each fruit gets into the rough wood of the crates and into the tissue-paper wrappings.

El Cantante

If you read the reviews of J.Lo's and Marc Anthony's Hector Lavoe biopic "El Cantante" is a stinker about to surpass Mariah Carey's "Glitter". Great side effect of the movie's release is a massive influx of Lavoe bootlegs on the web in recent days. Album blog "The Sun Of Latin Music" for example uploaded the complete Hector Lavoe discography both with Wili Colon and solo, which hasn't been available for years. There's also many an unearthed video on YouTube. One of the best is an appearance of Lavoe with Tito Puente's band on some Venezuelan TV show doing a great version of his signature song "El Cantante". There's a yet unbespectled young Lavoe performing with Wilie Colón, footage from a Fania show at the Cheetah in 1973 and a great rendition of Juanito Alimaña in front of a Keith Haring mural, which looks fairly familiar. And then there's the bio from the Spanish E! channel, which is pretty comprehensive.

Call A Glacier

Ran into Kalle Laar who's done this sound installation for the Venice Biennal called Call A Glacier. He teamed up with the Commission for Glaciology at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and put a microphone onto the Vernagtferner glacier in the Ötztal Alps. So now, if you call

+49 - 89 - 3791 4058

you can hear the glacier melting. Rather noisy. Because it's melting. Fast.

Summer Hit (2002)

I always liked watching CMT and GAC for their broad range of earnest blue collar emotions wrapped in pedal steel driven softrock. In any given ten minute segment there's always plenty of sorrow and anger, loss and despair, an unusual class conciousness and that fervent sense of patriotism walking the fine line between rabid nationalism ( Toby Keith , Clint Black , Darryl Worley) and rebellious salt-of-the-earth-nostalgia ( Gretchen Wilson , Sammy Kershaw , and of course Montgomery Gentry's "My Town" above). White hinterland America always seems like a strangely sad, but proud place in those videos.

I always missed this kind of blue collar pride over here. Especially in Munich of course, since there's not much of a blue collar population in Beamer town, where teenagers go golfing and senior citizens drive Porsches. But I got a taste of local patriotism, when I made the mistake of writing the town of Augsburg up as a "Kleinstadt", which means smalltown. Haven't had hate mail rain on me that much in a while. Well, when I looked up the stats, they got 263.477 inhabitants, which doesn't really make it a city. But then I was lectured that anything above a population of 100 K is considered a big city around here. Which is actually based on definitions set by the International Conference of Statistics in the year 1887. Well you know what Augsburg? A few things changed since then. Women are allowed to vote now, vehicles powered by combustion engine are the preferred mode of transportation and the Germans lost the war. Twice. These days a big city is anything above a million. And you should have some urban features like variations in cultural and demographic makeup or at least a skyline. So Munich may not apply either.

No Reverse

Here's a link that gives a good boost to New York nostalgia (lifted from MF's comment): Funkmaster Flex' 4th of July broadcast on Hot 97. Five hours of pure old school Independence Day. Makes you go back to The Roxy, Milky Way, Hotel Amazone and of course Big House. In that '78 T-Bird with no reverse of course.

Simpsonize Me

Fred simpsonized me. With a rather brillant useless web application on the Simpsons Movie website, which is fueling the current Simpsons fever. And yes, I'll go see that movie. Even though we managed to drop out of the movies and enter the DVD cycle, having missed two whole seasons due to moving and other things.
Talking about moving - the second batch of New York City returnees is about to arrive. Sookie and Johan are boarding their Goeteborg flight any miunte now. Reading Sookie's farewell blog about all those farewell parties is inducing serious pangs of New York nostalgia though. Amplified by news that essential personnel from that blog is going to Sandy Hook tomorrow. But hey, we got seventysomething lakes and a mountain range that can take on the Rockies anytime. C'mon New York. Try us.

Prejudice (Joys Of Summer)

The next sequel of "Rush Hour" takes place in Paris, and since the whole series is driven by prejudice, it takes the trailer about five seconds to feature the first smelly-French-joke. Another riff on Europeans lax relations to personal hygiene can be seen in the Simpsons Movie trailer. Of course every prejudice has it's kernel of truth. Although in this case it's more a whole sheaf. If you'd ever taken a morning tram in Munich at the current height of summer mugginess you'd know what we're talking about. Sure tests your gag reflexes. Even at the office some visitors leave persistent trails of butyric acid behind that will linger on for the day. And deodorants don't make it better. Most local brands have the tendency to just float a cheap flowery scent on top of the wafts of perspiration, which can even make sitting in an open air cafe a challenge.

Well, troubled summer hygiene is only topped by European standards of dental esthetics. I'm not talking about the average man on the street. You'd think people who regularily go on TV would invest in some corrective work. Not so. Last night the almost chancellor Rudolf Scharping was on TV sporting a rack of crooked yellow stumps he obviously wasn't ashamed of for a second. But nobody can top our minister of the interior, whose dentals seem to be a memorial for the great famines of past centuries. Oh scurvy - sure can take a toll on your smile. Maybe they should produce a German version of the PSA in the post below.

Read A Book!

This might be one of the funniest PSAs in television's history - BET trying to piggyback dental hygiene, hydration, parental responsibilities onto their literacy campaign.

Europa

Gotta admit watching Michael Moore's Sicko had the desired effect and made me glad we moved back to Europe. Sure it's propagandistic satire and in the usual Michael Moores style not quite acurate. After the French applauded the film frenetically in Cannes, because they're protrayed as living in a health care paradise they sheepishly told our film critic, that it's not quite that phantastic. And German healtcare sure is a two-class, expensive mess. But it's not the anarchy of pure profit margin mentality either. Social services somehow aren't seen as collateral damage yet. Take yesterday's fire alarm a few blocks down, which made us for the first time believe that our tax Euros are at work. A whopping eleven fire department trucks and cars decked out with tons of modern technology were there in a matter of seconds , just to make sure it was a false alarm. That's what makes you feel safe, not a permanent state of Code Orange alarm. Now this entry is of course the classic "Michael Moore in lefty Europe"-effect, where people watch his films and read his books just to reinforce their anti-american stereotypes. Works everytime.

Summer Hit (1977)

Albert sure pulled it off to turn the Brecht Festival into his very own roundtable. With a touch of class reunion. Nobody wanted to leave. And most didn't, spending an impressively overheated weekend in Augsburg, staying up all night to see each other's readings and talks and later getting wasted at the Capitol. Did feel a bit like 1977, staying up all night to watch Rockpalast.

On The Road

Is "Fernweh" a Germanism yet? Should be. And if you want to experience some, go over to A Brooklynite on the ice, where the Brooklinite isn't on the ice anymore, but in the East African bush. Read his brillant pieceon Rwandaise highways. And make sure to remember his name as one of the best travel writers around.

Quite a different trip for me this weekend. Since Albert's festival for the 50th anniversary of Bert Brecht's passing in Augsburg was such a huge success, he's doing another one. Again he recruited each and every one of his friends to read, moderate or play music, so Augsburg's currently turning into Albert's personal party zone.

P.S.: Looked up Fernweh in Leo's Dictionary. They actually translate it with antoher Germanism - "Wanderlust". Which is so 19th century.

Summer Hit (1973)

You always come back to your first favorite records. So few get better than this. But he sure was stoned out of his mind.

Mindless Summer Fun

Now this is a holiday movie, because after a long Sunday on Sandy Hook, at the lake or some beer garden you do not want to burden your mind with character, plot or motivation. Bay, Spielberg and a whole lot of expensive CGI machinery will do just fine.

Bavarian Hubris

When did this constant urge to categorize the world in rankings, ratings and timelines start? It might as well be an outhgrowth of neoliberal thinking, since all rankings are based on a competitive marketplace, even if it's a marketplace of ideas (whoever came up with that term). So to feed that urge a Swiss filmmaker named Bernhard Weber started a web voting for the new seven wonders of the world. The winners were:

Chichén Itzá, Mexico, Christ Redeemer, Brazil, The Great Wall, China, Machu Picchu, Peru, Petra, Jordan, The Roman Colloseum, Italy and The Taj Mahal, India.

Funny enough the Bavarian castle of Neuschwanstein was amongst the 21 finalists, now the Bavarians are pissed they didn't make it. Quite self assured that hill tribe north of the Alps. What makes them think the feverish dream of a flaming gay monarch who was willing to drive his country into ruin for his architectural drag shows would be more than a symbol of corruption and hubris? Well, according to Deyan Sudjic's "The Edifice Complex" most spectacular architecture is.



Another great tool of categorizing are of course comparison charts. One of the biggest faves of this genre are city comparisons. Which could be also useful to explain to our American friends where we live now. Most German cities don't really compare to any US cities. You could cram them all into Manhattan though. In that case Frankfurt would be Manhattan below Canal (lots of banks, great river views and a bit of gentrified subculture), Berlin would be Manhattan between Delancey and 14th (that's easy), Cologne would be Chelsea (art galleries, down to earth gay subculture plus remnants of 80s clubbing), Düsseldorf the East Side between 57th and 86th (high income, high art and pretentious boredom). Hamburg's already off the Manhattan grid, being more of a Baltimore with legal prostitution. For Munich we couldn't come up with any comparisons for a while. But then we got it - it's Santa Barbara. Same mix of money, natural beauty, sports enthusiasm, intellectual vacuum and a strange sense of creepiness. Until everything changes into Daytona Beach during the weekend of course.

New York Nostalgia (4th of July Edition)

I always liked 4th of July with all it's pathos and sentimentality, the barbeques and fireworks and the radio playing cheesy Irving Berlin songs. After having lived in a city thriving on a passionate and infectious local patriotism, it's kind of strange to live in a place where people don't really feel at home in their own country. So to celebrate 4th of July in this land of denial and self hatred here's one of the greatest songs about aforementioned local patriotism. Full of pathos and sentimentality. Only topped by the man who still manages to bring tears to the eyes of grown firemen.

Summer Hit (This Year, French Version)

This is the coming summer hit for this year in France and possibly greater Europe including the Balearic isles. DJ duo Justice is one of the acts on Paris based label Ed Banger (like headbanger with a French accent, got it? Tell you, they're funny, those French), who got famous for their ecstatic parties. All sounds like the second coming of Daft Punk to me, who incidentially are on tour again and featured on Kanye West's new single, so I guess late 90s French Eurodisco's the revival du jour.

War

Hilarious mock commercial for a ficticious medication healing politicians' sagging ratings. It was produced by the Drug Policy Alliance who wants to remind us that there's another war that the US can't get out of.

Most Livable City In The World

Monocle magazine did a global quality of life survey. Number one most liveable city in the world: Munich!
Now Monocle is run by Tyler Brulee and his gang, the very people who brought you Wallpaper*, the bible of 90s style dogma . I wasn't really sure I'd care much about a survey named after Giuliani's campaign held by a bunch of homosexuals with a taste for expensive furniture. But then they got me. One of their criterias is local media and there they say: "The city's main newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, sells around 445,000 copies a day and is read nationally, and respected for its intelligent, liberal analysis." And there's also the paragraph talking about the general sense of quality starting with "the level of journalism in the city's main paper". Well, if you've mastered the art of flattery like this...

Fela

Fela's son Femi's gonna play Munich tomorrow. Not to be missed.
The Fela footage above was supposedly shot in 1971 by Ginger Baker, whose footage of Segun Bucknor & the Sweet Things found it's way onto YouTube as well.
Baker lived in Lagos for a while in the early 70s, running the first multitrack studio on the African continent. Eventually he formed his own band there, called Salt. There's some footage from a session, which makes you understand, why he loved it there so much.
Have I told the story about Paul McCartney's visit to Lagos yet? I'm sure I did, but here it is once more. Baker told it to me, when I visited him in the Mojave desert, where he lived being married to some young cocktail waitress who had never heard of Cream before. Anyway, when Baker lived in Lagos, Paul McCartney ant the Wings came and wanted to record their album "Band On The Run"at his studio. But EMI had just opened the second multitrack studio on the African continent in Lagos, so they called him up and after a few days at Baker's studio McCartney apologized and changed venue.
Baker didn't care much, but his good friend Fela thought otherwise. It was about four in the morning when McCartney called Baker in tears. The Nigerian National Guard, who was commanded by one of Fela's cousins, had stormed the EMI studios with guns and bayonets and demanded that the Wings return to Baker's studio, so Baker had to get over there and convince the grim soldiers to leave the Wings alone.

Brillance In Pandering

Even better than the Clintons' clumsy efforts in ironic pop culture references might be Barack Obama's new collection of ringtones, which you can sample right here on his site. Who is he pandering to? The mallrat demographic? The high school swing vote?

Munich Vibe

When Aggro Berlin came out with Rap from the Berlin projects, everybody got all uppity about the types of lyrics they couldn't really understand, when listening to PE, NWA, Snoop Dogg or Eminem. Performed in blunt German that ghetto realism sounded all a bit too real. Well, for every Ice Cube there was always a Puff Daddy, so now there's Aggro Gruenwald named after the millionaires' suburb in Munich's South. Their group's called "Stehkrägen", which is the word for polo shirt collars turned up. Their first single is "Eure Armut kotzt uns an" (Your poverty grosses us out), with a hookline going "Don't you have a father or mother who achieved smoething?". Might be just sarcasm and political incorrectnes, but they sure give a quite acurate picture of Munich, the town of young heirs with Porsches, international boarding school educations, golf handicaps and unlimited trust funds. Funny enough, German Vanity Fair presented them as a refreshing antidote to the social realness of Berlin gangstas without a hint of irony. Well, that magazine is run by a rabid neoliberal hardliner, so he probably found some ideological brethren in the cartoon characters of Aggro Gruenwald.

The Clintons

Awkward? Well, I'll take the Clintons' clumsy heartland humor anytime over the current administration's Kennebunkport cynicism. Although Hillary's musical taste surely has no redeeming qualities, as proven by her selection of a campaign song with the help of the general online public. And the winner is - Celine Dion? That's why nobody likes Hillary. Shameless, market researched opportunism.

6000 Years Ago

And you thought they were kidding.... Whilest on the subject - they just showed Jesus Camp on Austrian TV. Sure it's easy to get creeped out by those little American Christanoids. But things ain't all secular over either. Recently I found thes quote from our dear Bavarian Father. Last fall, Pope Benedict XVI stated clearly, at a conference at the Castel Gandolfo addressing the nature of evolution, "It is not yet the time to reconcile the two domains." And: "This is in the interest of regaining a dimension of reason, which we have lost." Now it turns out the backlash's been going a bit longer. Ralph Boent, novelist and former physicist with a license to run particle accelerators, told me that the last pope told a scientist colleague of his that all those great discoveries of physcis are just great, if they would just please let that big bang stuff alone.

New York Nostalgia

New York's always been a city torn between nostalgia and frenzy, so any visit will be just like that. Took about half a minute to feel home again. And although Mr. Lou Reed and I might differ on the exact definition of a perfect day, those eight were sure right up there. It was nice and breezy days in Red Hook, Bluegrass sessions at Sunny's, soup dumplings at the New Green Bo, Pupusas and Huaraches at the ballfields (see who's volving down Pupusas in the video) and a burger at the Odeon. It was training with David, sparring with Charlie and seeing the Zab Judah/Miguel Cotto fight at a sports bar full of fans from Brownsville and Puerto Rico.



All crowned by a New Jersey sunset on Kara's Brooklyn roof, making the perfect background fro a jumbo shrimp barbeque and an argument about who was the greatest singer of all times. Rich bets on Ismael Rivera (Arsenio Rodriguez thought so too), I'll go with Hector Lavoe (J-Lo agrees, which admittedly ain't quite such a weighty argument). And if Lavoe's best song was "El Cantante" for it's epic range or "Periodico De Ayer" for it's bittersweet cynicism. We must've sounded like two old geezers sitting on a Brooklyn stoop arguing, if it was Sugar Ray Robinson or Muhammad Ali who was the greatest of all times and if Ali's most shining moment was against Liston or Foreman. And of course the dispute was never settled.

(Woop Woop) That's Da Sound Of Da Police

It's mostly sounds and smells that instantly make you feel home again. The classic wail of a NYPD squad car for example. New York cops have a whole set of sirens to choose from. There's the yelp and the manual Woop Woop, which was immortalized by KRS One with a song that all through the summer of '93 had every kid in the neighborhood imitate the siren chorus. There's the priority siren, which has a definite electro-boogie flavor to it, the European sounding Hi-Lo and the penetrating airhorn, which will clear any gridlocked intersection in a matter of seconds. With the right operator a New York squad car can sound like Miles Davis' band circa 'Dark Magus'/'Agartha'.

Just now the NYPD announced it will add another sound to their repertoire - the rumbler. Just tested, it makes the area surrounding the squad car shake with heavy bass sounds. That's about as hip as a police department can get.

Listen to or download the:

wail

yelp

priority siren

Hi-Lo

airhorn

Woop Woop

rumbler

Adverstising For Myself

Hung out with John Brockman for a long lunch. Always impressive, how connected he is (well, he started the A-list networking early, as proven by the 1967 picture above). John filled me in on all the latest advances the forces of faith made in the States (candidate hopeful and evolution denier Senator Sam Brownback given space on the New York times op-ed pages followed by an op-ed by none other than the creationist Discovery Institute in the Times owned Boston Globe ).

And there's of course the advertising for myself - I've got a story in John Brockman's online magazine Edge.

ThisYear's Summer Hit

More mainstream than 'Kick, Push, Coast', not as easily accessible as 'Crazy', but currently heard on street corners in Lower Manhattan, South Brooklyn, Outer Queens and the Boogie Down Bronx.

I Love The Smell Of Tear Gas In The Morning

Supposedly the black block was 3.000 deep in yesterday's G8 protest that escalated into an outright Battle of Rostock. That's quite a step up from the 30 followers of John Zerzan who started the Battle of Seattle eight years ago.

I guess this would be the time now to read up on neo-primitivists Zerzan and Kaczynski, throw in some Lewis Mumford, some Otto Reich and there we go. Although I suspect that reading's not so high on the Black Block's to do list.