On June 22, 2004, the 9/11 Commision Report was published by a bi-partisan committe of members of the US Congress.
Exhaustive and unbiased in intent (debatable), it graded the reaction to the September 11 attacks and complied a narrative leading up to the event and chronicled the aftermath based on interviews with 1,200 people in 10 [...]

One of Berlin’s certifiably dopest DJs, Jah Fish, is celebrating his birthday today. This cat is like B-town’s answer to J-Dilla and Hi-Tek rolled into one (or supm). Somehow he managed to work in a stint in Cape Town, SA for a coupla months, drop some funk on those fools, move to back to Kreuzberg, [...]

If I happen to somehow find myself in New York this December (prolly not) I think I would be most definitely standing in line for this one. P-fork reports that Lou Reed (Velvet Underground, hello?) is performing his wonderfully tragic (sometimes terrifying) album, Berlin, live (and theatrically) for the first time at St. Ann’s Warehouse. [...]

Wi11iam at squirm points out a spate of swastikas popping up in the media, one at a Nazi-themed eatery (!) in India and another mounted and topped by an eagle on a sunken battleship off the coast of Uruguay. The recovery of the latter, the pride of the Nazi Navy Graf Spree, would not be [...]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7LNXTGbWiU8
I know it’s been a coupla weeks now since Joseph Hill passed, but this is a great video (and I’m kinda busy). Jah much praise, one love.

It’s raining.
Things were just fine when I woke up this morning–admired the slowly improving apartment and the fruits of our labors yesterday moving furniture back and forth across the city. [I also wanna make a shout-out to my cousin Aaron Perry who got married yesterday in California. Here's to you, kids. Wishin y'all the absolute [...]

Tonight (circa 21:00) and tomorrow (for the Lange Nacht der Museen), some loosely affliliated Californian (expat and imported) and Berliner groove-hop luminaries are putting on shows that you should be ashamed to miss. So, like, don’t.

My colleague, Tibor, showed me a site called german-bash. Network gamers submit their favorite excerpts from in-play chat sessions. The best are usually profane and/or hilarious. And, of course, a lot of the nouns are not capitalised like they should be in proper German, but you know how the kids are these days. Of the [...]

Jamaican reggae star Joseph Hill has died in Berlin — midway through the European tour of his roots reggae band, Culture. Hill’s daughter, Andrea, told Pollstar her 57-year-old father suddenly became ill and died Saturday. The cause of death was not yet known. Culture’s representatives told Pollstar the band will continue its tour with Hill’s [...]

Berlin bloggers have been noticing a new kind of automat popping up at S-bahn stations all over the city, mainly on the Southwest Ringbahn, like at Westkreuz, Innsbrucker Platz and Bundesplatz, where I saw the McCain vending machine (and snapped a photo) for the first time about two weeks ago.
Last night I was waiting for [...]

Hey, if you haven’t seen Snakes on a Plane yet (nor have I), at least you’ve seen a portly hippie* strum along to a strangely moving cover of Outkast’s Hey Ya.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ioKEDgnfs8[/video]
After hearing the new record, Idlewind, which sounds more soul-pop than hip-hop, this dude’s take on the ‘Kast seems all the more appropriate.
I had a [...]

Salon has a piece today on literature about Berlin (as part of its Travel Channel Literary Guide to the World) that name-checks Alfred Döblin (and The Hoff). Döblin’s Berlin-Alexanderplatz is a must-read (so I’ve been hearing, like forever).
Alfred Döblin’s neglected 1929 masterpiece “Berlin Alexanderplatz” — the greatest book about the city — delves deeper into [...]

Jin has re-emerged in the underground and fired off a new mixtape (officially August 29, but hey).

Word is, now set free from bling-bling requirements, he’s sounding rather street and rather nice. Also, there’s a track with a title that surely looks like a Jay-Z diss at first glance but is apparently not (it’s more like [...]

[listening to: The Roots - Game Theory]
I’m surprised that they haven’t blogged the bejesus out of this yet (technorati says no), but this kind of kool you just can’t pass up. The fact that I first take notice of something located only ten minutes from my house (by foot) in a page from a Hong [...]

I like what I’m seeing this morning on the scenus globus (fake Latin, btw). Have you peeped Cars, the newish Pixar movie? It boasts a couple laugh-out-loud physical gags. And a friendship between a hick* and city-slicker. (The good-hearted but unknowingly-ignorant-arrogant city-slicker learns eventually that those country folk aren’t so stupid after all. But, yeah, [...]

AKA, screw you, traditional industry. First there was broke but sexy, now this. Up for re-election in about a month, Klaus Wowereit, mayor of Germany’s capital city and ‘only metropolis’, says forget manufacturing. Berlin needs to keep going post-industrial and not stop until he says so (ok, that last part was mine):
Our future-oriented business areas [...]

Wow, this is a stunner. (And I thought Jay-Z touring the world to promote Water Crisis Awareness was a curveball.) Nobel luminary and tireless war critic, Günter Grass, now 78, who I tagged as the conciousness of the nation in May, confessed yesterday* that he worked for Hitler’s Waffen-SS between 1944 and 1945. Damn.
Can’t [...]

Listening: Black Sabbath (natch) - Paranoid
Somewhat random I concede, but there’s just something fascinating about these tiny houses:

approx. dimensions 75 ft2, 7’ x 13’ x 11’ (4000 lbs)
Because its dimensions are well within the legal limits for travel on U.S. roadways, the XS-House can be taken almost anywhere. The porch and awning fold up [...]

Apologies for the exaggerated title, but I am seriously not down wid da ‘brandt. And I consider myself a pretty keen art appreciator (FYI, top three faves = Picasso, Rodin and Warhol). I’m guessing that my ignorance of his historical context has a lot to do with it, but what the critics call lively, vibrant [...]

Ahh, don’t ya love the internet, the only way I can delight in local Ohio politics over a cup of coffee here across the Atlantic. It is with no small amount of pleasure that a learn this morning of representative Bob Ney’s withdrawl from midterm elections. I guess being named by corrupt-and-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff [...]