Something rather intestering happened yesterday on the world’s stock markets (yes, I just said “stock markets” and “interesting” in the same sentence). Shanghai’s main index dropped by about 8.8% due to either/both a computer glitch and/or Chinese officials cracking down on over-speculation. Pronto, the rest of the world’s exchanges dropped like dominos and kept falling [...]

I got a chance to see Tre Hardson of the defunct Pharcyde and his very tight band play at the Bohannon club last week [photos]. Tre seems to be doing more of a Lenny Kravitz change-up these days and his guitarist sounds for all the world a true follower (and whammy bar jedi) of Jimmy [...]

Hasselhoff Endorses Nowitzki for MVP
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 18, 2007
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Dirk Nowitzki picked up another MVP endorsement Sunday night — from David Hasselhoff.
Hasselhoff, the well-traveled actor and German singing celebrity who’s currently starring in ”The Producers” at the Paris Las Vegas casino, was among the luminaries who walked the red carpet [...]

Beware Germany-based gmail adopters. If you sign up in Germany, you will be bait-and-switched by Google with the domain googlemail.com, not gmail.com. This is because a guy named Daniel Giersch who holds the trademark to G-mail has been in court battles with Google since 2004 to keep his exclusive rights, for which Google’s appeal was [...]

Na, toll. I’m not sure I can translate this 1-to-1 from German but it literally means “Oh, great” or “Well, great” and is always meant with ironic exasperation to point out a clearly non-great event—at best with eyes rolled and/or arms thrown upward—something you might say when you drop a cake or your car dies [...]

Gerd points to a new video portal site from Holtzbrinck (Tagespiegel, et al.) called WatchBerlin. In addition to user-posted fare, it also offers regular weekly features from at-the-desk or on-the-street reporters, including one by a cartoonishly spectacled Deutscher who calls himself Der Kulturterrorist. So far he has interviewed a man named Ali, aka the Mayor [...]

I know you didn’t expect it, but there’s a new club in Berlin - Mitte, Ruderclub. It’s located under the S-bahn tracks near Hackescher Markt. OK, I haven’t even been there, so I’m not 100% clear where it is either, but I’m going to check it out tonight @ the event called “Midnight Circus” — [...]

I was going to post Mother by Danzig as one of the greatest rawk songs ever, what Johnny Cash probably would have covered had he not done The Beast in Me and the perfect bar tune for my favourite Kreuzberg Kneipe, Franken (open daily 20:00 - 08:00).

  David Shrigley - The Jist
No, but then I came [...]

So we escaped the Berlin bubble on Saturday afternoon, caught a ride and travelled by car for two hours for some 125km westward to the city of Stendal in Saxony-Anhalt. Yuhang and I had been invited to celebrate Chinese New Year there with the students and faculty of her back-then German language school. Stendal is [...]

From a Greek radio station advert (ref: Mao Zedong, revered revolutionary leader of China, a la Gene Simmons, singer of the American glam rock band, Kiss)
“Tuya’s Wedding” (Tu ya de hun shi), a film directed by Wang Quan’an, won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale), which ended on Sunday. [...]

Happy Chinese New Year!
I just saw this, a review of the only hot pot restaurant in Berlin:
Hot Pot
Kollwitzstrasse 54
10405 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg
Tel: +49 (0)30 4404 8040
This cheerful Prenzlauer Berg restaurant adapts the Chinese tradition of the hotpot (where a large meal is prepared at the table in a communal pot) for squeamish local sensibilities. Each diner [...]

The fact that the trailer for a new movie starring Richard Gere as a writer (!) is full of bangs, whooshes and white light flashes makes Momus wonder in his newest Wired column if we are living in the Golden Age of Stupid Impact. And makes me wonder if he subconciously bit the title of [...]

Ever since this symbolism-writ-large work (Beijing 2008) by Chinese-Canadian painter Liu Yi (刘溢) was exhibited last March in New York, it has been something of an online parlor game–who is who and what are they up to? The setting is clear as next year’s Olympic games with the world gathering around the table for a [...]

Contrary to very popular belief, the Chinese New Year, which begins this Sunday, is not the auspicious year of the Golden Pig but rather the Fire Pig. Check the cycle yourself. Actually, the next Golden Pig Year, which is considered a very good time to spawn a lucky child, doesn’t roll around until 2031. Or [...]

Happy Valentino’s y’all. If you’re not with the one you love, then love the one you’re with—I think some hippies told me that a long time ago, or was it in a song? Anyway, here is a swingin’ tune from the 1960s in Germany delivered by one Heidi Bruehl. It’s all about finding a “new [...]

War veteran and Republican “moderate” presidential hopeful John McCain was in attendance at the 43rd annual Munich security conference this weekend where Vladimir Putin called out George Bush for making the world more dangerous. McCain made a statement afterwards to the effect that Russia would be ill-advised to “endanger” its partnership with the West, specifically [...]

OK, so this one is not ‘real’ geopolitics, but it’s not completely harmless either.
Barack Obama has been officially running for President for all of two days and he’s already calling people out. Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s recent dumbass assertion that Al Qaeda in Iraq should be “praying as many times as possible for a [...]

Isn’t underwriting from NPR and the Tagespiegel enough to keep berlinpaper.com going? Since February 2, there has not been a single new article on a page that used to have a couple fresh items every day. A feature on drug-dealing in Mitte’s Weinbergswegpark (headline: “Drugs”) has been sitting undisturbed for ten days. What gives? Did [...]

OFF THE NEW “RETURN OF THE MAC” MIXTAPE
ALSO: J.ROCC OF STONES THROW - NEW MIX: THANK YOU JAY DEE, ACT 2

Props to Interpol (the band). So, as of high noon yesterday, the electrons have returned to flow like a mountain stream through the wiring of my apartment. And it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fun but it was something that shook some cobwebs out of the house of cards that appears to be the inner [...]