Lexington at The Economist profiles the satire-meister in the current issue:
Republicans … tend to be flummoxed when Mr Colbert enthusiastically agrees with a point somewhat more extreme than the one they were making. Jack Kingston, a Republican from Georgia, complained about Democratic plans to make congressmen work a full five-day week in Washington. That would [...]
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 31, 2007 at 12:23 and categorized under Politics, Television.
I also can’t resist mentioning that Knut is featured on the cover of this month’s (week’s ?) Vanity Fair Germany (the second issue so far, I believe, in a magazine perhaps a bit lower brow than its American counterpart — middle-brow is not big here). Such is the mindless, moth-like nature of celebrity.
This post (currently with
5 comments) was created on March 30, 2007 at 21:52 and categorized under Berlin, Germany, Television, Video.
My friend Kelly Ann just told me about this dramatic (staged) reading by Karen Malpede, PROPHECY, taking place tomorrow at the English Theatre Berlin, in which she is participating. A timely topic; it looks to be intense:
March 31 / 8pm
New Political Plays II / Staged Reading
PROPHECY by Karen Malpede (USA) (Tickets 6.-, Sozialkarte 3 .-)
A [...]
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 30, 2007 at 17:43 and categorized under Berlin, Event, Literature, War, Writing.
OK, so I’m no less convinced that this summer’s Transformers the Movie will be anything approaching watchable or even tolerable, being that I’m over 12 and have already seen enough of Michael Bay’s explosion movies to last a lifetime, but I wouldn’t mind having one of these posters. Larger sizes here.
Plus: break-dancing Transformers [...]
This post (currently with
one comment) was created on March 30, 2007 at 15:41 and categorized under Film, Found, Geek, Technology, Video.
If anyone has been trying to call my mobile in the last three days and hasn’t been able to reach me, it’s because my phone is dead. The battery gave up the ghost and won’t charge any more. Plus, the phone itself is pretty crapped out anyway so I’m ditching it. If it was Old [...]
This post (currently with
2 comments) was created on March 30, 2007 at 14:29 and categorized under Life, Technology.
Catch that LCD Soundsystem reference? Never mind. On Tuesday night I saw this big-in-Berlin buzz band from Stockholm, by heart, play at the 103 in an absolutely packed room. I mean 400 people squishy packed, really packed, sweaty sardines packed. Did I mention it was packed?
— Nordic emoting: by heart @ Alexanderplatz, December 2006 —
They [...]
This post (currently with
one comment) was created on March 29, 2007 at 17:11 and categorized under Berlin, Event, Flashback, Music, Street, Sweden, UK.
Amanda Kludt manages to use the dreaded h-word about 10x too many in her recent Gridskipper overview of coolness enclaves in Berlin for Arty Hipsters:
The fall of the Wall rejuvenated Berlin’s hipster hives as the city’s young artists flocked to East Berlin’s rundown buildings for cheap or nonexistent rents. Like in the East Village of [...]
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 29, 2007 at 14:56 and categorized under Berlin, Communism, Film, Flashback, Found, Germany, Grammar, History, Street, Travel, Writing.
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Embryo gig, originally uploaded by bpx.
what the tiny words say (reprint of a review from the die tagezeitung):
TAZ 28.2.2006
Nein es geht nicht anders. Da muss man jetzt durch Wenn eine Band aber nun mal jede verflixte Mehrzweckhalle [...]
This post (currently with
2 comments) was created on March 28, 2007 at 16:44 and categorized under Berlin, Event, Found, Jazz, Krautrock, Kreuzberg, Music, Street, Wednesday.
Régine Debatty is my kind of European (and sometime Berliner). She quit an unfulfilling media job in Italy (having already studied in England and worked as a TV presenter in Spain and Belgium) and moved to Berlin, where she oversees one of the now-hottest art/culture blogs on the net, the maybe-it’s-ironic named We Make Money [...]
This post (currently with
2 comments) was created on March 28, 2007 at 14:46 and categorized under Art, Berlin, Europa, Exhibit, Food, France, Germany, Globalization, Italy, London, Podcast, Street, Television, Travel, UK.
First glancing the Berliner Zeitung RSS feed, I thought today’s “Die Niedliche ist tot” (”The Cutie is dead”) was referring to Knut and got a bit of a chill, considering the smark-alecky comment I left in my last Knut post. Turns out it was another bear, a panda named Yan Yan (Chinese for ‘beautiful’), that [...]
This post (currently with
7 comments) was created on March 27, 2007 at 10:51 and categorized under Berlin, Chicago, China, Downer, Russia, Television, Writing.
Despite originating from the hottest hotbed of euroskeptics, the level-headed BBC debunks a few of the more popular stories about EU bureaucracy, including the reputed outlawing of fire station poles to avoid potential pile-ups:
A European “safety directive” was accused in 2002 of forcing fire stations to abandon the poles the firefighters have traditionally used to [...]
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 26, 2007 at 17:36 and categorized under Berlin, Europa, Music, Tuna, UK.
The EU turned 50 years old today and Berlin was celebration central. The fireworks to commemorate the event, accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic performing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, were bombastic and soul stirring. It became all the more memorable thanks to some logistical oversights: those of us crowding near the gate were rained upon with [...]
This post (currently with
2 comments) was created on March 25, 2007 at 23:41 and categorized under Berlin, Europa, Event, Globalization, Music, Party, Video.
This Knut madness is getting, well, a bit mad. Every last TV station, tabloid, self-respecting newspaper, weekly mag, newstand display and online local paper (Berliner Zeitung, for example) is front-paging Knut, the baby polar bear whose life was rumoured to be in danger at the hands of animal rights activists! since he no longer had [...]
This post (currently with
3 comments) was created on March 24, 2007 at 15:18 and categorized under Berlin, Writing.
“Tousled and garrulous” James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem is writing a sporadic blog for the Guardian UK newspaper. Among other things, like fighting a war against capitalisation, he reveals that he has taken up ninjitsu (!) and is reading Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon. In a recent interview with Nate Chinen of the NYT [+ [...]
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 23, 2007 at 18:54 and categorized under Chicago, Grammar, Music, New York, Podcast, UK, USA, Writing.
Having visited last week with Yuhang and Pierre, I can fully vouch for the combined goodness and cheapness (I think they call that ‘value’) of Number 1, Wirtshaus Hasenheide, on this list compiled (untranslated — I’m busy, sorry, geez) by Elisabeth Heinze, who is described in this week’s Zitty magazine ESSEN & TRINKEN section as [...]
This post (currently with
one comment) was created on March 23, 2007 at 18:19 and categorized under Berlin, Food, Found, Kreuzberg, Life.
Wait, did it wander off somewhere and I didn’t notice? This week’s Der Spiegel cover story is all about Berlin’s return to a “Weltstadt” (leo says that means cosmopolitan city).
No, it’s pretty clear what the big red-trimmed megazine is blaring: the big picture. Berlin is back from the brink of ruin to its rightful place [...]
This post (currently with
4 comments) was created on March 22, 2007 at 18:40 and categorized under Berlin, Globalization, Grammar, History, Kreuzberg, New York, Ohio, Rant, Writing.
Maybe I did jinx it by calling the summer too early last week. The night sky is currently raining sheets of sloppy snow frisbees that glow in the street light and slush upon impact. Quite pretty actually, if also somewhat un-freakin-be-lievable. I arrived home with a head like a snow cone.
Since we’re talking about [...]
This post (currently with
3 comments) was created on March 21, 2007 at 23:46 and categorized under Berlin, Comics, Downer, Film, Politics, Science, Street, USA, Weather.
The final minutes of an extended breakdown on Yeah, which was truly transcendent even if it doesn’t all come through in this video (my first posting to Google Video, part 1 here). It is shocking how visceral this band is live. Now I know why they call it disco punk. One of the greatest [...]
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 21, 2007 at 9:30 and categorized under Berlin, Event, Music, New York, Punk, Video.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club—whose 2001 debut I fell in love with, though I haven’t honestly dug their output much since—will release their fourth rekkid of stripped down rock ‘n’ rollage on the first of May. Got that? Rebel. May Day. It’s packed to the gills with the kind of down and dirty beast groove that [...]
This post (currently with
one comment) was created on March 20, 2007 at 18:27 and categorized under Berlin, Music, Punk, Street, Tuna.
I have to take issue with film critic Matt Zoller Seitz of the New York Times who writes about the Danish film Adam’s Apples:
Smart-aleck comedy and spirituality aren’t incompatible, but in “Adam’s Apples” they cancel each other out. The film’s cutesy, misanthropic characterizations; Scorsese-style beatings; and bloody, comic gunplay announce, “People are deluded animals, God [...]
This post (currently with
one comment) was created on March 19, 2007 at 16:25 and categorized under Family, Film, Protest, Religion.
