Bush’s War, a new 2-part documentary by Frontline on PBS (the US public broadcasting channel) is now completely viewable online, as are the other mostly excellent Frontline reports, the closest thing I can think of to rival the BBC in terms of quality journalism television. It doesn’t spare the damning human detail either. Tony Perry [...]
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 28, 2008 at 17:56 and categorized under Food, History, Television, USA, War.
And I thought Berlin was full of Trabis. (outside the Budapest Fine Arts Museum)
This post (currently with
2 comments) was created on March 27, 2008 at 0:56 and categorized under Europa, Found, History, Street, Travel.
While in Budapest, my boy Albi played this beguiling record several times, one that I couldn’t categorize for the life of me. And I’m not even gonna try. There’s some dub in there, some eastern Europe samples, some reggae jive, pleasing chill vocals, all smoothed over with traditional-sounding veneer. But I’ll be damned if I [...]
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 26, 2008 at 16:10 and categorized under Europa, Food, Travel, Tuna.
Yesterday Yuhang and I returned to surprisingly sunny Berlin after five days of vernal equinox holiday (Easter) in the Hungarian capital. And my gracious me what a whopping wildebeast of a wunderbar city that is. Details forthcoming. In the meantime here are some rather random photos to enjoy.
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 25, 2008 at 17:42 and categorized under Europa, Travel.
Not sure why Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story bombed so bad. Admittedly “Johnny Cash biographical spoof” doesn’t fit easily into any category or target audience, so that could be one reason, but if it’s any consolation, it’ll likely go on to cult film land a la The Big Lebowski.
Walk Hard - All-Star Version feat [...]
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 20, 2008 at 12:42 and categorized under Film, Hip-hop, Music, Tuna.
That’s a Black Sabbath song about cocaine. And a fitting soundtrack for today when sunny blue skies get replaced by gray skies and swirling waves of white flakes—and back again—within the half hour. Craziness. Currently, it looks like one of those baseball-size glass balls on a wooden pedastal with a pastoral scene inside you can [...]
This post (currently with
5 comments) was created on March 19, 2008 at 16:45 and categorized under Berlin, Music, Weather.
Paul Constant, who worked for eight years at an independent bookstore in Seattle, once peeped a handwritten list of authors of books a would-be shoplifter was enlisted to steal:
1. Charles Bukowski
2. Jim Thompson
3. Philip K. Dick
4. William S. Burroughs
5. Any Graphic Novel
The list of popular books is surprisingly static, although newer artists have earned their [...]
This post (currently with
one comment) was created on March 18, 2008 at 18:40 and categorized under Literature.
At a cafe in Copenhagen this weekend I saw a flyer for a WMF-related project called Burning Panda, which because my Danish begins and ends with smørrebrød, I didn’t even vaguely understand. The monolingual web site was no help either. But one thing is for sure: that panda is straight gangsta.
This post (currently with
3 comments) was created on March 18, 2008 at 18:19 and categorized under Hip-hop, Protest, Random, Street, Travel.
Snoop Dogg does a countryfied tribute to Johnny Cash—a “true American gangster”—featuring Everlast on guitar, and by golly it works, too. This would be pill-popping Outlaw Cash of the early sixties we’re talking about here. Man, those were some crazy times—I’m told.
Snoop Dogg - My Medicine
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 14, 2008 at 14:48 and categorized under Hip-hop, Music, Tuna.
On the back sleeve of her new book about the fascinating bastardisation Chinese-American food, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, author J.8.L. explains that ‘8′ connotes prosperity in Chinese. Ever since I read her essay on the non-Chinese origins of the fortune cookie in the NYT in January and thought, wow, having a number as a middle [...]
This post (currently with
one comment) was created on March 13, 2008 at 22:52 and categorized under China, Food, History, Video.
I know this is late but I just noticed it today. The Keebler elf-looking mofo who runs the privacy-raping community site Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg (and whose last name means ’sugar mountain’ in German), got mob-ruled at an interview last Sunday at South by Southwest. The crowd, expecting a stimulating interview and getting a pointless corporate [...]
This post (currently with
one comment) was created on March 12, 2008 at 16:02 and categorized under Capitalism, Random.
Wow. Remember seeing Tom Cruise in Minority Report flip through pages of virtual panels and thinking, damn, that does look like the operating system I’d like to use in the future!? Well this extension PicLens is sort of like that. Install the plug-in. Restart Firefox (or Safari or what have you). Open an image-holding page [...]
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 11, 2008 at 16:44 and categorized under Film, Found, Geek.
Spotted yesterday at U-bahnhof Jannowitzbrücke.
This post (currently with
6 comments) was created on March 6, 2008 at 21:58 and categorized under Berlin, Mitte, Protest, Street.
Swedish thrash supergroup Disfear recently became Swedish-American thrash supergroup Disfear with the addition of the guitarist from Converge, the hardcore sons of Salem (Massachusetts). There’s a lot to love on the new record, Live the Storm, but this might be the one I love the most. They know when to stop and when to go. [...]
This post (currently with
4 comments) was created on March 6, 2008 at 21:55 and categorized under Anarchy, Music, Protest, Punk, Sweden, Tuna, USA.
Shiver me timbers, Hillary won the Buckeye State. (I’ve gotta give some equal time here anyway, feeling guilty for my ‘Hilldog’ title below—some things you see on South Park just stick whether you want them to or not.)
She’s galvanized here, fresh from her three-way victory, backed by a raging, banner-waving crowd of Ohioans (double shiver). [...]
This post (currently with
no comments) was created on March 5, 2008 at 12:31 and categorized under Ohio, Politics, Television, USA, Video, War, Zombie.
This is beautiful. Once upon a time, a hillbilly named Donald Ray Pollock, a truck driver for the Chillicothe Paper Mill (known monolithically as “The Mead” when I was a kid) decided he was finished with the drinking and drugging and dead ends and made up his mind to do something with his godforsaken life. [...]
This post (currently with
one comment) was created on March 3, 2008 at 22:43 and categorized under Literature, Obama, Ohio, Writing.
This 5-minute NYT video, Bombing Berlin, makes all kinds of hyperbolic assertions about the city like, thanks to its graffiti artists, it may be the most colorful one in the world. That strikes me as borderline hilarious, the notion a bit of well-placed spray paint might offset the landscape of a city so grey it’s [...]
This post (currently with
6 comments) was created on March 1, 2008 at 22:13 and categorized under Art, Berlin, Film, Flashback, Hip-hop, History, Kreuzberg, Street, Video.
