Thanks to Mike (well, Mike’s blog) for clueing me in on this “caberet punk” band from Boston. What? That’s what they call themselves. They’ve just released a record of B-sides and unreleased songs that, unlike most b-side comps, actually come off more accessible than their official recordings. This rattling Brechtian jam is even more explosive [...]

Well, how do you like that? “I’m not happy to hear that at all—REALLY,” Yuhang says, glaring at me as if to say “Your side might have won this round, but you people will soon have your day of reckoning.” Hitler banned smoking, too, I half-heartedly remind her, not awake enough this morning to use [...]

It’s out here on August 21 — weeks after UK, Korea and France. Pourquoi?
(pie chart via)

German police officers are mistaken for strippers
No one had ordered strippers for the 30th birthday party — but the two policemen who arrived after midnight to quiet the raucous celebration found themselves greeted by a round of applause. Female partygoers in western Germany mistook the real-life officers for fake ones who entertain parties by peeling [...]

Natch: Nas - Black President
Extra credit: Sam Cooke - Change Gonna Come

It was worth swilling expensive beer and slow-mo bumping-and-grinding through security lines to get within 30 meters (that’s 30 yards) of the Großer Stern—the base of the Victory Column rather than an object “beside” the column as some of the wires had it last week. Just a few bodies from the security tent (almost there!) [...]

I expected movie critics to take to the new Abba-scored jukebox musical Mama Mia! like hyenas to a crippled gazelle, but I didn’t expect the fun in reading about its horribleness to match the purported fun of the film itself. The best eviscerator in the biz, Anthony Lane at the NYer, describes what must be [...]

Over the din of a standing dinner party last night describing one of the happy coincidences of having been in Berlin, Germany over the Bush years instead of Princeton, New Jersey was a bit of pride I had to be out of the States at the time—as if not being geographically connected to my country [...]

Gotcha! No, but seriously, despite word from Team Obama on Monday that the non-gate location in Berlin would be selected in the next two days, there has been nary a peep. Meanwhile, speculation runs amok: add to the list of possible sites Rote Rathaus and Siegessäule. At least now we know for sure he’ll be [...]

DFA Records’ newest discopunk babies Hercules & Love Affair (with their smash Blind) are playing Lido. I have no idea how they are live, but they are the new hotness, so if you’re reading this on your Macbook in the Luzia bar on O-strasse, you probably wanna be there.
Also, where I would be tonight if [...]

Last night, in a midnight post-Hulk taxi ride from Potsdamer Platz eastward to Moritzplatz, we passed the Bundesdruckerei building on Kochstrasse, which I at first tried to tell my friends was the Axel-Springer building, in actuality the building that comes before the Druckerei. Anyway, this headline leapt out at me this morning, having learned just [...]

Now at the artist-run Pool Gallery in Mitte (Tucholskystrasse 38) self-described street kid Alex Flach presents some skewed shots of Berliners from his new book Berlin Calling (get it?).

Last month during the Fete de la Musique I had the good fortune to stumble across this Hamburg reggae collective jamming on Oranienplatz just behind Kuchen Kaiser. By the end of the two-hour show, the some 200 people who gathered around were screaming ZUGABE! ZUGAGE! They’re akin to Berlin’s Seeed crossed with Hamburg’s Deichkind, they [...]

JFK, while becoming president the same year the Berlin Wall was built (1961), did not in fact hold his 1963 Ich bin ein Berliner speech in front of the wall. He declared himself a jelly donut one district south of Mitte at Rathaus (city hall) Schöneberg. I just wanted to clear that up, because I [...]

OK, so, it’s that time again—grade school comedy hour. If comic demi-genius Mike Myers can revive the what’s the capital of Thailand? / bang-cock! joke in the Love Guru, what can I say? With everyone fighting about Obama, whether its Berlin Federal scrapping with Berlin Municipal about where he deserves to speak or what Jesse [...]

Confirmed today by Roger Cohen in the NYT in one of those increasingly popular and increasingly annoying “what he should say” op-eds. And! as previously speculated here, Obama will be holding forth a super symbolic speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate at the start of his European tour, which also features stops in Paris [...]

This one goes out to the kids at Stammtisch — when you care enough to cook the very illest. (Warning to parents and Sunday school teachers: harsh language, f-bombs and such.)

Yesterday was Germany’s hottest day so far this year (today’s storming, flooding and general mugginess notwithstanding).
Grandaddy - Summer Here Kids
Berlin.unlike has some good tips where to spend this hot wet summer.

source: Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, created by Der Tagesspiegel / Kroupa
Every fourth Berliner is an immigrant or a child of non-German immigrants, the Tagesspiegel reported yesterday. Grouped by district, notably, Mitte has the most with 44.5%, not Kreuzberg or Neukölln, despite dense pockets of immigrant areas like Oranienplatz (represent) with 65.2%. Extra points for appropriate [...]

Silly me, I thought White House designs on Iran were dead in the water after the CIA had the nerve to release a real and undoctored intelligence report stating that Iran had no intent of building a nuclear weapon, neutralizing neocon claims to the contrary. I also thought Seymour Hersh at the New Yorker, whose [...]