Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Return of Lo Fi

In the dusty cobwebs of childhood memory I recall first hearing the term ‘hi fi.’ The audio buzz was circulating around the schoolyard, kids talking about their parents’ new ‘hi fi stereo systems.’ Some rich kids, no doubt. High fidelity stereos were not cheap. Most kids’ parents had shitty mono systems with shitty mono records playing at home. But the buzz was in the air and everyone wanted to hear the hi fi. One day a kid captured a bee in a school lunch milk carton and ran up to me and shook it up, pressing it to my ear. The bee buzzed and thumped against the inside of the milk carton angrily as the kid yelled ‘TRAN ZIS TOE RADIO!’ He was no doubt a poor white trash kid like me who was inventive out of necessity; mother didn’t own a hi fi.

In the dusty columns of the Berlin U bahn the kids run around with their mobile phones blasting lo fi mono noise in what appears to be technology gone full circle. Mobile phones are the ‘in’ device for today’s crack smoking yoots. The damn things have radios and tiny speakers in addition to cameras and internet. But rather than spend 300 EURO on a decent ghetto blaster to hoist proudly on their shoulders to share their noise pollution, they buy a mobile phone and blast their hideous music at full volume through the tiniest speaker known to man. I remember the good old days when the yoots would pollute our fair air with bumping, thumping hip hop cooked up in low riding trucks and slung through 1000 watt speakers into the night air. Actually, that is a bit of an understatement. It KICKED through the metal side panels and rattled rivets and screws of the body of whatever poor Nissan or Toyota mule bore the huge musical burden. And they shook the cars next to them. The police issued tickets for noise pollution. Those were the days.
Now BVG (Berlin public transport) has signs on the U bahn trains. The signs feature a cartoon woman who looks like she ran off the set of ‘Run Lola Run’ directly into the unemployment office. With her official uniform, shock red hair and exasperated look, she touts a different message in each sign; such pearls of wisdom as ‘the seats are not garbage dumps,’ ‘don’t eat on the train,’ or ‘travel only with a valid ticket.’ Common sense shit for the white trash of Berlin (and there is a LOT of white trash in Berlin; hmm, subject for future blogs and/or government study money/cash cow). My favorite of all of Lola’s Ten Commandments has to be ‘Ein handy ist kein lautsprecher,’ or ‘a mobile phone is not a loudspeaker.’ Clearly this was meant for those unfortunate yoots whose parents saddled them with a mobile phone rather than a mini hi fi system with headphones. And they are everywhere, sitting and giggling and spazzing out with some dumbass drivel like Whitney Spears blasting through the tiny speakers of the mobile phones clutched in their sweaty, pimply hands. Usually it’s one phone per group of 6 yoots. Poor bastards.

One of the joys of getting older is complaining about the miserable, uncouth youth of today. I don’t do that. Instead I pity them. They gather in small circles with their single shitty speaker and socialize in U bahn trains. “Why in my day….” I pumped up the volume in my $500 car with the $2000 hi fi stereo. Sometimes I even curled up in the back seat with a babe and a beer. Those were the days. The yoots of today? Poor bastards.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

I KNEW Angie Was a Donut Muncher...


A picture of Chancellor Angela Merkel munching carpet a donut.
I always thought the lady was a bit 'special.'
Her first American donut.  I'm sure she's old enough to remember Kennedy's donut speech and I'm glad it made an impression on her.  It was especially diplomatic of her to realize that Amerikaner donuts beat the SCHEISE out of Berliners. I'm coming to grips with that, slowly.

I will wax poetic (non faggy) when I've gone out and munched a Berliner on Monday morning.

"Always start yer fucking week with a donut."
--Dunkin' Berliner

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

PIMP MY DOG

Well, it’s actually my girlfriend’s dog, but as a gift to her, I would like to present her pooch in cyberspace with the intention of Pimping the Dog. And when I say ‘Pimp My Dog’ I don’t mean it in the sense of Pimp My Ride or Pimp My Bride. If we were to add a different word to the phrase to make it more accessible to the Ebonically challenged and the Super Honky, I would say this:



I do not want to pimp my dog UP, i.e., dress him up in bling bling and loud purple fur clothing.



I would like to pimp my dog OUT, i.e. get him LAID. Soon.


My girlfriend is so desperate to get her dog some bitch booty that she is ready to PAY some dog prostitution firm (pet whorehouse) in the Czech Republic up to 100 EUROS to get her doggie laid. There was no use trying to tell her that humans get laid in Prague for less. It’s a losing argument. The dog must get laid. Period. The nightmares are starting. I just had one the other night, wherein the dog in question was so desperate that he was anally raping another male dog while my girlfriend and her brother held the poor ‘catcher’ down and cheered the ‘pitcher’ on with loud, colorful Czech swearing. I felt bad for the both of the poor little bastards. So if you would like to save our dog from the kind of sexual repression seen only in the worst case scenarios of the Catholic priesthood, please help us pimp out this dog.

‘So why don’t you just take the dog to the park and let him run free and let nature take its course?’ you might ask. Well, this poor little old doggie is pushing 10 years old. And he’s a Czech dog. And as a recent immigrant to the land of Big Bad Nazi Dogs and their pathetic little weasel owners (who let their dogs run free to attack anything and everything), our poor little doggie has already been attacked three times. Once he was bitten so badly that he had to go to the vet and get stitches. So we are just a wee bit leery of letting the local German Shepherds take a bite of our little sausage dog. I can fully understand the dog’s dilemma. A few weeks ago I was attacked by a random Turkish yoot on a U bahn train. To this day I find my weekly kebab to have a slightly sour taste.

      HUNDCHEN:
NAME: Black (because black is IN, baby!)
WEIGHT: 10 kilos
AGE: Gettin’ pretty fuckin’ old
BREED: Mix of Daschund and Doberman
STAR SIGN: What are you, a fucking HIPPY?
LIKES: Neck and chest rubs, long moonlit walks in the park, begging for food, white bitches
DISLIKES: Large male German dogs, cops (which is so COOL), being cooped up in the flat



How can you RESIST this little HUNDCHEN???  If you have a dog you would like to parade in front of this bad black pimpalicious specimen of canine pimpitude, please add a comment with some pix of the bitch and Black will be happy to respond.

Pooch pics by Gabriela Sarževska; purple pimp dog photo 'borrowed.'