A Rolling Donut Gathers No Moss

Dunkin' Berliner's Last Few Weeks In Berlin

The time has come. This is The End, my friend. Leaving Berlin. There, I've said it. I'm not the first and I'm not the last. Every year I proclaim This Is My Last Year and then I stay. Six and one half of them have come and gone. 1492 donuts have gone down my tubes (probably more, I don't really count) and I am none the wiser. Perhaps donuts aren't brain food after all. I'm waiting for the pendulums of science and medicine to swing in my favor, much in the way that in one decade they declared that chocolate and wine will kill you, then turn right on around and say the same killers will now feed your brain and libido and you will live and love long time. Science is a fickle bitch, so I wait for her to tell me to eat three donuts per day.

I haven't posted much recently because I saw The End coming and I was numb. Mostly from drinking wine and waiting for the veritas. Haven't found much. Gentrification sucks, as always, mainly because the rents go up and the wages do not. What was once a cheap, barren, sandy beach for feckless, creative nomads (like me) is now fertile soil for money trees. Trustafarians and hipsters take the places of the old guard. They are multiplying and growing to fuse into one large beardbeast. There are now even subgroups within the hipster underworld, the most hilarious of the bunch being dubbed Lumbersexuals. Those are the ones, usually German, who wear blue jeans, hiking boots and red plaid shirts in addition to the ubiquitous big black glasses and beards. I'm guessing that Lumbersexual is a mashup of lumberjack and metrosexual. Perhaps they were cut out of the Woody Allen Sexcapade film featuring the room with the man getting it on with a large rye bread. Perhaps the Lumbersexual was next door having rough sex with rough wood. Splinters are not for everyone (ouch). Bollox. I call them Lumberjackoffs.

The Bellevue Saints

Today I was riding through Berlin for several hours on S and U bahns doing my weekly photo job for a tour company. Every Friday morning between the hours of 10 and 11 in the Ay Em, The Saints get on the S7 at the Bellevue Station stop. You will know them by the trail of dead lyrics. A band of gypsies with a beatbox on a hand cart and 3 guys playing trumpet, saxophone and accordion launch into the worst version of When The Saints Go Marching In you will ever hear.

"AAAAAAAhhhh Win da sints

Gah Martian inn,

Aaaaaaaah win da sints

gaa Martian inn,

Uuhhhh wah wan

Beeeee end dat numm-zah

Win da sints gaaaaah Martian inn!

Evvy botty nah!"

Then they clap and dance and shake their fucking cups in your fucking face. JAY zus. In over one year of seeing the same fuckers doing the same fucking song on the same fucking S7, not one coin goes into the cup (nor do they learn the lyrics). People stare forward in apathy, even when the gnarly McD's soda cup is shaken so vigorously under numb chins that soda crust and tobacco lint fly with the coins. And they do not. Change. The tune. They play exactly one verse, badly, then get off at Tiergarten Station. When they venture too far from Bellevue, their halos begin to tarnish. The trains run back and forth. The broken record spins, hiccups, repeats, repeats, repeats...

If that ain't dedication I don't know what is.

Dueling Douchebags

In the crux of the tunnels under the Berlin streets the accordions squeeze filth through their flapholes. With the unholy mantra of the Bellevue Saints still echoing through my early morning brainfog, a new earworm wiggles through my auditory canals. Yes, you guessed it: Dunkin' Berliner hates accordions. Not because the accordion isn't a real instrument, not because they are only played by drunken gypsy polka rejects in the dark tunnels of Europe—but because they are simply the most cheesy instrument on the planet. Even the shitty plastic recorders played by first graders high on Cap'n Crunch don't hold a candle to this shit. In the dark annals of history, someone glued a tiny piano keyboard to a fucking bellows, handed it to a gypsy and said 'Go forth!' (read: get the fuck out of town!).

Two accordion players plied their sleazy/cheesy trade. What is worse than an accordion? Two. One played 'rhythm' MEHHH...muh....MEHHHH...muh while the other lounge lizard's greasy fingers were slip-sliding away over yellow plastic keys. Sweaty armpits pumped away. I wanted them to stop, face each other, and give challenge. Yes, I wanted them to stop torturing commuters with dungeon dreck and start the duel. Like the scene in Deliverance with the guitar, the banjo and the Tard. I believe that when two hideous, backwoods instruments come together, they must duel. Dueling douchebags on accordions. Now THAT's entertainment. Maybe next year they'll even rise from the bowels of the U bahn, ride high over the city on S rails and topple The Bellevue Saints.

Building A Shorter America

Dunkin' Berliner Observation: Amis are getting shorter by the year. Each season when a new gaggle of Ami chicks pours out of the planes, trains and automobiles, I notice the shortness. The voices are still loud, and the ubiquitous LIKE has been newly adorned with UM and RIGHT? But they are losing an inch every year; the batch I saw today must have been around 5 feet 4. Last year they were 5 feet 5, the previous years 5 feet 7—you get the idea. So how is America breeding smaller people? Science (that fickle shit) tells us that tallness is a sign of a country with a high standard of living, and that the Nordic types are the tallest. So what happened to the standard of living in the U.S.A? Where are the Amazons? Sure, a lot of short-assed Mediterranean types dumped their genetic ooze into the American genepool, but there just aren't enough of them to shorten the entire population. Maybe it's the diet. I blame the kale.

Wild, Drunken German Yoots

One thing hasn't changed in all the time I've lived in Berlin: drunken teens on public transport. Passing through Hauptbahnhof today, a group of them were so loud in their drunken shouts, hoots and sieg heil—uh... hoorahs, that the entire train could hear them through closed windows. I'm guessing that they had just graduated high school and were letting off a bit of steam. There's where I envy the Europeans: a dozen boys barely old enough to shave board the S-bahn, drop a case of beer on the ground and begin the festivities. In the States the cops would be legally authorized to call in SWAT and hose 'em all down. One of the yoots is a boy of about 5 feet tall, whith a curly green mop on his head (maybe he's just finished a breeding tour in the U.S.). He hooks up a little amplifier to his phone, the beat rages, and the whole group joins in drunken falsetto: EVERYBODY DANCE NOW! And they do, as jiggy as their wobbly legs will allow. Green moptop looks a bit green in the face as well, and slumps back into his seat until the next chorus of EVERYBODY DANCE NOW strikes up.

How will I find such entertainment in one day anywhere else? Where will I go next? Stay tuned.

Orifices

Two Little Assholes and One Big Mouth

Berliners will crash into you on crowded public transport without a single fucking ‘entschuldigung.’  Get used to it.  Fuck knows I’m trying.  You can blame the big city and you can blame the stars and Mars and whatever.  Dump a heat wave on a slow moving tram, jam it full of people and shake it.

I’m not the asshole who stands in the doorway of the tram with a large suitcase blocking people trying to get in.  That would be the Deutschbag.  Me, I try to move further into the tram with my big suitcase in tow.  I am not always traveling with a big suitcase, but if I am it is most certainly full of Berliner jelly donuts--or camera gear going to/from an out-of-town photo shoot.

I had just spent the last 6 hours on a sweltering hot train trip from Prague which should have taken 5 hours and most definitely should have been air conditioned.  All of the previous train trips were (air conditioned; most certainly not on time).  It was 11pm in the hottest and most humid night I can remember since 1966 when I was stuck in a Saigon hell hole and received a bamboo shank in the neck which facilitated my rebirth into yet another level of hell.

I digress.  Enter asshole number one:  German female pushing her way onto the tram (normally I wouldn’t refer to a female as an asshole, but what issued forth shortly after our chance encounter can only be described as a load of scheisse being forced out of a very spastic orifice), pushing ahead of the crowd.  Seeing her impatience, I tried to move my large self and my suitcase deeper into the sweltering tube of crowded hell in order to make room.  My efforts were repaid in kind by two hands beating my sides like Rocky training on a side of beef.  I turned to survey the impatient Deutschbagette.  “Where are you going?  There’s no space!” It was true.  If I moved one centimeter forward I would be tip deep in someone’s ass.  And a dude’s no less.  She kept pushing on my back.  I told her to chill out.  She wouldn’t.

“I don’t want to chill out! Fuck you and your fucking koffer!”  She then jumped up on my suitcase, walked over the top of it and dropped down on my feet in front of me.  Clearly this woman was mentally ill.  I was exhausted and about as close to a heat stroke as a 286 lb dude can be without a rebirth or a reboot.  I tried on my best Berliner Schnauze in the face of obvious insanity:  “Are you ok?  Alles gut now?”

“YES!!!” the crazy bitch screamed.  “I doubt it,” I replied.

Enter Asshole number two:  “THAT’S MY GIRLFRIEND!” in an American accent.

Me: “OK.”

Asshole number two:  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!  SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!”

(German tram youth echoing):  “Shut da fuck up, shut da fuck up.  Hee hee.”

Me (to self): very funny, German yoots, but you are not helping.

Asshole number two:  “SHUT THE FUCK UP OR I WILL FUCK YOU UP!!!!!”

I gave him the smirk I give to every Chihuahua who barks at the Big Dog.  It was kind of sad.  Asshole number two was about 5 foot 9, 50 years old, scrawny with long, grayish hippy hair.  The only thing this pussy could fuck up was his morning joint roll.  I was exhausted and in shock.  His retarded girlfriend had just beat my sides and jumped over me to be close to her asshole.  I am not one to interfere with assholes in love, so I let it slide.

I stood there on the 100 degree tram stewing in my own juices (literally) and thinking about what needed to be said:

Dude, clearly I understand the situation.  This here ugly, mentally retarded bitch of yours is all you can get and you are lucky to have her.  I got between you and your stupid bitch and you needed to monkey up and howl at me.  I admire the fact that you spun around and never stopped screaming at me even though you MUST have seen that I am double your size and could crush you without even half trying.  You are only following your simian psyche and I suppose I can respect that. But what you don’t know is that I’ve been taking shit from bigger assholes than you my entire life.  As I got older, the assholes got bigger.  Some of them gathered in threes in London alleys and jumped me.  Some of them jumped me from behind and kicked my legs out from under me in the Prague snow and kicked my ribs in while I was down.  Others, a select few who were brave enough to look me in the face, got my full wrath.  One of them got a broken nose with a geyser of blood.  Another (your exact size and weight) was lifted off his feet and bounced so hard off the ground that he slid-slammed into a door--I thought I was in a cartoon.  Bitches didn’t get up.  Word.

I resisted the urge to bounce-flip your dumb ass because I understand. I got between your monkey ass and your spastic girlfriend.  You have to protect her; this is hardwired in the male DNA.  I even stuffed down my shock and rage and apologized for getting in between such simian love.  It was all I could do to apologize.  For three stops I fought the urge to say ‘Exit next stop, fucktard.’ To this day I think of picking your scrawny ass up and slamming you into your ugly, retarded bitch.  If only to make me feel like I didn’t suck up all the shit in the world for nothing.

And if only to keep another pair of stupid Berlin monkeys from breeding.  But I suppose you already have.  Enjoy your Hartz IV careers, assholes.

STERNI UBER ALLES!!!

The following conversation takes place entirely in German.  You are reading the translation of the notes which were pried out of the cold, dead hand of the witness.

Give me a Sterni, asshole!

Lick my greasy Mohawk, Deutschbag!

C’mon!  I begged most of the money!  All you did was flirt with the chicks walking into the store!

Both of you are fucked!  It was MY dog that made us get all the change for the beer today.

Shut up, bitch!  Your dog ate my fucking homework!

Oh, right… when was the last time YOU went to school?  Were there cars, or did you suck dick on horseback?

Shut up, fake punk bitch.  Your parents TOTALLY bought you all your piercings and tattoos. On layaway.  Your shirt says ‘Fight the system’ but you couldn’t fight a sprinkler system.

Look you idiots:  I was out here for like, HOURS and the bitch with the dog just got here.  No WAY is she getting my Sterni.  I’m just sayin.’

We got 4 euros in 4 hours…that’s like 10 Sternis.  Three of us.  Uhhhh…. How many do we each get?

I don’t have a fucking clue.  The bitch’s dog ate my fucking homework!

Both of you guys can suck my dog’s dick!

Oh, you’re soooo cool, Punk Rock Girl. I think some asshole wrote a song about you.  It sucked more dick than YOU!

All right you two, either fuck or fight, but for the love of GOTT, give me my fucking STERNI!

I want to break something!

Break open a STERNI!!!

Sternburg bier aus Leipzig ROCKS in ways I cannot begin to explain!  It’s like a malty, amber microbrew—only DIRT CHEAP! Like the people who drink it!

You said it.  All this anarchy is making me thirsty.  STERNI, anyone?

Art Is For the Dogs

I was dragged to another art show in Berlin. My excuse for hanging with the Skinny Folks With Large Glasses this time around: my girlfriend’s dog would be in the show; that and the fact that there would be free beer.

Like any event in Berlin promising free beer, we had to get there early. It was a basement space in Charlottenburg (Christ, why am I dragged to Charlottenburg every month?) and it was a beehive of activity. The basement space fairly buzzed with flocks of various skinny dudes with bed head curly hair and those new fad jeans which are skin tight on the legs but droop at the ass to reveal their shorts. I’ll never figure that one out so don’t even ask me to try. Not hip hop. Not ballerina. Something in the middle I reckon.

The Artist (no symbol) let us know her plan: the dogs would each wear an Ipod with speakers for a collar and the speakers would belt out a human voice at just the right moment. WHOA!!! Said I, ‘Where’s the BEER?’ But you could see that one coming a mile away already.

The tension before any art show is about the same as the tension before a prize fight—especially when canines are involved. At the art show the early comers stood around looking poor but sexy (except me; I was an accessory to the lil woman and the dog) while waiting for the beer. I got to gawk at the crowd a bit while they were strapping the Ipods to the dogs. There were the same type of folks you’d expect to see at any art show in any city at any time in history: beardos, waifs and strays, the eating disorderlies, the vamps, the tramps and the one chick you’re not quite sure about because the calves are too thick and the jaw too square and izzit a tranny?

The dogs: a whippet, thin, speckled and twitchy; a beagle, curious, sniffy and hyper; our hund, a black dachshund/Doberman mix, social, silly and asshole-sniffy; and The Rapehound, rapacious, rapey and rapine. I don’t know what breed it was but the dog made it very clear from the get-go that it was on a mission to fuck one of the dogs in the room. That’s not normally a problem; except all of the dogs were male. Viewing this as a minor obstacle, the Rapehound immediately tried to mount our sausage dog. Having none of that, our poor beastie flipped himself like pancake so that his head was where his ass was a split second before. This was not the least bit of a deterrent for Rapehound: he began the face fucking in earnest. I’m not sure what was more disturbing to me: the ungodly act occurring before my eyes or the fact that my girlfriend thought it was cute and kinda funny, in a dog-dick-in-the-mouth sort of way. Some of the waifs and strays started laughing. They thought the show had started.

Eventually the owner of The Rapehound came over, stood and watched. I wondered if I was the only prude in the room. Hey, look, do whatever you want to whomever you want, just: A) consent; B) be of a reasonable age and C) don’t do it my face. The Rapehound’s owner said ‘I don’t understand. He is—how you say—castrata?’

Do you mean to tell me that your facefucker has no balls and STILL feels the need to mount the skulls of other male dogs? This just doesn’t make any sense at all. Now it becomes nothing about sex. Now it becomes all about power and aggression and rape.  And I think she said ‘Jawohl!’

I was ready for the art performance.

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.

SOUR KRAUTS

Sorry. I wasn’t going to talk about Sour Krauts until well into the New Year. I figured that unleashing one blatantly anti-German slur in one year was enough (see: ‘Deutschbag’). But the bitter old DDR commie biddies wouldn’t stop bitching and moaning and screaming as if someone had shot their dog. And now that I’ve picked up a few German words, now whenever I hear some tired old repressed bag of Deutsch scream in public about something someone is doing ‘to offend them,’ the bitching seems to be closer to home.

I’m no stranger to bitter biddies. The absolute Queen of Bitch has to be, hands down, old Czech women. In the morning they slam their shopping carts into young and old in order to get to the bread bin with cheap rohliky (bread rolls), and then proceed to plow through the stale bread on top to get to the apparently better bread on the bottom. Elbows fly. Occasionally harsh words are spat through yellow dentures. They get their bread and then board the local transport to displace all the poor bastards on their way to work. They whip out their Old Retired Commie Bitch I.D. and scream at people to give them their rightful seat. I have seen them actually hit people with their canes and scream curse words that American truck drivers from the Deep South haven’t yet learned. And their poor lives are so hard that getting a free flat from the government and a meager pension is cruelty to them. So they take it out on the rest of us.

Back to the DDR biddies: same worm-ridden dry old husk of a rotten brain in a shrunken skull, different language. But the body language is the same. Enter: yoots. I use the word ‘yoot’ a lot in my blog. For those unfamiliar with derisive New England slang, yoot means youth. But I’m not from New England. Maybe they just can’t say ‘youth.’ Anyway, yoots enter. They enter and proceed to do what yoots do everywhere on Earth. To whit, they make noise. They laugh, have fun, drink and generally enjoy life. This pisses off Old Commie Biddy to no end. Her life is nearly over. She remembers the Good Old Commie days when yoots shut the fuck up and gave their Commie elders their due respect. Not any more. With the advent of global freedom, strapping young yoots with Mohawks need not take any shit from the system, the cops, the government and certainly not from some tired old Commie relic with antiquated delusions of grandeur.

I ignored most of the biddies’ minor misdemeanors this year because I had seen worse in Prague. This year I largely ignored them as they yelled at dog owners who let their dogs run free, screamed at people in markets for no apparent reason, or the usual spitting at all things younger. But today I understood that there is a certain type of biddy who is beyond redemption. She unleashes her foul Commie stench in a familiar way, but with a uniquely Deutschbagischer way: Rules. The Sour Kraut isn’t content to watch idly as rambunctious yoots desecrate her sanctimonious silence with their bacchanalian whoops of joie de vivre. Today I saw an old German woman yell at three obvious tourists with a camera. This took the cake. As a photographer, I am well aware that German people have way too much control over what photographers can do with their cameras. Even in public places. So when I heard this screeching Sour Kraut demanding that the tourists (from Spain or Italy, I couldn’t hear their speech, but they seemed to be Latin) produce their ausweis (I.D.).

“Are you the press?” She demanded more than questioned, “Show me your I.D. Otherwise FOTO VERBOTEN on public transport.”

The offending foreign yoot with the camera wasn’t even pointing it at the shriveled old Sour Kraut. He was simply photographing his lovely young lady, who was wearing a very nice black hat reminiscent of a Spanish matador or the equivalent Italian thang (if I knew anything about fashion and/or Italians and Spaniards). I followed the whole episode because that is what I do. I observe humans of various cultures in mundane daily routines and dip them into a bucket of ridiculous satire later in the evening after I’ve had my tipple. Eventually the three Latin yoots moved on down the train to another compartment in search of relative peace and freedom to snap pictures in pastoral urban scenery where the local goats don’t bleat so bitter. I wanted to stand up. I didn’t. I wanted to step forward as the Voice of Freedom and give her the tongue lashing she so desperately deserved. I wanted to scream in loud German that I haven’t yet learned: “Entschuldigen sie bitte, Frau Sour Kraut. I just overheard your conversation and you need to know that you are not only a Sour Kraut, but a Deutschebag as well. Your perfunctory and parsimonious performance in public suggests that you need to take a time out. In fact, you have obviously lived a long, productive Commie life in the factory producing metallic sheise for the glory of the dead empire. Now you have but two duties left: Sign the will and get into the Gott Damn Box.”

Obama With a Hitler Mustache and Some Pretty Confused German Kids

What?!? WTF? MY president?  A FASCIST?  Say it isn't so.  Well, y'know, the German yoots are AWFULLY tired of having to bear the burden of their ancestors' sins.  They're just a little bit bored of hearing about Hitler every time they raise their hands to hail a taxi (hint: German kids, don't all raise your hands at once to hail a taxi, this looks suspicous; just one previously-elected-in-a-ridiculously-bureaucratic-ritual group representative is enough).

They didn't whip out the Obama Hitler photo right away.  They simply had a slightly dumpy, bespectacled young chick step in front of me while I was walking the dog the other day.  She seemed harmless.  I thought she wanted me to join Greenpeace or Oxfam or something or other. She ranted about eco fascists, genocide, the New World Order, and so on.  Then I told her that I didn't speak German.  So she had to repeat the whole tirade in English (I'm wicked).  I may be evil, but DAMN, the fact that she could rant in 2 languages was fairly impressive.  So I continued to listen.  She started condeming groups like Greenpeace, etc. as the eco fascists.  I was being entertained (the only thing missing was popcorn), so I went along with it.

"You mean, the big bunch of green kids is wrong to try to save the Earth?"  said I.
"Are you kidding?" said she, "They are the WORST fascists of all the ultra liberal groups!
(at this point I wanted to stop her and suggest that the term 'fascist' ONLY applies to the right wing, but why not let the poor sons and daughters of stormtroopers writhe in irony?)

"BARK!!! BARK!!! Woof!" the dog chimed in.
"Oh, your dog has an opinion, too!" she went on.
"No, we've just been walking for a half hour in minus 5 and he's telling me to get my white ass inside."
"He said that? What's his name?"
"Black."
(quizzical look from the Hitler Jugend) "Well, you should read our literature.  Have you heard of the LaRouche movement?"
"No, but I don't watch German TV."
"They're not German," a tired looking guy in the group added, "but you should know about them, being American."
"I'm the typical ignorant American you've read about," I explained.
The girl put a magazine in my hand, and since it didn't have pictures of Jesus and beams of light on it, I actually held it for a minute or two.  Then I flipped it over and saw the O-BOMB-A:

"Now you seriously don't think that there is ANY connection between Obama and HITLER, do you?"

"Yes!" They blasphemed, "With his healthcare and his genocide and his fascism and his..."

"Sorry, hon, you are out of your TREE."

"Vas?"

"Never mind.  But seriously, comparing Obama to Hitler is like comparing Jesus Christ to Hitler (at this point I was yearning for the Jesus in beams o' light pamphlet instead). They are not even CLOSE.  GET IT??"

"Would you let me finish?" she begged.
"Rant on, sister."
"Blah blah BLAH.  And some BLAH. And to BLAH BLAH that, there was BLAH!!!!!"
"TRILLIONS!" the haggard faced male said.
"And do you believe that Obama is HELPING the sick?" a new voice joined.  A black voice.  An African yoot joined the chorus of Hitler Jugend Gegen Obama, Inc.

I think he saw my jaw drop.  No, really?  I thought.  You. Can't. Be. Serious.  How much are these SS progeny paying you?  Please, brother.  Give anotha brotha a chance.  Stop associating with these SS ass clowns and get a real job.  I just can't take it.

He must have heard my thoughts or saw the flabbergasted look of shock and horror on my face.  Or maybe his English wasn't up to snuff.  He left the conversation.

"Ach!!! Bad dog!!!  Look!  Your bad dog has PISSED on our booth!" she chastised.

It was really hard to hide a grin.  I wagged my finger in the dog's face and said 'bad.'  No exclamation point.  I found it funny.

"Well, maybe you find it funny to talk with us, but you really don't want to accept the Truth," she proclaimed.
"No, I didn't find it funny.  I think 'fun' was the word you were looking for, and it wasn't fun either.  Entertaining, yes."
"Meeting me was the best thing that happened to you today.  And you want to leave before you can hear the Truth," she pontificated.

Damn, the Moonies got NOTHIN' on these cats.

"The day is young," I said, "it could always get better."
"You are the man who is going up the escalator and passes all the pretty girls and hopes to get a prettier one," the tired man chimed in (what was he? Her PIMP?).

I didn't want to insult the young lady, so I apologized for the piss on the booth, tipped my hat while leaving and said

"Yup."

Yet Another Friedrichshain Protest

ROWDY YOOTS FULL O' PISS N VINEGAR GATHER;
MATING RITUALS ENSUE

The Mohawks gathered round Friedrichshain the other day and made some noise. Again. Apparently ‘They’ weren’t listening to the Mohawks. Again. But that’s okay, that won’t stop kids full of piss and vinegar from grabbing some fabric and spray paint and waving their flags in an open invitation to compare Mohawks. The hawks were awful purty at this particular shindig: blue ones, red ones, pink ones and black ones were everywhere. I caught several rows of kids with the same color hawk; rows of pink Mohawks held up a bright red banner which read ‘Brunnen Bleibt’, which means literally ‘Pink Mohawk Social Club.’ Rival factions of blue-and-black-haired punks held up a black sign with letters which were so unclear that several members of the club were caught scratching their heads trying to decipher their own messages.

But what are the Crips without the Bloods to counter them? The various colors of Mohawk gangs milled about waiting for any conflict that might be on its way from what the Punx like to affectionately refer to as
‘der schweinenmenschen’ or literally ‘The Pigs’, aka the Fuzz, the Heat, Five-Oh, Bacon, Cops, or your friendly neighborhood Berlin riot control officers. I’ve seen a few of these Berlin protests before. The Berlin police like to fence the punks in with a nice row of Paddy Wagons. Usually about 25 riot vehicles, or roughly 1 vehicle for every 3 protestors. I mean it is complete overkill, the police presence. At this particular protest they even brought in the van of geek cops with laptops and satellite gear. Apparently, you’ve got to keep one step ahead of these pink, blue and black haired devils. They even brought in the Super Soakers: huge water tanks on wheels with twin nozzles for spraying the unruly mob. My girlfriend asked why the nozzles were so narrow on the ends. She thought if fired the cannons would only yield but a drizzle. I explained the effects of concentrated water pressure through a very narrow opening. A standard, S.F. hippy protest would have Super Soaker vehicles with standard sized water cannons and wide nozzles. The purpose of this was to give the stinking hippies a much needed group bath. However, the Berlin cops like to fire the same amount of water with great pressure through tiny twin steel nozzles. This not only gives the Berlin punk squatters a much needed group bath, but the pressure from these babies will literally knock them to the ground and roll them across the street through a brick wall.

And after all, being flung about like a sack of beer-soaked taters by the Super Soakers at a Berlin riot is the Number 2 Requirement for membership in the Pink Mohawk Social Club.

Jazz Church

The Church of Jazz meets in an abandoned chapel in Friedrichshain on certain Tuesdays. The building is a small pile of bricks in an East Berlin neighborhood; a disused chapel type building with no need for God. But the holy spirit of jazz inhabits the place, warms the place and sometimes blows the roof off the dump.

Normally, all previously-God-forsaken Commie-seized holy halls were reclaimed by some church or another; bought back by the Supreme Rulers in Vatican City, or Anglo-Protestant oil holdings, or whatever. Not this one. It is special. It stands between a cemetery and a kebab shop. In Berlin there is only one solution for a building of this type: Art the Living Bejesus out of it. And they have.

I’m not sure what the target audience for the disemboweled rat poster outside the church is. But the poster is there and is hard to look at, especially after just coming from a kebab next door. I think it says theatre-something-or-other. In addition to disemboweling rats, the old church-cum-kunsthaus hosts Jazz Almighty.

Call it a jam session for new converts. I bust in and I see them skulking in the corners with their dates, boy/girl, girl/girl, boy/boy. Mostly young party animals and freaks. Mostly white, nobody over 40 except me. Mostly posing. Somebody told the deviants that jazz was hip. And deviants are hip in Berlin. I don’t care what color flag you fly, just don’t make it your raison d’etre. As for me, I am so straight and square that my girlfriend may leave me at any time unless I bring out the gimp from Pulp Fiction. Or at least I imagine so. But I digress.

I am a longtime jazz fan. I know this because I have short hair, glasses and a goatee. I noticed other goatee-sporting, bespectacled dudes of my ilk in the pews of the Jazz Church the other night. They are jazz fans as well (or just really crafty poseurs). It reassures me, knowing that the Old Faithful and the New Converts can come together under one roof.

Thankfully, there is no sermon, no preacher, no choir. There are only musicians, jamming it up and spiraling solos and nodding graciously to the warm applause. Some of the musicians really LOOK the part; as if dressing Jazz will light up the low notes. Others dressed in torn shoes and jeans stand there nervously and stare at the audience, limp trumpet or sax in hand, waiting for their turn to jam. It’s an informal affair with pleasing results. I start to nod and bob my head with the beat. I’m the only one doing it but I don’t give two shits. I’m there to enjoy the music. It has its moments. Nothing earth shattering, nothing that will save your soul. The better musicians play early: piano played in frantic, chopping motions by skinny fingers, stand up bass picked, battered and swinging in time to the syncopated skins. By evening’s end, anyone with an electric guitar or violin can step up to the stage and fuck it all up.

It works on donations. And as you would expect in any church, some twitchy huckster oozes on up to you while you’re in mid head nod and sticks a hat in your face and says: “For the musicians.” The first time I attended the Jazz Church, I thought it was an odd concept. I knew there was a donation, saw a box by the door, asked if that was the donation box, and dropped the money in. Halfway through the jam, though, the dude with the hat was in my face. I told him I gave generously at the door, but he kept explaining, extolling, extorting me for more. I told him to go fuck himself. He oozed back down the drain from whence he came. Ya gotta know how to deal with hucksters.

My second night in the Church of Jazz was only slightly different than the first time. The same poseurs were there. It was packed again, and people were eager to get a pew. I was wedged in between a very bright stage light and a young German couple. When the desire for another beer became too strong to resist, I asked the girl next to me to watch my seat. She tried to be funny and say something clever, but being German, this rarely works. Maybe it’s the language barrier. She said ‘Yes, I will watch it closely, and….” I just smiled and waved and walked away before she could embarrass herself any further. Upon my return with the beer, she continued, “I watched your seat and it was there and it….” “GREAT!!” I said, “and here’s your reward!” I shoved a bowl of Cheetos cheese puffs under her face. She declined so I shook them vigorously in her boyfriend’s face. He meekly took one. God I love Germans. Give them a church, some jazz, some booze and some Cheetos and you’ve got yourself a party. Then the piper showed up right on cue with his hat. I was ready for him. I peeled off a fiver and chucked it in the hat and waved him away with my hand. Ya gotta know how to deal with hucksters. I feel right at home with my people skills. I go to the Jazz Church for a vertical relationship with the musicians on high, not for a horizontal relationship with the hucksters, the poseurs, the ‘clever’ people. There is a special word for people like me. That word is ‘asshole.’

The Church of Jazz gets so crowded I shouldn’t tell you exactly where it is (Hint: It’s on Boxi between the kebabs and the headstones). Maybe I’ll see you there. I’ll be the slightly drunk guy bobbing his head with Cheetos and beer in my goatee.