Habituation

"I have become comfortably numb."  - Pink Floyd

No, I am not loaded as I write this (for a change); but I DID have a donut this morning (go figure).  It's coming up on my 2nd anniversary in Berlin (January) and the process of habituation is nearly complete:  I no longer see Berlin as 'Ooh! Wow! Neato! Lookit!' and have become just another expat specimen consuming and excreting with Berlin as a fuzzy backdrop.

This affects my blogging; I was just talking with Lady Snooker about how I used to blog once a week--which slowly faded down to once a month.  Has my creative mojo gone?  Has my donut filling finally dried up?  No, I suspect that Old Rascal Habituation has done its thang on my eyes and ears.  It's happened to me before in other exotic locales:  London, Dublin and Prague.  Right about the time the traveler settled in to the routine; the study program (London), the jobs (Dublin and Prague) and the rent payments, the Buzz decreases, the new becomes familiar, then routine, then Old Hat.

I have noticed my best photographs of a location are generally taken within the first few months of living in a new place.  After that, things that were extraordinary become, well, ordinary.  This is a psychological process which allows us to protect our senses from the onslaught of new experience, disregard the mundane, and keep a lookout for new stimuli.   The wiki article on habituation mentions that soon after a human wears clothing, the sensations wear off.  Can you imagine if you could constantly FEEL the cloth chaffing you as you moved around?  I believe we would be batshit in about 72 hours.  Or city traffic and street sounds would make a New Yorker insane (scratch that; New Yorkers are NUTS) in weeks.

But what is basically psychological protection is damned inconvenient if you are a writer or photographer.  The details we pick out as unique and noteworthy start fading into the background.  So this is when we need to focus more.  Berlin is pegged as an ever-changing city; a city evolving before our eyes. Fortunately, if you look hard enough, you can see the paint drying:  the constantly shifting street art, the ever-changing rotation of festivals, events and goings on.  I now have more time on my hands than usual (my slow season for work), so my lack of money coupled with my excess of time gives me the perfect opportunity to slow down and observe.

I would like to also point out that many of the things I mention on this blog are cheap or free: Karaoke in Mauerpark (see: Return of Melvis) only requires a bit of nerve and/or liquid courage (and in Berlin, liquid courage is 60 cents per bottle).  Taking snaps of local street art is free if you shoot digital.  I have been following certain Berliner street artists and noticing their styles.  So when the background just starts to get a bit fuzzy, sometimes a new stencil, poster, or art piece will appear in the cacophony of color that is Berlin.

So let me throw out some ideas and we can all be comfortably numb in Berlin--with or without the chemicals.

If you have any ideas for free/cheap things to do in Berlin that Google doesn't know about, please comment.

Festival of Lights photo by Craig Robinson Photography

db

The Return of Melvis

Ich bin eine Karaoke addict and a piss-poor Elvis impersonator.  Nevertheless, I HAD to throw myself into the Berlin Bearpit and dance with the rest of the bears.  AGAIN. You may know me as Dunkin’ Berliner, but in a previous life (Prague) I was known as Melvis O’Presky, the hardest working pelvis in Prague; or His Royal Melvic Region, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

I paid my dues.  I croaked and crooned in some of the smokiest, darkest, least-crowded karaoke bars with the warmest, flattest beer a man can swallow without puking.  At first it was the usual ‘drunk man finds liquid courage, a microphone and primal scream therapy’ at the expense of the other drunks.  The mic hung at the edge of my soused mouth and I mumbled my Elvis in the dark. Three drunken friends clapped.  One of them yelled ‘Go Melvis.’  I think I scrawled ‘Elvis’ on the beer-soaked paper and handed it to the KJ (karaoke jockey).  Many muffled mumbles later, Melvis was born.

Then came The Suit:  All six-feet-five-white-polyester-sequined-hell of it.  I had it made by a local Czech seamstress. Then came The Gig.  Melvis entered, grabbed the mic and hosted many-a-Prague karaoke as MC Melvis, then, sadly (if only for me), Melvis left the building.

They say Berlin is where creative people go to die.  No, I just made that up.  We’re supposed to be reborn here, like some god damned Phoenixes rising from the fucking ashes of Capitalism or something; perhaps this is purgatory.  But considering that I’ve been surrounded by the same wannabe, parent-supported-mediocre-slacker-artist-pretentious-hipsters for nearly 2 years now, I’m beginning to suspect that I may have to work my way back UP to purgatory.  Again.

Re-enter Melvis.  Last summer I got drunk in Mauerpark, as a dude does on a sunny Sunday in Berlin.  I somehow wound up on stage with a bottle of warm Sterni in one hand and a microphone in the other--in front of a LARGE CROWD of people.  I croaked, I crooned and I really SUCKED ASS.  Evidence of my ass-suckitude can be found on the Bearpit Karaoke You Tube channel.  You really don’t wanna Google that.  TRUST me.  When I found The Pit it was just getting popular.  And as with anything that is just getting popular, you wanna be the one who says ‘you were there when it was just starting.’  And so I am. Er, was.  As a veteran karaoke lounge lizard from hell I noticed that the KJ (His Royal Highness, Sir Joe Hatchiban-San, ESQ, hereafter referred to as ‘K to the J’ or just ‘Joe’) had a completely different setup:  no monitor speakers (those tiny square ones facing the stage) to properly hear your own voice; no echo to hide the obvious flaws in every drunk’s voice; no safety net for the obvious karaoke fool who thinks he’s all dat and a bag of chips.  Joe likes to rumble in with his bicycle of doom, dump the heavy load onto the stage, and drop the hapless singers into the pit with the hungry bears.

And the crowd goes wild.

So I had to do it again and again, like coffee or beer or sex.  Yeah, like those things, with a MUCH bigger crowd.  But the crowds are out of control.  Not in the Bear-Eat-Drunken-Singer meaning of the phrase; you just couldn’t get a song in edgewise.  Fight through the horde, submit your song, wait for 2 hours—and if you’re LUCKY—sing your bad-ass song.  Badly.  I tried it a few times in the last months.  Once I was turned down flat: ‘We’re not taking any more songs,’ the nice girl said.  Hell, in Ye Olden Days of Yokee, Joe didn’t have the luxury of a nice girl to take songs.  Times they are a’changin’ I guess.  The next time The Girl put me on the bottom of a list of about 20 people.  Two hours later, no glory.  I left.

This is the part in the story where any sane man would have given up, got a job, paid his taxes and died unfulfilled, or any insane man would have returned with an Uzi and lit up the muthafuckas.  But I am neither sane nor insane.  I walk the line.  I went back.  Early.  I sat in the front of the muthafucka.  After Joe did his intro song he asked who would be the first singer.  I jumped up and flailed my arms.  It worked; third time’s the charm. I climbed up on that stony stage and I huffed, I puffed and I blew the house down.

And the crowd went wild.

A 911 Day Spent With Beer Guzzling Czechs in Berlin

Editor's note: db has decided that some readers may be confused as to which part of a particular Dunkin' Berliner blog is 25% satire, which is 25% comedic rant and which is the 50% bullshit.  In order to make it easier, db has decided to italicize and colorize anything slightly bullshitty.  The rest you have to figure out yer damn self.  Oh, as per usual, 0% faggy poetry.

I packed up the girl and the dog and headed into Neukoelln for a Czech street festival at Richardplatz.

I know what you're thinking: 'yer an American.  It's September 11.  You're thinking of all the pain, death and mayhem when the towlies took down the Twin Towers.  Yer goin' to the kebab 'hood to kick some camel jockey ass, AINTCHA?'

No, dear reader, that would be politically incorrect, vile, violent and offensive.  Not to mention I would need a MUCH BIGGER POSSE in that area of town.  The real reason I went was because my girl is Czech and she dragged me there to meet her Czech friends.  And there was Czech beer on tap.  Reasons enough.

I remember thinking I should bring my camera, but this insane little buzzer goes off in my head whenever I am about to go to any event which will consist largely of heinous bier abuse.  I don't want to have anything happen to my fancy-shmancy camera, the least of which could include:  damage due to droppage, damage due to beer droolage, damage due to pukage, loss due to theft, loss due to drunkenness or loss due to me suddenly at the last minute snapping into post-traumatic-9/11 redneck mode and swinging the camera wildly into Turbanated heads.

So I left the camera at home.  Which turned out to be a pity, since this wasn't just a collection of heinous bier abusers standing around and/or staggering into trees.  There was actual hootenanny style action with groups of people rolling giant bales of hay around the square for prizes and bier.  It was a very photogenic moment sadly missed due to reasons listed above.  Now I'll have to try the thousand words method.  Fuck.

My girlfriend mentioned before we got there that people would be 'rolling in the dry grass,' which I thought was just Czech code for 'drunken, boorish behavior #243.'  No, what she meant to say was 'rolling large bales of hay willy nilly around the square.'  I was immediately tempted to teach her one of my redneck English lessons ala 'y'know what a Roll in The Hay means in English, dontcha?' but I opted only for a slightly confusing reference which would leave her slightly confused.  Damn, I could've parlayed that cowboy cliche into some actual action later on in the evening.  Damn you bier, damn you to hell.  Then again, maybe not.

I did note with some degree of smirky-educated-white-trashian satisfaction the sheer insanity of these folksy, redneck style games.  I mean, to whit: 1) There's not one stick of hay occurring naturally ANYWHERE in the city limits of Berlin, 2) Neukoellners are NOT farmers, nor have they EVER been farmers, rolled in the hay or rolled hay down squares historically, and 3) one of the bales of hay nearly ran over a breeder and her progeny which were standing oblivious in the middle of the road in a manner typical of Berliner breeder menschen, like 'oh, I've managed to shit out another kid on welfare look at the little blond bastard ain't 'e cute? looks just like his unemployed, drunken welfare-suckin' daddy and don't you dare bump into me with bike, foot, or Gott Verbot a giant rolling bale of hay.' She had to run for cover with baby in tow. No bullshit. I smiled smugly. Fucken breeders. Heh.

So there I was, mid baby hate, mid buzz and mid redneck English lesson, when it occurred to me that these type of games were probably being performed this very 9/11 day in some backwoods, dried-up farmville in the YEW ESS of FUCKIN' AY with actual rednecks, pissy beer and thoughts of 'God damn YEW, towel jockey, yew fucked us REEEEEL gooooood, but today we YEWnite as WON and YEEEEE-HAWWW drink us some pissy swill, bitch about the towlies and roll us some hay bales n try to roll us a cowgirl in actual hay, and HEY! if that don't work, we'll form a posse and look for camel jocks and if that don't work, well God Dammit we'll just hafta cornhole us a drunk.'

The Czech Svijany beer on tap was tasty and came in two varieties: pilsner and unfiltered pilsner.  We tried both in slightly-less-than-heinous quantities and were satisfied.  I like the fact that the small town of Svijany can peddle its liquid luxury in Big Ole Berlin.  It makes me happy that the little brewer can still compete with the Big Corporate Beer.  But I suppose that's fairly easy as Berliner bier is sheise.  I prefer Bavarian bier, anything with a monk on the label.  Or Leipzig bier, anything with a punk on the label. Sternburg aus Leipzig.  Mmmmm.  Sternburg.  Not just for drunken punx! (tm)

In conclusion I just have to say this:  Nine years after some fools crashed into some big buildings and plunged us into another godawful long-ass war for all the wrong reasons, it's good to know that we could all just meet in Berlin and hold hands, Czech, American, Berliner and Neukoellner alike, and get our collective buzz on.  No bullshit.  Except the hand holding.  That was figurative.  Do you think an American would actually hold hands with a....

Photo by re-ality, taken from Flickr after I read that it was ok to do so.

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.

Breakfast of Champions

Sometimes a picture is worth (at least) a dozen words.

DUNKIN' BERLINER

CAPTION CONTEST !!!

Which of the following captions works BEST for the picture?

A)  Fruhstuck Weltmeister
B)  The girlfriend is on vacation and I'll eat whatever I want to goddamit
C)  Punk rock breakfast in Berlin
D)  Dude needs some SERIOUS help
E)  Other (pick your own)

The winner of the Dunkin' Berliner caption contest will win donuts.  Or accolades.  Or mention on this blog.

Add your caption in the comment section below to WIN WIN WIN !!!!