The Two-Day, Four-Party Marathon

Daytime

Well, considering that I had gotten home at 10h00 this morning, you’ll forgive me if I got up at 16h00. That’s just six hours of sleep, so it’s not really “sleeping in,” per se. Anyway, the rest of the “daytime” portion of my day was unexceptional. I fixed myself some eggs and tea, took care of some correspondence, and then started to catch up on my blog posts. Three hours later, it was already time for me to make my way out for the beginning of the night…a night that would last until tomorrow night, I might add.

Apéros

My friend Janine (French gal living in Berlin) had invited me, Fantô + her crew, Bob & Donna + their Franco-Berliner friend and a few other people over to her place for an “apéro” (i.e., drinks and snacks) at around 21h00. But first, Fantômette had invited me to the apartment, where she was staying with her girlfriend and another friend of ours, for a few drinks there. So I headed over to this massive industrial Hof (warehouse) on Ritterstraße in Kreuzberg (near the Moritzplatz U-Bahn station, U-8) to find them. Apparently, some smart person had bought the whole top floor of the building on one side and turned it into a suite of studio apartments to be rented like hotel suites. It was kind of brilliant, really. It’s exactly what a tourist would want of Berlin: an über-modern apartment in a red-brick warehouse in a shabby-but-up-and-coming neighborhood.

Anyway, we hung out there for a while, had some drinks, retold stories of parties past and filled each other in on the details of the night before (we had parted ways at Golden Gate). By about 21h00, we started walking our way over to Janine’s place. It took us a bit of time to find the right street, but eventually we got there and met up with the rest of the crew. Bob & Donna were there along with their Franco-Berliner friend (let’s call him Foster), a German girl who was a close friends of Janine, two British guys that Janine knew, a woman from North Carolina that lives in Berlin now, and the girls whose birthday it was the last time I was in town and I hung out with Janine.

Janine’s “apéro” spread was actually close to a full dinner made of finger-foods, including piles of crackers, dips, olives cheeses and so on. After a while, she emerged with pieces of cheese and salmon-spinach quiches, and later she materialized with cake and ice cream. And all the time, of course, she was plying us with wine and/or liquor. I managed to restrain myself from overeating, since I’ve learned from experience that eating just before a big night out tends to weigh me down and sap my energy.

I had a great time hanging out and talking to the folks at the party, although I’ll admit that I ended up speaking almost exclusively with the two british guys and the American girl, since they were the only people I hadn’t met before. I can’t remember all of the conversation, but I do recall that I gave the most lucid summary of my dissertation project so far; now if only I could remember what I said…

12h30: The False Start

At around 12h30, we began moving. Janine’s German girlfriend was going to Arena club to see a friend, Foster was heading to bed to meet us later at Berghain, everyone else was going to check out the “Champagnerama” party going on at the old Kindl brewery, and I was going to meet a friend from the Chicago scene at Kinski’s (and then meeting up with the rest of the crew at the Kindl brewery).

I headed over to Kinski’s, which was only two blocks away from Janine’s place, but I didn’t see my friend. I gave her a call to see if she was still coming, but I didn’t get an answer. Kinski’s is a sort of art space / café / club / whatever, and it’s pretty small and the crowd seems to all know each other. So it was a bit awkward for me to walk into this small, socially-connected space, walk around and conspicuously look for someone who’s not there, and then leave. Anyway, I wrote off that part of the night and headed off to meet the rest of the crew.

Just as I’m getting to the U-Bahn station, I get a call from Donna saying that the lineup is 200m long and looks to be about 3 hours of wait. It’s fucking cold, so they decide to head to Maria am Ostbahnhof instead. Janine, meanwhile, decides to head home and sleep instead, with the promise of joining us later at Berghain. And so I hop on the U-Bahn and head towards our new destination.

1h30: Spreepiraten @ Maria am Ostbahnhof

After a rather long and cold walk from the Jannowitzbrücke U-Bahn station to the club, wait in line for about 20 minutes and then pay the excessive cover (12€) to get in. 12€ for Berghain? Sure. For Maria am Ostbahnhof? Well, it better be on par with Berghain…

OK, so the club wasn’t as magical as the Berghain/PanoramaBar complex, but it was still a pretty cool club. Before the emergence of OstGut (which would eventually become Berghain) and Watergate, Maria am Ostbahnhof was apparently the central spot in Berlin for techno connoisseurs. The music programming had gone in an odd direction by the time I got to Berlin this past summer, with mostly electro-rock events and b-list local DJs, so I was never really tempted to visit the place. So it was high time I check this place out.

The space itself is pretty nice, especially in the back room, which has a pattern of diagonal cubes stuck to the wall behind the DJ in a way that casts really lovely shadows but also absorbs some of the sound and prevents slap-echoes. All around the club, they made good use of light projections to give the interior a unified theme; the theme for tonight: black-and-white silhouettes of unmarked playing cards.

The sound system itself was pretty good, especially in the main room. From the side near the main bar, the sound was loud but not uncomfortable. From the center of the dancefloor, the sound was impressively strong but not overwhelming. In the second room, on the other hand, the treble tended to be a bit too shrill. Thank goodness for earplugs!

The crowd was pretty mixed, mostly a combination of the late-twenties/thirties crowd that you see at Berghain & Watergate along with a late-teen / early-twenties crowd that seemed more like “casual partygoers” than avid fans of a particular DJ or scene. Of course, I’m generalizing here; when I was 17 and raving in Ontario, I already had pretty specific tastes; but nonetheless I had the feeling that the younger folks in the crowd were there to party first and see a specific DJ second, while the older folks acted more like they were attending a concert of a particular artist. Interestingly enough, at Berghain the crowd is almost entirely late-twenties and older, and yet you can still play this same game of “why did you come here tonight?” with the crowd: some are there for a particular DJ, some are there because it’s Berghain and they couldn’t imagine going anywhere else, and some are there because they want to party and this is the place to do it with a great deal of intensity.

Anyway, I wasn’t there for very long, but I caught the opening set by Larsson, which was pretty solid, and the first half of Alexander Kowalski’s live set, which was pretty strong and made great use of melodic fragments to suture his live set together.

So by 3h30 Bob and Donna have headed off to sleep and get ready for Berghain later that morning, while Fantômette and her crew disappear at around the same time. Another friend of mine (a close friend of a roommate from last summer) was going out with her crew to that party at the Kindl brewery later in the morning and I was determined to finally see her (after several near-misses since last summer), so I stayed at Maria for a couple more hours.

”Nice Guy!”:On the dancefloor, I run into a guy on the dancefloor who seems to be having a great time. At a particular high-point of the music, we both start pumping our fists in the air and then make eye contact. From there he offers me his beer and we exchange some brief remarks on the music. I tell him I’m from Canada and he says he’s from Rostock, in the north of Germany. He’s clearly high as a kite on a 200km lead, as his face is making pronounced contortions that I would associate with some very strong, “mashy” ecstasy.

I go away and come back a few minutes later and he appears next to me again. He offers me more of his beer, and then we dance some more and share more of those wordless glances that both check to see if the other person is in the same affective place as you are, and also prompt the other person to somehow respond. The current title of my dissertation starts with “Can You Feel It, Too?”, and this is sort of the look and the encounter that I’m thinking of when I quote that phrase; these are glances that ask questions but also answer them: “Did you just hear that?” “Yes I did!” “Isn’t this amazing?” “It sure is!” “Are you feeling this right now?” “Totally!”

Anyway, the crowd is packed and we’re being squeezed, but suddenly he sees a pocket of space in the crowd and gestures for me to follow him and dance next to him. When I reach him, he smiles and puts an arm around my shoulders as I put an arm around his waist, and we dance like that for a while.

For the next few minutes, he’ll find another spot on the dancefloor that he deems somehow better, then pull me over to it, and then continue to exchange gestures of affection, including offering beer and cigarettes, asking how I’m feeling, making ‘small talk’ about where we’re both from, hugging me, draping his arm across my shoulders and clutching me to his chest (he’s much taller than me), and even occasionally trying to engage me in hip-bumping and ass-slapping (we weren’t very co-ordinated in that regard).

By the time we had migrated to the front of the crowd, he had introduced me to most of his other 5 friends, none of them by name but rather always, “This is my best friend!” Then he would tell them I was from Canada and then we’d have a short conversation about Canada over the din of the music. Invariably, they would immediately offer me their drinks or their cigarettes.

At several points during this encounter, as my new buddy and I would look over at each other at the same time during a particularly exciting moment in the music, he would yell in my ear, “You’re a nice guy! I like you very much!” Now, this was in his somewhat-rusty English, so I’m guessing that he meant this in a more platonic way, but regardless: he was expressing feelings of warmth and attachment to a guy that he just met half an hour ago.

Just as I was thinking of leaving to catch up with my friend at the brewery party, he leans into me and says, “If some guy…gives you…any problems, you tell me.” Charmed but also a bit disturbed by the implications of this gesture of protectiveness, I said, “Thanks, but I’m not the sort of person to have problems with guys in clubs.” He immediately answers, “Of course! You’re a nice guy. I don’t think you would ever hurt anybody. I like you.” And then a hug. It’s not necessarily true that I don’t have problems with other people on the dancefloor (see 2 Fridays ago in Paris LINK), but I took this to be a sort of compliment and thanked him. The topic of discussion was uncomfortably serious and violent for me, but he seemed to be wanting to articulate intimacy to me in an idiom of protectiveness that I just wasn’t used to. Most of my friends are jokingly referential when they say, “I got yo’ back.” They’re not about to beat up a stranger for crossing me.

Anyway, it was past 4h30 and it seemed like the right time to head over to the Kindl Brauerei party. I might’ve been tempted to let the party slide and go directly to Berghain (or sleep), but I was really determined to see this friend of mine. I told my new buddy that I would be “right back.” It was a lie, but it was simpler and smoother than explaining my itinerary for tonight, and then resisting as he tried to convince me to stay with him. It’s pretty common to have these moments of passing, glancing contact, so I figured that he wouldn’t be too distressed if I just disappeared.

So I headed out and made my way towards Ostbahnhof, only to remember that the S-Bahn doesn’t run between Ostbahnhof and Jannowitzbrücke at this hour. I walked to Jannowitzbrücke and realized that the southbound platform for the U8 is out over service for renovations, so I walked down to Heinrich-Heine Straße. There was a lot of walking involved.

5h30: Champagnerama @ Kindl Brauerei

On the way down on the U-8, a group of very drunk and rowdy guys (and one gal) get on at Kottbusser Tor, clutching large bottles of beer in their hands. They shout-sing some song loudly every few minutes, and otherwise engage in some loud and slurred conversation that I could barely make out. Standing near me is another young German, quietly watching the goings-on. Every few minutes, we’ll exchange glances and eyebrow-waggles and then go back to watching them nearly make fools of themselves and annoy everyone in the train car. At a moment when the other guys aren’t paying attention, he says (in English), “Sorry.” I shrug my shoulders and say, “Normal,” implying that this was par for the course on a Saturday night (this word has a slightly different meaning in German). He shakes his head, saying, “No, it’s never normal.”

I get off at Boddinstraße and try to surreptitiously follow some folks who look like party people, since I don’t know exactly where the brewery is. They lead me to their apartment instead. Yay! So much for that strategy. I ask some random guy walking down the street and thankfully he gives me directions.

As I’m approaching the Alte Kindl Brauerei, a guy coming in the other direction stops and tells me that it’s not worth trying to get in, the building’s already at capacity. Well, great. I wasn’t about to give up without laying eyes on the situation, but I thanked him for the warning.

When I got in front of the building, there was a small lineup of 30-40 people, but it was barely moving. There was something like a “one in, one out” policy in effect, but it was even slower, since they had to worry about people coming back into the party. The system at most clubs in Berlin is that once you’ve paid the entry, you have the right to return and skip the line as long as the club is open.

So I send a text message to my friend to see if she’s still coming and get in line. I had hoped that she might say, “Screw it! Let’s just all go to Berghain.” But instead, she just told me she’d be getting there an hour or two later. Dammit.

While in line, I made friends with two Irish boys standing next to me. One of them thought that I was American, and when I corrected him, he apologized profusely and said, “Well, now you can call us British and we can’t get mad.” Fair enough, although I don’t think there’s quite the same animosity between Canada and the US.

After a while, two kids coming out of the club offered to give their admission bracelets to the Irish guys, so that they could skip the line. They gave it a try, but the bouncer actually pulled on their bracelets to see if they had been removed before. When they easily came apart, they were sent back to the line.

I got some amusement while waiting in line by watching the Irish boys get increasingly incensed with the rampant queue-jumping going on. On both the British and Irish isles, there’s a great degree of respect for the etiquette of lining up, and violating it is often treated as a grave ethical breach. You can seriously get your ass kicked in the UK over jumping the lineup.

This just got more amusing when a really large group of Greek partygoers showed up and just walked up to where we were standing. They lamely struck up conversation with a few people standing in front of us, and then acted as if they belonged there. Apparently, one of the Irish boys used to date a Greek guy and the relationship ended very badly, and so he was suddenly projecting all of his resentment onto the hapless ringleader of these partygoers.

Of course, rather than yell and hurl insults, the Irish lads decide to be passive-aggressive. One of them introduces himself to the ringleader and asks, “So where are you guys from?” Then the other pipes in, “Do you come from a country where you don’t usually wait in lines? Because the line starts back there, not here. I understand that might be hard to grasp.” It had no effect, but it amused me.

Lots of pushing and crowding. The two Irish boys get in before me as the lineup/crowd converges. I’m getting squeezed in by a group of annoying Spaniards behind me.

The bouncers change shifts just as I’m at the front of the line. The new bouncer asks me if I’m alone and then asks me where I’ve been before this. I tell him Maria am Ostbahnhof, and he looks me up and down, and then lets me in. WTF? The previous bouncer hadn’t been refusing anybody at the door and then suddenly I get to the front of the line and he’s replaced by Mr. Door Policy. Anyway, I don’t know if saying “Maria am Ostbahnhof” rather than Berghain or Wateragte helped me or hindered me, but I got in.

Well, the location was definitely cool. I mean, it’s a dilapidated beer factory turned into a massive party complex. Almost the entire event takes place downstairs in a series of underground rooms. In most cases, the original fixtures of the rooms are left intact, including massive brass vats poking up through the floor, piping going every which way, tiled drains and so on. Nonetheless, they did include some nice touches of décor, including cylindrical lights hanging behind the DJ booth in one of the main rooms, and a sort of multi-colored tic-tac-toe board hanging behind the DJ in the other big room. The sound was pretty good in the lower two rooms, while the upper room seems to be more devoted to chill-out music or something like that. I’m pretty sure Jens Bond was spinning in the larger room, but I could be wrong.

Upstairs, the coat-check is full and so I have the dubious pleasure of spending the next few hours with my jacket on and my scarf still wrapped around me. Great. At least the drinks are relatively cheap.

While dancing, some guy asks me if I have any rolling papers. I say no, sorry. He asks for tobacco. I say no, sorry. Then he looks at me for a moment, and says “Ja, ja” sarcastically, as if I was clearly lying and then stalks off angrily. Lay off the speed, buddy.

I sit down on the ledge of what I must presume used to be some sort of drainage pit. I’m pretty sure that it’s nastily dirty, but I’m tired and I tell myself that jeans were made for these sorts of conditions. A moment later, a guy taps my shoulder and says, “What are you doing, sitting in all this crap?! Here, I have a bunch of those plastic bags you use to collect dog shit. Sit on one of them the way I am.” And he handed me one and pointed to how he had laid one out for himself. I smiled, thanked him, and sat back down.

He was a friendly chap, so we chatted for a bit. When he heard that I was from Canada, he suddenly got very enthusiastic. Apparently, he had once wanted to become a hockey player in the NHL, and his favourite team was Les Canadiens. I couldn’t follow everything he said, but he was certainly happy to have met a Canadian, it seemed.

At that moment, I get a text message from my friend. She’s here! And she wants to know where to meet. I tell her in the hallway between the two main rooms, say goodbye to the would-be hockey player and make my way over. A few minutes later, I’m reunited with my friend and she drags me over to where most of the rest of her friends are.

Her ex-boyfriend was there and clearly out of his gourd, because he greeted me as if we were long lost buddies, rather than just guys who happened to know the same two women. He was never this affectionate last summer, perhaps because of the tension between him, his ex-girlfriend and my former roommate, but voilà: he hugged me tightly, cupped my jaw in his hands, made lingering eye contact, and then promptly presented me with a bottle of poppers. Yech, but thanks, I suppose. One tentative sniff of that crap reminded me of why I hate that stuff.

Before I could talk to her any more, my friend disappeared and I couldn’t find her for an hour. Instead, I hung around with her ex-bf as we migrated from one room to another, dancing and drinking. Eventually, I texted her and asked her where she was and she said she was behind the “DJ pult” (DJ booth). Really? I ran into one of her other friends and we both wandered through both rooms, trying to find her. There was no ‘behind’ the DJ booth in the second room, and the first room had only a small backstage area that was clearly closed off. Once I saw her ex-bf wander out from behind the stage, though, I put two and two together. This chick is well-connected.

I eventually found her, distributing lines of speed to all of her friends. Yay! Sorta. I finally managed to chat with her, but not without the bouncer trying to bounce me out of the area. He wasn’t at all concerned that people were doing lines, but he didn’t want random strangers backstage. Once he saw that I was with her, he backed off but then started harassing her about leaving. Feh.

Once we were finally shooed out onto the dancefloor near the bar, I hung around with my friend for a while as she talked about some very difficult and complicated romantic conflicts she had had last summer. This exchange happened as we stood next to the bar near the front of the main room, surrounded by her friends who were all dancing and chatting happily. I was really glad to be able to talk to her and give her some support, but it all seemed really incongruous to the context. On the other hand, if there’s ever a place where you can talk about personal stuff and not be overheard / noticed, it’s at a loud, crowded club.

My friend and her party disappeared into another corner to do more lines of speed, and I eventually caught up with them. When I did, I told her that I would be gone for a short while to find my friends and convince them to come back to the brewery party with me. Again, I was lying to make a departure that would otherwise involve lots of cajoling and pressure.

This time, on my way out, I treat myself to a cab. I’ve had enough walking for a while, thank you.

9h30: Berghain

I got to Berghain at about 9h30 and there was (thankfully) no lineup to be seen. The bouncer let me in without so much as a blink, and I was upstairs and dancing in no time. Bob and Donna were already there, along with Foster and the German galpal of Janine. Janine herself wasn’t due to come by until 13h00 or so (she didn’t actually show up until 16h00 or 17h00, but she’s perennially late). Fantômette and her crew never showed up, though, despite my frequent text messages. At some point around noon, I realize that I’m the only person that hasn’t slept tonight. Everyone else I knew had gone home and taken a substantial nap before coming to Berghain. Meanwhile, I had been at that brewery party.

So as I got there, a DJ called I:Cube was still spinning. His set was OK, mostly minimal techno with very little house influences, but it tended to be a bit same-y. That is, the tracks all tended to run together and yet the set also lacked continuity. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t complain; if I had heard that set any place other than Panorama Bar, I would’ve been thrilled.

Prosumer and Steffi were listed to do a long back-to-back set from 13h00 to 20h00, but that was complicated a bit by the fact that Steffi appeared to be drunk and/or very high. She still managed to beatmatch occasionally and she was certainly able to manipulate the mixer to play with the levels, but in the end Prosumer did the lion’s share of the mixing. Their set started off a bit too mellow and heavy on the vocal-house, but by about 14h00 or so things started to get pretty good and for at least a couple of hours I was having a fantastic time. I appreciated that there was a bit of alternation between more housey minimal tracks and straight-ahead techno-minimal tracks. But also, I think I was impressed by skill of both Prosumer and Steffi to manipulate the EQ levels to create climaxes and breakdowns and to otherwise give shape to the set.

Meanwhile, down in the Berghain room since about 9h00, Monika Kruse was giving a marathon, 8-hour set. I would head down every once in a while to check it out, but I rarely stuck around for longer than 20 or 30 minutes. Her mixing was flawless, her demeanor was always very self-controlled and professional, and her selection was definitely appropriate for the Berghain room, but I find the typical sound of that room a bit too heavy-handed and pounding, and so I was having the same problem’s with Kruse’s set. Very well done, but just not as fun for me as the sound in Panorama Bar.

Nonetheless, Kruse gets major props from me for dropping that remix of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman,” which came out relatively recently. It was remixed first by Booka Shade and M.A.N.D.Y., and then re-remixed by various other DJs on the release (on Get Physical Music). The remix I heard that night was the Reboot 20 Cubans remix, methinks. Anyway, it was great.

So by 20h00, nd_baumecker started his set up in Panorama Bar. Bob and Donna had just left, and Janine and her friend were about to leave as well. Nonetheless, I kept going for a little while longer to hear the first hour of his set (which was excellent but just a bit harder than I normally like) and then threw in the towel at 21h00. Considering that I had started my night with drinks at Fantômette’s place at 20h00 the previous day, I was feeling pretty proud of my marathon partying. I didn’t quite make it to the closing of Berghain (which can run as late as midnight Sunday), but I did pretty well for myself.

The ride back home on transit felt very long and just a bit painful (24 hours of dancing will do that to you), but it just made things feel all the better when I finally got home. I took a shower before even approaching the bed, and I also made myself a few eggs and a bit of tea. Essen ist wichtig! And so, at about 22h00 Sunday night, I went to bed at a “normal” hour, having not slept at all the night before.

Shopping, Won-Tons, Golden Gate, PanoramaBar

After a pretty crazy week, the most delicious luxury of today was sleeping in. Mmm, slumber-gasmic!

So Florian was actually planning to leave Berlin for Holland early Saturday morning, so he had a few errands to run today. As he dashed off to take care of that, I showered, changed, “read the Internet” (a phrase I’m borrowing from Florian) and caught up a bit on correspondence and blogging. At around 13h30 or 14h00, Florian called to say that he was done with his errands, and we arranged to meet at a café called Ciao di Berlino, at the corner of Wichertstraße and Greifhagener Straße. The food was pretty decent, involving standard “healthy” German soups and pesto-heavy Italian sandwiches. I had the “organic red beet soup,” which was tasty, but it also terrified me with its clothes-staining qualities.

The décor, however, was adorable. The main seating area had a silhouette of a green landscape running around the room at eye level, with little details like lakes with ships, bridges, and so on. On the far wall, around the doorway that led to the next seating area, was a massive print of a snowy mountain peak descending into grassy hills. All of the seats had pillows with silhouettes of forest animals silk-screened onto the corner. Anyway, it was cute.

Shopping!

*girlish squeal*

After lunch, we hit the nearby Asian market to buy the ingredients for Vietnamese summer rolls to take to a won-ton potluck party tonight. My knowledge of Asian cuisine can be pretty spotty, but one thing I’ve come to make with some skill are those delicious non-fried rice-paper rolls. Mmm.

From there I left Florian to return home and pack his bags, while I headed out for a bit of shopping. Well actually, we both stopped in a trashy dollar-store near the U-Bahn stop first, where we found these awesome felt coasters with silhouettes of teapots and apples and wine bottles. So cute! And only 0.65€.

My plan was to just do some window-shopping, but that didn’t last. The fashion in designer shops here is a lot more modern and brightly-coloured than what I find in Paris, and the prices are generally lower (although not cheap). Anyway, I apparently left my self-control at home. I think I also managed to rationalize the minor spending spree with the fact that I’ve barely done any shopping in Paris in these past 6 months or so.

I bought a pair of jeans at Hummel that were dark denim with bright violet contrast stitching. They were the display pair, so I managed to get a 10% discount. Yay!

In the store 2 doors down, I picked up this adorable sweater that had three stripes in a V-shape across the chest. The sweater itself was powder blue, and the stripes were violet, blue and turquoise. Very hott.

Finally, I stopped in this store called O.K. that sells odd and brightly-coloured items often made from recycled materials and from developing countries (i.e., coin purses woven from candy wrappers). I got a couple of gifts for people back home (no details! They might be reading) and then decided that I better head home before I do any more damage to my financial situation.

Dinner: Won-Ton Hoedown in Charlottenburg

After getting home and showing off my stuff to Florian (who was kind enough to my approving noises) I assembled the summer rolls and we got ready to head out for the won-ton party.

We headed over to the apartment of these friends of Florian, a couple that live in a MASSIVE apartment in Charlottenburg for 400€ / month. Seriously. They had this beautiful apartment with high ceilings, an office, a parlor and a bedroom, along with a massive bathroom and a similarly large kitchen. I swear, this thing was easily 1000 sq.ft (92m2) As is usual, all of my time in Berlin is spent in rabid jealously of people’s apartments. Sigh.

Anyway, the meal was great. We fried up the wontons right there at the table, gorged ourselves on all the other dishes that people had brought, and drank a lot of wine. There was some discussion of ceviche recipes, Paris, and what goes on in darkrooms at Berghain. I plead innocence to introducing the last topic, which was actually brought up by a straight guy (or, at least, heterosexually-partnered) who had a surprisingly intimate knowledge of the sleazier side of Berghain. Hooray for Berlin.

Things a got a bit blurrier as the meal went on (there was a fair bit of wine), but I do recall that at some point someone had the great idea of making wontons filled with Nutella and bananas. Then someone tried the same thing with nectarines and blue cheese. They were pretty damn good, I must say. Well worth a try at my place one of these days…

By 1h00 or so, almost everyone else had left and I was getting messages from my Frenchy crew (Fantômette and the rest) saying that they were done dinner and heading off to a club in their area. So I made my goodbyes and wandered my way back to the S-Bahn stop to head into Kreuzberg.

André Crom @ Golden Gate (club)

On the train over to the first club, I get a call from Fantô saying that they couldn’t find the club, so instead they were going to go to Golden Gate, which just happened to be near where my train was at the moment.

So I got off and headed over to the club, which is under the S-Bahn tracks near Jannowitzbrücke. It’s actually literally built in under the tracks, which is kind of neat; I imagine that it had been a storage area or something before. The club itself was sort of small, dark, almost entirely of brick and a bit grimy. Just like I like it. It was almost like someone’s apartment, with the first room (dancefloor) sort of the size of a salon, the second room (bar) the size of a bedroom, and then some bathrooms upstairs.

There was an outdoor area for smoking and chilling out, which involved a bunch of beat-up couches and armchairs with blankets, covered by a series of tents. It was nice out there, but a bit too cold. There were a number of DJs playing that night, but the one spinning while we were there was André Crom. Good, solid techno, although also not very exciting. Fantô pointed out that the tracks that he releases are very minimal and finely wrought, while what he was doing tonight was a heavy-handed pounding techno set.

The crowd was almost exclusively local Germans, which was cool as well. It was nice to discover a new location, after many weekends of visiting the same 2 or 3 clubs recently. Even this summer, I tended to go to a certain circuit of clubs, including especially Berghain/Panorama, Watergate, Club der Visionäre and Bar25.

By approx 4h00, Fantô and crew had had enough and they split. Although they were heading home to crash, I still had plans to meet my London-based Frenchy friends, Bob and Donna over at Panorama Bar. I hung around for a little while longer, and then got my jacket and headed off. Panorama Bar isn’t too far from Golden Gate, so I headed over on foot and stopped at a gas station on the way for a bag of chips to soak up some of the alcohol.

Get Perlonized night @ Panorama Bar

I got to Panorama Bar at around 5h or 5h30, so I apparently missed the Half Hawaii (the collaborative project of Sammy Dee and Bruno Pronsato) live set. I’m fine with that, since I heard a bit of them at mutek last year and wasn’t impressed.

There wasn’t much of a line at the door and I got in pretty quickly. The American bouncer, Mike, was checking bags and he gave me a full soul handshake, including that whole shoulder-to-shoulder half-hug thing. Yay! Nobody does soul shakes in Europe, so it sort of reminded me of home in a nostalgic way. Later that night, a French girl I had just met would gush at the fact that I did the bise ritual (air kisses on both cheeks) with her before leaving. “Je me sens chez moi!” (I feel at home!) she said, complaining that Germans never do the kissy-kissy thing (not true, in my experience, but they certainly do it less).

I found Bob & Donna and we spent some time catching up and chatting. Vincent Lemieux was spinning (apparently a Canuck) whose set involved some nice minimal house, but with some vocal-house tracks that I liked less. Later in the morning, around 8 or so, Sammy Dee got on the decks for a while and kicked out an excellent series of punchy, dry and yet bass-heavy tracks.

Sometime at around 8h00 or so, I had this massive wave of nausea and I had to sit in a corner and fan myself out of a cold sweat. I’m not one to feel nauseous for nothing, so I took it seriously and got off the dance floor. Bob was nice enough to come check on me, but there wasn’t much to do other than wait for it to pass. Once it passed, I was feeling much better, but tired and with a bit of a headache.

They had finished with the renovations of the bathrooms at Pano (mentioned briefly in my last visit), which were pretty neat. They had one big set of bathrooms with plenty of stalls and new, clean-looking tiles and metal toilets and so on (of course, it didn’t stay clean very long, but the design was pretty hygiene-oriented). They lowered the ceilings on the toilets (which had been two stories, like the rest of the club) and then put in a mezzanine above it with couches for sitting around. It was a really nice idea, although Bob was right to point out that it was a mistake to break through the wall into the dance floor and put a little balcony there. While it gave a great view over the crowd, it allowed the sound to spill into the next room, which made it harder to talk there. Also, on Saturday night, I would discover that the mezzanine allows drunk/high people to spray the crowd below with their drinks.

At some point near the smoking area, I make friends with another very friendly German dude (this is something of a pattern: I walk through the Berghain smoking area, some talkative German guy makes friends with me). He starts by asking me if I have any cigarettes, and then we spend the next few minutes chatting about where we’re from, how hard it is to learn a new language, and so on. At some point, two other guys that he doesn’t seem to know pass by and ask for a lighter. In return, one of the guys passes out some Menthos candies, which made me think of those absurd “Menthos, full of life!” commercials, and that made me chuckle. I bet they weren’t thinking of Berghain at 8am when they made those commercials. Anyway, they got talking and I wanted to go dance, so I said goodbye and disappeared.

Later that evening, Bob introduced me a German friend of his, who told me that he works in music. He’s a sound engineer, but he also makes music. When I asked what kind, he told me that, although he’s straight, he’s developed a gay rapper persona that raps about gay sex in clubs in German-inflected English. I would’ve thought he was joking, if he hadn’t started freestyling for me right there. That shit cracked me the fuck up. In response, all I could say was, “Geil” (sexy). I’ll have to ask Bob for his website, because his work needs to be exposed to the world.

At around 8h30 or so, I finally decided to throw in the towel and head home. On the way out, Mike gave me another soul shake, so I felt like a bouncer-knowing, club-getting-into badass. w00t!

I stopped at the kebab place near the Ostbahnhof station and forced myself to eat a kebab, thinking that a bit of food might settle my stomach, although I was already feeling better.

The train ride home was a bit complicated, mostly due to the fact that I thought I would catch the M1 tram from Hackescher Markt, which would bring me a few blocks closer to home than the U2. However, the northbound stop for the M1 at Hackescher Markt is in a rather non-obvious place, which required walking around the neighborhood for a bit and following the tram tracks. Anyway, I got home, peeled off my clothes, and got into bed.

Oh, by the way: I was breaking in my new jeans tonight and I totally forgot that dark-wash jeans have a lot of indigo dye in them when you first buy them. Every couple of hours, I had to wash the blue dye off my hands. Hah.

Jump into Berlin

Ok, it’s time for another time-warp. Since the antics of last Saturday’s Salon d’Agriculture, my week was pretty uninteresting, but really busy. A few IT issues exploded at work, and it sort of took over my life for a few days. The highlight was probably last Monday, when a friend of mine had a little apéro / soirée at her place to celebrate her b-day for those who can’t be in town for her official b-day celebrations (i.e., me and a few other Frenchy folks heading to Berlin). I offered to make food, and so I came with a big bag full of Peruvian goodies. Arroz chaufa, ceviche, ocopa, and so on.

Anyway, we come to Thursday! I had an afternoon flight today to Berlin to begin my weekend of debauchery/research, so I had to leave directly from work with my luggage and sprint to Orly airport. I got to my plane on time and all, but EasyJet had several other flights leaving at about the same time and the check-in area was a mess.

The flight was fine and I got into town at around 21h00 or so. As soon as I turned on my phone, I was checking in with my folks in Berlin, including Florian, my gracious host, N., a former roommate from last summer, Fantômette (who needs no introduction at this point), and K., a friend of another former roommate from last summer.

While on the train into town, I heard from Florian that he and some friends had just left an art gallery opening and were heading off to Cocolo, a ramen noodle joint that Florian had taken me to back in November. I had some trouble finding the imbiss in the maze of streets behind Hackescher Markt and my luggage slowed me down, so by the time I got to Totoro, they had already finished eating and Florian’s friends were getting ready to leave.

But Florian, bless his kindly Dutch soul, stuck around to keep me company as I had a bowl of tonkatsu ramen, which involved ramen noodles with half a smoked-boiled egg, smoked pork shoulder, tofu, and sweet BBQ pork belly. God, was that fucking awesome. I also had their roasted rice tea, which was lovely.

From there, we walked over towards Rosa Luxembourg Platz to grab a few drinks at a bar called Bar 3 (yes, seriously). It was densely packed with the denizens of the Berlin art scene, along with a lot of cigarette smoke. There was a strong majority of Anglophones in the room, at least by my ear. We ran into a friend of Florian’s that runs an art gallery, and we got to watch him do his “work,” flitting from conversation to conversation, discerning the artists from the buyers, making introductions, etc. Florian and I also amused ourselves by identifying the various cliques in the room, including the Rather Young Art-Fags That Dress In Ironic Versions Of The Fashions Of Their 20th-Century Queer Forbears. I swear, if you saw them, you’d know what I was talking about.

By about 0h30, we finally decided to head home. It was rainy and kinda gross, but the walk to the station was relatively short. Florian kept apologizing for Berlin’s cobblestone sidewalks, as I struggled to roll my luggage over to his place. It wasn’t that bad, mind you. I managed those streets with three pieces of luggage last summer. Anyway, we got back to his place, had some tea, and got some sleep.

Fast Times at the Salon d'Agriculture

Woo! Le Salon d'Ag!

You might wonder why I'm all excited about the nation-wide equivalent of a state fair. Well, if you look at my post from this same event two years ago, you'll see that le Salon d'Agriculture is a fine place for food and alcohol-related fun. Too much fun, at times.

While I was trying to avoid the debauchery of last time (and two of my companions were trying to avoid a repeat of last week's drunken poker game), we nonetheless managed to "discover" a fair bit of food and alcohol from the various regions of France. The whole thing was too much of a jumble to recount in linear form, but here are some highlights:

• One of my friends immediately opined that the crowd at the Salon was not at all Parisian or even from another large French town. The fashion, the accents, the attitudes (or lack thereof) all pointed to the folks that populate the countryside and small villages.
• On that note, we proceeded to buy sandwiches from a booth selling various kinds of cured meats. The young man that helped us was being rather talkative and smiley, as if he was trying to hit on all three of us at the same time. Alas, he had very "countryside" teeth.
• My companions were apparently too timid to sweet-talk their way into free samples of wine and liquor, so it was up to me to do it for all three of us. In most cases, all you needed to do was approach the booth, ask a couple of anodyne questions about their wine ("I've never heard of Bardol wine, what's it like?"; "Where is you winery located?") and wait for them to propose a tasting. Then, you make some vaguely-informed comments about the wine ("hmm, very smooth, but also a bit sweet." "wonderfully dry and just a bit tart" "lots of character, but a bit more tannic than I would normally drink"). And then, you make some gestures that imply that you're interested in ordering, but just not right now ("Do you take orders by phone?" "Do you have a website?"). The same technique applies to other kinds of foodstuffs and spirits.
• One vintner pointedly presented us with a crachoir (spit-bucket), as if to see if we were really there to taste the wines and possibly buy, or just to get drunk. We didn't spit.
• There were some disctinctive regional differences between wine-sellers. Pretty much, anybody not located in Bordeaux or Burgundy was thrilled to have us at his/her booth and spent ages presenting his/her wines. The people from Burgundy and Bordeaux, however, were dealing in 30€+ bottles of wine, and were selling wine like used-car salespeople. They would quickly offer you lots of samples from very expensive vintages, and then lean on you to order a crate of something right away. One guy in the Bordeaux section gave me at least 4 different tastings, and then whipped out his order book and started filling out an order. When I asked him to give me an estimate and I would come back later in the day, he gave me this whithering look that made one of my companions start to nervously try to back me up ("We'll be back for sure! When just need to think about it"). Not unironically, his reaction prevented me from coming back and making a smaller order (I had been thinking of maybe getting 6 bottles and paying a slightly higher delivery price).
• After one of the trio had left, we the remaining pair headed back into the salon for a few more rounds. We discovered a beer made in the Champagne region that was surprisingly tasty, so I bought a bottle.
• Near the end of our time there, we hit the stands in the DOM-TOM regions (yes, all of France's tropical territories were grouped together in the salon, like a little island of bright colours and loud music). We shared a sandwich filled with a sort of ginger-chicken, which was a bit messy. We were leaning on the counter of the neighboring stand, which was otherwise empty and already had the detritus of previous visitors. A moment later, just a piece of chicken fell out of the sandwich, a guy who was presumably the owner of the stand came up and started yelling at us for making a mess. I took the napkin I had and used it to clean up the counter so that there was no trace of our presence. The owner came back and started saying, "I'm not yelling at you to bother you, but—" to which my friend angrily replied, "Of course you're bothering me!" and walked off. This left me trapped with the angry owner, who gripped my forearm rather tightly and kept on insisting that my friend shouldn't have gotten angry. I told him that we had cleaned up after ourselves (and the detritus of others, besides) and that he should leave it at that, and then I managed to pry myself loose from his grip and rejoin my friend.
• While at one of the French-Caribbean booths, we witnessed a group of guys getting stinking drunk on rum drinks. Obviously they were partying to forget something, because one of them started to stare morosely into his glass and get very quiet. One of his friends noticed and tried to cheer him up, but whatever it was that was bugging him got to his friend, too, and soon they were both wiping away tears from red-rimmed eyes. Soon, the rest of the group noticed them, took turns consoling them with hugs, pats on the shoulder, tousling of hair and so on, until they managed to cajole them into at least the appearance of a better mood. All of this was interesting and touching and all that, were it not for the fact that it was going on in a brightly-lit convention centre. There's probably something to be said about most intimate / empathetic stuff happening in dimly-lit or dark places.

The difference one asshole can make

Yes, as you might imagine, tonight doesn't end very well. Nothing catastrophic, mind you, just shitty.

Anyway, I started my day by making a short trip to my neighborhood market to get a few things for me, but also the fixings for chimichurri. A friend of mine is having a birthday party next Monday, and I had offered to make some Peruvian food for the event. There rest of the stuff I was going to prepare on Sunday, but I thought I could at least prepare the chimichurri early, since the stuff actually benefits from sitting and curing for a while.

Also, after more than a week of living on a strict fish-and-vegetables diet, I decided to treat myself to a tasty, tasty roast chicken. I managed to get one that had perfectly-roasted skin; when the skin is browned and just beginning to get crispy, it's like kryptonite to me. Anyway, since I hadn't eaten breakfast and last night's dinner had been pretty light, I fell on the chicken like a madman and pretty much picked its bones clean. Now, even though roasting chickens here in France tend to be smaller than the bionic creatures you find in the US, that was still a lot of poultry-flesh. I spent at least an hour afterwards, just staring at the wall and wondering what I had done to myself. I pretty much didn't eat anything else that day, except for some carrot sticks later that evening.

Anyway, the rest of the afternoon was pretty unexciting. I finished my manuscripts for the two entries I'm contributing to the 2nd edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music, submitted them, and then did some work back-tagging my blog. That is, I went through some of the first posts I made to my blog and added the tags that I've developed since then. This is somewhat important for my project, because I have a few tags that correspond to particular chapters in my thesis (i.e., Touch, Solidarity, Affect), which I'm using as a marker so that I can come back later and cull some anecdotes to structure my chapters. The task was slowed down considerably by the fact that Blogger doesn't offer a convenient way to label and re-label more than one post at a time, but it was also much slowed by the fact that I couldn't resist reading these posts from almost 2 years ago. Good times, good times.

So, on to this evening's activities

Get On To Get Off: Heartthrob, Butane and Yakine @ Le Rex

Actually, I started my night at On Cherche Encore..., where Fantômette and Franck Valat were spinning for the evening. I spent maybe an hour hanging out with them, but I had to split shortly afterwards. I was on Yakine's guestlist for the event at Le Rex, and since he was spinning first in the evening, I needed to be there well before he finished his set.

I hopped on a vélib and made my way over by approx 1h00, and got through the line pretty quickly. I checked my coat and headed out onto the dancefloor, which was still pretty empty. As a friend of mine had pointed out last weekend, the first couple of hours at most clubs in Paris look markedly similar. Large groups of young guys that would normally have trouble getting into a club show up very early (when the bouncers are less picky) and buy bottle service (which also helps secure your entry). The result is that you have this odd landscape of empty-ish dancefloors, and tables filled with clots of similarly-dressed young men, nursing tiny doses of alcohol mixed with some juice. There's an air of anticipation/desperation that I normally would associate with the end of the night, really.

0h00-2h30: Yakine

Anyway, I ran into my friends S. and D., who were also there to see Yakine spin. The three of us hung out near the DJ booth, trying to make our support of Yakine as visible and physically present as possible. By about 2h00, other friends started to show up and the dancefloor was filling in. His set started off rather low-key, but by about 1h30 he had moved into higher-intensity tracks and he started getting into it. He's a relatively quiet guy, and so he can be a bit stone-faced on the decks. However, by the second half of his set, he was cracking a smile more often and looking like he was genuinely having fun. His track selection was solid and his transitions were always smooth; my only quibble with his technique was his tendency to cut the bass during the breakdown of a track, and then bring it back a few beats after the track itself had already kicked back in. You can hear it because the bass kick in the track usually has some upper-frequency element that passes through the low-cut filter and creates a sort of "echo" effect of the bass that would normally be there. So his manipulations of the bass kick was sometimes out of sync with the track itself, but otherwise the set was great.

2h30-4h00: Heartthrob live

Heartthrob's set was good, but I have to admit that I've heard better from him. The set started off pretty weak, but that's sort of to be expected; it's a live set, and in live sets the performer tends to start off with some broad gesture that falls flat 50% of the time. Nonetheless, he was pretty slow in getting off the ground. By about 30 minutes into the set, things picked up and got interesting, with slightly more complex bass patterns and punchier samples. He still has a fondness for sustained, echo-y, granular washes that I don't share, but I've made peace with that aspect of his aesthetics.

So, now to the asshole. I was dancing at the front of the room, in front of the live setup, against the metal stanchions they had installed around Heartthrob. By now, there was a crushing crowd all around, as clearly the entire techno-loving population of Paris had come out to adulate the scion of the Minus label. There was this guy dancing to the left of me, who was occasionally shoving his way into my space. I managed to hold my ground, but then a cute girl sidled up on the other side of him and complained that she didn't have enough room to dance. The prospect of possibly bedding her was clearly all the motivation he needed, and he barreled into me, pushing me into the person on the other side of me. I tried to push back, but the person on the other side was pushing back at the same time, so I ended up being forced behind both of them, and their shoulders closed in front of me. Annoyed and a bit bruised, I went back to dancing, but made a point of dancing right up close behind the asshole and occasionally co-ordinating my dancing so that I would "accidentally" collide with him pretty hard.

A few minutes later, I decided to go find my friends. My bag was hanging on the metal stanchion, right in front of the asshole, so I had to reach between him and the girl and start untying my bag. He seemed to think that I was trying to elbow my way in between him and the girl, and so he started pushing really hard on me, and I was holding onto my bag, which was tied to the stanchion, so the whole thing was threatening to tip over and the strap on my bag was probably going to break. After shoving back for a moment, I put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed as hard as I could, and started yelling in his ear that I was trying to get to my !@#$ing bag. He gave me a bit of space and said, "Well, get your bag, then." as if he hadn't just been doing his best to prevent that. I finally removed my bag, let loose a string of curses at him, and moved on.

However, the interaction had put me in a foul mood, and it wasn't being helped by all the other people colliding with me as I made my way across the dancefloor. I found my friends and spoke briefly with them, choosing not to tell them about the confrontation, since they at least seemed to be having a lot of fun, and I didn't want to bring them down. If I had really been loving the music, I probably would've been able to overcome my own foul mood and get back into the partying spirit, but Heartthrob wasn't inspiring me and the nastyness of the whole situation tainted the rest of the night for me. I guess it's not surprising how much of a difference one asshole can make to a whole night. Much in the same way that a bouncer/doorperson can make or break your night out (especially in Berlin), one sufficiently dickish jerk can suck the fun right out of your evening.

I stayed around until about 4h00, waiting patiently for my mood to improve, and then finally gave up and headed home.

The bike ride home was pleasant, at least.

Luis does Bobby Jindal (but not like that, thank you very much)

Well, yesterday I gave you my play-by-play snark on Obama’s address to the joint session of congress (a sort of unofficial “state of the union” address). So today, I’m giving you my play-by-play reaction (snark) to Bobby Jindal’s response to Obama’s address. I tell you, this was really hard to watch, and not because of his compelling argumentation…

• Ok, right from the beginning: who did the lighting for this debacle? How did you manage to make an Indian guy look orange?
• Ugh, he sounds like a fourth-grade teacher. The excessive modulation of pitch in his voice (sing-song-y), the overly-slow rhythm of his speech, and his insistence on placing a massive emphasis on every remotely important word makes feels like condescension. It’s gong to be hard to convince us if you’re insulting our intelligence with your delivery…
• And the hand gestures! People made fun of Obama for punctuating everything with a hand-jab, but this is kinda rediculous. The fact that it’s the same double-handed sawing gesture all the time makes it look like a nervous tic. He seems profoundly uncomfortable and ill at ease.
• Oh great, now he’s making remarks about how great it is that a black guy is the President. I suspect that this is going to be the new opening gambit for Republicans voicing opposition to the still hugely popular president: “See? We’re sensitive to racial issues! Now, about that uppity president’s stimulus plan…” Also, the combination of the facile congratulations with Jindal’s condescending tone is especially galling: “Good for you, boy! Have a cookie!” Yes, Obama is black and the president at the same time; this is very historical and stuff, as evidenced by the fact that everyone and his or her dog has been saying so since November 4th. It’s no longer a new insight for anyone, so the fact that you keep repeating it is telling, IMHO.
• “The President completed a redemptive journey…” oy vey.
• Oh, now I see where he’s going with this: “Obama’s a child of foreigners, and I am too! So you should have the same warm feelings for me! (Unless you’re racist, in which case please note that I’ve changed my first name from ‘Piyush’ to ‘Bobby’).
• “My parents also came from a distant land…” What is this, fairy-tale hour? JUST SAY INDIA! YOU’RE NOT A MEDIEVAL BARD!!
• “They instilled in me an immigrant’s wonder at the greatness of America.” Oh fer fuck’s sake. “An immigrant’s wonder”? Really?? Because wherever they’re from, it certainly wasn’t as great as America. OK stopstopstop right here folks, I need to rant for a moment:
  • the US really has to drop this “greatest nation on earth” schtick. Do you love your country? Sure. Does this mean that you need to make absolutist claims about its superiority to all other nations of the planet? No, dammit. America is great: OK, at least within an ever-dwindling set of parameters. But the US needs to come up with another form of patriotic expression than superiority and supremacy. There’s a historically important reason why most European countries, for example, avoid this sort of rhetoric like the plague.
• OK, back to listening to this.
• Now some anecdote about going to the grocery store with his father, and his father saying “Americans can do anything.” Oh, you can already tell this is going to be a motto for this speech.
• There you go, he said it again. Is this his version of “Yes we can?” ‘Cause it’s not working so well.
• “When we pull together, there’s no challenge we can’t overcome.” Wrong party, Jindal. The Republican party is the party of individual responsibility, not collective care. According to conservative philosophy, you don’t pull together, you act as self-interested parties in a free market that somehow results in a good outcome for everyone…most people…well, the profitable few. Those who don’t fare so well must’ve not worked hard enough.
• “Republicans are ready to work with the new president…” I’m glad I wasn’t drinking anything when he said this, as I might’ve damaged my screen with spit-back. What?! The Republican strategy so far has been to minimize any efforts of bipartisanship by Obama and then obstruct his success as much as possible. It’s clear that the plan is to come out of this as newly-devout conservative purists, just as their opposition to everything that comes out of Obama’s office ensures a crashing failure (or so they hope). Gah.
• “Today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us. Those of us who lived through hurricane Katrina, we have our doubts.” WHAT?! Did you just use the example of Hurricane Katrina to argue that government can’t save us from the financial crisis? Are you seriously arguing that, since the government failed horribly at dealing with Katrina, the government should have no role in dealing with the global economic crisis? Do you really think the government was too involved rescuing people from the floodwaters? What precisely was to be done instead? Anyway, as a Republican, you shouldn’t even utter the word “Katrina” for another 10 years. Christ. That’s it. I quit, I’m out of here.
• …
• OK, OK, I’m back. But I’m not enjoying this.
• “Let me tell you a story…” NO. GIVE A SPEECH, PLEASE. Fuck. I mean, anecdotes are fine and everything, but they should be embedded smoothly into your argumentation, not jammed in there like some sort of entertainment “intermission.”
• AAAAAAUGH!!! I’M ONLY 2.30 MINUTES INTO THIS THING! I’M NEVER GOING TO MAKE IT.
• Declares his frienship with Terry Lee, a New Orleans Sheriff that has been constantly under criticism for racial profiling.
• “some bureaucrat” stopped N.O. citizens from saving others in their boats. Sure. If you’re going to make that claim, you need something more substantive than “some bureaucrat,” as if a tubby caricature in a pin-stripe suit just materialized in the middle of the post-Katrina devastation.
• “The strength of America is not found in our government.” There’s the conservative money shot. It’s a pretty tone-deaf argument to make, but fine, at least you’re talking politics now.
• “this spirit will get us through the storms that we face today.” No, Bobby. A bunch of people having “spirit” isn’t going to undo the financial crisis we’re in right now. It’s a bit bigger than grassroots organizing and individual volunteer work. Everyone can play a part, yes, but the government must play the part that no other entity can play.
• Again, “Americans Can Do Anything™”. No, Bobby, no. Thanks to the last eight years of dwindling civil liberties, Americans certainly aren’t free to do a lot of things. If what you mean is that Americans are capable of anything, again, no. Americans can’t turn back time, they can’t un-kill Iraqis and Afghanis and their own soldier-children, they can’t completely snuff out terrorism, they can’t boss China into doing anything anymore, they can’t be serious about removing illegal workers from the US labor system without causing further collapse in manufacturing, construction and the domestic service industries, and so on. Nor, for that matter, are any other citizens of any other nation capable of anything.
  • In fact, just to bring in the Spinoza [LINK], the better point to make is that we can never fully know what Americans are capable of. This means that, at any moment, could potentially surprise ourselves with action we had never thought possible (both in the positive and negative sense). But anyway, I digress.
• OK, now the Republican wish-list
• Cutting taxes for working families
• Cutting taxes for small businesses
• “strengthening businesses” whatever that means
• new tax credit for home-buyers
• “These plans would cost less and create more jobs.” Prove it. This all sounds like an ass-backwards version of what was already proposed in the stimulus bill…only less economically stimulative. A tax credit for home-buyers? I realize that the housing market is in a slump, but encouraging more property speculation isn’t going to help.
• Now on to complaints about the stimulus bill
• while containing some good policy, it’s “larded” with wasteful spending. Examples follow…
  • money to buy new cars for the government
  • money for high speed train lines (he calls it a “magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disneyland” which is wrong on all three counts; it’s high-speed rail and the budget hasn’t been allocated to a particular route yet, and that allocation will be done by a former Republican congressman)
  • “and 140 million dollars for something called volcano monitoring.” YES, IT’S CALLED VOLCANO MONITORING AND IT HELPS PREVENT MASSIVE LOSS OF LIFE YOU IDIOT. OMG THIS MAKES MY HEAD HURT.
• “Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington DC.” Oh I see what you did there. Yes, very clever turn of phrase. Excessive spending is TOTALLY analogous to the threat posed by another Mount St. Helens.
• …”saddle future generations with debt.” Yes, thank goodness you weren’t doing any of this when your party was in power.
• Apparently, Louisiana is a corruption-free paradise of bipartisan co-operation. Did you hear that, people of New Orleans?
• Instead of mirroring Obama’s concerns for the environment, health care and education, here’s his hobby-horse: the price of gas.
• “We believe that Americans Can Do Anything™” Ugh. OK, is that the fourth time so far? This is going to kill me.
• Apparently, here’s the Republican health-care principle: “No American should have to worry about losing their health-care privileges.” Clever phrasing there. Notice that people who never had healthcare in the first place are not covered by this principle. Nor is the right to affordable healthcare. They just think that it shouldn’t get any worse than it already is. WE’D LIKE AN IMPROVEMENT, THANK YOU.
• His take on education: “The Children of America Can Do Anything™”
• OK, now he just made a joke about Louisiana being half underwater or half under indictment at all times. Seriously.
• Republicans have hope, too! We just don’t hope in the government. Instead, we hope in you, the American people. Group hug!
• “Our party got away from its principles.” Oh, here comes the mea culpa
• “You elected a Repulican government to champion limited government, fiscal discipline and personal responsibility….Republicans lost your trust, and rightly so.” OK, this would’ve been a good way to start the speech.
• Apparently, he’s “determined to regain your trust.” Apparently, by making stupid shit up about ‘excessive spending’ in the stimulus bill.
• “This is the nation that cast off the scourge of slavery” Yes, after the rest of the enlightened world had. It took a fucking civil war in the mid 19th-century to get rid of slavery in the US, so let’s not act as if America blazed the way for emancipation in the world.
• And, in closing, “Americans Can Do Anything™”
• You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you, bobby?

Obama's address to congress, with my snarky comments

OK, I’m one day late, but I’m watching Barack Obama’s Address to the Joins Session of Congress. Here’s my reactions, as they happen:

• The shot from the coverage I’m watching on FOX (I know, it was what I could find on YouTube, OK?) follows Obama as he walks down the aisle into the chamber. What I notice is that it’s like he flanked on both sides by undulating walls of grasping hands. Everyone is reaching out to touch his shoulder to get his attention. I wonder how he feels about that; if he’s squicked by it, he isn’t showing it at all.
• Awww, he gave a shout out to the First Lady….who is looking mighty fine in that violet sleeveless dress.
• Now, a list of narrative examples of how “everyday people” feel the crisis:
  • “the worry you wake up with” / “sleepless nights”
  • “the job you thought you would retire from, that now you’ve lost”
  • “the business you built your dreams upon, that’s now hanging by a thread.”
  • “the college acceptance letter your child had to put back in the envelope.”
  • OUCH. For some reason, that last one has the most affective impact for me, and not just because I work in academia. I think nothing incites that combination of sadness and shame like seeing the lives of your loved ones curtailed by your inability to support them.
• Standing Ovation #1: “we will recover, we will rebuild and America will come back stronger than before!” Hey, it’s a pep talk now!
• What I would’ve stood up for: “The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation.”
• “Now if we’re honest with ourselves we’ll admit that for too long we’ve not always met these responsibilities.” Don’t tell me that wasn’t a clear Bush/Republican dig.
• “I say this not to lay blame or look backwards.” Oh yes you do; don’t be coy. Let Bush and his party take credit for what they’ve wrought.
• “We have lived through an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election.” OK, that last one was a pretty transparent dig. I like this!
• “The surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.” This one got applause. Yay not-to-subtle-Marxist-critique!
• Re: his “agenda” for economic recovery: “it’s an agenda that begins with jobs.” This got more applause.
• Standing Ovation #2: When he announces that his stimulus bill “is now law” (as if anybody in the room wasn’t aware) only a certain part of the room stands up.
• Long list of the kinds of jobs this stimulus bill would create: green-sector jobs, retention of teachers in public schools, retention of police officers—in fact, a lot of it is about jobs that won’t be lost.
• Why does the camera cut to the very uncomfortable Mitch McConnell (R-KY) when Obama talks about the tax credits for low-income families paying for college tuition?
• “Now, I know that there are some of you in this chamber—and at home—who are skeptical about whether this will work.” (camera cuts to a smirking McCain) “And I understand that skepticism; here in Washington, we’ve all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises, wasteful spending.” How was that for an agile sympathy-suckerpunch combo? He’s all, ‘I know about disappointment, too; remember the last 8 years?’
• Biden will manage an “oversight effort” on the stimulus package, apparently because “nobody messes with Joe.” Pelosi gives him a standing ovation.
• Re: fixing the credit crisis: “Every American should know, that it directly affects you and your family’s well-being.” Translation: this isn’t just a hand-job to the financial sector, folks; your ass is riding on these banks as well, like it or not.
• What follows is a pedantic (but comprehensive) explication of how a “credit crunch” pretty much fucks everything up.
• Hmm, he’s definitely playing the populist / anti-bank card now, promising all sorts of harsh “accountability” for banks that take government funds. Some snide comments about how “those on Wall Street” might prefer to take the money with no consequences for their reckless decisions.
• Standing Ovation #3: “This time [i.e., not like the first bank bailout in the fall], they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending for the American taxpayer.” Pelosi shoots right out of her seat for this one. Lieberman claps soberly…the backstabbing traitor.
• Standing Ovation #4: [right after the previous one] “This time, this time, CEOs won’t be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks, or buy fancy drapes, or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over.” That last one was clearly a reference to that zillionaire that was recently accused of massive fraud à la Madoff.
• Standing Ovation #5: [not 10 seconds later!] He repeats the “doing something is better than nothing” argument (which is specious, but efficient), implying that inaction could result in a stalled economy for a decade. “That would be worse for our deficit, worse for business, worse for you, and worse for the next generation and I refuse to let that happen.
• Re: the unpopularity of helping banks after they’ve fucked things up for themselves: “I promise you: I get it!”
• “We cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment.” WHERE WERE YOU 7 ½ YEARS AGO?!
• Standing Ovation #6: “I will not spend a single penny for the purpose of rewarding a single wall street executive…but I will do whatever it takes to help the small business that can’t pay its workers or the family that has saved but still can’t get a mortgage.” Thunderous applause. Go anti-finance-sector sentiment! If this weren’t a thoroughly capitalist country, you might call this capitalist-baiting. Maybe banker-baiting.
• “we cannot consign our nation to an open-ended recession.” Great line.
• Standing Ovation #7: call to finally reform market regulation. Was anyone seated for that?
• Now he’s talking about his upcoming budget. What’ll be in it?
• Another Bush/Republican dig: “…the stark reality of what we’ve inherited: a trillion-dollar deficit, a financial crisis, and a costly recession.” Translation: I’m doing what I can with this mess, but if you want to blame someone for this, look into the last 8 years.
• Standing Ovation #8: A list of examples of how America has historically launched large state projects during times of upheaval. The last one got the ovation:
  • railroad construction during civil war
  • public high school system emerging from turmoil of industrial revolution
  • during world wars, the creation of the GI bill, and thus “the creation of the largest middle class in history”
• “In each case government didn’t supplant private enterprise, it catalyzed private enterprise.” True, although there’s always the specter of nationalization.
• Standing Ovation #9: While there will be cutbacks in the budget, there will be significant investment in:
  • energy
  • health care
  • education
• HELLZ YES. Pelosi jumped up like her seat was hooked up to a 3,000 volt wire.
• Standing Ovation #10: complains that all of the recent innovation in “green technology” has been happening overseas, and that he is committed to reasserting America’s predominance: “We will lead again.”
• Standing Ovation #11: “More renewable energy in America.” Does this require a standing O? Is it really that surprising / groundbreaking?
• Standing Ovation #12: “I believe that the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.”
• Dude, this is like a Catholic mass! An endless series of standing up and sitting down. If they start kneeling, they’ll have to burn some incense.
• Standing Ovation #13: “we can no longer afford to put health care on hold. It’s time.” [camera cuts to Hilary Clinton]
• Standing Ovation #14: mention of passing of the S-CHIP bill days into the new administration. Pelosi jumps out of her seat before he finishes the sentence.
• Standing Ovation #15: “seeking a cure for cancer in our time.”
• He’s starting a planning committee for health care reform next week
  • Electronic charts, new technologies to reduce cost
  • Preventative medicine
  • Broader health-care options (read: near-universal)
• “Nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt called for reform, the cost of health care has weighed down our economy and our conscience.” Nice turn of phrase there.
• Standing Ovation #16: “Health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.” Does this mean we’ll see something before next xmas?
• Now, on to education
• “a good education is not just a pathway to opportunity, it is a prerequisite.” Interesting point.
• Some depressing statistics of education levels and drop-out rates in high school and college.
• Standing Ovation #17: that every person has access to a complete and comprehensive education (does this mean my future as a prof is secure?) Pelosi again jumps out of her seat. I feel like I should get her a pair of pom-poms.
• He calls on every American to commit to at least one year of college or higher education, including community college / vocational training. OK, now he’s pandering directly to the educators!
• Standing Ovation #18: “Dropping out of high school is not an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.” And Fox, in its endless racial sensitivity, cuts immediately to the row of black legislators. “Of course! Black people drop out of high school a lot, right? Let’s get a reaction shot from some highly-educated black people!”
• It’s a bit of a surprising move to link education to patriotism—at least in America.
• Standing Ovation #19: A new education goal: by 2020, the US will have the largest proportion of college graduates in the world.
• Obama promises support for higher education training if you volunteer in the community, serve the country (militarily?)
• Standing Ovation #20: Asks that the education bill be named after Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Ted Kennedy (D-MS).
• Speaks about the “importance of parents” to a child’s education, although the phrasing makes it sound like a subtle reproach (i.e. it’s not the government’s job to tell your kid to turn off the TV and do his/her homework).
• Standing Ovation #21: “Responsibility for our children’s education must begin at home. That is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue; that’s an American issue.”
• Standing Ovation #22: underlines the importance of not passing to “our children” a debt that they can’t pay. For once, the Republicans in the room seem as enthusiastic as the Democrats
• Obama even jokes about it after the ovation: “See? I know we can get some consensus in here.”
• Sorta-Standing Ovation #23: Only this phrase: “With the deficit we inherited…” then Obama smirks as only the Dems stand up and clap. Chuck Schumer lucks positively delighted.
• Claims that stimulus bill was passed without earmarks (technically correct, although ask him about the Omnibus bill coming down the pipe).
• Reminds everyone that he had recently pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.
• Claims that his budgeting committee has already identified “2 trillion in savings in the next decade.” I’d be curious to see those numbers.
  • End educational programs “that don’t work”
  • Terminate agriculture funding for the large corporations “that don’t need it” (what about small farming?)
  • No more “no-bid contracts”, which have “wasted billions in Iraq” (this got a mini-standing ovation from the centre of the house)
  • Reform military acquisitions “so that we’re not paying for cold-war-era weapons we don’t use.”
  • Remove “waste, fraud and abuse” in the medicare system (i.e., for seniors)
  • “balance” the tax code by ending tax breaks for corporations that outsource their labor overseas.
• Standing Ovation #24: see the last point in the list above.
• This is called a pre-buttal: “You will probably hear from other sources that rolling back these tax cuts constitutes a massive tax increase on the American people…” deflate criticism before it’s articulated.
• Standing Ovation #25: if you make less than $250,000 (“a quarter million,” he repeats to emphasize its size), your taxes will not increase “by a single dime.” The Republicans are mostly slow to stand up, but they eventually do.
• Standing Ovation #26: “In fact, the recovery plan (stimulus bill) provides a tax cut—that’s right, a tax cut!—for 95% of working families. And, by the way, these checks are on the way.”
• We must address the growing cost of Medicare and Social Security (by “we” he means Americans; I’m just a spectator caught in the consequences).
• Calls for tax-free universal savings accounts “for all Americans.” (applause)
• “Finally, because we’re also suffering from a deficit of trust…” he wants to restore the feeling of transparency and honesty to the budget process…
• Standing Ovation #27: “…and for the first time, that includes the full cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. For seven years, we’ve been a nation at war, no longer will we hide it’s price!” You can’t not stand up to that, right?
• Announces intention to “review” the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but not concrete details.
• Standing Ovation #28: nonetheless, commits to making a plan that “responsibly ends this war.”
• Shows his hawkish / tough side, claims that he’ll work on the effort in Afghanistan / Pakistan to “defeat Al Qaeda and combat extremism.”
• Standing Ovation #29: “I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens half way around the world. We will not allow it!” Interesting shift from first person singular to plural.
• Addresses himself to the soldiers on the field “and to the families that bear the quiet burden of their absence.” Again, nice turn of phrase.
• Standing Ovation #30: “We honor your service, we are inspired by your sacrifice and you have our unyielding support.” Cut to a scene of some chubby politician shaking the hand of a young military officer conveniently located in the crowd.
• Claims that new budget increases the numbers of soldiers and marines
• Standing Ovation #31: expanded pay and benefits for veterans.
• “There’s no force more powerful than the example of America.” Huh. I don’t know about that…
• Standing Ovation #32: references the requested closing of Guantanamo Bay detention center. “Because living our values doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger.”
• Standing Ovation #33: “that is why I can stand here tonight and say with out exception or equivocation that the United States of American does not torture. We can make that commitment here tonight.” The last phrase implies pretty heavily that, under the Bush administration, we probably did.
• Discusses the importance of foreign policy
• “we can no longer shun the discussion table”
• mentions Middle East convoy (Holbrooke) assigned for Gaza conflict
• mentions need for international co-operation for fixing the economic crisis.
• Insists on this time as “the crossroads of history,” where the present is stretched out into historical time.
• Standing Ovation #34: in honor of Richard Abbas (sitting in the audience), a Florida banker that cashed out of his company, took a huge bonus, and then distributed the cash to his employees without saying anything to the press. The ovation was hesitant at first, but picked up speed.
• Mentions Greensburg, Kansas, which was completely destroyed by a tornado and is now being re-built as a clean-energy city.
• Standing Ovation #35: quotes the words of Ty’Sheoma Bethea (in the audience, next to the First Lady), a student in a “hopeless” public school in NC, who wrote a letter to congress asking for help. “We’re not quitters.”
• Moves to closing gestures, about how these people (the three examples preceding) should inspire “us” (legislators, but also the general public) to work for the nation.
• “I know…look, I know that we haven’t agreed on every issue—thus far.” (laughter from the crowd, as he looks at the Republicans.”
• Standing Ovation #36: “…but I also know that every American who is sitting here tonight loves this country and wants it to succeed.”
• “That must be the starting point for every debate we have in the coming months, and where we return after those debates are done. That is the foundation on which the American people expect us to build common ground.” So, patriotism as political engagement quelconque? (c.f. Agamben)
• of course, no American “no church in this state” speech can end without “God bless America.” Sigh.

My furry roommate

Remember back in the fall, when I saw a mouse in my kitchen and finally decided to buy a mousetrap? [LINK] Well, the mouse mysteriously stopped showing up as soon as I brought the mousetrap home, so I cleaned my kitchen of any edible items and called a unilateral truce.

Then, tonight, he scuttled across my kitchen floor. Again. With all the lights on, in the early evening. He didn’t even have the decency to lurk about in the dark.

And so here I am, preparing the mousetrap again. I have no cheese left in my fridge, so I attached a bit of red cabbage to the trap, as if that’s going to work.

Back in the Saddle, musically

Etude 007: Reggaetón Edition

Yay! Back in the saddle, so to speak. After work, I finally got around to making some music again. It’s just a short 2-minute loop with some reggaetón samples that a friend sent me, but I was just happy to have produced something after more than a month of radio silence.

Anyway, I had crashed at a friend’s place the night before, so I got up at 10h00, fell back asleep, woke up again at 10h30, and finally got myself out the door. I was in no shape to go directly to work, so I had to climb on my bike and pedal my way around parc Buttes-Chaumont and make my way over to my place for a hasty shower and breakfast.

I got to work a bit late, but my boss seemed to forgive me, and my day was otherwise pretty unexciting. I headed home and set about making a fish salad out of those two roasted sea bass that I had left over from the night before. It actually worked out pretty well. I made some mayo from scratch with some good olive oil, an egg, lime juice, mustard and a clove of garlic (and with the help of a good hand blender, mind you). From there, I finely diced some onions, fennel, turnip, and carrots along with some of the fennel greens. I took the fish and carefully disassembled them, pulling the flesh off the skeleton without taking too many pin-bones with it; I flaked the flesh with a fork and removed any bones I could find, and then I mixed the fish in the veggies and added the mayo. Not bad, really.

I also made a roasted cauliflower soup, which was “improved” by adding a small container’s worth of crème fraîche. See? It’s healthy, because there’s vegetables in it…despite the pound of cream.

My evening was spent mostly dealing with the banalities of preparing application dossiers for fellowships and dealing with pedagogical issues, but before going to bed I decided to stay up and make a bit of music. It’s been almost a month since I had resolved to make something—anything—musical at least once every couple of days, so tonight was my night to get back to it.

The Four-Night Weekend, Part 4: The Postponed Date

Well, today was short but not entirely quiet. Since I had returned home at about 10h00 in the morning, I let myself sleep into the early afternoon (15h00) and then got up and went about blogging my little heart out. I managed to catch up on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so I was doing pretty well. I also took care of a few bits of school-related housekeeping and then set about making some parsley-flavored rice and roast fish. Tasty! I roasted all three of the fish, since they were beginning to get old. I only ate one, and I put the other two in the fridge, thinking I might make some sort of fish salad out of them tomorrow.

I got a call from the guy that I met on Thursday (with whom I was supposed to have a hot date last night, but it didn’t work out) and he invited me over to his place for some drinks. We ended up staying up really late chatting and such, so I crashed at his place, thinking foolishly that I would wake up early enough to swing by home before going to work.