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 raskal trippin hopscotch adventures of an exiled new yorker in berlin this site has moved. if you are not redirected, please click here. |
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Monday  raskal trippin has moved! please update your links. raskal.typepad.com ich bin dabei! blog stats since the der spiegel episode, i haven't checked the stats too often and realized i've been missing out on stat comedy. my favorite 3 recent searches: "is robert de niro hung like a horse" "can i eat pancakes after having teeth out" "turkish kids fighting kreuzberg" people are strange. posted by sattva | 2/27/2006 10:12:00 AM GMT+1  Berlinale wrap-up It didn’t end up as well as it started off. Apparently, I mixed up a title or a description or something and ended up in a movie with two scenes repeated over and over and over again. In one scene people were clothed and in the other scene they were naked. In neither scene was dialogue a priority. More ass and penis than I ever expected to see in one setting. Half of the audience was gone by the time the credits were rolling. Later that night, the director of this unfortunate movie was spotted at a bar in Kreuzberg. I was at home and missed out.  Even though I missed out on that star sighting, I did run into Berlin Blogger at the last film of my Berlinale 2006 expedition, which was a pretty funny surprise. Block Party was all and more than I expected. Dave Chappelle had me rolling. I loved it. It was better than Cats. I was depressed for about a month after it happened for real, thinking why am I living in Europe? what have I done? So now I can go on with my life. I really need to see Jill Scott in concert though and yall need to go see this movie. March 3rd at a stateside theater near you. Until next year… posted by sattva | 2/20/2006 12:31:00 PM GMT+1 Wednesday tips for berlinale 1. don't laugh at the people who had to stand in line to buy/pick up tickets. even if you have the hook-up, you may eventually have to stand in line too. 2. realizing you have to wait and then trying to cut in front of half of the people already in line is a no-no. it is likely that there will be a taz reader present who will insist on explaining the process of line formation and its benefits to modern civilization loud enough for everyone to hear. (i was not a part of this interaction) 3. if you don't really understand the language of the film you want to see and there are no subtitles, stay at home. do not bring your friend to perform simultaneous translations in a loud whisper. if you can't wait for the DVD, learn sign language. 4. don't kill yourself trying to think up questions to ask the director. it's true he/she probably travelled a long ass way but berlin is not such a shabby place to be. i'm sure the director could be using his/her time more fruitfully than answering gems like, hey so are you from south africa? ok thanks... or watching someone totally ignore an answer to come up with their enlightening (as in 18th c.) hypothesis: maybe it's the african culture? 5. if you don't have paparazzi following you around, you can always get a stalker. mine showed up on the bus yesterday with an open bottle of beer, woozily stating that he'd seen me exactly 2 1/2 hours earlier on the bus. does that mean anything? he asked. yea it means you need help and probably should not be trying to create your own version of the berlinerfahrbar in the middle of the afternoon. all that being said, conversations on a sunday afternoon was great. even with the disconnect of almost wanting to cry while 99% of the audience was laughing. posted by sattva | 2/15/2006 07:52:00 AM GMT+1 Monday Valentine’s day in berlin Passion lives here! Oh wait, that's Torino. Do people do that here? I’m not the best person to be reporting on cultural differences on this particular holiday. I don’t remember a single Valentine’s Day celebration growing up. February was Black History Month. If anything, on Feb. 14th, we had a birthday cake for Frederick Douglass. My parents did not play. In Berlin, flowers are shockingly cheaper than other cities I’ve been to. In Paris, there is clearly some sort of flower mafia at work behind the scenes. We never did Valentine’s Day there either. I’m not really a fan of flowers and we have too many other things to celebrate: first date, civil ceremony, church ceremony, the US side reception, that day we had a fight in the esoteric section of Barnes & Nobles… things like that. But if you wanted to indulge in such sappiness here, it wouldn’t totally kill your wallet. More love: JDilla/Jay Dee tributes were taking place online this weekend. If you listen to hip-hop, you know JDilla probably without knowing it was him. This man straight overworked himself to death. At 32. For Valentine’s Day, love yourself. Go schedule your check-ups, annual pap smear, blood work including STDs, mammogram if you are old enough… I’ll be trying to get done with the dentist finally. No love: moving… definitely not in time for V-Day. This is turning out to be the longest move ever. We’ve had the keys since December and the only things that have made it to the new place are most of my books and a mirror. I’ve moved to other continents faster than this. First some rest, 2nd movies, 3rd back to the dentist, some more IKEA/Bauhaus excursions and then and only then we are packing it up and moving out of Graefekiez. By mid-March *fingers crossed* posted by sattva | 2/13/2006 10:33:00 AM GMT+1 Tuesday goodbyes/back for berlinale eventually i'm going to have to say goodbye to the neighborhood but right now it's being drawn out as long as possible. this weekend was another all-star kiez weekend, interrupted by one trip to steiglitz. old neighborhood tire-bouchon and lebmel on dieffenbachstr. la maison blanche on körtestr. mini-bar, the room 77, die kleine kneipe on graefestr. emerald isle on erkelenzdamm for the france/scotland rugby game. the only screen i could see was playing chelsea/liverpool which was quite entertaining so i didn't feel like i was missing out. replacement goalie. comedy. new neighborhood enoteca bacco and knofi where "wir hassen fleisch." not the place to be looking for italian sausage. now that our weekend visitor, the dubliner famed for missing planes, is gone, i can get on planning a starless, redcarpet less but very international Berlinale and drinking the liter of bailey's we received as a present. movies i'm going to see: Dear Pyongyang, Japan Casa de areia, Brazil Shisso, Japan Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon, South Africa El cielo dividido, Mexico and my personal highlight Dave Chappelle's Block Party, USA posted by sattva | 2/07/2006 10:02:00 AM GMT+1 Friday a ripple in the internet what started out as one of those e-mails which should have stayed in the draft folder is reaching epic proportions. Latest developments: mike’s article in Spiegel Online (which includes a link to the top ten list that doesn't seem to want to die) Du bist Deutschland and klowände are now the top searches on technorati which lead to an explanation for non-German speakers on the technorati blog. it's like wildfire over here... i'm convinced it's all due to the fact that wikipedia.de is down (due to a lawsuit involving a deceased hacker's parents) and folks just don't know what to do with all that time they used to dedicate to creating their own skewed version of history. i know i need to rededicate my time... this post is all about procrastination. happy friday! posted by sattva | 1/27/2006 09:48:00 AM GMT+1 |
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