Sunday, October 23, 2005

Catchup Crumbs

Been leaving too many loose threads around here, so I thought I'd take up some of Sunday afternoon to tie some of them up. And to celebrate the 200th post here. I know that's not much for a lot of blogs, but considering how damn verbose I am, it's not half bad.

***

No sooner do I mention Chinky the Chinaman than his sister shows up on the cover of this week's tip magazine. tip is one of the two biweekly listings magazines, the more yuppie-friendly and lifestyle oriented, as opposed to Zitty, which is more politically inclined, but their deep dark secret is they're essentially the same company, as you discover when you ascend their twisted business structure. Anyway, Chinkette can be seen a little ways up from the bottom of this page, although she's a lot more, uh, striking full-sized or on the posters tip has up all over town. And now I hear I'm about to get an ad for a new "soul" radio station here which will be the Afro equivalent. Hmmm.

***

The "Do Not Ask" sign on White Trash across the street went down shortly after I mentioned it, and we got yet another in the seemingly endless stream of temporary art shows, this one entitled "seven +: Eleven Positions of Contemporary German Photography." I've always been put off by this "positions" word, since what it seems to mean is "this stuff's not real interesting to look at, but we've got these really interminable and unreadable essays by the artists and various art history PhDs in this big thick catalog which explains what's going on and what makes it art." Now, I'd call the show "Eleven Contemporary German Photographers" and let it go at that, but then, I don't even have a Bachelors degree. Nor can I figure out why a show of 11 photographers gets called "seven +." If you're showing there, are you one of the seven, or one of the others?

***

I've been told that one reason for all the horrendous lack of anything at all at the last race at the Hoppegarten is that the track has once again filed for bankruptcy. I have no details on this at the moment, but it could well be that all concerned weren't actually anticipating that the race would go on until the very last minute, although, come to think of it, that's pretty unlikely considering the fact that the big BMW race was happening that day. Will it be there next year? Wait and see, I guess.

***

The rain has started falling, hard enough to wake me up last night, as a matter of fact. Right now, Berlin is beautiful because all the deciduous trees are changing color. We've got about a week of this before things really turn ugly, but it's worth going out and suffering a little bit of precipitation to see it before it all turns grey and bare.

No comments: