SOME INTERNATIONAL FREELOADERS HAVE BEEN LIVING IN MY ROOMFriday, March 12, 2010
While I was away recently, my neighbor sublet my place in Berlin to backpackers. I was gone for five weeks and in that time he got four different people to take my apartment. Each one stayed around a week. I felt a little violated on my return. What had they done in there? Maybe they’d tried my clothes on, played my guitar, flipped through my dream journal? Maybe they’d done things in my home that I would never ever get the opportunity or the balls to do. Read the rest of this entry » |
WHY DON’T THESE NEW PURITANS JUST GO TO RUSSIA?Monday, December 7, 2009
The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is used to showing oil paintings and military artefacts from many centuries ago, i.e. not what the kidz are into. But to win over the youth, they put on a collection of contemporary British art, including a print of Cher Guevara, and a log stuck in some railings. They wanted more though, they wanted to bring over a band to make the kids hip to Catherine the Great’s palace and its unrivalled collection of lace, goblets, and a 2000-year-old solid gold comb. My step-gran works there and so I got involved as a consultant on what the kids are into. The kids are into These New Puritans, who are fortunately on my label, so they went to play a show and I got to have a free holiday in Russia. Read the rest of this entry » |
MARTIN FENGEL’S ROMANIAN DICHOTOMYThursday, November 12, 2009
We love Martin Fengel. He’s the guy who took the pictures of the happy crucifixions in Manila. Apart from his passion for beautiful pictures he is really into traveling around the globe. His last trip led him to Romania. After he came back he wrote our German editor a really nice letter about his experiences over there, and since you all like freaking out about someone’s trip to Romania we thought we’d share it with you. Read the rest of this entry » |
HITCHHIKING THROUGH VIDEO-GAME TERRITORY OF ROMANIAMonday, November 2, 2009
While wandering around the Carpathian Mountains on a recent trip through Romania, I spent a lot of time asking people for insight on facets of Transylvania more interesting than the Dracula tomfoolery. I was hoping that I would talk to a stranger who could tell me where I would find the gypsy camp where the best most exotic acrobats are manufactured, or something just as hypothetically awesome like a Romanian warship factory or a peasant curling league, but no one was really giving me answers. Then, as I was eating supper in what seemed like the Romanian equivalent to The Cracker Barrel, a dodgy looking Irish expat started talking to me about medieval citadels. |
SNOOPING AROUND GIMLI, NEW ICELANDTuesday, October 27, 2009
Icelanders are taking over Manitoba. The once-glamorous country that is now officially bankrupt has been losing its citizens to Canada for over 100 years, and Manitoba now hosts roughly 88,000 of these Goolies (a derogatory term for Icelandic Canadians, probably coined by their emigrant rivals, the Ukrainians), which is crazy because that’s practically a third of Iceland’s entire population. Read the rest of this entry » |
VBS - MISSILE SILO HOMESFriday, September 25, 2009
Head on over to VBS today to watch our exploration of repurposed missile silos across the American west. Way back when, the good ol’ US of A got in a kerfuffle with the USSR and we built a whole load of massive, winding underground labyrinths stuffed to the brim with nuclear warheads. Nowadays, the American military’s busy fighting hotter, deadlier wars throughout the Middle East so the government’s selling off the abandoned silos at auction. Which means weirdo begeirdos of every stripe have been converting these structures into houses, UFO research HQs, SCUBA training grounds, you name it. Take a tour of these incredible structures with our intrepid team as they wade through the rusty, flooded military installations of yesteryear. |
AMSTERDAM - THE GLOWIEST PLACE IN TOWNThursday, September 24, 2009
Meet Nick Paladino, a Hendrix-obsessed American who drained an Amsterdam basement all by himself in order to create Electric Lady Land, a museum where everything but Nick is fluorescent–although we haven't seen him in the nude. Mieke Lindeman traveled to the museum for further inspection. Here's what she came home with. |
VBS - A SHOT BY SHOT HISTORY OF WODKAThursday, September 24, 2009
The 1891 Treaty of Madrid was the first bilateral agreement to recognise France’s sole right to use the word Champagne. Since then, a slew of other rulings have followed, cementing that agreement in pretty much every market in the world. That’s why these days, when you think of Champagne, you think of France. What this is getting at is that in 1977, when Poland tried to claim the sole production rights of its national drink Wodka, it wasn’t such a crazy idea. Certainly not as crazy as Cadbury trying to trademark the colour purple. Sadly for them, the superpower formally known as the USSR saw it differently, successfully contesting and defeating Poland in an international court. Naturally, poor Poland has been griping about it ever since. (That and everything else, seriously, what’s with Polish people and griping?) All racial stereotypes aside, what if that ruling was wrong? What if the Poles was robbed? |
JAPAN - THE RELUCTANT NORTH KOREAN FILM STARWednesday, September 23, 2009
On January 4th, 1965, a confused young sergeant in the US military named Charles Jenkins drank ten beers before setting off on his nightly patrol duty along the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, where he had been serving for the past year. Having previously been shuffled back and forth between South Korea and US outposts across Europe, he feared his next deployment would be in war-torn Vietnam. Replaying in his mind the horror stories he’d heard of the battles going on in south-east Asia and afraid of dying in the jungle, in his boozy haze he made a snap decision. Drunkenly he stumbled over the border into North Korea with his hands in the air, giving himself up to his communist enemies. He would remain there for 40 years before escaping. |
JAPAN - HOLIDAY OR HOMELESS?Tuesday, September 22, 2009
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Either he's afraid of blowing his day job in the Goldman Sachs IT department, or gays have finally reached the point where I officially give up on ever understanding what their deal is. 
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If you want your Gran to stop being such an old-fashioned prude just find a way to get her out of the house and show her what kids are into these days, like taking her to a hardcore show or one of those emo sex-parties she keeps hearing about.
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