It was a Thursday afternoon in August in San Francisco. The boats in the race for the America’s Cup were chasing each other in the bay. We had rented bikes. It was windy. Headwind anywhere we went. Good for the boats (as they were enigmatically always coming in [more]

Politics in Turkey is actually not funny. Chernobyl wasn’t funny and the mad cow disease also not. People were injured, got infected, lethally sick, people got imprisoned and people died. And still, there is this embracing ironic attitude out there coming along with a fatalistic smirk, a Monty Pythonesk way [more]

Pilzsuchergebnisfoto ist das neue “lustige Katzenvideo”? Hehe. Hab mich gerade beömmelt vor Lachen, als ich das las. Was Justus Köhncke auf Facebook vor 7 Stunden schrieb, ist so was von heiter, weil es ganz ehrlich das beschreibt, was mich auch verwundert hat. Denn so geht das schon seit [more]

Almost every day I drive by the Viper Room. It is located on Sunset Boulevard, next to a dirty liquor store. I always try to look at the black sign above the club, that says who is playing tonight. You hardly know any band, and any band wouldn’t [more]

MoL always enjoys self-help and lifestyle and health columns. There was a particularly fine crop of mind-numbing cliches in this morning’s free handout paper. 1) We have created a monster out of stress. (MoL is the first to applaud bullet-point psychobabble.) 2) Some people seem to have been [more]

Styling and photography by Wilma Hörbiger:

A beaver’s tail is flat and wide, flapping in the water, its hind-feet are webbed. It is a graceful swimmer. Beavers are often defamed with alleged tales of destruction, but they only cut down plants to reach the fresh foliage and build large dams if there isn’t already [more]

Bertrand Russell was traveling in China in 1920. Since the famous logician and co-author of the Principia Mathematica knew a lot about the logic of language, but nothing about Chinese, a young and dapper mathematician and philosopher named  赵元任 Zhao Yuanren accompanied him as an interpreter. Zhao had studied [more]

SV Lichtenberg 47 is a sports club with mainly footballers among its 900 members. The other departments are bowling, boxing, aerobics, gymnastics, line dancing, table tennis, and volleyball. The club was established in 1945 as Sportgruppe Lichtenberg-Nord in the Russian-occupied East Berlin and in 1947 it merged with [more]

It’s holiday time and there is not much to tell. You enjoy your life and take it easy. What a privilege. What a gift.

Große, geradezu unerfüllbare Pläne zu schmieden, das ist mein Metier. Demzufolge ist der durchaus überschaubare Rahmen der Sixtinischen Pages quasi als Geschenk des Himmels zu erachten, – oh ja, lieber Georg Diez, lass mich Dir bitte, dem dankbaren Haushund gleich, dankbar Deine gewaschenen Füße ablecken – denn diesen, [more]

As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World A woman in a headdress stood guard inside the entrance. Her clean white tunic was smooth as stone, but it wasn’t the synthetic material we all wore—could [more]

This must be the most melancholy consequence of the US federal government shutdown: Mars rover Curiosity has suspended her twitter feed. “Sorry, but I won’t be tweeting/responding to replies during the government shutdown. Back as soon as possible.” We can only hope that while Curiosity is no longer communicating [more]

könnte man das nennen.

http://youtu.be/NwIl9CPG9GU

“When philosophizing,” Ludwig Wittgenstein writes, “one has to climb down into old chaos and feel well there”. In philosophizing, the human subject touches chaos, the non-ground. It maintains an at least problematic contact with it. To feel well in chaos can mean nothing other than to integrate the [more]

I like to share because I am constantly broke. I am the poorest rich person that I have ever known. I do not think that this is problem only an inconvenience that I believe will be fixed momentarily. I have always believed that. I am always on the [more]

Chinese Factory Workers and the Toys They Make

Just met Julianne Moore this afternoon in a tiny, expensive hotel room. I couldn’t stop looking at her freckles. They are the most delightful and elegant freckles I’ve ever seen. They are everywhere. Hands, legs, feet, face. She has them all over the place and Julianne’s freckles are [more]

My 77 year old mother would never curse, never say something dirty, and I actually never heard her using the word shit. Today, she sent my a joke. It’s a political one, and I admit it is none of these jokes you would tell because it is a funny [more]

Only a few years ago when people asked me where I come from the reaction was quite different than today. Nowadays, to mention Istanbul is enough to cause a vivid talk about how exciting, controversial, beautiful, welcoming, artsy or cool this city is or must be according to [more]

Coffee in Italy. Autobahn in Switzerland. Searching for a radio station while driving. Reading the review of Jonathan Franzen’s new book on Karl Kraus. Drinking white Merlot. Playing silly card games. Jumping into Lake Maggiore. Eating stuffed peppers. Listening to Georges Brassens: En ce temps-là, je vivais dans la lune [more]

In this shopping mall at Landsberger Allee is a Japanese restaurant on the first floor. It was closed but it looks very nice.

bei Tag und bei Nacht

Completely unexpectedly, squeezed in between the likes of Chanel and Hermès on a small pedestrian alley just off busy Union Square, lies Mocca, an Italian deli. Its cluster of little round tables and garden chairs dominates most of Maiden Lane. A musician jazzes away on his double bass. [more]

In 1949, Le Corbusier stars “The Architect” in Nicole Védrès’ film “Life begins tomorrow”. “The only way out of the disaster caused by the old manner of city planning is to destroy everything and to reconstruct it.” (Words spoken by “The Architect”.) A film of adventure, love, humour [more]

Maria Theresia’s lap dog. The Empress of Austria was also the sovereign of Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma and the mother of Marie Antoinette. The dog is now on display in a show-case at Vienna’s Natural History Museum. Creepy.

MoL is a big fan of crossword puzzles. Best clue this weekend, 13 across: Artist doing nudes? The underwear could go here (6,6). 25 across, just to drive Germans crazy, is a cricket clue: Look to make a cricket score? (6) [ANSWERS BELOW] MoL went to see the [more]

As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World In the center of the white city the tops of the guano-streaked buildings were as blackened and lightning-struck as the crowns of the giant redwoods in my [more]

In my yesterday’s post I mentioned this important soccer match, only shown on Pay-TV. So I had to leave the house to watch it. No way I would miss the match. All soccer bars are smokers bars. Like the one I went to. Everybody was smoking. Me too. [more]

It’s April, two months away from the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Adidas builds a miniature copy of Berlin 1936 Olympic Stadium on the Platz der Republik. It is called World of Football. In 2005 already many locations are in discussion for this venue in the Berlin Senate. [more]

Mein bester Freund war da und er war traurig. Er finde es ganz schrecklich mit dem Herbst, sagte er, eklige sich fast vor dem Dunklen, dem Modrigen, dem Kalten, dem ganzen Mist vom Herbst eben. Es mache ihn depressiv und er könne nicht verstehen, warum Menschen, so wie [more]

Suddenly your are surrounded by hundreds of people dressed in fine Sarees and suits. A band is playing the drums while the groom appears on a white horse that is almost as fancy as the person sitting on it. The sun is slowly setting over the ocean framing [more]

according to reliable sources, people high up in the 60pages hierarchy have been overheard saying that ‘das leben ist ein ponyhof’ (thereby deliberately showing off their good mood in close proximity to a very stressed writer claiming the opposite). these rumors have been adamantly denied. the CEO of [more]

When I came home from the conference in Lüneburg, which ended with a lecture by a philosopher and behavioural scientist, who actually sang half of his lecture, spontaneously bursting into song, serenading tropical birds and their ritualistic synchronicities, I found a package containing a volume of Felix Salten’s [more]

They used to say that we live in an age of Nervosität. This was in the 1910s and 1920s. Today it is less the age which is nervös, it is more the people. So what is the difference? It is the difference between a war without and a [more]

It’s Sunday. It’s hangover day. Today’s hangover cure is Ragnar Kjartansson and his pomp and circumstance brass band sailing the S.S. Hangover in Venice whose flag flies in the ensign of a fat pegasus. If that didn’t help, I am sure Fitzcarraldo will. Just remember Captain James Lawrence’s [more]

If you are German and very rich, in the top ten of the richest Germans, you get these special photographs made. A little out of focus, something in the foreground. Coat, briefcase, open doors and: An on-the-run-feel to it. This is Karl Albrecht. The 93-year-old founder of Aldi [more]

Just saw the new “Carrie” (Original by Brian de Palma from 1976 with Sissy Spacek.) Back then, the evil was the sex, the cheerleader bitches and their violent boyfriends. That was it, kind of an analog evil. The evil now in 2013 is in the cell phone and without [more]

Candy Candy

aus dem fenster gemalt

This was the invitation: wall breaking … bring friends, come for drinks, food, heavy tools, smart action … cheers, arno This was my preparation: And this was today. Nice. With Arno, Armen, Claudius, Peter, Johanna, Tobias, Sam. Tomorrow there will be moving images.

The Libero on Karl Lade Straße is actually not really a restaurant. They are not allowed to sell food: “We are a smoker’s bar.” But they have Sky. And Sky shows football. Quite a lot of Bayern fans.

Austria has many sports idols who are actually from Austria. Lots of ski racers like Franz Klammer, Karl Schranz or Toni Sailer. My father loved them. There is of course Niki Lauda, the tennis pros Horst Skoff and Thomas Muster, my father hated them. There are plenty. But [more]