Peel a ginger root and slice it into thin slices or pieces. Boil a liter of water, add the ginger. Cover it and wait 20 minutes. Add honey and lemon to taste. It helps! Cheers! Drink it hot!
Fluffy Lints
One super 8 frame is 1/24 second = 41.66666666666666666666666666666666 milliseconds.
Here’s one with beautiful lints! Can you find out what’s on the picture ? 😉
Elevator Mosquitos
I was biking through a park and found a little flock of mosquitos, they were dancing in the late afternoon sunbeams – up and down vertically like playing elevator. One up one down, close. Friction generates warmth, I guess. Keeping the last summer particles! (unfortunately I couldn’t capture them with my camera. Just believe me.)
Secrets in an Alditüte
I wonder what my opposite neighbor hides in his ALDI-bag … a birthday surprise cake that cools down over night? Apples that are best kept at outside temperatures and the fridge would be too cold and the inside too warm? Love letters? Body parts? Stinking cheese? 😉
Yellow Autumn
After more than 1 week with a sick computer I’m finally online again Â… and my outside world has turned yellow. And I found a heart on the street!
From the Series: Buses with Funny Names
Sachensuchen / Seeking Things
Explorers, finders and collectors like me, my brother and my nephew love www.geocaching.de and www.geocaching.com … People all over the world hide „treasures“, it’s like „a game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.“
We found one today!
A Day Dedicated To Wilbur Scoville
German reunification – happy birthday, 18 years ago the East and West joyfully joined together 😉 – it’s a holiday for everybody here … I’m still suffering from Californication, so I reunited happily with Khani, Miriam and Darius to have some authentic burgers in a hidden place called AWS (American Western Saloon) in deep space Reinickendorf/Märkisches Viertel, weird outskirts of West (!) Berlin … oh Guadalupe-mia, we had Chili-Tequila, we spit fire and will never be cold any more and felt really cleared from the inside … the waitress told us later that we finished the remains of the Tequila bottle (means: concentrated marinated chili) … definitely very high on the Scoville scale.
Red Yellow Green
I couldn’t resist … I had to go back to the heart light and check out the green … yes, looks like a christmas tree 😉
Red Light Heart
More and more often I see – biking through Berlin – heart or star shaped red or yellow lights! Or simply a smiley! (They used black paint). A new wave of tiny high-spirits-makers is approaching! I’m waiting for green Christmas trees in wintertime 😉
Park Choreography
Görlitzer Park in the heart of Berlin (Kreuzberg) – people enjoying the last beams of the late summer sun. I drove past on my bike, paused, and it felt like I grabbed and captured one still moment of a ballet rehearsing – the kiteflyer, the frisbeethrowers, the bikewhisperer Â…
The Sexiness of Construction Sites
I noticed that wherever there is a construction site there is always a watcher who just stands there for a long time watching busy diggers, steamrollers or similar. Why? Does he check that they do their job neatly? Is he jealous of the mighty machines? Has he always wanted to be a digger driver deep in his heart?
Bösekatzebösekatze …
German Human Beatbox-History Â… I saw a documentary in the Eiszeit-Cinema about “The 5th Element of HipHop (after DJing, MCing, Breakdancing und Graffiti)“ – an amazing and very entertaining film about Berlin subculture, lips, tongues, the deep bass beat of a city and a big community: „Love, Peace and Beatbox“ by Volker Meyer- Dabisch.
I wasn’t interested in German HipHop at all before but this film showed me that there is a huge loving tolerant universe beside all those aggro dumb motherfuckers!
And I loved the scenes where DJ Mesia, a real big bearish Berlin tough & nice guy, teaches kids the basics of HipHop, Beatbox and mouth-percussion in a youth center. That made completely sense to me and touched my hippiesque youth-teacher-heart …
This “Bösekatze“ thing in the headline is a kind of mnemonic – learning beatboxing: your first bursting consonants will be like B, TZ, K the guy in the credits told us directly in the camera (and the audience practised it immediately!!) … B …sss … k … tzz …
Performing a cool & sweet spontaneous Eiszeit-Special after the film show: Bee Low, founder of the German Beatbox Battle, and ….. I’m not quite sure who the other guy is – Wetlipz of 4XSample?? Correct me if I’m wrong 🙂
Rainy Hasenheide
The Berlin-in-autumn equivalent to the blog picture from August 21!
(“Hasenheide“ is a street’s name and means “Rabbit-Heather“ 🙂
Schenkt das Leben dir Zitronen, mach Limonade draus!
Take the citrons of life and make lemonade of it.
Happy weekend to all of you!!!
Season Signs
What is the first sign that now the beginning of a season is irreversible?
The first chestnut for autumn Â… the first snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis) for pre-pre-pre-spring/end winter Â… the first crocus and the first singing blackbird at dawn for spring Â… the first time walking barefoot on grass for summer and the first metallic cold smell of snow at night for winter.
Hanging Jeans
Wabisabi activated. This morning, making coffee in my kitchen, I saw someone’s jeans hanging in the window. Airing the stinky knee part 🙂 ?
If they hang their sneakers tomorrow, I’ll be getting nervous Â…
Grumpiness on Kottbusser Damm
Walking down Kottbusser Damm direction Andec (the one and only Super 8 processor in my neighborhood!) to bring them my last exposed film rolls (Californian desert inside 😉 I realize I’m transparent! I look into people’s eyes and they don’t look back! Is it the creeping autumn cold that’s coming too soon this year or is it in our collective Berlin genes? Has LA spoiled me? Did I wander around over there with my mood so high that they couldn’t help but HAD to smile back and normally they’d ignore me?
Who cares. I try to sustain my wabisabish state and the laidbackness I brought with me over the seven seas. LA was therapy!
Why ever stop?
Sticky Anchors
Lisa, Paolo and Dagie say goodnite, farewell, super8 forever, love and take care to all friends and readers!
Dusty Road Karma
I had a strange dream last night and I think it was in black & white: I was driving an oldfashioned car, a convertible, along a dusty straight empty road. The image was like from a time a hundred years ago. I could see all the way straight to the horizon. And then the name came into my mind: La Cienega.
Hahaa! Maybe I was here before 🙂
I am packing my things and fly home to Berlin. But I’ll be back, I know.
Â
Happy Birthday My Brother!!
Apart From That … is a film that was shown today in the Film Center. It kind of blew me away. I can’t really express why, but it was one of the best I’ve ever seen. Different threads, everybody lost and a little lonely and wacky. It felt so real. Good actors, were they actors? I need another drink … break … sick America? No home? Who loves me? Good soundtrack, mannomann, respect! Go try to see it somewhere.
Good night – see the moon?!
Â
Taquizas A Domicilio
Shauna celebrated her 25th birthday at the Film Center tonight, small intimate private party.
Good luck, dear, with everything!
On my way there, psst, yummy secret: every (?) night on Alvarado in front of the VONS parking lot: The Tacobus!!
Â
Quesadilla Mamma
The last week of my residency in the Echo Park Film Center has begun … I enjoy every single day, no other than the 4 weeks before. The classes are over, I’m still finishing some short films (I love riding the bus! One film will be called „704“ about my favourite bus from Echo Park direct to Santa Monica Beach. I admire the drivers, did I mention this? Today we got stuck in a traffic jam and crept reeeealy slow. But the driver stayed cool and friendly and announced the next stations (normally a tape is running) plus extra information about connecting buses and a good afternoon & take care to all leaving passengers. Â I loved that guy!
Normally I don’t really like tourist attraction but Santa Monica Pier is different. Well, you can of course have your name written on a rice grain and buy t-shirts and ice cream and lose it to the brave seagulls …
… but you also encounter … music. I took a break there at the very end of the pier and listened to the guitar player. Even felt like buying a CD – support your local musicians – and had a nice chat with him about the unbeatable weather and good places for musicians. His name is Stephen Wild.
Back in Echo Park my feet got itchy and whispered: „we need cowboy boots! Now!“ So I stumbled across „American Vintage“ on 1707 Sunset. And I found a pair! I tried them on and they were just perfect. They found me.
Next whisperer (stomach) signaled: hungry! I found a little quesadilla stand on the street (Sunset / Echo Park Ave) run by two women and their children. Delicious! They prepare quesadillas in their pans and you can add anything you like (cactus pieces!). I very much recommend them. One quesadilla 3 $.
Good night everybody and sunny vibes!!!!
Joshua Treehugger
My lovely hosts and I went for a small holiday in the desert of Joshua Tree. (The name Joshua tree was given by a group of Mormon settlers who crossed the Mojave Desert in the mid-19th century. The tree’s unique shape reminded them of a Biblical story in which Joshua reaches his hands up to the sky in prayer.) A night of a zillion stars and many planes and two sputniks and a day of clear heat. No snakes crossed our ways, thanks, Rattlesnakes and Mojave Green!!
We visited Noahs place. A man who collected junk in the desert and made weird monuments of it.
And then we found the World Most Famous and Tiniest Crochet Museum (German friends: Haekeltieremuseum!!) which was unfortunately closed today. Happy Labor day!
Sesame Street
Find the (horizontally flipped) 6!
Â
Buzzing Palm Trees and 8 Years is Enough!
I had my film screening at the Echoparkfilmcenter tonight! Showed some old short films (happy 20th anniversary, Barbie Dolls!), some fresh ones edited only yesterday on Super 8, and my brand new 32 minutes long Ode To June which I finished in Berlin before I came here (world premiere!!).
There was a quiet moment when we set up the room, the projector, the food & drinks … and while we did so we listened to Mr Obamas speech as the probable new president live on the radio …Â which was interesting for me as a foreigner … he promised a lot of things like the chance of good education for all and solar and other renewable energy … good luck and keep your promises!!!
And by the way thank you dear audience for singing with me and Paolo & Lisa the Palm Tree Song Line film!!!!! Great performance! There’s music in the city …I’ll be back.
Â
3 Birds on a Wire
A Super 8 film cassette contains 15 m of film. 50 feet. At the end of a roll the very last images sometimes fade away when being processed. And that’s what I love: pure beauty accidents 🙂
Â
Another hot day in California
Letterbox
It is so incredible … once you started to give attention to things lying on the ground they start to … appear …Â