Unsigned and single. After a brief "intermezzo" with Condi Rice he's back in Berlin to rock a couple of locations we're not gonna tell you about (because you might come and you might bring your stupid friends along and it's all very secret.) But I can tell you this, all the labels are fighting over this guy and they didn't even see him live.

The MySpace of Alex Tornado is not much help, but everybody who has seen him , thinks he's a sensation...

Did we link our dear friend Zam Johnson yet? I think we forgot.

"born and raised in los angeles, california, zam has worked in the record industry, countless television commercials, film scores, and the avantgard music scene, in the United States, Europe and Japan."

He has done a million interesting things and we all love him. And he gave us a nice little p.a.-system the other day... well, thanks, man!

If you want a creative professional to do your soundtrack or wax your ears in general, he's the man, guys!

There's also Zam Johnson, the painter. That's the same guy. Just a different MySpace, ha, ha.

Dr. Snakeskin put it on his MySpace. Duuude, I'm still laughing!

Don't know why, but we have ten times more traffic than usual today.... Well, actually it's no wonder. Women are fighting over the last copies of the "Exberliner" with Alan on the cover. I've seen him signing autographs!

This guy keeps coming back to our page for two days now.

Today he had some more questions:

Search request: what should i bring when i move to another country

Answer: a toothbrush and some money would be good.

Search request: jobs people get when they come from another country

Answer: they sell "Zitty" and "Tip" on the streets of Berlin.

Anything else? Man, can we help you in some way? Are you stuck somewhere? The US of A maybe? Yeah, life sucks if you're growing up in a smalltown and the only good thing about a smalltown is: it makes you wanna get out.

-> From Brooklyn to Berlin: New York Artists Escape to Germany - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Amazing! Have a look at Brian Dettmer's Book Autopsies

Check out their music over here: Ella Stich and Agnethe Melchiorsen

Starts at 9

"GEORGY GIRL, a world-wide smash, was a ground-breaking film -- one of the first to deal with the sexual revolution of the '60s. There was considerable pressure to censor the film's "frank and ultramodern" portrayal of complex relationships. It was also part of the leading edge of European films invading American theaters. And, of course, it marked the auspicious debut of its star, Lynn Redgrave, who won the Golden Globe® for Best Actress, the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actress, and was nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Actress of 1966."

Starts at 8 p.m.

"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers (facilitator Jeremy Dunn)

"With the publication of her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940.

At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music.

Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated — and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.

Richard Wright praised Carson McCullers for her ability "to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." She writes "with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming," said the New York Times . McCullers became an overnight literary sensation, but her novel has endured, just as timely and powerful today as when it was first published. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, endearing best. Reviews: "To me the most impressive aspect of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the astonishing humanity that enables a white writer, for the first time in Southern fiction, to handle Negro characters with as much ease and justice as those of her own race." Richard Wright, The New Republic

McCullers leaves her characters hauntingly engraved in the reader's memory." The Nation

[McCullers] writes with a calm and factual realism, and with a deep and abiding insight into human psychology. She does so without an iota of vulgarity and bawdiness, in a manner which many a present day novelist would do well to study." The Boston Globe

When one puts [this book] down, it is with...a feeling of having been nourished by the truth." May Sarton

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter has remarkable power, sweep and certainty....Her art suggests a Van Gogh painting peopled with Faulkner figures." The New York Times Book Review

There is not only the delicately sensed need that one might expect youth to know but an even more delicately sensed ironic knowledge." Chicago Tribune

About the Author Carson McCullers was born in Columbus, Georgia. She published her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, at the age of twenty-three. She died in 1967 at the age of fifty."

More over here...

Please welcome our new friends on MySpace or over at WWW.NOBLESSEOBLIGE.CO.UK.

They rock!

Some dates in Berlin coming up!

Hey, steven augustine, do you want to change your "topic" aka. tag "Friday poems" or something like that. I could add the tag in the navigation up there, but it wont work with the "/"-slash-thingie for some reason. Try "Friday-Poem" or something instead...

Cheers and thanks for the contributions!

Over here! You had another one, but I lost the URl. Can you send it in and I add it to the list of Berlin Blogs on the left?

Great little crime novel about a detective with turkish roots. There's a "lending only"-copy in our Germany section.

More at "No Exit": "A Turkish worker - Ahmed Hamul - is stabbed to death in Frankfurt's red-light district - certainly no reason for the local police to work overtime. Kemal Kayankaya, however has a different attitude. He is 26, born in Turkey, raised in Germany and now working as a Private Investigator. He has a German passport but has first hand experience of resentment against foreigners and now Hamul's wife, Ilter, has hired Kayankaya to find out who murdered her husband.

In the 3 days it takes him to wrap up the case, he has time to identify Ilter's sister as a heroin addict, track down Ahmed's girlfriend [a prostitute], link his father-in-law's fatal accident three years earlier to an ingenious police cover-up, and still survive beatings, gas attacks and a close encounter with a Fiat."

Sign & Sight: "The six finalists for the German Book Prize 2007 have now been named. We present a list of the shortlisted titles below, with links to English translations of the first pages."

Search request: why could it be risky going to another country

Or: Search request: Difficulties about going to another country

Not bad either: Search request: games from another country

Found this swell anagram generator for hours of fun..be sure to visit the Hall of Anangram Fame..it's uncanny!

Here

Cultural icon, poet and author Jack Kerouac defends the Beat generation. (1959)

Just received a message from an old friend formerly known as the queen of Berlin's slam beat poetry scene (or whatever they call it today...)! Since May she's been living in South Korea and she finally managed to register on MySpace! She's so good! Add her to your list of friends!

Her homepage is over here!

Over at Booktv.org

William S. Burroughs, "Love Your Enemies," from Dead City Radio (Island, 1990)

William Burroughs, "The Sermon on the Mount 1," from Dead City Radio (Island, 1990)

William Burroughs, "The Sermon on the Mount 2," from Dead City Radio (Island, 1990)

William Burroughs, "The Sermon on the Mount 3," from Dead City Radio (Island, 1990)

More at Slashdot: slashdot.org