Let's Be Strangers in Berlin

For weeks I've been stuck in a daily grind, and what's strange about being in such a grind is that, even though things are happening --very notable, interesting things -- they're happening within the context (or rather, confines) of routine, daily life. It doesn't seem as if there's ever a moment to take a step back, breathe, and see things as they are.

Tonight, while walking home from a workshop I've been teaching, I had such a moment of quiet and reflection. It didn't last nearly as long as I wanted, but it was just what I needed. I was walking down the street with my boyfriend, and I suddenly demanded that we walk in silence, as if we were participating in one of those weekend Buddhist retreats all of those stressed-out yuppies crow over.

I was walking along the same path I normally take home, but I wasn't listening to one of my many podcasts or attempting to make conversation with my boyfriend even though I was exhausted. Instead, I was swimming in the details of the things around me: all the little ways this seemingly familiar stretch of land remained alien and unfathomable to me.

It had stormed that day and the trees were still wet. The air felt lush and tropical. I noticed bits of street art that hadn't ever caught my eye before: a stick figure carrying the bar in a "Do Not Enter" sign; a poster advertising Barbie's Playhouse torn to shreds with the sticker "Sexistische Kacksheisse" covering Barbie's eyes; a piece of graffiti which read "LTRL WAFFLES."

There was a rounded, Bauhaus corner to a building I'd never noticed. In the driveway, a BMW sat next to a billboard with an image of a woman cowering behind a skeleton: an advertisement for the next album from "Queens from the Stone Age." Nearby was a strange half-street in which cars weren't allowed. It was filled with cobblestones criss-crossed by a bike path and struck me as exactly the kind of street American Republicans probably associate with this continent: poorly-designed, public in an aggressive sort of way, probably funded by high taxes and useful to almost no one.

The vague smell of industrial cleaner one associates with Porta Potties wafted towards me from a nearby construction site. The Caterpillars there were poised to scoop fresh earth, but they hung still and silent like a row of flamingos. The gutted buildings looked sinister and apocalyptic.

I've always craved the sensory overload traveling provides and I've found the feeling hard to recreate in my new hometown. This walk, however, restored my faith in silence, and it made Berlin seem like the same strange, alien world I had encountered when I first landed here.

6 Totally Un-Marxist Thoughts on May Day

Let's marvel at these merry Marxists.

May Day is a very important day -- for drinking.

Maypril fools! May 1st is actually a historic public holiday that means a lot to many people.

In the Rhineland region of Germany, May 1st is a time of Paegan revelry. A small pine tree atop a Maypole is traditionally set up in a town's public square or village green to symbolize Spring. If you want to show someone you dislike them, you can also bring them a tree covered in white streamers. Because nothing says "I hate you" like a costly gift.   

Berlin's May 1st ritual is a bit more complicated than that of Paegan lore. This has traditionally been a day when lefty types throw Becks bottles at cops dressed in riot gear. The protestors' reasons are diverse: some are protesting the German "police state," while others are protesting war and capitalism. According to a man named Bill who leads a May Day tour around Kreuzberg: "It's all about the fact that capitalism is bullshit, and we're against the system." Yeah man, fuck that! (Seriously though, how much should I tip you?)

Naturally, I feel a lot of pressure on May 1st to join in solidarity with the cause. But it's hard. What follows are the incredibly un-Marxist thoughts I had whilst wandering around Kotti with a Club Mate: 

1. I wonder where that dude driving a recumbent bike died his mohawk green and if the drapes match the pubes. Is that how the expression goes? I'm disgusting. 

2. These policemen are hot. Is there some kind of May Day bondage event today? Is it expensive? The gay lifestyle is completely unaffordable. We should be protesting this.  

3. Honestly, I'm thankful there's some extra security here after what happened in Boston. These people are drunk and one of them just walked up to a police officer and adjusted his hat. That's a lot of Chutzpah.  

4. The McDonald's on Skalitzer is totally packed right now. You traitors should be ashamed of yourselves.

5. If I suddenly have a panic attack, it's going to take ages for the ambulance to get through this dense crowd. 

6. Let's be real folks: you're just excited you can litter and pee on the street today. That's what this is really about. 

Spring is Fucking with All of Us

Spring is arriving sporadically in Berlin, like a performer who only sometimes remembers her cues. There's great anticipation, but crappy execution. Oh, Berlin, what a commitment-phobe you are. Seriously, you're worse than the guys on GayRomeo. 

All the fluctuations are making me feel out of step with the world around me. Yesterday, I barely registered a skinhead at Alexanderplatz. He was wearing those giant leather boots and all I could think about was how I needed new clothes. That's how out of it I am. I am like that woman in the Clariton commercial before the soft-focus is peeled away. I know there are real things around me, but all I see are blobs.

The trash is slowly being cleared from empty concrete ponds in the park near my house, which is just drawing attention to how much trash is still in them. At some point, there will be water and lilipads and maybe even a happy frog or two but right now there's just a soggy pizza box and a bunch of cigarette butts.

Before I moved to Siberia, I barely registered the weather. Seattle has two seasons:  drizzly and overcast, and sunny and 70. Berlin is a whore with mood-swings and a violent temper in comparison.

Spring is a state of mind that I relish. I want to feel like a fresh young daffodil in the morning dew or a productive baby chicken. I'm waiting for the newness and freshness to wash over me like a Mentos commercial. All my thoughts will be so different then. I can't wait.

It's This Jew in a Box

Ido Porat, an Israeli, is the first to answer questions from the "Box."

The Jew in the Box” is not here.  “Today is Shabbat, I’ll be back on Sunday,” reads a notice taped near where he usually sits. I consider sitting down on the purple chaise and fielding questions myself. “Oh my favorite young Jewish actress? Lena Dunham, of course!” I’d say. Then whomever had asked me the question would gab with me about how dark the series has become. “Such a shonda,” I’d lament. “But the girl’s got some real chutzpah.” 

Of course, that’s not how it would really go down in Deutschland. First off, a German person would probably be like “What is a Lena Dunham?” (“Girls” hasn’t really taken off here). Then they’d want to  get my take on Netanyahu and the new Israeli government. “Is there really going to be a war with Iran?” is the question I’ve been asked the most in the three years I’ve lived here, usually in such an earnest way that I can’t help but try to formulate some kind of response.

But, really, how the hell am I supposed to know? This is the problem: I cannot speak on behalf of all Jews, much less the current Israeli government. It’s not like I’m Bibi’s bestie. This is why having a real-life spokesJew fielding any and all questions from a glassed-in podium is so important: he’s doing the dirty work. Now I won’t have to be anyone’s “first Jew.” I can be the second! What a relief. 

Not all of the questions are answered admirably.

The truth is that, when you get over the outrageousness of their executions, the ideas behind the Jewish Museum Berlin’s exhibition “The Whole Truth: Everything You Wanted to Know About Jews” are pretty progressive. Many outraged journalists have been quoting Stephen Kramer, General Secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, who told the AP: "Why don't they give him [the Jew in the box] a banana and a glass of water, turn up the heat and make the Jew feel really cozy in his glass box?” But Kramer doesn’t get it. Never mind the fact that this is an exhibition curated by Jewish German people or that the glass box is actually a podium surrounded by glass on two sides.  The whole point of it is to symbolize what it’s like being the perennial spokesJew in Germany. It is, indeed, like living in a fishbowl. 

The rest of the exhibit isn’t bad, either. At “The Whole Truth,” visitors not only can ask a real-life Jewish person any question under the sun (from “what do I bring to a Shabbat dinner?” to “What is that rectangular box next to my Jewish neighbor’s door?”) but they can also find answers to some of the most common questions recorded in the Jewish Museum’s guestbook. These questions range from “Are all Jews religious?” to “Can you make jokes about the Holocaust?”

Visitors watching the Sarah Silverman Show

To answer the second question, the Museum hands the mic to Sarah Silverman. The episode of the Sarah Silverman Show where Sarah opens a hyper-capitalistic Holocaust memorial (featuring tigers, a bikini-clad “sexy Hitler” and a giant golden nose shpritzing water) is playing on repeat. “Auschwitz? I’ll have you saying Wowschwitz,” Silverman deadpans to the camera. Two German teens laugh, but the 40-something man who watches the video after them does not. 

It’s a bizarre sight, especially when you think about the context in which the video is playing. According to polls, 45% of Germans think Jews still “talk to much about what happened to them during the Holocaust.” In the time I’ve spent in Germany, the anti-Semitism I’ve experienced the most has been from Germans who were sick of talking about the Holocaust, or those who’ve tried to convince me that the Jews were the ones who wouldn’t let it go. Is it good that Germans can now laugh along with Silverman at the culture of memorialization? 

In another room, visitors are encouraged to drop plastic coins in three of five semi-translucent pillars, each one representing a positive Jewish attribute: do visitors think Jews are “business savvy?” What about “kind to animals?” “Beautiful?” “Influential?” “Intelligent?”

Visitors place plastic coins in pillars based on the
Jewish attributes they find most prevalent. 

If Germany were a country that had mostly rid itself of anti-semitism, I would probably have felt more comfortable seeing how many people see Jews as “business-savvy,” but given that a good 16% of Germans think Jews have “too much power in Germany,” it doesn’t really seem like a compliment. 

No, this isn’t the United States. There isn’t a whole ton of awareness here about how far Jewish stereotypes are from reality. But that’s why this exhibition is so important; it holds a mirror to society at large and encourages the public to look at their misconceptions with a bit of humor. While it may not seem especially politically correct to have a spokesJew sitting on a bench near the exit, the metaphor you’re searching for isn’t “Eichmann in Jerusalem” but Larry David at a Christmas party. Because that’s what it’s like being a Jew in Germany almost every day. 

If you really want to get freaked out, just imagine a country where the only dialogue related to Jews is about responsibility for the Holocaust, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and how to combat anti-Semitism in the far right wing. That’s scary, because it misses all the messiness and wonder of contemporary Jewish life. If you have to be outrageous to change the conversation, maybe it’s a sign that the conversation has veered somewhere very, very limiting. Hopefully, this little exhibition will widen the scope of what Germans talk about when they talk about Jewish people.  

Eilat

Aqaba, Jordan glitters in the Dead Sea. The water looks like oil bubbling in a frying pan. A faint row of silver lights hovers in the mountains above the city, like an alien space ship too afraid to land. 

Hebrew words are being spoke in a sing-songy intonation. Someone is having a playful fight. Light family drama, from what I can tell. A comedy of (no) manners.

The electric hum of a passing golf cart interrupts the conversation. Resort patrons must be taken to their rooms in the utmost of comfort. A cat darts from corner to corner, rubbing herself against anything she can find, as if modeling. A woman coughs. 

My hands stings from chlorine. I'm reminded of all of the pools in which I've lounged today, trying to not think about what I'm leaving and what's going to happen next. If my thoughts listened to the scent, they would take an anti-depressant. This is the scent of waterslides, of manufactured aquatic entertainment, of leisure industries.

There's a thought about work, delete it. Press the space bar and get to the next sentence. Drink some water, feel how cold it is in your warm body. Dab a finger in the rich chocolate spread you bought instead of Nutella -- which had the import tax. Maybe read Haaretz. No, don't read Haaretz.

Pretend the sights around you are actually teaching you something. Egyptian border is a mile away, that's inherently interesting. How many cars go through every day? What kind of security is there? Isn't it strange to even think about Egypt?  

Today, a camel came into your life. That was weird, huh? Just waltzed in with her cartoonishly large eyelashes and let you sit on her like it was nbd. She was cool with being your slow-moving car for 10 minutes. She had to scratch herself because the flies LOVE camel skin, so it kind of felt like driving a car during an earthquake, but still. Range Rovers can't scale mountains the way a camel can.  

Then you sat in a bedouin tent and drank a Coke. Dabbed a warm floppy pita in a bowl of zatar and olive oil. Tried to make small talk with a man wearing a turban, but he was busy playing with his iPhone 5. The waiter was shy, maybe gay? You stared at the oriental rugs on the walls, trying to not be distracted by the sounds of traffic. The store was half-indoors, half roof-less. Just you, a couch, a road, some pita and a coke. 

The headache is back. The heartburn will come. The coughing has started. The allergies will strike. But right now it's peaceful anyway. Jordan's still shimmering. The vast expanse of Saudi Arabia is barely out of your field of vision. Warm air from the Sinai is here. If you know what's good for you, you'll breathe it. 

5 Things You Instantly Miss About Berlin The Moment You Leave

Try to go somewhere else and not miss these things...

5. The Nightlife

In Berlin, what you do at night is almost always more exciting than what you do during the day. Maybe all you did today was buy a brötchen with cheese and download some new tracks you found on Pitchfork. Ho hum. But at night, you're suddenly in a new club you've never been to before, talking to a performance artist from Majorca and her ballet-dancing Finnish friend who just arrived last night and who wants to stay out until dawn. Are you going to turn them down? Of course not! So you're up until 6am dancing in a warehouse together. That's an "average" night out if you really commit yourself. 

However, in most other cities, an average night out involves paying a massive coverage charge so that you can listen to sub par remixes of the latest Britney Spears song, sip an $8 sugary cocktail and watch lots of obnoxious people you've seen before attempting to hit on one another. You need a back-up friend at all times just so you have someone to laugh with about how shitty and stupid everything is. It's not transcendent, you don't learn about a new culture and you're probably back home before the reruns of the nightly news.

4. The Anti-Consumerism

I'm not saying Berlin is some Soviet backwater, but the advertising is less pervasive here than in most other places I've lived. Rarely am I walking around the city feeling like I need to buy something ASAP so I can feel better about myself. Most of the ads I see on the U-Bahn or on billboards around the city are for things like "Learning English" or "Building a new kitchen" or aren't really ads at all but rather public service announcements about diversity or how to treat people who are living with HIV. German TV is so bad that I never watch it, but when I do the ads are usually for beer.  Compare this to the States and it's like two distinctly different planets. Whenever I go home, I'm suddenly like "maaaaaybe I need a smartphone that can work underwater", and "what's with these at-home soda makers?" and "Wait, JC Penny has cute clothes for dudes all of a sudden? FUCK I'M POOR."

The worst offender, however, isn't the States; It's London. Never have I ever encountered so many florid descriptions of average things. A tuna sandwich at a grocery store in London is a free-range whole chunk albacore sandwich on watercress salad wrapped in whole-grain sweet oat bread. Then there's a little poem on the back about how happy it will make you feel about life. 

The constant talk about money, the desire to have more of it, and the feeling that you're not going to really be happy until you can buy a blahblahblah is what makes me want to fly home to Berlin after just a few days in most other places.

Berlin is so anti-capitalistic that Levi's made their anarchistic ads there -- even filming protest scenes from the May Day demos in Kreuzberg to show off how youthful and carefree their brand is. Everything comes full-circle. Lovely, ain't it?

3. The People

Berliners = greatest smorgasbord of laid-back individualists I've ever encountered. Okay so they're not all super motivated all the time and it can sometimes feel like none of your lives are really going anywhere, but you're learning so much about other people that you just gotta shut up and enjoy the ride. Who knew you would fall in love with a gaggle of Swedish students, a Dutch party promoter, a Finnish actress and a cackling Ukranian? Because there's no real dominant culture to fit into, people tend to stay true to who they are, which makes the diversity of personalities all the more striking.  On the downside, some people are flaky and a few get lost in the party scene forever.

2. The Public Transportation

I used to spend more than an hour and a half on public transportation every day in Berlin, shuttling back and forth between job and apartment. Thing is, I didn't mind it. The train was almost always on time, the seat cradled my bum and people were usually quiet enough so that I could read something engrossing on my Kindle without interruption. An hour long movable office space? Don't mind if I do! I'm not even counting the number of lines which criss-cross the city, taking you to every single place you could ever want to go at almost any hour of the day. Without public transport, Berlin would cease to function because, let's face it, most us are too poor to buy a car.

Even in other cities with excellent transportation systems, it's still almost impossible to get to some obscure address at 2am on a Tuesday. I laugh at you, MTA. BART can eat my butt. Seattle's Sound Transit? Don't be outlandish...you can take me to the airport, Nordstrom and Columbia City. 

Being able to get almost everywhere at any given moment means you can never really turn down a Facebook invite because the event is too far away. In this way, Berlin is like a good mother, forcing you to socialize with people you don't know so you can become a better human. 

1. Galleries, Museums, Concerts, Film Festivals, Etc., Etc., Etc..

On any given year, Berlin receives close to a billion dollars in arts subsidies from the German government. 400 million goes to the Berlinale and Museum Island, 100 million goes to Berlin's three opera houses, 100 million to the state theaters,100 million to independent arts organizations and 120 million is doled out by the districts of the city to individual artistic initiatives. This is an insane amount of money, and you can feel it everywhere you go in the city. There's nothing BUT art. Because there's a significant amount of money to go around, artists aren't fighting with each other over who gets that one public art grant. You meet more working artists than you've ever met in your life. Musicians, painters, actors, directors, dancers, performance artists, whatever. Drizzly outside? Go to a museum! Need a break from your own life? Watch some mesmerizing modern dance. Going stir crazy? Spend all weekend at art markets.

I know I've missed a whole bunch of things, so let me know...what do YOU miss the most when you leave Berlin?

Photo credits:
Kater Holzig -- www.die-unschuld-in-person.blogspot.com
screaming partygoers -- www.berlin-artparasites.com
BVG tram -- www.wikipedia.org
Brandenburger Tor with Metropolis film -- NYTimes.com

To Be Perfectly Franco

James Franco's latest film, called "Maladies," is a moody, introspective, and ultimately self-indulgent hodgepodge of a film that further solidifies Franco's reputation as a dilettante. It seems like a student film and doesn't contain anything that resonates.

James Franco's character is an artist. The film begs you to applaud this fact every time you see him on the screen. Look at him, scribbling away while listening to static on the radio. Look at him having a nervous breakdown in a drugstore. He's the real deal, folks!

James Franco's sister, Patricia, played by Fallon Goodson, is a silent, bug-eyed observer of Franco. She sits in her 50's-style poofy dress in the corner and smokes cigarettes even though she knows it annoys everyone (although everyone else is so lost in their own thoughts that they barely register the actions of those around them) because she has no creative talent. In an early scene, Patricia drinks a glass of water as if she's been wandering the desert for 40 years, gulping it down so quickly that it spills all over her dress. There's an actual subplot about glasses of water and how everyone in the cast drinks water. Because, well, because James Franco just wrote an essay about water and it means a lot to him right now!

Catherine Keener plays Franco's friend, and she is a painter. She paints Rorschach inkblots and dresses like a man sometimes, because she's also an artist. Catherine just wants everyone to get along, and she wants James to stop having panic attacks and obsessing about death and making life hard for himself.

James wanders around 2012 Brooklyn, which is supposed to look like 1950's Brooklyn because two people on the street are wearing period piece clothing. Franco walks along the beach by his house and listens to an omniscient narrator explain to him how wonderful it is that he has the ability to use his arms. He picks up the phone in a telephone booth and hears voices in the dial tone. He tells Catherine things like "Everything in the world was made by someone," and "Everything that is, wasn't at some point" and "I know where I am at point A, and I know where I am at point B, but I don't understand how I got to point C." Catherine hugs him and smiles because -- wow! -- what a hottie intellectual.

Alan Cumming plays James's gay admirer. He lives next door and (meta alert!) watches James play himself on a soap opera all day long. All Alan Cummings wants to do is rub himself against Franco's penis. But Franco don't swing that way, and he's sick of being called an "actor" by Cummings because he's a "writer" now, got it? This is very important to Franco, like the thing with the water.

The film plods along, barely able to capture a single emotion, lost in its own unique brand of creative suffering, until Franco goes insane, sprays shaving cream all over himself, gets tackled by a bunch of cops, ends up in jail and then, abruptly (though not surprisingly) dies. It's now up to Catherine to translate his entire manuscript into braille because Franco met a blind woman once and thought she was holy.

Welcome to the back of Franco's mind. It is just as boring as you thought it would be.

How (Not) to Date a Berliner

Before I moved to Berlin permanently, I spent a winter here in 2008. The weather was the same as in Seattle (rainy, hazy, full of bleak) but everything else around me was different. I was dating one of those mythical born-in-Berliners. His name was David, and he thought I was crazy.

David wore Capris and smelled like magic. He lived in a white modernist cube of an apartment in a crumbling building above a major intersection in Mitte, near his Yogi friend "Greg." On weekends, he'd leave the apartment around midnight and come back at four or five am, at which point he would make bok choy with soy sauce and sleep until 2 in the afternoon. He was 35. I was 21 and terrified of life. We were an odd match.

David and I would Skype and I would tell him a joke and he would laugh and then look at me like I was an alien. We didn't understand each other on most levels. For one, he didn't even WANT to talk about his job, even though it sounded totally cool (he was an editor and I was at a very impressionable age). He also wasn't paranoid about sex, unlike all of my hyper-educated gay friends in the States. He used condoms, end of story, why was I freaking out? 

David taught me how to be a hedonist. Together, we'd go to abandoned warehouses filled with paper mache and dancing. We'd go to strobe-lit caves of wonder. I tried dancing like a German (there's less irony involved) and I definitely tried drinking like a German (ie, in public). I felt awe at this adult amusement park of art and leisure. On the drive back to his apartment, I'd stare out the rain-streaked window at all the grafitied and crumbling buildings, wondering what crazy, naked art projects were going on inside.

One night, David and I got into a fight. We were at a bar, talking to an old flame of his, and I began to feel like a used, snot-encrusted hankie. I suddenly believed he had slept with the entire city. "I've lived here a long time!" he responded. "So, of course I've known a lot of people." The necessary expiration date on this age-imbalanced relationship came into sharp focus. I didn't care that he used condoms, I felt like I was going to get a disease anyway. The next day, I wrote him an email apologizing for essentially calling him a slut, but it was clear we weren't cut out for each other at that stage in my life. I left Berlin soon after.

Back in Seattle, the gay bars were the same. But I began to let go, just a little bit. I was more open to meeting new people. I was actually just more open, period. You don't realize it until you go back to the States, but it's much more fun to look at the world through the eyes of a Berliner, even if you barely understand where they're coming from. You don't have to open your legs, though -- the eyes will do.

The Different Kinds of Expats That There Are

So you're new here. You're walking around with your pint-sized Lonely Planet and you're feeling Berlinspired. You want to move here and Berlintegrate.

Well, first you gotta hold up, put your thing down, flip it and kindly reverse it. Because before you move, you should know what you're getting yourself into. You should know what kind of people you're getting yourself into. And no matter how much you think you're going to fully integrate yourself into the fabric of Berlin society, one fact remains: you will always be an expat. You're going to end up getting to know the expat world a lot better than the German one. 

So after you're done visiting the Reichstag, eating currywurst and wandering around Lidl looking for Angela Merkel, here's a little list of the kinds of expats you may end up meeting:

The One Who Actually Moved Here for His Career

"Are you a unicorn?!"is the first thing you want to ask this expat, who's so rich they're wiping their ass with real Euros, and the Euro hasn't even collapsed yet! While the rest of your friends are living below Hartz IV, this expat is riding high, eating 16 euro salads at the SoHo House, buying Acne jeans and taking weekend trips to Paris. After all, their apartment is 300 euros and they're making 1700 a month. The downside? They're always working on some insane project at work and never sleeping. Zaha Hadid's personal assistant yells at them every day. You comfort yourself in knowing they aren't really absorbing the "Berlin vibe" but you're actually jealous because you don't know what in the actual fuck you are doing in this city and they kind of...do.

The One Obsessed with Full Immersion

Good luck ever hanging out with this expat! Full immersion friends have a hard time answering your calls because they're just so, you know...immersed. Some of them won't even speak English because their language instructor told them not to. Advice: just wait. Full-immersion is a phase that happens during the beginning of almost every jaunt across the pond. Eventually, they'll get frustrated and overwhelmed and want to gab about the latest Modern Family episode with someone who understands irony and sarcasm.

The One Who's Always Out

You get approximately 15 Facebook invites from this expat every day. They can't hang out tonight because they're listening to an Afro Klesmer band, attending the launch of a new gay magazine, having a midnight pillow-fight at Brandenburger Tor and then playing Wii Sports with 15 of your other friends. You should go, but it's -5 and there's a new episode of Parks and Recreation you want to download and you're generally too lazy to do anything in the winter.

The One Who's a DJ

Basically the same as above, except the invites are for concerts at Berghain and there's no question they're snorting mountains of coke. Also: this Portlandia clip.

The One Who's Gay

This expat is gay and no one seems to care, no mater how much they try to shock people with their crazy sex stories. Berlin has been gay since before it was cool, so hush now child. We're all very happy for you, even though we're bad at expressing it. Now please come out to your parents.

The Photoblogger

Oh...my god. Can this expat please document my life? Clearly I need to read-up on things like white balance and exposure because my photos look like they were taken by an early 90's webcam. These people are living a more charmed, aesthetically-beautiful life than you and I.

The Compulsive Liar

Once this expat infiltrated a gang of Neo Nazis and convinced them he was Roma and the Nazis were all "whaaaaaaa?" but now they're cool with it and they're actually BFFs. This dude also wants to take you to this brand new club set in Hitler's actual bunker which wasn't destroyed (that was a FAKE bunker) and it's got everything: fake trash bimbos, women dressed as bonobos, lesbians with heavy flows. This dude is FUN.

The Self-Loathing American

DRONES! Nestle is force-feeding toxins to babies! Israel is a racist tumor that must be cut off! Coca-Cola is forcibly sterilizing African women! Wal Mart will enslave us all! Okay, so they're probably right about that last part, but everything else this expat says makes a mockery of the liberal causes they try so hard to champion. They haven't lived in the States for 10 years but still believe they can speak authoritatively about how backwards and narrow-minded everyone who lives there is. They'll never go back because they've reached the unshakable conclusion that living in Europe is morally-superior. I actually don't mind these people at all, because some of them are really knowledgeable. But it's like, really? You're NEVER going to go back? You don't miss Hulu and Whole Foods even a LITTLE bit?

The Artiste

I don't want to be mean. I would much rather live in a city with struggling artists than one with hella bankers. But, like, let's be honest. You're not making that much art. You're mostly working at a cafe. When you're not doing that, you're partying and doing the odd graphic design project. I like you, as long as you don't pretend you're hot shit.

The Inauguration Speech I WISH Obama Had Just Given

Hi, my name is Barack HUSSEIN Obama. Yeah, that's right: HUSSEIN. Suck it, Islamaphobes. I'm proud to be your 44th president. I was going to try to awe you with some soaring rhetoric that draws from our nation's rich and storied history, but then I thought, you know what? I don't give a FUCK. It's my second term, bitches!

Now, there's been a lot of talk recently about gun control and I just want to say that the NRA must be brought down. We can no longer sit back and have kids being killed by guns seem like a normal thing. So, starting today, we will no longer allow anyone to buy a gun unless the government has determined that their lives are actually at stake and an abusive spouse or someone else crazy is going to burst into their house and kill them. Oh, and stop dehumanizing mentally ill people after massacres, Republicans.  You either blame them or Marilyn Manson. They're not the problem: guns are.

Also, now that I no longer have to worry about being re-elected, I'm going to go full-force on the immigration issue. Anyone residing in the States who was brought here by their parents, legally or illegally, must be eligible to stay so long as they have no criminal record. They must be eligible for in-state tuition, driver's licenses, and all the benefits citizenship affords. Our best and brightest can't be shipped away because of where they were or were not born.

Because of the importance I place on arts education, I am announcing a new budget for the national endowment for the arts of 2 billion dollars, which will be distributed to school arts programs, teachers, museums, individual artists, gallery collectives, arts residency programs, artist health care initiatives and artist housing. This is to combat the force that gentrification is playing in our nation's biggest cities, forcing artists out while turning once vital neighborhoods into cookie cutter yoga studios and cupcake shops. Speaking of urban planning, the White House is now working on putting real bike lanes on every street in every major city. Countries like the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Sweden are beating our ASS when it comes to bike lanes. 

Oh, speaking of the rest of the world, we're no longer going to pretend it doesn't exist. We're going to see what works in other places and apply it here and stop being dicks about our own "exceptionalism." If Germany is able to get half their energy from renewables we can too. Our foreign policy needs to get with the program, too. Dunno if you've read, but shit is really fucked up in Iran, North Korea, Gaza and Syria, and we're going to try to help by relying on scholars who know the history of these countries and Anthropologists who've lived there. And we're not going to pretend that drones are the answer to all of our problems because they're fucking creepy.

Hmmm, what else? Oh yeah: higher soda taxes, everywhere. Because seriously, Coke is making us fat. But please stop blaming the nation's problems on fat people.  The way our country treats fat people is disgusting and shameful.  Also, I'm personally going to fight tooth and nail for more money for Planned Parenthood because god fucking damnit, sex education saves women from unplanned pregnancies, HIV prevention programs save lives, and too many kids don't know their butt hole from their vagina. Good sex lowers stress; we should all be having it right now. [WINK AT MICHELLE]

Finally, let's talk about the media. First of all, I love 30 Rock and Parks and Recration. I believe we're entering a golden era of television. But HBO needs to start letting people buy episodes of Girls a la carte. Am I right or am I right? But while I love Tina Fey, our journalism world is a mess! Content farms are eating away at the bottom line of every newspaper in America. Now they're so desperate for cash that they'll write about anything, including the Kardashians! Just to balance that shit out, I'm giving NPR a billion dollars. Because, you know, they're the kind of organization that doesn't make people hate each other because of their political beliefs, unlike most cable news. And no, they don't have a liberal bias. Google that shit. Another billion will go to fund journalism fellowships at newspapers across the country to lure the best and brightest. 

Lastly, no more unpaid internships. They're turning us into a plutocracy. AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!

OBAMA OUT!