If it's not Raven, it's crap...

Last night, I gorged myself on vegan  Vietnamese/Thai-style summer rolls . Today for lunch, I had  Schweinshaxe with Knödel and Sauerkraut . The culinary juxtaposition was not intentional. It just so happened that, at roughly the same time, two friends decided that a regularly scheduled food time would be a novel idea. Thus was born Tuesday Night Supper Club and Wednesday (Whatever Special Is Closest to the Office) Lunch. Both take place on the 1st and 3rd weeks of the month. However, only Tuesday Night Supper Club gets its own mix. It gives me a good excuse to do a first pass at mixing together music for radio and I love talking about music with my TNSC cohorts. I can't promise that I'll post every mix, but here's the first one. It's roughly an hour long (with no commentary from me). Listen to it at your own risk. Some of this will end up on next month's show... some... not so much. Tuesday Night Supper Club Vol.1 by Oscarhomeslice on Mixcloud

OMG, you guise! It's finally happened. I'd heard about these letters from Hamburg's  Erster Bürgermeister (literally: First Mayor). Yes, I know that "Bürgermeister" sounds like it should belong to Mayor McCheese  and the ordinal number prefix makes it sound like there are infinite mayors of this city-state, but let's just gloss over all of that for the moment (and forever). Basically, this is a form letter from Hamburg's mayor that is best summarized as, "Hey... gee, wouldn't it be totes awesome if you became German? You know... 'cause you've lived here so long and whatnot?" I'm not trying to take the piss or anything *puts on super serious face* the letter addresses the two biggest reasons why I'm even considering "the switch" -- 1.) being able to vote for things that I care about in the place that I live and 2.) never ever ever having to deal with the mofos at the immigration office ever again... ever. I f

My favorite escalator in Hamburg @ Gänsemarkt (Caffamacherreihe/Valentinskamp exit). The white sign reads "Vorübergehend feste Treppe", which basically means "temporary stairs". It's possible that the same sign is used in other Hamburg subway stations, but I've only seen it here and it makes me giggle every morning on my way to work.  "Kult" is a dive bar in Hamburg-Barmbek. I wouldn't call it the diviest of dive bars, but it's probably up there. It's also become an in-joke between me and a few coworkers who live in nearby Bramfeld. A handful of times after our company's weekly Beer Thursday gathering, I've been roped into going to Kult for a beer/shot nightcap. I say "roped", because I was well past my cutoff point. I won't say that I'll go anywhere, if offered a free taxi ride... but a free taxi ride that will basically get me to my front door is pretty hard to pass up. Last Thursday, I took my

Christopher Street Day has a special place in my heart on so many different levels. It wasn't until very recently that I realized just how many levels. I know this sounds like the introduction to some kind of Buzzfeed-style gif-fest, but it's not. My first CSD was back in 1998 in Berlin, when I was a 17-year-old exchange student from Oklahoma City. It was an eye-opening experience like nothing I'd ever seen before in my life. The experience stood in stark contrast to pretty much everything that I'd known at the time. Back in the days, I could sum up my knowledge of the LGBT culture in OKC with rumors and hearsay of two locations: the Wreck Room and Habana Inn . (Much later I went on to have many an awesome and memorable evening at both locations.) If I were hard-pressed to describe my first CSD as anything, I'd say that it was the first time that I'd ever witnessed anything coming close to unconditional acceptance. It was simply amazing and that feeling stu