courtesy of Dr. Motte

The scoop on Berlin's reanimated techno truck-fulla-amps

Mingling among the crowd in the bright Berlin sunshine were so-called Love Guards, who distributed earplugs, ice spray, glucose tablets and even contraceptives if things got too hot.

The Love Parade made a good showing this year, especially for a young gentleman who's been out of the game for two years -- around 600,000 people showed up on Saturday, which beat out the last one in 2003. Techno isn't exactly, I dunno, EBM anymore, but the minimalist variety that our Übercoolische Berlin freshmakers churn out is going nowhere. Germans like nothing more than throbbing to some beat that takes 8 minutes to change from "bup bup bup bup" to "bup bup bup ba-dup" -- maybe wacky tobaccy has something to do with it?

I didn't make it to this momentous celebration of youth, as love does not reside in Berlin for yours truly. Sebastian and I had notions of selling bottled water or collecting beer bottles, so you can see that our motivations run completely counter to the assumed spirit of the event. In a different way, this also holds true for Dr. Motte, the founder of the whole Love Parade movement -- he divorced himself from the proceedings, citing bad feelings and corporate whoredom. Music nerds can be almost unbearable and have no place in polite society, but there is a lot of sonorous truth in his complaints. Motte still had the good humor to mount the decks even if he had some political problems with the whole scenario, so how bad can he be (though he does look like Alan Rickman playing a gay suburban father)? He's shifted emphasis to the SF one anyways.

I can cite several reasons why I didn't Max out to my Julietta this year: I wanted to have a comfortable, enjoyable afternoon; seeing constant streams of near-naked women seems to infuriate me as much as it arouses me; I couldn't conceive an outcome to the event that would personally gratify. But, in the end, I'm kind of disappointed in myself for not witnessing even the fringes of this blow-out feature to an already-active July. I feel like I've dropped the ball as a cultural student, and a boy. Everybody likes a parade. Especially an insane, too-big German one. Well, I can always live through my deranged acquaintances -- one of whom told me that he had hooked up with several girls in Germany "without using words." Fan-tastic.

According to people who like using found items to their political advantage, World War III is on. Whether it is actual or intentional, I think we need love more than ever. Break me off one of those glucose tablets and iron my g-string. Next year, it's on.

p.s. Speaking of American-German love, check out this footage of how much Bush liked his suckling pig last week. It's gotta be an act, right? (Super thanxxx to Ben Perry)

p.p.s. Can I get a na for the theme next year being Im Staub Der Sterne? If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about.