Deutschland über us (in the accusative case).

Last week, a man by the name of Gunnar Lindemann took public transportation in Berlin and decided to share the experience with his 960 Twitter followers. It was the greatest thing I have ever seen.

Allow me to explain several things at once.

First, Gunnar Lindemann happens to serve in the Abgeordnetenhaus von Berlin (AB-guh-ORD-nutt-un-house), basically the German equivalent of, say, the New York State Assembly. Second, Gunnar Lindemann belongs to the AfD, or “Alternative for Germany” (Alternative für Deutschland), which is one of Germany’s eighty-twelve jabillion political parties, all of which are disliked in equal measure by most Germans, but only a few of which share both the platform and the grammatical mastery of Donald Trump (but I am getting ahead of myself). The AfD was, unsurprisingly, the first party in Germany to congratulate that country’s most dangerous export on his part-time residency in the White House.

Third, it’s fun that even an ethno-nationalist xeno-homo-transphobe climate-change-denialist Kinder-Küche-Kirche jerk-butt such as Gunnar Lindemann still takes and enjoys public transportation, because that is so Europe. (Could you imagine Paul Manafort on the Q train? I guess that is the most direct way to Brighton Beach.)

Kinder, Küche, Kirche #sketch

 — @naifpanicscares

Fourth, the company that runs Berlin transit is the BVG, short for Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (bur-LINN-ur vur-CARES-buh-TREEB-uh), which literally translates to “Berlin Intercourse Authorities,” because the German word Verkehr (fur-CARE) means “intercourse,” both sexual and vehicular. That, by the way, is why the final sentence of the Franz Kafka story “Das Urteil” (The Judgment) is superior in what pretentious twits like me call “The German” (as in, the following passages are translated from the German by me).

In the story, protagonist Georg Bendemann lives with his dad and he gets engaged, and then his dad gets super pissed about that for reasons that don’t make any sense, and says: “You were actually an innocent child, but more actually you’re a devilish human being! And therefore, let it be known: I sentence you to death by drowning!”

Because this is Kafka, Georg obeys his scary awful dad, and jumps off a bridge to his death. But the story doesn’t end there! Because this is Kafka! And surprise, our inconsistent narrator’s BEEN OMNISCIENT THE WHOLE TIME, and is just keeping stuff from us on purpose. (Kinda like what Georg and his dad accuse each other of! Perfect internal/external narrative symmetry!!!)

Anyway, the last sentence of “The Judgment” in English goes like this: “Just then, an endless stream of traffic came over the bridge.” But the original German goes like this: In diesem Augenblick ging über die Brücke ein geradezu unendlicher Verkehr. Literally translated, with German word-order intact so you guys can see just what I deal with on a regular basis: In this moment went over the bridge a downright endless intercourse [of traffic, OR IS IT?]. (I have tried to approximate this amazing, morbid joke with the phrase “came over,” but it’s not the same.)

Now, it’s highly improbable that the BVG were thinking about Kafka and the double meaning of “intercourse” when Gunnar Lindemann decided to live-tweet his commute — but that didn’t stop them from fucking with him.

Because here’s the fifth concurrent thing I need to explain: The BVG are an unapologetically progressive organization. Their slogan is weil wir dich lieben (VILE veer dick LEE-bun), or “because we love you,” a tagline that is extra affectionate because it uses both the informal “you” and the intimate form of “I love you” (usually reserved for havers of sexual, rather than vehicular, intercourse). The BVG launched that slogan by running a spectacular ad starring the late Turkish-German viral sensation Kazim Akboga, “Is mir egal” (“I don’t care,” but literally means “it’s equal to me,” because of EQUALITY):

(A full and “helpfully” annotated English version of the lyrics is here.)

Yes, the BVG is a true bastion of tolerance, except when it comes to making the train late by sticking your hand in between two closing doors (a.k.a. the “New York City Chivalry Shuffle”), at which point said doors will take your arm all the way off rather than allow your train to be 12 seconds late pulling into Görlitzer Bahnhof.

Anyway, while it’s heartwarming that even the BVG and AfD can come together over the universalizing German trait of extreme Pünktlichkeit (POONKT-lick-kite), or punctuality, the transit authority was not going egal into Gunnar Lindemann’s particular good night. So that’s when the A++ trolling began. (Or, as the Germans would call it, das A-plus-plus Trollen.)

Heute mal den Norden von #Berlin mit dem #ÖPNV erkundet. Ein Dank Allen die uns sicher ans Ziel bringen. @BVG_Kampagne @SBahnBerlin #agh

 — @AfDLindemann

@AfDLindemann @SBahnBerlin Unserem Fahrer Dschamal hat es auch sehr gut gefallen.

 — @BVG_Kampagne

As you’ll see here, Lindemann tagged the BVG in his breathless chronicle of his mundane journey across Berlin. “He seems to have an uncanny enjoyment of riding the train and bus through the city,” says Die Zeit’s Carly Laurence, hinting that the far-right politician feels the excitement of a big boy who ate all his steak and then got to sit behind the wheel of a very big truck for a special treat.

Sure, Berlin is a giant sprawling city that takes a while to drive across — a city positively teeming with immigrants, gays, feminists, environmentalists, and hundreds of thousands of native-Berlin-born people whom Lindemann’s party still wants to expel from the country. And so what happened next is that the BVG clapped back: “Our driver Dschamal also enjoyed [your trip] very much.” Dschamal is the German spelling of “Jamal,” a.k.a. “Your driver was black, and fuck off.”

Lindemann kept going — so the BVG did, too, pointing out that for every leg of his journey, his driver belonged to a group the AfD actively works to oppress: Hakan (Turkish); Zeynep (Turkish AND a woman); etc. Toward the end of Lindemann’s trip, the BVG got truly punchy — quipping, “Your driver Tarek says hi” — before delivering the ultimate death blow:

@AfDLindemann Gern geschehen. Viele Grüße von Tarek, dem Fahrer.

 — @BVG_Kampagne

@BVG_Kampagne Grüße zurück an meinem Fahrer Tarek und herzlichen Dank für die stressfreie Fahrt durch #Berlin

 — @AfDLindemann

@AfDLindemann Tarek sagt, es müsste „meinen" heißen.

 — @BVG_Kampagne

Here, Tarek — a person of (likely) North African descent that the ethno-nationalist AfD does not consider a “real” German — has CORRECTED GUNNAR LINDEMANN’S DUMB-ASS GRAMMAR. Lindemann has attempted to say “Hi back to my driver Tarek, and thank you very much for the stress-free journey through Berlin,” but he’s done it wrong.

And that, at last, brings me to SIXTH, and most important of all: German grammar uses what German 101 teachers call (in an attempt at levity) “AC/DC prepositions,” which stands for “Accusative Case/Dative Case,” but which also (in an outdated reference to both electrical outlets and 1970s bisexuals) is also supposed to remind us that they “go both ways,” depending on the situation. Some German prepositions always take the accusative case, and others always take the dative; not so with the dastardly AC/DCs, one of which is “an,” which also has about a billion meanings (to, at, on, about, by, just to name a few of them).

So…when you “say hi” to someone in German, as in not actually say hi but SAY you say hi, as in “Tell him I say hi,” you “send greetings” to that person, using the preposition an and the accusative case on your pronouns or whatever, which Gunnar Lindemann did not.

Basically, a semi-prominent German nationalist tweeted a fairly obvious and glaring mistake in his precious ethno-pure German to someone he likely assumes doesn’t speak German “right” — and that alleged foreigner corrected the fuck out of him. (Imagine Paul Ryan tweeting YOUR IN AMERICA SPEAK ENGLISH at his kids’ Bulgarian nanny, and the nanny tweeting back “you’re,” except on the social media account of a giant intercourse authority, and you’re halfway there.)

Reports are unclear as to whether the BVG’s burns were sick enough to scare Lindemann off of public transportation altogether. But I am guessing that for his return trip — his intercourse, as it were, through the city full of people he wants to screw — he probably said zum Teufel (“to Hell,” dative case!) with the BVG and their top-notch trolling, and hailed an Übermensch.

Back-catalog sales numbers of note from Nielsen SoundScan.

The definition of “back catalog” is: “at least 18 months old, have fallen below №100 on the Billboard 200 and do not have an active single on our radio.”

Paul McCartney released a deluxe reissue of Flowers In The Dirt, his 1989 collaboration with Elvis Costello and immediately sold more than twice as many records as Metallica in one usual week. Elton John celebrated his 70th birthday with a boost in back catalog sales and a lot of media coverage about his “most underrated songs” and his “greatest glasses.”

Look, I know no one reads this column or whatever, and I promise I’ll stop doing it someday, but I really do love discovering bands I haven’t heard of who are selling more copies of their first record in one week than Purple Rain and The Very Best of Prince. (Not to worry, the anniversary of Prince’s death is coming up next week, so I think we’ll see a spike in sales. But this right here is fascinating to me: who, in the wake of the one-year anniversary of Prince’s death, is like “Wow great tunes I better purchase his full album to add it to my increasingly useless collection now that everything is streamable.” It’s not MANY people, but I want to know everything ABOUT those people.) This week’s discovery is The Deep South, a self-proclaimed “rockin’ stompin’ bluegrass band” from SASKATCHEWAN (the Deep North) that consists of four guys, a banjo, and a cello plucked like a bass guitar. Sometimes there are other instruments but I mostly want to focus on the guy with a cello strapped around his neck. They obviously also snap their fingers and stomp their feet on railroad ties while wearing suspenders. Have a looksy:

Anyway they came out with a new record. David Norris Phelps is an American Christian music singer, not to be confused with David Phelps the Marlins’ utility pitcher. Finally, the Gorrillaz have a new album coming out on my birthday, please don’t forget it. I expect to see them climb the charts until then. Would anyone like to wager how high they’ll get? I’m going with spot, uhhhh, 32. No reason, just a good nice number for April 28th.

1. MCCARTNEY*PAUL FLOWERS IN THE DIRT 11,796 copies

10. JOHN*ELTON GREATEST HITS 1970-­2002 2,929 copies

71. DEAD SOUTH*THE GOOD COMPANY 1,399 copies

79. PHELPS*DAVID BEST OF DAVID PHELPS 1,351 copies

143. GORILLAZ GORILLAZ 1,030 copies

166. GORILLAZ DEMON DAYS 964 copies

185. GORILLAZ PLASTIC BEACH 916 copies

(Previously.)

What a week it was.

Remember when this week began? That was only TWO DAYS AGO. Yes, TWO DAYS. You have only done TWO DAYS of this ENDLESS IMPOSSIBLE WEEK. We’re not even at the midpoint yet. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? Oh my God, I get that everything has to be terrible from now on but does it also need to slow down too? I mean, of course it does, why wouldn’t it? Anyway. It’s Wednesday. A thousand hours from now it will be Wednesday afternoon. Good luck getting through it. It’s supposed to be nice out today, that should help, as should the music below, which feels kind of cleansing, if that makes any sense. It doesn’t? Whatever, I’ve had a long week. Enjoy.

The Adventures of Liana Finck

Liana Finck’s work appears in The New Yorker, in Catapult, and on Instagram.

★★★ The sparkle was off the sunlight and a chill was not far away from the warmth. The coffee shop door had been propped open with a little stack of insulated cardboard cup sleeves. The light brightened and sharpened for a while. Breeze filled the storefront banners and lifted the front flap of an awning. The air was just a bit cold on the scalp. Clouds drew together, with bright spots where the seam hadn’t quite closed. The harbor smell was back after months of absence. The slightest preliminary drizzle seemed to be falling, scattering sharp little sensations of something even colder against the deepening cold.

Some Dunkin Donuts franchises are now legally required to serve butter, not margarine.

If settlement agreements filed on Monday are approved, up to 1,400 people may claim up to three free buttered muffins, bagels or other baked goods from the 23 locations in Grafton, Leominster, Lowell, Millbury, Shrewsbury, Westborough and Worcester. Customers would not need to show a receipt of a previous purchase. The stores will be required to use only butter — no margarine or butter substitute — for a year. If they use butter substitutes in the future, the menus will have to explicitly say so.

Massachusetts is home to all kinds of Patriots.

Butter or Margarine? In Dunkin’ Donuts Lawsuit, Man Accepts No Substitutes

How Merrick Garland, a one-time Supreme Court nominee, gets through Tuesdays

Merrick Garland is a federal judge who sits on the DC Circuit. He was previously nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court, which was then stolen, and most days he grapples with this historic tragedy. He’s begun re-watching movies, not only as a form of escapism, but also to be reminded that people have always been fucked up. “I like to revise my list of favorite movies in every year since I was born,” Garland explained. “Eventually I’ll publish the list to Facebook. Maybe on the day Neil Gorsuch is confirmed as associate justice to the Supreme Court?”

LAZY MORNING Maybe I hit the snooze button for once in my life. What’s the rush? Tuesday will be the same as Monday. Maybe I’ll turn over and stare at the wall until it starts blurring like a Magic Eye. Maybe I’ll imagine the wall moving closer to me, inch by inch, until it finally touches my nose and maybe the ceiling is moving towards me too. And soon I’m in a box and I’m being shipped to wherever President Obama is. Maybe we’ll go for a run and maybe a group of teenagers will see us, and maybe they’ll scream, “Run, Forrest, run,” and then laugh and maybe I’ll tense up. Maybe President Obama will say, “Merrick, wake up. Kids today don’t know who Forrest Gump is. They’re laughing with us. We’re all laughing because we ran our fastest mile.”

MORE LAZINESS Maybe I’ll wake up and I’ll put on the sweats already on the floor, and I’ll go watch Charlie Rose before I leave for work. Maybe my wife will tell me, “Don’t go in today. You don’t have oral arguments. Your clerks can send a car with the briefs and the memos.” Maybe I’ll say, “I know,” but get up to leave anyhow. Maybe I’ll grab a box of Cheez-its on the way, and maybe my wife, following me, will say, “You can’t eat snacks for breakfast,” and I’ll say, “they’re the new toasted kind,” and maybe she will hand me a poached egg which I’ll eat on the stairs, with my hands, the yolk blending with the Cheez-its and dribbling down my t-shirt. Maybe my wife will gag and fake kick me and maybe, briefly, we’ll dance, like that young couple from La La Land.

TATTOOS Maybe I’ll leave the house, and drive aimlessly until I realize I’m in a parking lot of a tattoo parlor. Maybe I’ll briefly think about getting a Finding Nemo tattoo on my calf. It’ll be the blue fish and it’ll be captioned “Just keep swimming.” Maybe the shop will be closed though, and good thing, because I didn’t really mean to get a tattoo, and especially one that covered the entire bottom half of one leg. And maybe as I’m starting the car again, my clerk Andrew will call me, and ask, “Hey, Judge Garland, next time you’re in, no rush, but next time you have time, can you call that partner at Skadden about interviewing me again. Tell him that the B I have in Constitutional Law, it should be like a B plus now, maybe an A minus, thanks to all I’ve learned about the Constitution working under you.” And maybe I’ll say, “You probably deserved the B, Andrew. Distrust in experts is what got us into this mess.”

HANGRY Maybe I’ll remember I’m hungry. Maybe I pull into the bistro where I’m a regular, and maybe the waitress whose child’s school fundraisers I regularly support says, “The usual?” and I nod. And maybe I grab a table and read and wait for my meal. Maybe, when I’m sending back my sandwich because it has mayo on it again, Justice Kennedy appears and says to me, “I’m still the swing Justice, Merrick.” And maybe I’ll say, “Oh, go to Hell, Justice Kennedy,” because who the fuck cares anymore. And maybe he will gasp theatrically and reach for my table to regain his balance. And maybe, just as his hand touches the table, I’ll turn into the Joker, the Dark Knight Joker, and shake the table psychotically, and he’ll lose his balance and he will fall down. And maybe I’ll run out of the café, Merrick again, and just as I leave, my waitress will yell, “Justice Garland, your sandwich!” and Justice Kennedy will say, “It’s Judge Garland.” Maybe I’ll keep running until I get to my car, and then remembering I never ate, I’ll keep driving, all the way to Wegmans in Maryland.

DREAMING OF HOME Maybe when I get to Wegmans I’ll push the cart along the perimeter, like they say you’re supposed to. Maybe I’ll receive a New York Times alert that Senators McCain and Graham support the nuclear option and maybe I tell the woman handing out dumplings that Judge Gorsuch will surely be confirmed now. Maybe she responds, “Do you want one more? The quicker I get rid of these the quicker I can go home.” And maybe then I remember that Washington is a bubble. That, yes, it matters who sits on the Supreme Court, but that it’s still a job, and that some days Justice Gorsuch will also daydream about going home.

ALWAYS CONNECT Maybe I’ll finally fill up my gas tank, so my wife doesn’t know I was driving around all day, again, and maybe when I walk into the gas station, to pay cash because my credit card has just been declined, Hillary will be there. And maybe I’ll ask, “What are you doing here?” and maybe she’ll say, “Buying cigarettes.” And then she’ll add, “Do you know what group of people comprising predominantly of white males I’d really like to absolutely fucking obliterate?” And maybe, because I just re-watched Silence of the Lambs the night before, I’ll answer, “Serial killers?” and then Hillary will say, “No, Republican Senators.” Maybe then she will ask me if I want a cigarette, and I’ll say yes even though she hasn’t paid for them yet and I haven’t smoked since college. Maybe I’ll light up and we will both cough heavily and then maybe Hillary will say, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg better never fucking die,” and I’ll agree, and then we’ll cough some more, before we split a Powerball ticket and go our separate ways.

Previously: Sundays.

Sunday Routine

Of album titles at the very least.

The story goes that in 1980 a Cuban coke dealer named Armando Perez met a dancer, Alysha Acosta, at a topless bar in Miami. They slept together, and nine months later, on January 15, 1981, she gave birth to the boy who would one day be known across the world as Pitbull. “It worked out,” Pitbull tells me. “Shit, I gotta find that titty bar!” According to a 2015 interview Pitbull did with Howard Stern, Acosta would point at stars in the Miami sky and tell her young son that’s what he’d be one day. It’s a perfect story, but Pitbull grew up in a turbulent time, far away from the Art Basel Miami Beach of today. In 1981, the year he was born, the New York Times reported that more people were murdered in Miami than anywhere else in the world.

Pitbull Will Live Forever

Pitbull only watches VICELAND, CNBC, and Bloomberg. His nickname is “Pit.” In order to understand Pitbull, you must first understand South Florida. More Pitbull facts and anecdotes here, in this entertaining profile by Mitchell Sunderland, published by Vice.

Mastodon’s ‘Emperor of Sand’ is a mature take on prog-rock.

“The reason that critics like Elvis Costello… is ’cause they all look like Elvis Costello.” —David Lee Roth

Since their formation in 2000, no band has contributed more to the heavy-metal canon than Atlanta, Georgia’s Mastodon. The four-piece prog-metal giant’s catalog has covered land, sea, air, and space, taking them everywhere from the Grammys to Westeros. Over nearly 20 years and six albums, they’ve pushed the boundaries of what a metal band is “allowed” to be, crossing over into the rock charts while playing circles around the average rock band. They’ve made brutal standalone tracks and bonkers opuses, but for their seventh album they’re turning over the hourglass to ponder mortality and time (naturally, it’s called Emperor of Sand). Whether you’re an “I prefer the early stuff” dickhead or living vicariously through them in your mom’s basement, a new Mastodon release is an event to circle on the calendar.

Emperor of Sand is a return to the concept album for Mastodon, but it’s not a return to the free-form, progressive fearlessness of 2006’s Blood Mountain or 2009’s Crack the Skye. While those albums are easily identifiable as the band’s artistic high water mark, Emperor is Mastodon hitting a new kind of, uhhhh peak. The lineup is still the same four dudes: Brann Dailor on drums, Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher on guitar and Troy Sanders on bass. Vocals are done by committee, their distinct personalities and sounds coming together as only two decades of commingled odors in a tour van can bring. No one is fighting for space, each fulfills his role and executes it with style and skill that few can pull off while still serving a song.

Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” epic begins with a perfect first sentence: “The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.” Similarly, Emperor of Sand begins with “Sultan’s Curse,” the story of a man sentenced to death and doomed to the desert, ‘Tired and lost, no one to trust.’ It’s a rager that features all of the many voices of the band, goes through a few quick movements and gets the fuck out. “Show Yourself” is a brief, near-pop respite from the gloom that will run throughout, with Dailor raising the bar on what a drummer can do while singing (or is it what a singer can do while drumming?) “Precious Stones” features the often criticized vocals of guitar wiz Hinds, whose voice actually complements the band’s less metal/more rock proclivities perfectly, while bringing to mind the best of the ’90s yowlers like Alice In Chains (before the style was reduced to a total joke by mouth-breathing buttrockers with awful band names like Seether, Staind and Shinedown).

At the middlish point of the album is “Roots Remain,” which would fit right in on some of their earlier records if not for Dailor’s ability to sing so well. The back half of the song is a multi-part changeup of a bridge, highlighted by a gonzo Hinds guitar solo at the 4:54 mark that reminds us that, yes, he’s capable of hitting a shitload of different notes in a row like any player who practices enough can, but he also knows how to make them fucking matter. It’s as heartfelt and meaningful a guitar part as you’ll find on any record these days. “Andromeda” is built around an unsettling, dissonant riff that brings to mind the influential ’90s New York hardcore legends, Vision of Disorder, with Troy Sanders’s signature guttural wail that resolves into a beauty of a chorus. It’s the highlight of a damn strong side two that carries the record home.

Featured on every part of every song is this band’s sheer ability to play the fuck out of their instruments. If you don’t know what the four of them look like, you might get the impression that they have more arms than most people. Listen closely, the progressive sensibility is still in there, it’s just folded into a standard verse-chorus, verse-chorus package. Each song is built like most good heavy metal, with a great riff at the foundation — Kelliher and Hinds seem able to mass produce these things in their sleep. Where 2014’s Once More ‘Round the Sun felt overwrought, leaving the listener wondering if there was enough gas in the tank for any more trips, Emperor feels free of fat and to the point, with enough adventurism to keep the prog prefix intact.

A welcome return on Emperor is Brendan O’Brien, the producer who quietly shaped much of the sound of the ’90s (and beyond) and made Crack the Skye Mastodon’s best-sounding record. Without O’Brien, 2011’s The Hunter veered a little too close to the over-processed, rigid production that makes so much metal unpalatable these days; the lack of atmosphere was a detriment to the high quality of the songwriting. Emperor of Sand’s production keeps a foot in the past with analog warmth (I’m willing to bet he uses tape machines) and values the sound of human beings playing instruments in a room.

While their days of blowing the doors off genres and rules might be behind them, Mastodon is still a vital animal, creating intelligent music in a heavy-metal landscape that often rewards the most stupid. Only one metal band has achieved more and left a greater impression on rock music history. Of course I mean Metallica, and of course at this point Metallica, try as they might to restore their glory, have made far more terrible records than good. Considering that, there’s a case to be made for Mastodon as the greatest metal band of all time.

Emperor of Sand is out now. Catch Mastodon on tour with Eagles of Death Metal & Russian Circles.

John Dziuban is no longer a musician, and he does not look like Elvis Costello. Metal Minutiae is an occasional column on the decline of rock music.

The people have spoken.

Democratization of the internet and the free exchange of information is crucial to the expansion of social liberalism. Every day we see more forces at work trying to prevent us from getting the information we need to remain truly informed as engaged citizens. For example, the history revisionists in Texas are imbuing fiction into the textbooks that provide misinformation to the 4,000 children in America who can afford public education; George Soros has his propaganda machine churning out more deceptions than ever; and Congress has, if I may be crass, “pulled the plug” on our internet privacy protections, opening the door for that skeezeball Assange to ruin each of our lives on a more individualized basis from his Ecuadorian dungeon of shame. This makes us even more collectively malleable at this dark moment in our nation’s history. One thing you see a lot of is the media recklessly drawing false equivalencies between two loosely related things in order to craft a point that furthers their agenda. However, the people are sharing e-information with each other that counters the corporate narratives and allows us to control our agenda. All this is to say: Señor Frog’s in Orlando, Florida is better than the UNESCO World Heritage Sites — please find the evidence to support this claim below.

No one gives a care about your birthday at the Great Pyramid of Giza! +1 to the frog.

Modern day “no room at the inn” story vs. one tremendously dissatisfied customer!

Have on good authority that “latino” night at the Taj Mahal is terrible!

The bureaucrats puffing cigars on Capitol Hill don’t want you to read this.

Radio silence about this on the Clinton News Network (CNN).

Whoa party in Jovan’s backyard, am I wrong?

Up to you if you want your family to have fun or not I guess.

More evidence that’s been buried by our corporate overlords.

Enough said!

Kaeleigh Forsyth is a writer who lives and struggles every day in Queens.