I worried when I first heard of the Egyptian Museum’s curatorial mash-up, sprinkling Alberto Giacometti sculptures into the ancient collection. A modernist and the ancients — potentially interesting, I thought, like seeing Picasso’s work next to the African art he drew on, but plenty of room for over-curated fluff.

We stopped by today. I shouldn’t have worried. It’s brilliant, shedding light on Giacometti in ways I would likely never have noticed on my own. He was apparently entranced by Egyptian art, spending long periods of time studying and sketching ancient sculpture. The collection shows books that had belonged to him, with his own versions of pieces sketched in next to pictures of the originals.

The exhibition works in much the same way, placing a dozen or so of his sculptures next to pieces of a genre that served as obvious models, or inspiration. Tall, eerie striding man next to a classic Egyptian walking man with one leg outstretched, portrait busts that shared structure (and almost the same foreheads), twisted beautiful figures that display feeling and personality in stylized form.

Well worth the visit, particularly on a free museum day.

I’m only beginning to understand Egyptian sculpture, thanks to a visit to the Met last summer. I’d always loved Greek and the best of the Roman (Romans copied dreadfully, but they also gave real personality to what in Greece was often simply beautiful). But even thousands of years before the Greeks, the Egyptians were creating busts and full statues of stunning, almost frighteningly realistic personality. In the Altes, Nefertiti’s head gets all the press, but a little piece called the Green Head is far better — a stone head of a priest, I think, that expresses force and power and personhood in every expert line.

Seen at Bonanza Coffee Heroes, where they make a rich, flavorful brew with geopolitical relevance.

Americans: If you haven’t voted already, send that ballot in now!

(Cross-posted at Hungry in Berlin.)

From a McCain staffer today (via Huffington Post):

MIAMI — Move over, Al Gore. You may lay claim to the Internet, but John McCain helped create the BlackBerry.

At least that’s the contention of a top McCain policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Waving his BlackBerry personal digital assistant and citing McCain’s work as a senator, he told reporters Tuesday, “You’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.”

There are many things to be said about this. But aside from simply being high on the idiot scale, it misses a fairly obvious point. The Blackberry is Canadian, created by Ontario’s Research in Motion.

Reminds me of the (I think) French ambassador’s comment after the whole “Freedom fries” incident: “Actually,” he said. “They’re Belgian.”

I think I’ve spent the last six months entirely inside. It wasn’t a cold winter, but the dark and cold-enough of it seemed to get under my skin more than I expected this year. Though it’s possible that staring at a laptop screen for 29 hours a day every day has something to do with creating a vitamin deficiency.

But last night, against all odds, we actually ventured outside to this event being thrown by a few dozen B-list clubs across the city, one ticket gets you in all of them, dance to your heart’s content. It’s the first time Peasant Glasses and I have been to any Berlin dance clubs except our friendly local Icon, and so naturally we excitedly started at the old-person’s hour of 11, when everything was deserted. The first few were a bust for me; I never liked high school dances, and have zero nostalgia for the disco of the 70s and radio hits of the 80s. But just in time, we found a group of crazy Romanian DJs playing some kind of hard bass-heavy electronic goodness, two in giant cardboard robot costumes, another laying down live sax squeals over the beats. I dug. Dancing is a collective ecstasy; it’s hard for me to transcend my own inclination to simply nod my head and analyze the music, but it’s a beautiful thing when it happens.

On the way home, we stopped to watch a pair of blackbirds battle-rapping at 4 am, sitting on opposite sides of a long vacant stretch where the Wall used to run, alternating complex and creative stretches of song at the top of their lungs. The sound echoed from the sides of the apartments, lit up the pre-dawn streets like fireworks, made us grin.

Winter’s over, finally.

After a bit of swearing and frowning and several trips down to a part of Wedding which I don’t ordinarily see (but we all should, because there’s quite interesting African Lebensmittel shops there), the Ausländerbehördenites have at last given me a permission slip to stay in this part of the world for a bit longer. Many, many thanks to Bowleserised, who pointed me in the direction of a very helpful accountant who prepared the 3,000 page folder of documents that allowed me to sidle confidently into the office, wait no longer than four hours, and then head off home with a newly valid Aufenthaltserlaubnis.

So, now that nobody’s kicking me out of the country, it’s time to figure out what to do with the time.