The folks on their last day in Berlin

Edith declared that she had ridden to the top of this thing as a little girl. "Don't think so," said Manny.

Later, I discovered that the dang thing was built by the Commies back in 1968, so there's no way.

But my mom hangs tough.

My dad and I have decided to call it the Berlin "time machine." We went to the top of thing thing today but we managed to avoid time travel.

As far as we know, at least.

Here we are with our cute Nigerian-German cabby

At an Italian restaurant in one of Berlin's many cool spots. Listened to a cool band, too.

Mom insisted on ordering a fancy chocolate desert. It arrived as a big mouse head with mouse ears made of crackers. Mom grabbed one of Mickey's ears and ate it.

"You're eating Mickey's ear!" I protested.

"Don't worry. Mickey's dead," said mom. She ate the whole damned thing.

Buffalo Springfield Again

Buffalo Springfield stunningly returns to L.A. (OC Reg)

     …Here at last, after giving its first reunion performances last October at Neil Young’s Bridge School benefit concerts, was the short-lived but mighty Buffalo Springfield — a group that literally formed in a traffic jam on Sunset Boulevard, finally playing again in the city that spawned it 43 years and a month after the (mostly) original lineup last played in Southern California, to some 5,000 people at Long Beach Arena on May 5, 1968.
. . .
     Their importance cannot be overstated: The band that locals used to call the Herd rank only behind Bob Dylan (especially with the Hawks/Band) and the Byrds (with and without Gram Parsons) as the most crucial cornerstones of what’s now called Americana music, that hard-to-define yet easy-to-spot hybrid of folk, rock, country, blues, psychedelia and lyrical poetry….