Brace Belden and Les of True Anan dive into Germany with surreal satire, from a darkly comedic "daily flogging" routine to monitoring Berlin’s "pro-Palestine" Instagram posts—branded "distasteful"—while citing Bret Easton Ellis’s scorn for German self-importance. Their "Uber Dance Club" intro sets the tone: equal parts absurdity and sharp critique, framing Germany as both revered and reviled, all before a week of research even began. [Automatically generated summary]
And I was once on a German talk show and if you want to go on one, it's a lot of fun.
It's really fun.
And I was on this German talk show and this woman said to me, she said, Mr. Williams, why do you think there's not so much comedy in Germany?
And I said, did you ever think you killed all the funny people?
And here's what got interesting.
She didn't batten Eila.
She just went, no.
At that point, even God's going, do you get it?
Willkommen, mein Damen und Herren.
Zu einer episode über unser Glorikets Waterland.
Mine in name is Brace Belden.
Und.
I'm Les.
Und.
We are, of course, joined by producer Jan Chomsky.
Uber producer Jan Chomsky.
And und podcast is called True Anan.
Jesus.
You went into Austrian right there.
Hello, everyone.
Welcome to Drunan.
Hello.
How are you guys doing?
Wilkomen to Wilkamen to the Uber Dance Club.
It's crazy.
So I've been thinking.
I've been in thinking.
I've been thinking.
Actually, I'll say this.
Let's back up even farther to several days ago, to about a week ago.
Okay.
But we've been talking about doing this episode for a long time.
Yeah.
And have kind of been like researching stuff here and there.
But we really, really got like started on this pair of episodes about a week ago in earnest.
And I got to tell you, I have been in the hole.
The trenches.
Well, that was, of course, where I was made a man on the Western Front of World War I.
And also where I got a fantastic gay blow job from Ernst Junger.
But I got to tell you, I have been in the German mindset.
I've been waking up at the crack of dawn.
I have had my daily floggings.
Daily floggings, a wispily thin twink shitting on my chest.
I have taken ecstasy at about 9 a.m. So that you could complete your art direction portfolio.
For Nike.
For Nike's.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
For Nike's, you know, the consultant gig you're getting through Nike, but for the European Commission.
Absolute.
Absolutz zin.
And then after that, at around 9.30, of course, I eat Mein Breakfast, which consists of one black coffee and about 45 sausage links.
Sure.
Sort of fed to me one by one by various completely latex clad, amorphously gender dog mask individuals.
And you're being walked.
I'm being walked.
Yeah.
It's the dog, because that's the classic German, that's the German joke.
It's who's walking who when they see a dog and a person walking.
And then, of course, around noon, I go to the Zedance club and I stay there until about four in the morning where I come back and I do more graphic design work.
Yes.
And then, of course, what I do is I go through the Instagram posts of various Arab, Turkish people who've moved to Main City, Berlin, and I try to find anything that maybe is a little too pro-Palestine.
Spicy.
Palestine?
A little spicy, and not in a curry worst kind of thing.
No, no, no.
In a way that I find distasteful.
Which is how I find curry worst.
I've never had it.
German food is just not my business.
I had to say, there's this thing that Brest said about Germans.
And you got to take it from him, right?
Big Brest himself.
And he was like, you know, the gap between someone like Goethe and the average, let's say, sausage-eating German is so much wider than the gap between, say, Voltaire and the average Frenchman.
Brest himself did not particularly have much love for the high esteem of his countrymen.
I will say this.
I hold the German, the Hun, in both high and low regard.