Cobainville:
One of my New Year's Resolutions for this site is gonna be to post more pictures from people's Buzznet accounts; I figured I'd get a head start.
12/29/2005 02:28 AM
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Two Angels Blogs Ride Off Into the Sunset: The venerable Purgatory Online, and the minor-league documenting Future Angels. Your work will be missed, gentlemen.
Also, I keep meaning to update my Halosphere permalinks with Haloblog; my only regret about the site is that it's not the real Daryl Sconiers, who was a favorite of mine.
12/28/2005 07:05 AM
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Emmanuelle, I Think on Her Third Birthday:
The enthusiasm (for ironing, at least) did not survive into adulthood. Nor did mine; I actually used to love a little board-work myself, until the day I tried to test with my entire index finger whether the iron was hot....
12/28/2005 02:05 AM
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The Man Who Made These Cookies Reviews Your Movies:
12/27/2005 01:24 AM
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Whatever You Do, Don't Ask a Moscow Cop About ATM Machines: And maybe it's better just to unplug your hotel room telephone.
12/27/2005 01:23 AM
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A Band from Long Beach, California, Featuring a Redheaded Bassist/Vocalist Named Matt Welch: He looks nothing like me, though. Or does he??
12/27/2005 01:22 AM
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New One From Me: "The Success Curse: Why statism may never die in the two oldest democracies": And man, was it hard to avoid referring to The Plexiglass Principle....
12/27/2005 01:21 AM
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Merry Christmas! You want to know what we had for Christmas Eve dinner, don't you? The Monique Richard menu:
* foie gras with toast
* escargots swimming in a butter/herb sauce
* the most delicious roast duck ever prepared (involving some mushrooms stuffed inside, and chestnuts), served with Gratin Dauphinois.
* no cheese course, due to physical limitations.
* a tiramisu-resembling cake, served with chestnut ice cream.
Hope your Christmas is half as delicious!
12/24/2005 11:54 PM
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Seven-Word Movie Review, Match Point: Rich, fortunate perv ponders class, luck, lust.
I know, I broke the rules, but how to distill 5 zillion words of credulity-stretching dialogue into just five? It's a pretty good movie if you like such things; I generally don't. Though that Scarlett gal ... damn.
12/23/2005 05:08 AM
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One of My Two Favorite Books This Year: Was Julian Rubinstein's Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts, which I've long meant to read, but only finally picked up impulsively at LAX before hopping across the Atlantic. Oh man, what fun.
It's about a rough-hewn, rakishly handsome small-town Transylvanian young man, who after an early love-tragedy and a broken childhood makes a daring escape into Hungary underneath a train during the latter days of Ceausescu. He then heads down to the local "professional" hockey team in Budapest, lies about being an experienced goalie, takes about 8,000 pucks to his face in a tenacious and terrible two-hour try-out, breaking his nose in the process, yet winning the hearts and minds of his team, which hires him as a Zamboni driver and third-string netkeeper. After a time, he begins smuggling pelts, and gaining a taste for the post-commie Hungarian high life (which mostly consists of leasing expensive cars, and getting wasted in trashy casinos). With a relentless work ethic, a cunning mind, and a head full of demons, he finally takes the plunge and becomes a gentleman robber of post offices and state-owned banks, always making sure to steal only from the institution, never from the patrons, and acting quite politely (saying csokolom, or "I kiss your hands," to the women in attendance, and even occasionally bringing flowers). He becomes, obviously, a folk hero in the process, and a star of the burgeoning tabloid-journalism industry, avoiding capture for years, leaping briskly over the bank counters, and always bearing the sweet smell of whiskey, which he'd typically pound across the street to calm his nerves.
This all took place exactly when Emmanuelle and I lived in Budapest (1995-97), and the way Rubinstein captures the mood and atmosphere of the times is just uncanny, seeing as how he was living thousands of miles away. Especially fun are the descriptions of the marvelously incompetent and routinely corrupt police force, including a cop with the delightful nickname "Mound of Asshead." And later, after we left, the Whiskey Robber made a daring, never-before-successful escape from jail, followed by the largest manhunt in Hungarian history.... Incredible.
What makes this book so tasty, besides the obvious richness of the story, is that Rubinstein, unlike the authors of the endless variants on How the Oyster Saved the World and Changed Civilization, doesn't at all try to exaggerate the significance of the Whiskey Robber's tale, aside from pointing out in a single paragraph that this could have only happened at a single time and place in history. Also, the breezy, comical tone was the perfect choice, I thought. It ain't high lit, and thank God for that sometimes.
These last characteristics match perfectly with my other favorite book of the year, which I'll talk about some time in the week ahead. Merry Christmas from Lyon!
12/23/2005 04:29 AM
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New Reason Online Column From Me -- "Fighting the Last War in Iraq and the Middle East: The perils of using Cold War analogies in the twilight struggle against Islamic extremism": Here's how it opens: PRAGUE -- Sixteen years from now, will Iraqis be sitting in gay-friendly bars sending gleeful SMS messages to each other about the final episode of the local variant on "Big Brother," as my Czech friends were doing last week?
I sure as hell hope so, and further hope that Iraq's election turns out to be as pivotal as the June 1990 ballot in Czechoslovakia. But basic comparative observation suggests more modest expectations, no matter how tightly the Bush Administration and its supporters cling to the Central European example for its Iraq and Middle East policy.
12/21/2005 02:09 PM
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Some Pics By Emmanuelle:
The Fabulous Drunken Sisters:
The Lazy Pigs na Ujezd (actually right next door). They were nice enough to play some vintage Condron, Hangley, Bozeman and other treats.
And requiring no explanation:
12/21/2005 02:07 PM
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Memo to Pals Who Once Lived in Prague But Haven't Been Back: You should go. Nice town; some of your friends still live there, and they say "hi."
I'd talked myself out of going for nine years, mostly on grounds of not wanting to approach such a deeply seared city/friends combo in just one weekend. And it's true -- having eight days made the experience much better. But one weekend is better than no weekend at all, and this town's too fun, and the friends too funny, to miss out on for so long. I still feel badly that I didn't see half the people I wanted to, but there's always next year!
Much has changed in nine years, but not the fundamentals:
- Terrible sense of humor. My first brush-up with Czech humor came before I even got my luggage. There were these dopey little T-Mobil ads on the baggage-conveyor belts saying "Still Waiting?" (Czechs are the biggest cell-phone addicts I've ever seen, though it's been two years since I've dealt with the Magyars) ... so some Czech teens naturally put a roll of toilet paper right on one of 'em. The guy handling the lever that spit the luggage onto the track would try to toggle his delivery just so he could knock it off, for sport. If he was successful, the next available still-waiting Czech (babicka, pre-teen, whoever) would calmly put it back into place. No one does pointless whimsical humor better than these people.
Another example -- I had multiple conversations with people discussing the intricacies of identifying friends on your cell-phone with your terrible nicknames for them; it's easy to get confused, you can't always remember if it's appropriate to call your friend "Vulture" to her face, etc. Then there was the drunken Eskimo sidewalk party (featuring dozens of terrific costumes); also the dopey triple "icku"s at the end of each word you wanted to make triple-cute....
- That beer thing. They still drink it! And it's still cheap and delicious! I never did go into a full-on sketchy pub, but I paid anywhere from 15 to 45 crowns for the best lager in the world. What's more, with the EU membership, and the whole Czechs-actually-have-money thing, there are good wine stores on every street corner downtown. Turns out when given a choice, Prague's boozers actually don't prefer the sweet-tasting, plastic-capped Moravian junk, though they'll still hit it in a pinch.
- Horrendous/delicious street food. Wenceslas, Narodni Trida, Staromestske namesti, Kampa, various tram stops ... still provide you all the smaz, svarak, klobasy, "hamburger cordon," and mystery meat that you could ever want. (And in my case, I want a lot.) And no, I didn't visit Masarykovo, bohuzel; though U Zpevacku is now a *cough* half-fancy restaurant.
- The whole jiggery-pokery deal. That's a great description of Prague's windy, alchemic little streets coined by Sadakat Kadri, in his unbeatable Cadogan Guide to Prague. (Weird coincidence -- I went to a party at Kadri's flat in London the day before flying to Prague.) Anyway, after all these years & various easyJets (you should see how huge the airport is now) and stag-parties, you can still take five paces off the touristical paths, and explore/traverse down almost totally forgotten secret passageways and whimsical alleys. Only now they have bars, cafes, and weird shops, and the buildings are spruced up.
What else is the same? The pace of change is still dynamic, people still seem enthusiastic, you can still eat bad American attempts at Mexican food all over town, and you can still find apartments in the city center (we were on Jilska) for 55 Euros and less. I don't have all the relevant URLs at my fingertips, but if you use Google, or look at Craig's List, you'll find apartments for as low as 30 Euros over by where the Bunkr used to be.
Let's see, what am I forgetting.... Our first office is now a museum dedicated to Nova TV founder (and suspected crook) Vladimir Zelezny; our second office is a laser dermatology clinic. Apparently, Andel has become a mess of office buildings (where Vladan works at Mlada fronta, for example), though I didn't see it. Ujezd is no longer Borat, the Obecni Dum remains empty but beautiful (the Plzenske Pivnice in the basement had exactly one table occupied at 7 p.m. on a Sunday, despite/because of the threat of a "Cesky folklor" show at 9). There are still crappy English-language publications galore, you can still stumble across a Lazy Pigs show (sometimes, Jimmy tells me, without a single original Pig in the lineup); though they say the era of Charles Bridge music is officially Over. And David Cerny is still busting out with the headline-making art (check out Good King Wenceslas on the upside-down horse).
Anyway, sorry to bore the rest of you, but I know there are at least 10 people reading this who ain't been to Prague since forever, and are somehow uncertain about going back. Don't be. Cities like this don't grow on trees, you know, and now you can fly there from just about any European town for 50 bucks, if you plan ahead. As long as you're on this side of the pond, the carp are still calling....
12/21/2005 05:18 AM
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The Hana-Zuzana Blog: If that doesn't strike fear in your heart, you must not be Australian. I think they're still trying to keep it "secret" or something, but since they don't update enough it's time for a little outing-action. Here's the second paragraph currently on display: Even though am a proper drunken sister, I was amazed at the easiness one can start downing shots of liquor once afloat! I never before realized the relaxation qualities of morning shots! Unbelievable! I think that the overall feeling that I got each morning when climbing into my boat was along these lines: "A full bottle of booze trailing behind one's canoe can make all petty problems go away!" What a terrible lie -- I know for a fact that she and I "realized the relaxation qualities of morning shots" with Olbram Zoubek roughly 13 years ago....
12/20/2005 11:14 AM
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Same-Sex Marriage and Transvestitism in Pre-Spanish California: Geitner Simmons uncovers the goods.
12/20/2005 09:56 AM
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Newly Online Reason Column: "From Bob Woodward to Judith Miller: The country’s most reviled reporter is a direct descendant of its most beloved": An alternative headline could have been "The Joy of Print-Magazine Deadlines: Clever column idea turned into strangely incomplete redundance by the time it's online...."
12/15/2005 11:29 AM
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