Bruner Blog
All Bruner, All the Time
Forcing Journalists to Testify
My friend Peter Maass wrote an op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times, which I thought I'd point out, about the debate over whether journalists should be compelled to give evidence in international criminal trials. Peter himself has been served with such a subpoena from the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague.
- 7/6/2002
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What Is Terrorism?
The FBI's refusal to call the LA airport shooting incident "terrorism," where an Egyptian man killed two people at El Al's ticket counter before a security guard shot and killed him, simply raises a question no one seems to want to give a straight answer to: what is our definition of "terrorism"? As far as I am aware, our government doesn't really seem to have a precise legal definition of this. (If someone can correct me on that, please do.)
The FBI is considering calling it a "hate crime," which I guess makes sense to me, if it was just one guy going bonkers. (Interesting to note that his birthday was July 4. Premeditation seems likely, either way, though, as he sent his wife and son back to Egypt last week.) I suppose some form of conspiracy with others might be the determining factor that it was terrorism? Where is that written down?
NYTimes.com coverage
CNN.com coverage
- 7/5/2002
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Firesign Theater Are Back, on NPR
 I'm delighted to hear that Firesign Theater has begun (today, July 4) a series of month installments on All Things Considered, NPR. For anyone who doesn't know this comedy troupe, they are basically America's unsung answer to Monty Python, about the most twisted, surreal, hysterical brand of humor this side of the Atlantic. They did a few movies that are hard to track down (I've seen "Nick Danger in the Case of the Missing Yolk"), but it's almost too surreal and low budget to truly enjoy. But their albums are genius. The were a bunch of alternative radio guys in 1970, so their humor has always worked best in audio. I'd particularly recommend "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers" and "(All Hail Marx & Lennon) How Can You Be in Two Places at Once (When You're Not Anywhere At All)."
 To here the bit that ran on NPR today, click here.
I see they have a web site (FiresignTheather.com) with amusing doo-dads, and a page that describes their history and has links to all their material. I also see that while they have remained fairly obscure, they have continued to put out new records, their latest (from the fall of 1999) presciently titled "Boom-dot-Bust" (a good six months before the April 2000 NASDAQ collapse).
- 7/4/2002
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Budapest Responds
My old friend Steve Carslon offers his $0.02 on the great Budapest v. Prague debate. Like Rob McLean, living in Prague, Carlson remains a resident of the East, in Budapest in his case, where he has resided for the past 14 years, so his perspective is notable.
- 7/4/2002
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War Photographer
Many thanks to Peter Maass for bringing a group of us last night to see the powerful documentary film "War Photographer," by Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei, a portrait of James Nachtwey, an amazing photo journalist who for the last 25 years has focused his lens almost strictly on war zones, extreme poverty, starvation and other forms of human suffering.
This film is powerful on many levels. First is the amazing "artistry" of Nachtwey's images. Artistry is perhaps not quite the best word, given his subject matter, but he is clearly a brilliant photographer. The film features hundreds of his shots, all of which are mesmerizing. Nachtwey is also a fascinating character personally. The sacrifice he has made throughout his career -- e.g., foregoing most vestiges of a normal life, notably any stable romance (that much more of a shame considering his uncommon good looks) -- is nothing short of inspirational. Zen-like in his self-control and single-minded dedication to documenting injustice at the risk of death on a daily basis, the photographer comes off one of those rare people so driven by a higher idealism that the rest of us can only admire with trembling lower lips. How he has seen what he has seen and yet not become in insufferable cynic, raging alcoholic or intermittent puppy strangler is hard to imagine.
The filmmaking itself, by Frei, is also remarkable. First of all, the documentarian followed the photographer on assignments for nearly two years, the video camera unquavering amidst plumes tear gas in Ramallah, swarms of flies at a garbage dump in Jakarta, choking fumes at a sulfur mine in Indonesia, mass graves in Kosovo and more. (For a film so dedicated to the visual image, it did a great job conveying putrid smells.)
One of the most innovative techniques the filmmaker employed was a micro-video camera mounted on Nachtwey's still camera, affording us a deep-focus view that included in the movie frame the top of Nachtwey's camera with his finger poised on the trigger as well as the view of the photographer's shot. Another similar micro-camera was pointed back at Nachtwey's face as he angled his shots. The result is many dramatic sequences seen from the photographer's perspective as he runs through hectic scenes of gun battles, assaults by rock-throwing Palestinians, grieving Kosovar families and more.
The editing, narration, pacing, musical score and other elements of the film all came together beautifully for an impressive work. Although the film is emotionally draining, there are several moments of levity that help keep it from being a complete downer. In the end, the film is genuinely uplifting, an inspiration that there are still people out there trying their hardest to make a difference in the world. Nachtwey, a man of few words generally, provides some narration near the end of the film that give the greatest insight into the sincerity of his character, explaining that his essential optimism despite all he's seen motivates him to persevere in the hope that showing these horrors to the rest of us, most of whom will never venture anywhere near where he goes, may somehow compel us to act differently in the long run. Very eloquent, I wish I had the transcript.
In NYC, the film has been held over by popular demand at the Film Forum till July 9. Highly recommended. Bring a hanky.
- 7/4/2002
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So Today We Die?
I'm not especially worried about it, but just in case NYC is attacked today, I want to be on record saying "Up yours, Al Qaeda!" in advance.
- 7/4/2002
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The 4th in NY
 Very funny Art Spiegelman cover on the current issue of The New Yorker (not!). What struck me about this was that the mushroom cloud looked a bit like the WTC. Is that deliberate, do you suppose? (Jeez, and some people think the Bruner Blog is edgy.)
BTW, for the rest of you outside NY, even if we don't go up in flames tomorrow, we stand a good chance of simply melting. Heat index at the moment is 101 degrees (at 4:30pm), with 210% humidity, or so.
- 7/3/2002
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A Rose by Any Other Name...
Steve Carlson inadvertently recommends I change the browser bar subtitle of the Bruner Blog from "Rick Bruner's reflections on life" to "Rick Bruner's self-indulgent rants, peeves, trivial obsessions and the like," which I think is an improvement. (See your browser title bar.) Opinions?
He also promises to get back to blogging, which is a good thing.
- 7/3/2002
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Budapest/Prague Bloggers Unite!
In an effort to heal the bitter rift I've created between Budapest and Prague expat bloggers, I offer the following idea from a reader:
The guy who wrote "Prague" is reading from his tome at Barnes & Noble on July 10, 7:30pm (81st/Broadway branch); I suggest we show up en masse to see if anyone remembers this guy.
- 7/3/2002
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Time to Quit Smoking
Thank you Mayor Bloomberg, you may just get me to quit at last. Just bought my first pack of cigarettes since the mayor's new sin tax took effect on Monday: paid $7.25 a pack, $2.92 of it taxes. That's almost as expensive as a movie ticket, for crying out loud. Just about makes me want to move back to California, where at least it's just plain illegal to smoke, or Hungary, where it's illegal not to. I can tell you, it's going to get to get mighty tough to bum cigarettes from friendly strangers anymore when you're talking 36 cents per butt.
- 7/3/2002
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Reality Czech
Man am I a lousy speller. I even recently upgraded to Blogger Pro, which has a spell checker, but obviously never use it. Prague resident Rob McLean read my rant on Prague and replied, pointing out (among other things) that I misspelled the ethnic identity of his hosts. I subsequently ran a spell Czech on the whole thing, and it was ugly. Ouch. That's embarrassing. Apologies to those of you who know how to read out there.
McLean, meanwhile, makes a case for busking on the Charles Bridge and other issues on why I should lighten up about Prague. I'll let him speak for himself: click here.
- 7/3/2002
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Prague Props
Matt Welch responds to my earlier rant about the novel "Prague" and my comparisons between Prague and Budapest, giving the Prague point of view. I concede to the fact that Matt has a better perspective on the question, having lived for years in both cities:
Ha ha! Of course, you realize, I used to busk on the Charles Bridge... [No, I did not. Oh well...]
Funny stuff; I always noticed & enjoyed the consternation/mild jealousy among the Budapest crowd about all the Prague hype. I would take issue with your melt-into-the-culture observation, though -- a far higher percentage of American expats I knew learned pretty good Czech than Hungarian (easier language, after all), more of them inter-married, and far less fathered surprise children. It was my experience that Americans in Prague were far more likely to live on a similar economic level as the Czechs (at Prognosis, we basically made the Czech minimum wage; and I knew a lot of English teachers who made less). This explains, in part, why you saw so many young hippie bums doing unseemly things like busking -- they needed the money! The Budapest expat scene always seemed more apartheid-like... But then, that was my personal experience, too -- poor as shit & speaking some of the language in Prague & Bratislava, rich as Midas and living like a colonialist in B-town. And since Prague was so damned small (and only longtime residents would know how to deal with downtown w/out running into tourists), you couldn't help but notice the fucking Americans everywhere.
- 7/2/2002
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ClicktoAddTitle.com Round Two: The Horror Show
I'm a bit behind in my reportage, but Round Two of ClicktoAddTitle.com (the 7-round East vs. West PowerPoint presentation design competition I mentioned a month ago) has already taken place and been judged.
The theme of Round 2: "The Horror (Pretty Inside: PowerPoint's Inner Beauty)" By at resounding public vote, the round went to New Yorker Leslie Harpold for the most terrifyingly bad PPT slideshow seen outside of a chicken factory.
As one visitor wrote in the comments field: "More horrifying: Leslie's. More terrifying: Sippey's."
Stay tuned for Round Three shortly (which is probably why Michael can't return my calls).
Official Rules
ClicktoAddTitle.com
- 7/2/2002
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Prague Bloggers vs. BP Bloggers
Following up on my rant below about the new novel "Prague," I really don't mean to pit Budapest expats vs. Prague expats against each other (tho I guess it's hard to tell I don't mean that from my rant), but I would anyway like to take a moment to point out an interesting phenomenon among bloggers, Praguers and Budapesters: a seemingly large number of high quality blogs today are produced by members of the Generation Expat. These include:
- Rick Bruner - (i.e., me) Budapest resident 1990-1995, co-founder and editor of Budapest Week (formerly a newspaper and now just a web city paper), now blogging and consulting at Bruner Blog and ExecutiveSummary.com
- Nick Denton - former Budapest correspondent for the Financial Times and The Economist 1989-1994, later founder of content syndication service Moreover.com and now power-blogger and soon-to-be entrepreneur again in the blogging realm
- Peter Maass - former Budapest (and Bosnian War) correspondent for the Washington Post 1990-1994, presently a freelance journalist for many top magazines, including the New York Times Magazine and blogger
- Steve Carlson - resident of Budapest from 1989 to present, co-founder of Budapest Week and now blogging and consulting about European e-business at nowEurope.com
- Matt Welch - co-founder of Prognosis (Prague's great alternative paper for a few years in the early '90s) and resident of Prague and Bratislava 1990-1995, then an editor for Budapest Business Journal 1995-1997, before moving to Cuba and now Los Angeles as an Internet entrepreneur (Tabloid.net, a defunct early blog-like content site), freelancer and war-blogger supreme
- Ben Sullivan - also a co-founder of Prognosis and later an editor at the Budapest Business Journal (similar years as Matt Welch in Prague and Budapest), and now writing the IT Insider column for Comdex.com and blogging at TechBlog.com
- Ken Layne - Another part of the Prognosis/Budapest Business Journal/Tabloid.net mafia, whom I do not really know. Since Tabloid.net closed, appears he has been keeping himself busy as (guess what) a freelance journalist and blogger. It would appear from checking his site, however, the blog is on hiatus as of yesterday while he moves down to Belize to run a casino/whorehouse (don't know if it's a joke, but it's what the site says)
- Henry Copeland - Has lived in Budapest on and off (but mostly on) since 1991, where he wrote for Budapest Week early on, as well as became editor of the Budapest Business Journal and contributor to other publications including The International Herald Tribune, Euromoney and Details, now CEO of PressFlex, a content management software tool with blogging features (so I've heard; the site isn't clear on that, and Henry and I are a bit out of touch, but that's the way I've heard it described). He's also a lapsed blogger.
- Emmanuelle Richard - Lived three years (1994-1997?) in Budapest, freelancing for Libération and Radio France among others, now living in LA as a freelancer, loving wife of Matt Welch and frog-blogger
- Amy Langfield - I just met her for the first time the other night at a party Mr. Denton threw for the NYC Blogirati, but I learned she was also part of the original crew (or soon thereafter) at Prognosis, now freelancing and writing the blog Amy's New York Notebook
Matt Welch notes the following omissions from my original list:
One of the the things I love about blogs is that journalists, professional writers and quality thinkers are drawn to the medium, which is why so many are so good and compelling. It does seem strange, though, how many of them are produced by Budapest and Prague Generation Expatters.
Nick Denton, in his link back to this posting, observes:
Coincidence? I don't think so. For budding writers, eastern Europe was the place to go in the early 1990s. And the personalities who gravitated to Prague and Budapest were those least likely to settle into a corporate media job in London or New York.
True enough. Who else am I forgetting?
- 7/2/2002
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Generation Expat
 I normally don't buy hardcover books, because I'm a cheapskate, have plenty to read on my shelves and generally don't care what's new and trendy in fiction, at least not so much that I can't wait for it to come out in paperback. But I broke down and bought the new novel Prague by Arthur Phillips the other day.
I broke down because many, many people have pointed out this novel to me for months, although it was only just printed a couple of weeks ago. Why? Because the novel is about a group of expatriate Americans living in Budapest (despite the f***ing annoying title) in the early '90s, and one of the principal characters works at the (fictitious) English laungage paper BudapestToday. For anyone who is new to the Bruner Blog, I was an American expat in Budapest for five years in the early '90s, where I co-founded and was editor-in-chief for 2-1/2 years of Budapest Week.
I'll tell you straight off, I've had at least three serious problems with this book before I even started reading it:
- Sour grapes because I haven't written any fiction in 12 years since graduating college with a degree in creative writing. I previously blamed the fact that I was a working journalist earlier in my career and didn't have time or energy for more writing. That was a crock tho. I just don't happen to be one of those people who are so compelled to write that they simply can't not write. I can not write quite easily, and frequently do. Nonetheless, I dream of the day I'll write a novel, and I actually came back to the U.S. after five years living in Hungary with a highly developed plot in my head for a comic thriller set starting in Budapest and spiraling out across the Balkans (think of a cross between "A Coffin for Dimitrios" and "A Confederacy of Dunces"). Problem was I realized after I moved back it was really stupid to relocate to San Francisco to write a novel about Eastern Europe, considering the dramatic difference in the cost of living. That, plus I wrote 10 pages that sucked and gave up. Anyway, I'm sure it would have been better than this book, regardless.
- The insane publicity this novel has been receiving. It always annoys me when the publishing industry decides seemingly randomly to anoint some first-time novelist with gobs of marketing dollars, particularly when they're younger than me. Look at his picture (below), with his *N Snyc haircut. Jerk. Actually, come to think of it, this objection is pretty much a subset of "sour grapes," above.
- What the f*** is up with the title!? By far, this pisses me off most. Prague? The damn novel is set in BUDAPEST! Why they hell is it named after Prague?! According to the liner notes, the five American expat characters the novel follows "harbor the vague suspicion that their counterparts in Prague, where the atmospheric decay of post-Cold War Europe is even more cinematically perfect, have it better." What?! The same sentiment is mentioned in the opening pages of the book (which is as far as I've read), and, according to a glowing review in The New York Times, the same point is echoed "on the last page" of the book. I'll tell you my theory. My theory is that the publisher (Random House) figured that "Prague" was a more saleable title. The cover art even features the Charles Bridge in Prague! But the damn novel takes place in BUDAPEST!
For those of us who lived in Budapest, the whole Prague thing is a sore point, along the lines of New York vs. California. At some point, I dubbed the whole phenomenon of young folks of my age flocking to Budapest, Prague and elsewhere in the newly liberated Eastern Europe as "Generation Expat," a term I'm sorry not to have seen caught on more. There were a lot of us, from many countries -- US, Canada, England, Australia, France, Germany and so on -- who settled in the Wild East to watch first-hand this fascinating moment in modern history when several countries made the night-and-day switch from Communism to something approximating democracy and open societies. I will be forever grateful to have been a part of that.
But it always galled me that Prague got most of the glory. Granted, Prague is an incredibly beautiful city. But it is so pretty, it struck me a bit like Disney Land. It was never seriously bombed during WWII (much unlike Warsaw and Budapest), so it has this beautiful central part of town with 900-year-old buildings that are just amazing to see. But so much so that the center is mobbed with tourists 12 months a year. In high season, you can almost lift your feet off the ground and have the throngs of tourists just carry you along. And outside of that central area, it's not really such a beautiful city at all, in my opinion. Just acres of Soviet style 1960s housing blocks surrounding this gilded center.
Budapest, by contrast, is also a very beautiful, tho it's beauty is perhaps a bit more subtle and accented with the scars of sorrow than Prague. Budapest also has a lovely ancient tourist area, the Castle District, although most of the buildings have been reconstructed in the image of their original structures after devastating Allied bombing during the war. But there are many more beautiful buildings and sites throughout the city, both restored classic edifices and those in varying states of decrepitude, along with ugly Communist-era buildings and contemporary ugly and excellent architecture, all stirred together in a wonderful mix. The city is also much larger, with a population of 2.5 million, almost twice Prague's, so there is more to see, altogether.
Besides the buildings, however (and let's leave cultural comparison's aside), the question of the expat experience in the two cities is also something I preferred Budapest for. Based solely on my personal impressions after living in Budapest for five years and visiting Prague maybe four or five times for long weekends, it seems to me that the expats in Budapest were much more integrated with the local culture than in Prague.
One thing that really stuck with me on my first trip up there was seeing American expats busking with guitars for donations on the Charles Bridge. What was up with that? There weren't enough talented starving Czech singers to go around that they needed competition from a bunch of American backpackers? But this epitomized a kind of outsider arrogance among expats in Prague I observed. For one thing, there were so many American expats in Prague, they really stood out as a social force. There were perhaps the same number of expats in Budapest (no one ever could come up with a good estimate, but our working estimate during the Budapest Week biz plan development around 1991 was 10,000 Americans), but because Budapest was a much bigger city, they weren't so apparent.
Also, in Budapest expats didn't seem to be dominated so overtly by just Americans. All along, Budapest Week was pretty evenly split between Americans and Brits among expats, with a smattering of Canadians, Ausies and Kiwis and a few German, French, Dutch and other contributors (plus several Serbs). (Also, a good half of the staff of the paper were Hungarians, including in senior editorial capacities. Among the three key co-founders was Tibor Szendrei, who has lived in Budapest all his life.) As far as I could tell, the balance of the expats at the Prague papers (Prognosis and The Prague Post), along with the expat community in general up there, was much more Amero-centric.
And the expats in Prague also seemed much more isolated, less integrated with Czechs than their counterparts in Budapest, where we all dated (and many, like myself, married) Hungarians, social circles were strongly cross-cultural and most of us made reasonable attempts at learning the (bloody difficult) language, where I know few Prague expats who learned to speak Czech decently. Also, while in Budapest there were certainly several bars favored by expats, in Prague there were literally several bars and restaurants owned, staffed and patronized almost exclusively by Americans, where I witness in one a bartender who didn't even speak Czech well enough to take a drink order in that language.
I'm probably going to get flamed heavily by Prague promoters, perhaps including fellow bloggers and Prognosis co-founders Matt Welch and Ben Sullivan (I should be so lucky that they would read the lonely Bruner Blog). But this is all just one man's opinion. I welcome the perspective. Either way, it remains painfully clear to me that Prague has captured the public imagination as the cooler place to have been during Generation Expat, erroneous as I'd like to believe that may be.
I used to joke that Prague was where expats went to write their first novel, and Budapest was where they went to make their first million, crawling as it was with would-be entrepreneurs, schemers and con artists. How ironic that Mr. Phillips writes his novel about Budapest, albeit titled "Prague" (and written in Paris, where he now lives).
I'm amused to see Janet Maslin praise the author for his inventiveness, like his ability to "make up book titles like 'You Had to Be There: Approaches to Humor 1415-1914'." Well, that title within the work may be clever, but I wish he had applied that same level of creativity to the title of the novel itself, rather than caving to pressure from the publisher for something saleable, as I suspect.
 One more thought: who the hell is this guy, anyway? Despite the novel featuring the fictitious newspaper called BudapestToday, no one in my Budapest Week circle seems to remember him. Anyone else recognize him? I'd love to hear about him.
So far I'm only about 20 pages in. All I'll say is he's going to have to work harder than what I've seen so far to win me over against my ample contrary predisposition.
Oh, also, for anyone else reading the book who perhaps also knows the real-life Gabor Burt, is he possibly the model for the character Charles Gabor? Seems like a dead ringer to me from the opening pages.
- 7/2/2002
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Just What The World Needs: A New Paint Job
 Everytime I see this logo for Sherwin-Williams, I have to crack up. Can you imagine being in on the "brand identity" meetings that came up with this logo and slogan? I mean, they can't exactly be sweethearts of the environmental movement to begin with -- they are, after all, a paint company. But could they have been any more horrifying to ecology lovers than with this? "Our mission is to 'cover the earth' with a thick, hard coating of petrochemicals."
- 7/2/2002
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If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try, Try, Try, Try Again
You have to admire Steve Fossett, the adventurer millionaire, for embodying American-style sticktoitiveness and pioneering spirit, being the first person to successfully circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon, named "Spirit of Freedom," on his sixth attempt.
His official site
NYTimes.com coverage.
- 7/2/2002
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