As I've ranted before, I haven't owned a car in nearly 20 years. Lately I've been admiring the new Mini. But now I've got a new favorite: the Tango. Here's a recent Seattle Times article with details.

I love my wife! And I'm so proud of her! (And No, neither the woman in the red hat nor the frog are pictures of her. The woman is the red hat is title character Sara, aka actress Sally Nacker.)

Tonight it was my great honor to attend the premier screening of "Sara Goes to Lunch," a new 25 minute film by Dean Kapsalis (writer/director) and Tommy Minnix (producer), Lucky Frog Films. My beautiful wife, Adrienne Haspel, was the (co-)editor, her first official credit as such, after two years of inspirationally diligent work at making that her career ambition.

It's really a lovely film. Just right, said Nick, just alternative enough to be interesting, but not so much as to be pretentious (I'm paraphrasing). Speaking of how well everything came together -- the acting, the beautiful photography, the music, and not least, the editing -- Veronica put it best, speaking as one wwho knows of such things: "It was like jazz."

Kudos all around. Dean and Tommy, please get famous. You're certainly talented enough though far too nice for the business. Most of all, I hope you do because Adrienne adores working with you and wants to edit your feature!

As I noted earlier this month, I love the idea of Name Phreaks, people whose names oddly describe them. Here's the latest, a rather macarbe one: the guy who went ballistic (literally) in NY City Hall yesterday, was named Othniel Askew. No question the guy was more than a little off.

And how sick of an irony is this? The guy he murdered, City Councilman James E. Davis, had made his reputation as a politician leading efforts to curb gun violence, and on the very day he was shot, he was planning to introduce to the City Council a resolution aimed to prevent violence in the workplace.

MP3s of 1940s instruction on how to explain sex to children.

That's right, you can invade Iraq and never give justification. But you say, "George, how can I invade Iraq and never give justification?" Two simple steps. Step one: invade Iraq. Step two: make up bogus justifications. Then when they say, "But those justifications are bogus! Didn't you read the memo?" You say, "I forgot." And then when they say, "You forgot?! What kind of bullshit answer is that?!" You say, "Well, excuuuuuuuuuuuse me!!"

Speaking of the informant whose tip lead to the U.S. military killing Saddam Hussein's two sons Qusay and Uday, Paul Bremer, Iraq's top civilian administrator, said: "I'm looking forward to giving that guy a check for $30 million."

I'm wondering, where the hell do you deposit a check in Iraq for $30 million these days.

Also, wouldn't $2 million have been plenty? Do you think it makes a material difference to an Iraqi to get $2 million versus $30 million? Couldn't you have spent the other $28 million building schools or fixing the eletricity or something? How about $2 million plus a U.S. passport? If it were me, I wouldn't want to be hanging around Iraq with $30 million burning a hole in my pocket as the guy who gave up the former dictator's sons. It's not like you'd be inconspicuous there as an instant multi-millionaire while everyone around you is eating sand for lunch.

This is fairly scary, too: a political cartoon in the LA Times of a guy labeled "Politics" shooting President Bush in the head (a nod to the famous Vietnam War photo of a Vietnamese General executing a Viet Cong officer at point-blank range) resulted in the cartoonist being paid a visit by Secret Service agents investigating whether the comic was meant as a threat on the president's life.

Okay, I see Gawker posted this days ago and I just found it on Daypop today, which just goes to prove I'm not hip, but that's just fine. I'm well over 30 anyway, so it would be patently unhip to even try to be hip. It's still funny: hipster bingo.

This is among the scarier articles I've read in a while. The writer alledges that he was paid a visit from the F.B.I. after a patron at a coffee shop reported him to the Feds for reading a printout left-wing commentary.

This is by far my proudest moment as an Internet professional.

And the guy whom I called fat and runs like a girl thought he had it bad.

Solidarity

My nephew, my namesake, sure is a super cutie. If you are inspired to see photos of someone else's kid (my sister Sue said she'd be please for him to be featured on the Bruner Blog) click here and here.

Shout to one strange Lisa, a recent Jewish convert, who blogs all about it at LisaStrange.Blogspot.com, where it's All Lisa, All the Time (not unlike the mood here at Bruner Blog, minus the religious stuff and the wole Lisaness). Best of all, she's a Bruner Blog fan! See how easy it is to get some linky love from the Brunster*?

* A never-before and never-again used nickname.

The "Miss Balaton" beauty pagent may as well have been called the "Miss Bootythong" beauty pagent. Ah, Hungary. Really, what is it in the water over there? For a glorious photo gallery, click here, then scroll down the page and click any of the photos you see.

What is up with this?

You may have heard of Pittsburgh Pirates first baseman Randall Simon smacking a one of the Milwaukee Brewers' sausage mascots with his bat during a game. Here's the video (look for the thumbnail photo in the right margin of this story).

In case you're one of the proud few who actually reads Bruner Blog before Gawker or Daypop or otherwise haven't seen this elsewhere, this is one of the most beautiful pranks I've ever seen: turning the big cube at Astor Place into a Rubik's Cube. It's not clear exactly when this happened, but I gather recently. Wish I'd seen it with mine own eyes.

UPDATE:
Miki confirms he saw it himself no June 24th.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a magician. What little boy didn't? So, one day my mom finds an ad in the back of the New Yorker for a summer camp (we were big on summer camps, growing up) called Stagedoor Manor. It's basically a theatrical camp, up in the Catskills, a former Borscht Belt resort.

Long story short, from age 13 to 15, I had the acting bug. I eventually got over it (after one particularly disappointing TV commercial audition), but I did have a great time at that camp. All sorts of terrific memories (first time getting to second base, winning best supporting actor award in a musical, great friendships, etc.). The camp really was remarkable, too, for its preformance training. Rigorous courses in dance, singing, acting, voice, mime and so on, plus each kid was in a different play every couple of weeks. And not just "Annie" and "Grease," either. I remember them staging "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf," Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" and "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad" among others (and these are kids age 12-18, mind you), as well as lighter fare, too. And given the camp's quality, a generation of successful young actors passed across its stages, including Jennifer Jason Leigh, Natalie Portman, Robert Downey, Jr. (whom I don't remember from the time, but apparently we were there together), Mary Stuart Masterson (whom I do remember, and had a big crush on) and Jon Cryer (who was my roommate for two years and close friend at the time).

Well, it wasn't just me who was so inspired by it. Jon and I got back in touch via email a couple of years ago, and he told me he was thinking about making a film about the camp (he wrote and starred in the film "Went to Coney Island on a Mission From God... Be Back by Five" in '98: IMDB | official site). Turns out someone else beat him to it: actor, writer, producer Todd Graff has just released "Camp." Got good attention at 2003 Sundance (Rolling Stone write up). Here's a Reuters review.

I'm going next week to a screening and party for Stagedoor alumns. Thilled. I also just signed up for a Stagedoor alums email discussion list. Boy, wouldn't I love to be back at camp again just for two weeks this summer...

Very amusing.

Literally.

Brazil, directed in 1985 by Monty Python co-creator Terry Gilliam, is quite simply one of the best films of all time, IMHO. Rarely do you get a chance to see it anymore on the big screen. But here's your chance: Symphony Space's Thalia theater is showing it this weekend, July 12 and 13th, twice each day, as part of its ongoing sci-fi festival this month. Don't miss it.

I haven't yet seen the new Hulk film, as most of the reviews look pretty disappointing, but one thing that amazes me from just the commercials is that they've continued to perpetuate the most ridiculous point from the '70s TV series: when the Hulk transforms into his big green hugeness, all of his clothes rip to shreads except for his pants. Well, maybe it's not so silly after all. Here's why.

FYI, I am now the moderator of the I-Blog Discussion List, devoted to better understanding best practices for business weblogging. Pass it on.

Anyone know who this jerk is and what crawled up his ass and died?

UPDATE:
Jay has the best response to this: "Yes, the Internet is shit, but in the words of The Firesign Theater 'But it's really great shit Mrs. Kresky.'"

I moved to San Francsico in late 1995 and soon realized the only thing worth reading in the SF Chronicle was the column by Herb Caen. I hadn't know anything about the guy before I moved there, but I soon learned he was a beloved city institution. I didn't realize at the time that he had been around forever (first column in 1936). Turned out that 1996 was a big year for Caen: he turned 80, won the Pulizter Prize, got married, had a major street in SF named after him (3.2 miles along the bayside Embarcadero) and he dropped dead. He is greatly missed by thousands, maybe millions, and as a now former San Franciscan who has expressed his fair share of cynicism about that city, I should say I have nothing but great respect and fondness for that greatest of newspaper columnists.

One thing about Caen's column I especially loved was what he called Name Phreaks. This blog post wasn't really supposed to be a tribute to Herb Caen, it was only supposed to be about Name Phreaks. But having thusly paid tribute to Herb Caen, I hereby offer to take over the mantle of responsiblity for carrying on the Name Phreaks tradition, just because it's a fascination I've long shared with Mr. Caen, even before I first read of it in his column.

That is, people whose names oddly describe them. Here's today's example: an accountant by trade and the most recent winner of the World Series of Poker: Chris Moneymaker.

DesertNews.com readers, here's the link you're looking for.

The miracles of the future, today.

Too bad I stopped doing drugs, or I could spend hours playing with this.

UPDATE:
This link was broken, but I've since fixed it.

I'm sorry to make light of the death of beloved celebrities, but following up on my comment the other day that celebrity deaths (Kathrine Hepburn and Buddy Hacket) come in threes, Barry White just died. They shall all be missed.

dj-chillin	bkln-landscape	two-babes	two-babes-2
the-gals-1	the-gals-3	the-gang-1	the-gang-w-picasso
the-gang-3	flowerbox	gay-ny	girl-w-camera
beautiful-people	host-w-sausage	new-camera	babe-w-tattoo
hunky-guy	hunky-guy-n-gal	kolbasz	loft-w-martian
lovebirds	lovebirds-2	masks1	masks2
masks3	masks4	more-bps	more-bps-2
fellas	fellas-2	guys-n-dolls	presenting
rocket-fridge	roof-boys	roof-boys-2	roofview1
photo-boy	neighbors	skyline	skyline-2
skyline-3	wifey	neighbors2	party-people
minglers	trucker-hat-sign	trucker-hat-dj	trucker-hat-gal
trucker-hat-gangsta	fireworks1	lovely-ladies	out-of-towners
out-of-towners-2	party-girls	roofview2	roofview3
old-navy-strikes-out	daytona-500

Just when you thought the press release was dead, I amused myself by writing this.

It is often said that celebrities die in threes. I thought of that when I heard yesterday of the death of Katherine Hepburn. Then, right on schedule, today's news of the death of comedian Buddy Hackett. (I couldn't help remembering of an episode of Al Franken's hilarious, short-lived show Lateline, in which the ficticious TV news show erroneously reports the death of Buddy Hackett, only for Hackett to make a cameo from a hospital bed protesting that he was still alive.) I'm on a death watch for who's next. Macabre.