AP reports:

A woman has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery, admitting she attacked a stripper who failed to meet expectations during her daughter's bachelorette party.

. . .

The 28-year-old man suffered head injuries, bruises and scratches when he was punched, kicked and hit over the head with a bottle after his July 2002 performance at a hotel in Crystal Lake.

I see this was first reported elsewhere in May, but it just caught my eye in the Atlantic:

The Victorian naturalist Thomas Huxley, arguing for the organizing power of random chance, allegedly advanced the conceit that an infinite number of monkeys banging away at typewriters over the course of infinity would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. The Plymouth researchers set out to explore this proposition, giving six Sulawesi crested macaques the use of a computer for four weeks. In the end the monkeys produced not a single word, and showed little interest in any key but S. "Another thing they were interested in," a spokesman for the project said, "was defecating and urinating all over the keyboard."

Ah, science. Sounds like some bloggers I know.

I got the story from Adrienne, who's vacationing back in Budapest at the moment. A bomb blew up in Budapest on Monday outside of the Nyugati (Western) train station. Jihadists wreaking terror in Hungary's capital for that country's participation in the war on Iraq? (Thousands of Iraqi police officers are being trained at Hungary's Taszar Air Base.)

Well, not exactly. Turns out it was what Hungarians call a "bunko" (rough translation: "moron"). A 20-year-old Hungarian fellow was afraid that someone was out to get him (gambling debt, I believe Adi said). So, he went on the Internet and figured out how to make a home-made bomb, which he then proceeded to carry around in his backpack as self-defense. That's right, a bomb in his backpack as self-defense.

Apparently, he had set the backpack down, then when his tram was about to leave the stop, he lifted it up with a jerk and it exploded. Thankfully no one was killed.

Budapest Sun reports most of it.

Last month, CNN reported:

SANTA MONICA, California -- An 86-year-old man who drove his mid-size Buick through a crowded farmers' market Wednesday told police he couldn't stop and may have hit the accelerator instead of the brake, Santa Monica Police Chief James T. Butts Jr. said.

Nine people were killed, including a 3-year-old girl, authorities said. The more than 54 hurt include 14 people with critical injuries, they said. Two of those critically injured are under the age of 2.

Today, the New York Times reports:

A 9-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy, left alone yesterday in the girl's home in Little Ferry, N.J., climbed into the family sport utility vehicle and drove it almost a mile to Hackensack, where it crashed into four parked cars in a supermarket parking lot and struck a pedestrian.

... The pedestrian, an 84-year-old man whom the police would not identify, was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center. The police said he had suffered bruises and scratches that were not life-threatening and was in stable condition late yesterday.

• Frontman and the Backup Band
• The Orgasm-Faced Blues Band
• The Funky Honkies
• The Dingleberries
• Disaffected Youth
• Petulant Teenagers
• The Wannabes
• Cat Food
• The Dog's Breakfast
• Trucker Hat
• Reality Band
• The Ego Strokers
• The Hipster Sellouts
• Joe Jones and the Jones Tones
• So Last Year

UPDATE: I found another! Really, what is up with this?

Wetumpka. It's just fun to say. Ain't her mama proud now?

Cat tree for sale. Good condition, slightly used.

Must pick up in Manhattan, near 125th & Broadway.

$50. (Was $200 new.) Serious inquiries only.

Cats not included.

Email: rickbruner@mailblocks.com (NOTE: this is a spam-filtering service; you must confirm with a reply after you send your email)

SOLD!!

A new blog called Riverbend purports to be written by a 24-year-old Iraqi woman in Baghdad. Her English is curiously perfect (better than Salam's), but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt, as the perspective seems really true.

I recommend this article in the Observer about "the four Moms," crusading widows and mothers of victims of 9/11 who have refused to stop asking questions of the government's official version of events on and around that fateful date.

Adrienne and I watched Wide Angle on PBS Thursday about Berlusconi and what a manipulative, anti-Democratic SOB he is, re-writing the laws to favor his business interests, silencing criticism in the media, having two members of Parliament as his personal lawyers, having himself granted immunity to prosecution while in office. Later, over drinks, we were talking about how thankfully something like that couldn't happen here. Then we thought about the stolen presidential election, censored pages from Congressional investigative report, secret arrests of hundreds without due process, the EPA lying about the safety of air around Ground Zero after the attacks under pressure from the White House, the Patriot Act, Haliburton and, my personal favorite, still no leads in the anthrax murders.

I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist, it really is strange that the NY Times et al have never adequately investigated that gaping discrepancy that from the time of the first hijacking till the last plane crashed was well over an hour and yet the Air Force never got off the ground to intervene...

The shock of the thing has finally worn off enough that I'm ready to start being a cranky liberal again. I think I'm going to celebrate the two-year anniversary by subscribing the The Nation.

This is great news: Internet cafes in Iraq. Just what I was hoping for in March.

I am so happy about this: manufactured diamonds indistinguishable from those created by thousands of years by Mother Nature. Genuine alchemy. I hate diamonds. One of the biggest marketing scams every perpetrated on the American public. No one deserves a kick in the mouth more than those bastards at De Beers. Talk about conspiracy theories come true.

Funny, funny stuff.

This guy is just nuts.

KTVU TV reports:

A 200-foot-tall giant sequoia tree fell along Sequoia National Park's main road, crushing [an SUV] into a several-foot high pile of crumpled metal, park officials said Monday.

No one was hurt.

I recently attended my (*gulp*) 20-year high school reunion. Everyone looked fabulous and is doing great. I'm sure few regular Bruner Blog readers will find much interest in the faces of these strangers, but I put this gallery up here so that if some other RHSers find this via Google, they may reminisce. Because so many folks are touchy about their photos on the Web (to whom I say, "Then don't pose for a digital camera"), I have compromised and excluded names or commentary here.

If you are a fellow RHSer, Class of '83 ("Way to Be!"), drop me a line and I'll fill in the gaps. Reunion was much better attended than these photos indicate, about 150 or more attended.

Click on the photos to enlarge:


Here, BTW, is the registration page for our Classmates.com records.

I know a few of you stopped by the Bruner Blog for my take on the blackout. Problem was, there was a blackout, so I couldn't blog. Okay, my power has actually been back on for more than 24 hours now, I have just been busy. Here are some observations:

• I was really worred Adi might not have the presence of mind to get home before dark. She was working downtown at PBS on 33rd Street, nearly 100 blocks south. I figured she'd happily go out for drinks with colleagues until it was dark and only then think of how to get home. By that time we were out of phone contact (as our cell phones, like most other people's, didn't work). She later admitted that is exactly what she would have done, but all of her colleagues bolted straight out the door for home, so she had no option but to slowly make her way back, by foot.

• I, meanwhile, first made a business call (land line phones worked throughout the blackout; and I also had water the whole time, unlike many friends; I guess we have a tank on our roof), then it occurred to me to buy candles and batteries. Turned out later I already had plenty of candles and batteries, but it was dark, so I couldn't look for them. Besides, better safe than sorry. Of course, I had $4 in cash (there's a lesson for you: keep an emergency stash of cash), so I paid for everything with dimes from my change drawer (quarters being scarce, as we use those for laundry). I got the last pair of D batteries at two neighborhood delis, which were both doing a bang-up cash business.

• I then brought up three folding chairs and sat out on the stoop chatting with old ladies from the neighborhood waiting for Adi to come home. Turns out our building was once a whorehouse (or so I'm told). Stories of all the social clubs on the block that have since closed, the Chinese fresh vegetable grocery that closed a few years ago due to rising rents (we could really use another), how sleezy the street around the corner used to be pre-Giuliani, and so on. Our building has also apparently been used for numerous movies (including Last Seduction, which I saw), along with others in the neighborhood. Very Old New York.

• I was advised by one neighborhood woman, "Don't buy meat from C Town for a month" (C Town being a cheapo supermarket in the neighborhood). Sounds like good advice. All the other neighbor women heartily agreed.

• After Adi arrived home at dusk, we went for a stroll. The streets were positively thronging. It was like Carnival. We walked down Broadway from 125th to about 110th.

• Stopped at Haagen Dasz. Sign posted "No Discounts." Nonetheless, the place was packed. I waited on line behind a dozen people (Adi waited outside, as it was stifling inside). Down to four flavors by the time I got there. Extra-big portions for the money, though.

• Pizza parlors around the city reportedly did huge business, as their gas ovens had not problems with the blackout, and I guess their ingredients were less perishable. (Don't know why else their gas stoves were better prepared for a balckout than other restaurants' gas stoves, but that's what we heard from others and witnessed ourselves.) A Chinese restaurant on our block was also cooking up a storm, despite temperatures inside in the 110-degrees range.

• We ended up at Nacho Mama's on 112th, which stayed open late by candle light, packed, doing a great bar business. Had one or two too many, in fact, which I discovered the next day when the power came on at 7am, my radio blaring in my ear. Go figure, they fix Harlem first and leave the East Side for last. Ha!

• My favorite piece of news coverage (from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, also reported by NPR): "Hundreds of guests at the Marriott Marquis hotel had to sleep on the sidewalk because the high-tech electronic room keys wouldn't work." That is the kind of thing they should have a backup plan for!

• I heard reports that said 800 people were freed from elevators, and 350,000 were freed from subway tunnels. I also heard on the radio from a guy who was down in the city's biggest subway station, at Time Square, who noted there were no emergency lights anywhere. For anyone who knows that station, it's a huge labyrinth. How awful to consider being down there in pitch blackness, and how incredible they don't have an emergency lighting system for that, or any station for that matter.

• Much unlike the 1977 blackout (which I remember vaguely as a 12-year-old in New Jersey), crime this time was actually down compared to an ordinary weekday.

• The whole ordeal made me think of Iraq, where they haven't had power or water for months. I wasn't alone with the idea. NPR reported that Iraqis think it's hilarous that we're complaining about no electricity for one night and mere 90-degree temperatures, until they stopped to think that we're supposed to be the ones fixing their electrical system. NYT also had a similar report, as does AP.

• Stars over Manhattan. What a concept.

My Photos:

the hood	the hood 2	the hood 3
glow guy	glow guy 2	125th and Broadway

Not My Photos:

Here's some other coverage and photos:

• Photos by WNYC's Bill Swersey
• NYT blackout coverage
• Photos by John Wehr
• Photos from lots of folks via Text America
• Gothamist blackout coverage
• Amy Langfield's tale of being stuck in on the Q train (scroll up to see all of her coverage on the blackout; she really blogged her brains out on it)
• Blogger Paul Frankenstein's minor act of blackout heroism
• Gawker (see Saturday the 16th)

On my favorite topic of being proud of my wife, mark your calendars: on Thursday, September 4th at 9pm (check local listings), PBS will air the "Time for School" episode of its international-affairs documentary series "Wide Angle," which, notably, is Adrienne's first paid job as an assistant film/video editor. The episode chronicles the lives of six children respectively in Kenya, Japan, Benin, Brazil, Romania and India starting their first year of school.

Sadly, Adi herself will not be around to watch it broadcast live herself, as she will be vacationing then in Hungary. I recommend the rest of our gang of friends, however, get together to watch it en masse, say, at Ildi's apartment... (as she's got a big TV!)

I like to cook, but today I had a complete revelation: how come no one ever told me about oven bags before? Does everyone else know about these things? Did my mother not raise me right?

While at the grocery store looking for plastic wrap, I came across these on the shelf. Don't they advertise these things? I was so excited, I rushed home and threw a couple of chicken breasts in one of these suckers with some potatoes, onions, garlic cloves, green pepper and seasonings, baked it in a pan for 45 minutes and, delish! And no clean up! I know I sound like an ad, but I swear I'm baking everthing in bags from now on! (The also come in foil for the grill.)

This doesn't seem like what a grown man should be blogging about, but I'm sorry -- I LOVE OVEN BAGS, and I don't care who knows it!!!

UPDATE:
Adi thinks this is embarrassing. ("Maybe you shoud put it ["embarrassing"] in capital letters." She actually first used the Hungarian "ciki.") Perhaps if she'd learn to cook she be entitled to an opinion on this.

I observe as of this posting that both AhnoldForGovernor.com and AhnoldFahGovahnah.com are unregistered domains.

Oh happy day. I finally got a link from Gawker, after months of shameless begging (not really, but almost). Happy even if it links to my homepage, not my blog. At this point, I'll take what I can get.

Very pleased to see Gawker mocking that insanely annoying habit the New Yorker has of putting umlauts over diphthongs.

I got around to updating my blogroll a bit last night. Not a major overhaul, just some overdue maintenance. (Insprired to do so after observing that I am among the top 200 "most prolific linkers" on Myelin's Blogging Ecosystem, which didn't seem like a good thing.) If you made the cut, it means that, while I can't promise I actually read your blog with any regularity, I still admire it. Notable updates:

• ElizabethSpiers.com - She's back!

• Get. Give. Take. Have - Stepbrother Jay's blog design no longer sucks. Or at least, it can now be enjoyed also on a Windows machine, not just by Mac weeinies.

• NickDenton.org - Once a leading light and my personal favorite blogger, it must be said that since the declared "end of hostilities" in Iraq or so, Nick seems to have lost interest in maintaining his own blog, down to just a few posts a month, as reflected by his Alexa and Google ranks flirting dangerously close to Bruner Blog's at this point. There should be some clever slang for bloggers that burn out. Any suggestions?

• I added a bunch of links pertaining to summer festivals (better late than never) and such to the new NYC Kulcha section.

I've also changed the main blog font to Verdana, like everyone else, as Adi thinks Bruner Blog is tragically ugly and has been begging me for months to change the font. ("Much better" she tells me.) Ah, the things we do for love.

NYT Op Ed:

And how do I know you're not saying "halve?" "Did Iraq halve weapons of mass destruction?" How should I know? What difference does it make? That's a stupid question.

Etc. Quite amusing, as you'd expect.

Damn hackers.

I pitched this story idea to Wired Magazine's feature editor back in 1996 (name forgotten), but she thought the idea was stupid.

UPDATE:
Dad returns Bush doll, saying it's no fun.

Like many of the reviewers, I was quite impressed with the 2000 film Memento, in large part thanks to its "innovative" backwards narration format. But then tonight, I saw a Fox rerun of "The Betrayal" episode of Seinfeld, from 1997, where Jerry, George and Elaine go to India for a wedding, and -- guess what -- it's told BACKWARDS. This just confirms my theory that all things in life were represented in nine seasons of Seinfeld (which I watch obsessively in syndication, having been out of the country during much of the original run of the series).

Best moment in the episode, the last 30 seconds, flashing back to 11 years earlier, when Jerry is first moving into his appartment and Kramer comes across the hall to greet him and asks if he can help Jerry with anything. Paraphrasing:

Jerry: No, thanks, I'm fine. But I just ordered a pizza. Why don't join me.

Kramer: No, that's okay, I wouldn't want to impose.

Jerry: Don't be silly. We're neighbors. What's mine is yours.

Kramer: [Pausing to look around the apartment] ... Really?

Just to be clear, I don't believe Arnie is a Nazi. That said, I'm no fan of his movies or his politics, so I'm happy to use my minor celebrity to point my mediocre Google PageRank against his absurd political ambitions. This Salon piece is getting lots of links, already as a thorn in Arnie's side, owing to his refusal to denouce Kurt Waldheim, former UN secretary general, president of Austria and WWII Nazi mass murderer. Turns out Arnie's an old buddy. Plus, Arnie's dad was a Nazi party member, too. Ouch. You can bet he, too, knows what blogs are by this morning.

Go Gary!

UPDATE:
Mark thinks this Ahnold Nazi smear business is just dirty politics. He's probably right. He points, for instance, to this article in the Jerusalem Post, that quotes Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Holocaust historical and human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center coming to Schwarzenegger's defense, pointing out that Ahnold has been an active supporter of the SWC since years before the whole Waldheim association was first raised by the media nearly a decade ago. (To be fair, the Salon article I linked to above makes more or less the same point.) Mark also thinks it's unfair to tarnish Arnold with the sins of his farther, who, while a Nazi party member, was apparently not an active member and merely a postal worker, not a soldier.

Regardless, I'm entitled to my opinion that Schwarzenegger as governor would be a sad joke (as in, what do you get when you combine Bush's intellect and Clinton's moral authority?), even if I'm no longer a Californian. This is international news and affects me as an American. So, dirty politics or not, I'll do my part to advance them. Furthermore, I do think these are fair questions that voters should be at least aware of. If, for example, an American-born politician's father was a member of the KKK and his godfather, to whom he was still close, was a grand wizard credibly accused of being involved in several lynchings, wouldn't it be a legitimate question for that politician to account for those relationships? Again, I'm not suggesting that Arnie himself is sympathetic to the views of his elder mentors, but let's hear him say so, explain why he's continued to defend Waldheim, given that man's indefensible record.

Politics is hard. Or at least it's supposed to be. Actors are elitist, and, although they are public figures, they are entitled to their privacy, to what extent they can retain it. Politicians, however, are our public representatives. They need to be held accountable to the electorate. If Arnold can't deal with those terms, hasta la vista, Baby.

Too good to be true. NPR. CBS. Gothamist.

Okay, it didn't actually eat it, but close enough.

Heard this on On the Media, a profile of Baghdad Bulletin, a one-month-old newspaper in Baghdad produced by a group of young American, British and Iraqi journalists. As co-founder and one-time editor in chief of Budapest Week in the early 1990s, shortly after the dawn of democracy in Eastern Europe, I can't help but to marvel at this venture and think nostalgically of those days, although I can only imagine how much more intense is their experience. I certainly wish them the best of luck.

Paraphrasing:

Michael Jackson announced that he's starting a line of men's suits. If that's successful, he's going to get into boys' pants.

Having moved from San Francisco myself nearly four years ago, once again I'm ahead of the curve. This headline from the Oakland Times says it all: "Californians Leaving State in Droves"

I wonder if it has anything to do with Arnold deciding to run for governor. (I caught a minute of his address on Leno, and loved that he called California a "disaster." Maybe that will become his campaign slogan.)

I observe ArnoldforGovernor.org is taken by a domain squatter. D'oh! At least he can afford it. Or maybe he thought everyone would be able to spell his last name for a domain...

UPDATE:
I wonder if Arnold may reconsider now that Gary Coleman has also entered the governor's race.

Or this one is anyway: he won $315 million in Powerball lottery (although he was already a millionaire businessman beforehand), and then had $545,000 stolen from his car while in a strip club. Hard to feel sorry for him, but get this: the thief was even stupider: the money was all found around the corner in a dumpster. I really wonder who feels like the bigger idiot in this situation.

Okay, so next Bravo and NBC are going to air a show about a group of lesbians taking a really hot girl and making her fat and ugly.

Sure, they didn't want to join us in the war, but Reuters reports:

German police have arrested a man for firing potatoes at passers-by with a home-made bazooka, authorities in the western city of Essen say.

"It was like a bazooka that fired potatoes," a spokesman for police in Essen said on Friday. "Jolly dangerous from close range."

Jolly, indeed. I wonder who translated that.

Here's why reality TV is so awesome.

I'm actually still using Windows 2000, but same difference. I know this routine only too well. Getting to be about that time.

Adi loves photos!

No duh. I blogged about this months ago. But don't worry, I'm sure they're on top of it...

Amazing video from the BBC of Austrian Felix Baumgartner who strapped wings to his back and jumped out of a plane over France and landed in England. Four feet forward for every one foot down. We should all be so lucky to get those odds for everything in life.

Very powerful political flash animation, Army of One, very effectively calling out Bush's hipocracy on the war vs. the adminstration's poor support of actual soldiers. They are seeking donations to put the ad on TV. That would turn heads.