• Move and activate entire Bruner.net site contents and Bruner Blog 5-year archive to a new web host. I'm partial to GoDaddy, but open to ideas.


• Implement new blog structure in WordPress instead of MovableType. (Or, if you really want to make a case for sticking with MT, give it a try, but I'm not much interested in other platforms.)


• Redesign Bruner Blog with fresh look.


• Optimize the blog design for search engines (e.g., use title as archive URL, etc.)

I can afford to pay what I would consider reasonable for this project, but please also bear in mind this blog is relatively high profile: it still gets a few hundred visits a day even after three months of no new posts; it's got a lot of in-bound lnks, and B-List blogger status on Blogebrity.com. I'll happily put a link to your site crediting you with the design in my blog template.

To respond with a proposal, please send an email to rickbruner at gmail dot com, and put "Bruner Blog RFP" in the subject line. Show me examples of your previous blog designs and give me a sense of your expertise in this area. I don't want to deal with beginners, no offense. I want someone who has real blog setup and design chops. Quote me a price and add any other comments or questions you have there.

Thanks!

Regular readers have noticed that I haven't posted in a while. Just over three months, to be precise. Ooops. Sorry. I'm back! At least I'm back enough to say: stay tuned, I'm preparing a redesign of Bruner Blog and relaunch in a few weeks.

It's been a fun summer. Lots to catch up about. There were technical and clerical errors involved in my hiatus, but I guess I also just needed a break. Been blogging semi-regularly for five years (April 22, 2002), and I don't remember ever taking a break of three months before.

I'm about to publish another post calling for a Bruner Blog redesign Request for Proposals. After I get that sorted out, I'll be blogging more regularly again, I promise. I'll try to publish more pictures, and I'm also expecting to jump on the UkeTube bandwagon and upload some of my own performances. I've pretty well got "I'll See You in My Dreams," "Dancing Cheek to Cheek," "Rubber Ducky" and other crowd pleasers down tight. Plus I have a backlog of pictures to share, stories to tell, etc.

Looking forward to being back in action soon. Meanwhile, "I'll see you in my dreams..."

An important new mission for the Bruner Blog in the next few months is to share with you some of my many favorite ukulele performances cataloged on YouTube. I just watched this one, from user SmileyAbalone, and it's an instant favorite, thanks mainly to his adorably talented daughter. (Her outro question is especially cute.)

"Night Falls Fast" (IMDB) is a profound short film, NYU graduate thesis project, by Mark Robert Jackson, about a crystal meth addict confronting his addiction and his relationships with his father and his fireman boyfriend in the aftermath of his mother's death. Beautifully realized, it won the "Best Short Film" category at this year's Philadelphia Film Festival a few weeks ago. Adi edited it. (Some blogger somewhere praised the editing, but we can't find that now page now.)

"Triple 8 Palace" is another thesis film by an NYU grad, Alexander Ku, about a Chinese immigrant girl's New World struggle to pay back her smuggling debt via prostitution or sweat shops in New York. Adi was the editor. The film was accepted to Cannes where it shows on May 24.

"The Treatment"(IMDB) by Oren Rudavsky is a narrative feature Adi worked on in 2005 as second editor that is in theatrical release around the country right now to critical and audience acclaim. It's documentary film maker Rudavsky's first narrative feature, starring veteran actor Ian Holm, indie hottie Famke Janssen and newcomer Chris Eigeman, about a commonly neurotic high school teacher falling in love despite his Freudian therapist's best advice. It won the Tribeca Film Festival's "Best Narrative Feature Made in New York" in 2006. Music by John Zorn. It opened a 2-3 weeks ago in several cities (see the "View Release Schedule" link in the upper right corner of the film's web site). Go see it! It's very New York and cute as hell.

"No Plague Like Home" and three other episodes of Electra Elf by underground film making icon Nick Zedd (IMDB, Wikipedia, his blog) are showing this this coming Saturday, May 26, 8pm at the Millennium Film Workshop, 66 E. 4th St. in Manhattan.

Here's what Millennium Film's site has to say about the Zedd films it will be showing:

Nick Zedd, long identified with a film movement entitled, The Cinema of Transgression, is a filmmaker, performer, writer and editor. Always highly controversial, his work has been embraced by some and disliked by others. With his recent Electra Elf series, he seems to have moved in surprisingly different direction.

In 2004, Nick Zedd premiered a television series on MNN called THE ADVENTURES OF ELECTRA ELF. Combining action, satire and special effects, the series features local artstars and comedians. Weekly episodes present superheroes and supervillains in absurd morality plays assaulting consensus reality in an offbeat manner.

"NO PLAGUE LIKE HOME deconstructs the genre, addressing the issues of implantable microchips and the 9-11 Inside Job along with the dangers of watching television." - N.Z.

I'm so proud of her! I can't wait to see what 2008 brings her way. Maybe, "Spider-Man IV"?

My understanding was that the second ticket was effectively twice the cost of the first ticket, as it was a second infraction, with the total fine for the two, were I to have pleaded guilty, would have been over $500.

So, instead, I pleaded guilty to the one, sending in $200 by mail, and not guilty to the other. My original court date was roughly six months after the incident, but I had to reschedule it, due to business travel. (I learned that, much like trying to postpone jury duty, while it is virtually impossible to get any such civil servant on the phone to answer questions, if you appear in person, they will process your request for a postponement in about a minute with no added unpleasantness.

The rescheduled court date came up last month, but again I had a business travel conflict. This time, however, I didn't get my shit together in advance and in the end simply blew off the court appearance. I fully intended to go down to the traffic court as soon as I was back in town, but a colleague lit a fire under my ass by predicting that there would be a bench warrant out for my arrest, due to my non-appearance. Yikes.

So I went in immediately after returning from my trip, and went to the information counter at the traffic court and explained the situation, calling the trip a "business emergency," whatever that is. The clerk was matter-of-fact about the non-appearance, to my relief, and said I'd have to put down a $40 deposit to secure a new court date, which I would be refunded if I was found not guilty. I realized I didn't have $40 in cash (credit cards not accepted), so I told him I'd have to run to an ATM and be back.

"You don't have any cash?" he inquired, his tone changing to get my attention that we were now having a different conversation. It transpired that he could see from his computer that the cop who had issued the tickets was no longer on the force, meaning the case would automatically be dismissed. If I was prepared to scratch his back, metaphorically speaking, he could get me on that day's docket, saving me the trouble of coming back for a future hearing date. In fact, it was coincidentally 10:25am and the court started proceedings at 10:30. Well worth the $10 I did have in my wallet.

As he prophesied, I was out of there 30 minutes later a free man. God bless Amerika.

Since the original incident, greater scofflaws than me have advised that you should always protest a traffic ticket, as the case is automatically dismissed if the cop doesn't make an appearance. One friend said — and I have no idea whether he's right or not, and for the record I'm also not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, just a stupid blog post — that cops have to make traffic court appearances on their personal time, not working hours, so obviously no cop has any interest in actually making the appearance, as no one wants to show up in court on a day off.

It's been either too cold or wet to ride much recently, but I did ride today, and recalling this whole incident brought a smile to my face as I blew through that same light at 114th Street this evening.

Last week, passing posters for "Blades of Glory," a friend and I agreed Will Ferrell had jumped the shark with this film and joined the ranks of Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy who were greatly talented comic actors who had sold out and would pursue a long, slow trajectory of critical, if not box office poison. The poster alone conveyed to us that it would be an awful one-joke movie.

Then I saw a clip of the film on Letterman Friday night and it looked funny enough that I was curious, so I went to see what the rating for it was on IMDB. I admit I put a lot of weight in the IMDB user-generated ratings. To my surprise, IMDB claimed around midnight on Friday/Saturday that the film was still "awaiting five votes."

I figured that maybe it's not really a real-time vote but that they hold off over night or for the first 24 hours after a film's release before posting the votes to make sure they have a valid sample of something. But as of this posting, it's 9pm EST Sunday night, more than 48 hours after the film has opened, and the entry still says "awaiting five votes" (click the thumbnail picture to see the entry with the date in the lower right corner). I note that IMDB meanwhile does have up to date that the film was the top box office earner of the weekend, and it shows hundreds of votes for other films that opened this weekend. Yet somehow the most popular film of the weekend hasn't yet garnered five people to rate it on one of the web's most popular movie sites? That doesn't smell right.

Here's my theory, informed by nothing more than a paranoid conspiracy about how corporations are ready to whore themselves for filthy lucre: the movie company, anticipating bad reviews, paid off IMDB to hold back releasing the consumer score till after the opening weekend.

Just one blogger's opinion, but I'm ready to eat my hat if by Monday morning the site doesn't miraculously have a review with hundreds of entries for the movie, which in all likelihood will be lucky if it's as high as 6/10. Stay tuned for an update.

UPDATE:
Hmmm. So here it is Monday morning, and I see the entry still says "awaiting five votes." Perhaps it's less about corporate treachery and more about some snafu. Dunno.

LATER THAT SAME DAY...
Interesting... So, it's now 7:15pm EST Monday, and I see that IMDB finally has votes for "Blades of Glory": a failing grade of 5.8 with 783 votes. Gee, no votes all weekend, and then several hundred votes saying the movie sucks eggs. Just like I thought. Coincidence?

I've turned into a total slut for karaoke. Live rock 'n' roll karaoke remains my true love, but I'm pretty dreamy for the private room Korean thing, too. T-Bone (picture here) is pretty much my god. I especially loved his plaintive begging at 2:15 am to the staffer trying to kick us out, "Please, just one more song! PLEEEEAAASE!!!!"

I've been a fan of Hugh MacLeod's inimitable Gaping Void business-card cartoons for years. We've exchanged emails for much of that time, but I've never had the pleasure of meeting him in person. Strange that I find his cartoon sensibility so New York, but he's been an American expat in London the whole time of his Internet fame, so far as I know.

But here's my big chance, and yours! He's going to be meetings friends and fans on Saturday, March 10, at Two Boots Pizza in Grand Central. (Time as yet unspecified.)

He requests RSVPs on TheHugePage wiki.

UPDATE:
Pictures! Not too many, though. Much fun was had by all.

I was in Sydney for week on business a couple of weeks ago. Reminded me a lot of the Bay Area, with more city and fewer Californians. Pretty place, seems very livable, met some nice people. Altogether, however, it was hard to justify the 25 hours of flying time for a bunch of white people who basically seemed like they could be Californians with funny accents. I even said as much to a handful of Australians, who all agreed they had a lot in common culturally with Americans, more so than Brits. No one was even offended by the suggestion. What kind of foreigners are those who wouldn't bristle at being called "like Americans"?

This photo was a highlight. A group of slacker guys in their late 30s/early 40s from the looks of them, riding a bike off this pier repeatedly. The stunt itself was thrilling for a few seconds, then it took then 10-20 minutes to fish the bike out of the water and haul it back up. I went by later to the spot and looked in, and the water looked alarmingly shallow. I've done silly things like this in my days, but I don't know that I would have been comfortable seeing the bottom of the bay floor so clearly. The water's just too clean for that much fun.

I asked this guy for his email address, proposing to email the photo. "I'm living in a hostel!" was his somewhat cryptic reply.

It turns out people who find my site are normally searching for really filthy things, which, by coincidence, apparently I blog about all the time. Here are some choice search terms where Bruner Blog currently comes up on the first page (or there abouts) on Google:

* four hour erection
* pornaments
* unicycle sex
* Bulgarian Bar
* skateboarding dog
* playing piano with his balls (I get more traffic on that than you might think)
* extra slutty
* perpendicular mohawk
* chinese airport security
* ny topless
* Zwack Unicum
* chicken ass
* tiny penis

I'm so very proud. Especially of that last one, which is new. (It's not the meat, it's the motion, seriously!)

Here are the links to Part I and Part II.

Actually, his first choice song choice was "Brown-eyed Girl" by Van Morrison, but when he was invited on stage, the MC told him, "I've got some bad news for you: we're not doing 'Brown-eyed Girl." We're not sure if that was because it would have killed the Rock 'n' Roll mood of the first hard-rocking eight or so songs, or because the fill-in musicians for the regular house band didn't know it; the MC didn't elaborate. On the spot, Ballamac chose "Roadhouse Blues" -- the MC was skeptical -- and he hit it out of the park. That may not come through in this crappy recording, but the audience was totally with him, he was right on the tune and sold it with gusto.

I sang, too: "Creep" by Radiohead, as promised. I was told I nailed it, too, but unfortunately Ballamac didn't quite know how to run the camera and it got switched off video, but he did catch a couple crazy-looking snapshots:

Ironically, he used that last one twice, so I guess it wasn't really a "final caution" after all, was it, ass gobbler? More like a final and a penultimate caution perhaps? Oooooooo! I'm askeered! I want my mommy!

Strangely, he also keeps featuring his email address: bboy_zouhir@hotmail.com . Please feel free to sign him up for all the gay porn mailing lists you can get your hands on.

What's most irritating is I have no one to blame for this more than my blogging software, MovableType by SixApart. The version I'm using, Version 3.121, recommended I set up MT in its own directory and leave all permissions set to 777, meaning anyone on the system (i.e., my hosting service, I guess) has permission to write into my directories. Great.

There's a workaround for this, which I won't bother explaining in details, as this turd burglar obviously understands this stuff better than I do so I don't want to do him any favors, but it would seem to require me to move the directory where I have MT installed. I've already invested a few hours in figuring this much out, and I so don't have time to figure out how to move or reinstall MT at this point. I'm probably going to find some friend I can beg or pay to do it for me eventually. Meanwhile, I must turning on and off the permissions every time I post, which is tedious, especially when I blog drunk and forget to secure the permissions after posting and he comes and hacks me again, which is what happened last time.

If anyone from SixApart feels bad about this and wants to come fix it for me for free in exchange for me saying nice things about them here, feel free. Michael? Anil? Grrr.