The Greighties

I love the 1980s.


Not ironically, either.


To me, the 1980s were full of all sorts of great things. Video games, D&D, great music, awesome movies, and all manner of pop culture phenomena. Though full of personal trials and tribulations (my father died, and I became a teenager, in the 1980s), I still look back on the 80s with fondness. Lofted multi-colored hair, too much oddly colored make-up, leg warmers over colored tights, and the layered look still turn me on. I was forged in the fires of the 1980s -- the fake-fur-lined, lopsided-haired, candy-colored fires, that is.


People with any sense whatsoever consider the 1980s to be the pinnacle of pop music. Synthpop, New Wave, Punk, Industrial, Goth, Glam Metal, and Rap were all ascendant in the 1980s. It was a glorious mess of new sounds, new looks, and new technology in music. Many of my absolute favorite bands -- Kraftwerk, Front 242, Ministry, Big Black / Rapeman / Shellac, Foetus, Skinny Puppy, Public Image Limited, Joy Division / New Order, Laibach, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Cabaret Voltaire, Devo, Severed Heads, Frontline Assembly, KMFDM, Depeche Mode, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Swans, Sonic Youth, Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks, Subhumans, False Prophets, Misfits, Black Flag, The Adicts, Adolescents, Rudimentary Peni, Youth of Today, Warzone, Les Garcons Bouchers, Public Enemy, Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, TKK, a;Grumh, Borghesia, Le Syndicat, The Haters, Merzbow, M.B., etc. (the list could go on and on) -- were in their heydays during the 1980s. Nothing about contemporary pop, punk, goth, industrial or hip hop is as compelling as the 1980s and early 90s apex of these genres. In part, it was that the cold war gave the arts more of a sense of urgency, and in part it was that people hadn't yet become so jaded by overexposure to the slick, soulless product of continually expanding global media empires.


I have quite fond memories of even the most commercial New Wave pop music of the day -- Blondie, Cyndi Lauper, The Cars, Human League, O.M.D., A Flock Of Seagulls, The Eurythmics, Yaz, etc. -- even the one-hit wonders like Animotion, Wang Chung, and A-ha were enjoyable. Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson -- three of the biggest names in pop music of the 20th century -- were all defined by their 1980s music, all of which at least dabbled with New Wave (Madonna emerged entirely from that movement). The 1980s were the last hurrah for pop music before, in the 1990s, the major labels consumed the last vestiges of punk and new wave (the "alternative and college" labels) and all music became product. It was also a time when the suits were confused about the market, and a lot of strange music came out of even the majors that wouldn't have at any other time. It was as chaotic as the 1960s, but it smelled a little better, and it wasn't as monocultural (there was more going on that was weird than just the Hippies, so there was more diversity of odd music). I'm far from the only person who conisders the 1980s to be the most active, creative time in the history of popular music.


While the 1970s are often remembered as a great era of film, the 1980s get downplayed. This does the decade a huge disservice. A number of my all-time favorite films are films of the 1980s. Some of the greats of the era include The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Amadeus, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tootsie, Raging Bull, Platoon, E.T., and the incomparable Blade Runner (which I happen to think should be #3 on the AFI top 100 list, after Citizen Kane and Lawrence of Arabia -- yes, above Casablanca and The Godfather, in my opinion). But there are many other classics that don't necessarily make the film snob lists.

Sci-fi and Horror were booming in the 80s. The Empire Strikes Back, in my opinion the best of the six films (so far) in the Star Wars franchise, came out in 1980, and 1982's The Wrath of Khan is the most unequivocably enjoyable of the many Star Trek films. But John Carpenter's 80s output alone is enough to enshrine the decade: Escape From New York, The Thing, Big Trouble In Little China, and They Live are all true classics of their era. As is the Davids' output, Cronenberg with Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, The Fly and Dead Ringers, and Lynch with The Elephant Man, Dune and Blue Velvet. James Cameron's fabulous, franchise-building classics Aliens and The Terminator are true 80s gems, as is Paul Verhoeven's inspired Robocop. W.D. Richter's peculiar The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai is a wonderful bit of craziness that is often overlooked or underrated, as is Tron, a famous film that seems quaint to some because of its graphics and primitive computing technology, but which was not equalled in terms of a unique vision of a digital future until the first Matrix film. Halloween sequels were in full-swing (most sucked, though), but George Romero's Day of the Dead follow-up to 78's Dawn of the Dead, and the first Friday the 13th, are the 80s stand-outs for the three big horror franchises. And Japanese mindbenders Akira (animated) and Tetsuo: The Iron Man (live action) remain alongside Eraserhead as some of the most original, bizarre films of all time.

Punk broke into film in the 80s, as well. Alex Cox made the two most important punk films of all time during the 80s: Sid & Nancy and Repo Man, and even Penelope Spheeris' lesser punk fare The Decline of Western Civilization and Suburbia are still worth a viewing. Postpunk auteur Jim Jarmusch emerged in the 80s, with Permanent Vacation, Coffee and Cigarettes, Mystery Train, and the pure genius of Down By Law, as did Gus Van Sant, with Mala Noche and Drugstore Cowboy.


Meanwhile, John Hughes was busy reinventing the teen comedy genre, steering it away from Gidget-type dreck and creating classics like The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Savage Steve Holland kicked in with Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer, and Cameron Crowe with Fast Times At Ridgemont High and Say Anything. Teen Angst films of the 80s included such classics as River's Edge, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Tex, and the underrated The Legend of Billie Jean.


Even some of Hughes' mainstream 80s comedies, like Vacation, Planes, Trains & Automobiles and Uncle Buck, are genius. Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder had a career defining moment with Stir Crazy, while Caddyshack and The Blues Brothers created new stars. Eddie Murphy was actually funny in films like 48 Hrs., Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, and Coming To America, and the mockumentary was born with the hilarious This Is Spinal Tap -- but the real comic gems of the 80s come in the form of three of the best comedies of all time: Airplane!, Ghostbusters and The Princess Bride (in my opinion, a strong contender for best comedy of all time).


Genre-redifining action films, in particular Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, and The Road Warrior (which got more attention than its predecessor, 79's Mad Max) also appeared in the 80s. Across the Pacific, John Woo was making equally important action films like A Better Tomorrow and The Killer. Tim Burton's first Batman film brought postmodern comics to cinema, replacing the feel-good camp of the Christopher Reeves Superman films (Superman II being another good 80s film) with darker, somewhat more character-driven fare.

In Japan Miyazaki was helping bring anime to the world at large with beautiful films like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle In The Sky, My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service. However, I feel the most brilliant Japanese animated film of all time also came out in the 80s: Takahata's bittersweet drama, Grave of the Fireflies. And on TV, the Robotech / Macross saga brought the Japanese space-soap-opera to a generation of Americans. It remains one of the best animated TV series of all time, with much more sophisticated writing than the more popular Transformers, which also spawned its first feature film in the 80s.


Role playing gaming also came into its own in the 80s. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson's Dungeons and Dragons (most gamers actually played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons -- the two systems are not fully compatible) was the most well known, but there were many other great 80s RPGs. Twilight 2000 was the best WWIII game ever made, and sci-fi titles Cyberpunk and Shadowrun helped break the Cyberpunk and Steampunk genres as legitimate subcategories of Sci-Fi amongst the nerderati (neither system was perfect, so some gamers like the two groups I played with in high school and college just merged the two games despite their being from different publishers and having very different systems). The true Steampunk game, Space 1889, was fun but not sufficiently popular. Traveller / 2300 AD was the best of the Sci-Fi systems (although lamented by some as too complex, its skills system redefined gaming rules, and I say for the better), and had many fun modules. The hilarious Paranoia Sci-Fi parody is hands-down the best humorous RPG, and though Teenagers From Outer Space was a close second, both are overshadowed by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (a good game, but the other two are much better). Strategy / board games whose worlds led to hybridization with role playing (often borrowing or creating a new system to fill in the gaps) included SJG's Car Wars and FASA's Battletech. RPG playing really helped hone my writing and storytelling skills, and led me to become a better writer, game developer, and storyteller in general. The social aspect of RPG playing is something I dearly miss. Video gaming is just not the same, even LAN parties, because human-machine, and not human-human, interaction is the core element of the gaming equation. Also, video games rarely allow the players to truly influence the design and outcome of the narrative adventure. Still, video games were a key part of my 80s childhood.

August 1982 changed the world forever. Few moments in popular history can compare with the release of the Commodore 64, which began a 12-year run unequalled in the history of computing. The machine racked-up over 30 million sold, and did at least as much to bring video games into the mainstream as the Atari 2600 (which also sold about 30 million units, but since you couldn't program it, did not do nearly as much to create a new generation of game developers). During this time, games were the brainchildren of dedicated gamers, not marketing teams. The market hadn't solidified into four genres (sports, fps, rpg and rts) with each running off one or two popular gaming engines. Since computing in general was just breaking big, games still had much more variety. While the graphics and sound were primitive, in some cases the gameplay has yet to be surpassed.

Fun, unusual games abounded in the 80s. Crush Crumble and Chomp, Mail Order Monsters and Rampage were great monster games, a dead genre. Geopolitique 1990 was a political strategy game, another dead genre. Pirates was a fun tall ship game, another dead genre. Racing Destruction Set let you create your own cars and tracks and destroy them, which is far more fun than driving around some pre-built world. Qix, Bubble Bobble, Dig Dug, Lode Runner, Warriors of Zypar, Archon, Archon II, Marble Madness, Night Shift, Pinball Construction Set, and Hovver Bovver (a lawnmowing game!) were all odd, but fun (puzzle, maze and action hybrids mostly). Simple, odd, but fun is just barely coming back with the likes of Geometry Wars (really an updated Asteroids more than an OBF). Karateka and Bruce Lee paved the way for the likes of Street Fighter which broke-big the once-popular martial arts genre, and Donkey Kong and Jumpman invented the platformer. Beachhead and Beachhead II were very primitive, but fun, predecessors to the likes of Battlefield 2. Zeppelin, a combined side-top scroller, seems simple but is one of the most fun games ever, and other great shooters/scrollers abounded, like Killerwatt and Defender. Tron was one of the best of the multiple technique games.


But, on the C64, what put things over the top was adventure (and related) games. Not all was swords and sorcery with C64 adventure and strategy gaming, such as great space strategy games like the Psi-5 Trading Company, M.U.L.E., Argos Expedition, Galactic Empire, Andromeda Conquest, Reach for the Stars, Starflight, and Impeirum Galacticum. (Now all we have is Starcraft sequels, but fortunately also emerging franchises like Galactic Civilizations / Sins of a Solar Empire, Ferion and Horizon). And some of the best games had no graphics at all, those being the classic Infocom text adventures like the Zork trilogy, Enchanter trilogy, Plantefall and Stationfall, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Deadline, Starcross, Suspended, Infidel, Wishbringer, Suspect, Jourey, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and the still popular Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.

The big daddies of adventure and strategy games were once Origin Systems, Inc., Sierra On-Line, and Strategic Simulations, Inc. (who I had the pleasure to work for briefly during the period of acquisitions that led to the imprint's unfortunate demise). Richard Garriott and OSI dedicated most of the 80s to the Ultima series, perhaps the greatest adventure game series of all time. Ogre, Autoduel and Omega also managed to come out during the 80s and redefine their own genres. Ken and Roberta Williams' Sierra had the very popular Kings' Quest and Leisure Suit Larry franchises. Lucasfilm Games, considered by many to be most directly competitive with Sierra, squeezed out Maniac Mansion and Zak Mccracken and the Alien Mindbenders, both good fun. However, SSI was really a force to be reckoned with once. SSI produced both great adventure games like Phantasie, Wizard's Crown, Questron, Pool of Radiance, and several official AD&D games, as well as classic turn-based strategy games like Kampfgruppe, Germany 1985, Mech Brigade, Roadwar, Gettysburg, and Storm Across Europe. Electronic Arts, still under Trip Hawkins and not yet considered greedy industry villains, chimed in with Seven Cities of Gold and the brilliant, genre redefining, franchise-spawning The Bard's Tale. Really, there are too many good games from this era to list them all. Maybe someday I'll try, but let this abbreviated list suffice for now.


The first comic book done on a computer also came out in the 80s: Saenz and Gillis' Shatter, a well done cyberpunk story that was steeped in the emerging digital culture. But that wasn't the most exciting thing going on in comics in the 80s. Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's The Killing Joke brought back Batman as a conflicted vigilante. Moore's The Watchmen and Art Spiegelman's Maus turned once lowly comics into genuine literature. And in 89, Neil Gaiman's seminal The Sandman arrived on the scene.

Philip K. Dick's last novels also came out in the 80s: Radio Free Albemuth, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, The Divine Invasion, and the brilliant VALIS, as did Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco. William Gibson burst onto the scene with his best works: Burning Chrome, Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Salman Rushdie published Midnight's Children and the fatwa-inspiring Satanic Verses, Gabriel García Márquez published the brilliant Love in the Time of Cholera, Milan Kundera published The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Gore Vidal published Empire, J.G. Ballard published The Empire of the Sun, and Don DeLillo broke out with White Noise (and Rudy Rucker arrived on the fiction scene with White Light).


I am a child of the 1980s. I was 6 going into 1980, so most of my formative years were spent absorbing the wonders of the 1980s. Computers and science, video games, music, movies, art, and books were my whole life. There are great films, music, games, art and books of the 90s and beyond, but the debt they owe to the 80s is often overlooked, downplayed, or scoffed-at. Before people laugh at the 80s, they ought to look at the impact of the 80s on today's culture. New Wave fashion (the most canonically derided element of the 80s) looks a lot like contemporary hip hop fashion. Both synth-and-sampler laden genres like hip hop and future pop, and guitar-laden ones like Modern Rock, owe at least as huge a debt to the 80s as to the 70s and 90s. This often forgotten, or mocked, decade really produced some of the best popular culture of all time.

Obnoxious Berkeleyites

I went to Berkeley today to try to buy birthday gifts for my wife. Not only was I mostly unsuccessful, but the visit reminded me of just how much Berkeley annoys me -- at least that part near the University and up in the hills which is overrun with certain people. Those people can ruin the place for everyone else, if you're not careful.

Berkeley should be a paradise for American Liberals since, by its own claims, it is America's most Liberal city. However, I think the Berkeleyites have "Libertine" confused with "Liberal," and "Obnoxious Contrarianism" confused with "Thoughtful Politics."

I'd like to start of by pointing out that "George Bush Sucks" is not really a sophisticated political sentiment. Too many people in Berkeley seem to think that all politics is a matter of popularity of slogan. If it's on a t-shirt, mission accomplished. It's not just that they wear the t-shirts, and plaster the bumper-stickers everywhere, but that when you hear them discussing politics on the streets -- it's in the same vapid terms.

They wear their amazing enlightenment on their sleeves, while their own city is visibly, obviously segregated economically and racially (when a Berkeleyite says "the hills" they mean "rich and white (or east asian)" and when one says "the flatlands" they mean "poor and dark"). I've had more than one Berkeleyite tell me: "You must be so glad to be out of New York, where it's so racist." Excuse me? New York is one of the most racially, ethnically, and economically mixed cities in the world.

Just like New York's East Village, the trash-strewn, piss-soaked streets of Telegraph Avenue near the University are the result of a concentration of stupid college students and bums. And all college students are stupid. When I was a college student, I didn't think I was stupid. That's because I was an ignorant, self-aggrandizing hypocrite, like every college student. Basically, the purpose of college is to use sleep deprivation and drugs to brainwash young adults long enough that when they are unleashed on society their unmitigated, self-righteous arrogance has mellowed enough that there's a less than 90% chance someone will murder them within the first few minutes of their release into greater society.

In Berkeley, however, even the bums are arrogant and self-righteous. Unlike your usual glaze-eyed, gibbering lunatics in places like New York's Washington Square Park, Berkeley's bums are mostly coherent enough that they retain the facility to care whether or not you agree with their rants. When they yell at you for ignoring them, it is more than an autonomous reflex. Some of them even want to debate. And, as usual, the volume of their speech generally inversely correlates with factual accuracy. Your mere existence does not give you the right to tell me everything you've ever thought of, so stop following me.

Gutterpunks, who manage to give regular punks an even worse name, also abound in Berkeley. No, I'm not going to give you $5 for beer or pot. I'm going to buy my own beer, and while I drink it, I'll listen to some Amebix and think "thank Bob I can't smell those blokes." Then I'll eat some food, and sleep in a bed. The funny thing is, since a number of the Gutterpunks in Berkeley (like many of the Hippies) come from wealthy families, that's what they could be doing if they hadn't chosen to dress like a filth-spattered Bundeswehr deserter with PTSD and sit on the sidewalk.

For some inexplicable reason there are also still Hippies in Berkeley. I know they're genuine Hippies because they are old, smell like they haven't bathed since 1968, and have simply replaced Viet Nam with Iraq in everything they yell. And they always yell. There's not a lot more I can really say about Hippies, other than to point out that by and large the 60's generation are the soulless hypocrites who are sucking the wealth out of this nation, squandering its natural resources, and generally causing sociologists to estimate that my generation will be the first to be worse-off than its predecessor.

White guys with dreadlocks also abound in Berkeley, listening to boring Reggae and that one Rage Against The Machine song over and over. Apparently, many of these guys also like marijuana, as evidenced by the forty foot tall marijuana patches on the back of their hempcloth vests.

You'd think that with all these elements, Berkeley wouldn't be one giant shopping mall filled with coiffed, spray-tanned and over-made-up teen bimbos parading around in matching outfits of whatever colors the dye makers needed to throw away this season. You'd think incorrectly. Somehow, these elements fuse perfectly with the mall environment. And in Berekely, even the bimbos wander around saying "gee, George Bush is so dumb," as if that magical incantation will right all that is wrong with our country.

Berkeley is much more anti-Bush than it is pro-Obama -- there's scant Obama sloganeering or imagery compared to mountains of it that are anti-Bush -- and therein lies the rub. Berkeley is all about being against things. I rarely see anyone campaigning FOR something -- the most serious positive causes are always turned-around and turned into an opportunity to complain and inveigh. I'm from New York. Many of my friends are New York Jews. You want complaints and invectives? I've got them right here, buddy.

But Berkeley -- Oi Vey! It's just plain exhausting. And it smells like piss.

If only Amoeba would move to Oakland. At least that city is dilapidated and corrupt in all the usual urban American ways.

(Of course, there are also some very nice people in Berkeley who love their city -- hey, some of my best friends are Berkeleyites -- and this rant is mostly about the Shattuck-Telegraph-Berkeley Hills areas, not so much the working class areas near Oakland.)

In Praise Of My Bed

Five cats greeted me upon my return from Poland. In my exhausted and sickened state, I barely finished feeding them when I trudged to the bedroom and went to sleep. Even though stomach problems and dehydration kept me from sleeping perfectly that evening, it is amazing how much more restful one's own bed is than even the most expensive hotel room (never mind an economy class seat on a jetliner). While away, the things I missed the most were my wife, my cats, and my bed. Yes, I also missed the delicious and varied Bay Area cuisine and wine selection, the moderate weather, and the relatively exhaust-and-cigarette-smoke-free air. But it was my bed that really called out to me even whilst comfortably ensconced in the overpriced (to my proletarian sense of value for your money) Polonia Palace hotel.

I love my wife and our cats. Anu is incredibly intelligent, loving and suitably resilient and independent for my sometimes moody disposition. Each of our cats has a personality their own: Cthulhu the overgrown, clingy kitten; Sim the fickle, domineering lap cat; Ash the spaz; Shub the quiet lurker, and Yog the space cadet. But, compared to other beds, it's almost like my bed has a personality as well. I missed it too, often dreaming of it as I dreamed of being back with Anu and the cats.

Like in that bear lair of Goldilocks fame, my bed is neither too soft nor too firm (and my mastery of our climate control system means the room is neither too hot nor too cold). My bed is a comfortable height for me to get onto and off of without having to stretch it, contort myself weirdly, or simply roll onto the floor. Having only a simple frame, there is no headboard to whack my head against, no footboard for blankets to bunch-up against and make me feel constricted, and no sidewalls for me to roll and wake up with alternating pain and numbness as some poor part of my body attempts to deal with bruises and pressure-induced restricted bloodflow. Even asleep, I instinctively know how much I can thrash around on it (I do that a lot in my sleep) without falling off or hitting a wall. And Anu's side always remains free of my body (though I do steal the blankets and pillows when she's not there, presumably as my sleep-addled brain reaches out for her missing presence.

With foreign beds, I frequently knock over nearby lamps, even though they're usually much farther from the bed than my usual bedside lamp that nearly sits on my head. Headboards and sidewalls present ample opportunities for bruising and numbness, and sometimes I even literally wake up on the wrong side of the bed. It is miserable, even if the hotelier or friend has taken great pains to give their guests a comfortable temporary home.

Sleep is the realm of autonomous action. It is all habit, and adapting to a new sleep environment is a slow process. My feeling is that this, as much as time differences, is a major contributor to what we call jetlag. No matter how hard one tries -- and no matter all the strange exercises, meditation, herbs or drugs frequent travelers employ -- it is nearly impossible to be truly rested in a strange room, with strange air, an unmemorized obstacle course between you and the toilet, and worst of all, a well-meaning yet inadvertently hostile bed.

I am so glad to be reunited with my beloved after ten enjoyable yet exhausting days abroad (and I also look forward to Anu's return from New York).

Fly The Unfriendly, Incompetent Skies

Legend has it, Lufthansa is a great airline. This is what I'd heard from fellow travelers many times before: typical German efficiency, and comfort on-par with riding in a Mercedes or Audi, rounded-out with an atypically (for German companies) friendly and helpful staff.

What a crock of Scheiße!

For starters, when my trip on Lufthansa was first delayed for a few weeks, the woman at the desk in San Francisco lied to me. Outright lied. She said that due to the cancellation, my ticket would be re-issued at a later date, minus a $250 fee. She also claimed she made an annotation to this fact in their computer system, and that when I called their New York office the next day to reschedule the flight, all would be well. Their central US office proceeded to tell us that there was no such annotation, that in fact there was no ticket number ever issued against my reservation number which could have been thusly annotated, and that there couldn't have been such a ticket issued on the date I was to fly since Lufthansa in Poland (where the ticket was purchased) had to issue a ticket number 2 weeks prior to the flight (which hadn't been done). After much effort, folks in Poland were able to get the ticket reissued -- with a $450 fee, not $250 as claimed. Lufthansa remembered to actually issue a ticket number that time.

My flight to Poland was relatively uneventful, though not particularly comfortable. However, my return was a nightmare. Due to a strike, my flight from Warsaw to Munich was canceled. When I went to the Lufthansa ticket booth, there were four women in Lufthansa uniforms but only one of three stations was open to serve the displaced passengers. After a little over an hour -- during which repeated admonitions against the women were made by the older gentleman in line behind me -- they finally opened a second window. As the passengers in front of me slowly made their way through the process (one couple took approximately 45 minutes to get processed), they finally opened the third counter about a half hour after the second. I felt especially sorry for the nearly 40 people behind me, as it took over an hour and a half for me to reach the counter and I was only behind 6 customers.

Rebooked on a flight to Frankfurt, with a connection in Frankfurt to a United flight, I specifically asked the ticket agent if an hour and twenty-five minutes would be enough time to make the connection, including passing-through the notoriously overcrowded Frankfurt passport check. She said it would be -- that an hour would be too little, but an hour and twenty-five was fine. I wasn't given a boarding card for my connecting United flight because -- Star Alliance be damned -- Lufthansa's computers in Warsaw couldn't talk to the United computers to issue me a boarding card (apparently the booking computer that issued me the reservation was on a special "is available to Lufthansa" network, while the boarding confirmation computer is in a special hardened United-only bunker, on the moon).

My flight to Frankfurt boarded 20 minutes after it was scheduled to take off (45 minutes after previously scheduled boarding). At this point, I was down to an hour in Frankfurt. Not enough time, according to the ticket agent. After boarding was bumped 15 minutes, I explained this to the gate agent, who said that the flight would still be on time in Frankfurt (through some inexplicable spacetime phenomenon by which a plane will arrive at its destination on-time regardless of when it takes off). When pressed further, as the boarding grew later and later, she overtly stopped responding to any of the passengers, turning to chat with her coworkers.

Once we boarded the plane, we were further delayed because the pilot "forgot" to ask the control tower for permission to start his engines, and we missed our departure slot. On a plane loaded with mostly connecting passengers, that this didn't start a full-scale riot was testament to how tired and worn-out we all already were by this point. The best we could do was make smart-ass comments about it.

Landing a little over an hour late in Frankfurt, I sprinted across this rather enormous airport -- begging the Border Guards to let me go to the front of the line at passport control -- only to be told by United that my being late was Lufthansa's problem, not theirs, and I couldn't get on the plane. Much yelling about incompetence (during which I told the United agent who insisted it wasn't their fault to tell his company to pick better program partners), then begging and pleading, ultimately convinced the United gate agent that so long as he could lecture me about how I was late and this was not normally allowed, that he'd let me on the plane.

My luggage is still in Germany. United was able to find it in their tracking computer, which means it had been released from the odious grasp of Lufthansa as of my arrival at SFO (so there is some chance it will ever arrive).

Nothing about my Lufthansa experience was worthy of the praise I'd heard the airline receive previously -- rather, it was a performance worthy of the uniformly terrible Air France. In fact, this experience puts Lufthansa squarely in the camp with Air France and (Soviet Era) Aeroflot as the worst airlines I've ever had the misfortune to fly on. (And at least Aeroflot was trying, despite antiquated planes and an oppressive totalitarian regime crushing the souls of their entire nation, unlike Lufthansa and Air France.)

[Follow-Up: My luggage arrived this morning. So United, who generally gets a mediocre to bad rap amongst travelers, did pretty much everything right (yes, the flight was fairly uncomfortable, but so was the Lufthansa flight over), and Lufthansa did nothing at all right during this debacle.]

Sundays In Silesia

Spending four days traveling around Poland proved to be more exciting than I could have predicted.

The first two days, in Zakopane, were relatively uneventful affairs filled with cheese, beer, lamb and rain. Sofia, the woman whose home Marcin and I stayed in, was very nice and she made sure to stuff me full of food the first opportunity she got. Zakopane is in the Tatra mountains, and close to the border with Slovakia. Having exhausted the possibilities for photographing mountains and eating cheese, Marcin decided we'd go on a beer run in Slovakia.

In Slovakia we bought beer. I got yelled at by the angry gas station man for photographing his gas station, and I got waved at by the happy farmer. The happy farmer was particularly exciting since hardly anyone in Central Europe smiles much (with the exception a few of the guys at Platige). I don't smile much, either, so it must be genetic. Unfortunately, my photo of the happy farmer is pretty bad -- as it was taken just as we were narrowly avoiding a traffic accident, jostling me and causing a blurry and oddly framed image.

Sunday we went to Oświęcim, and to the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. The museum at Auschwitz is quite extensive, and both impressive and depressing in its scope. A group of Israelis was visiting the site, which I can only imagine was a terribly emotional moment for them. My (Polish Catholic) grandparents were in labor camps in Germany during WWII, and while all Poles suffered greatly during the Nazi occupation (the museum addresses this), Jewish citizens (of all the occupied territories) suffered the worst. So what I was feeling, the Israeli visitors must have been feeling even more deeply. For many in Central and Eastern Europe, it seems that Jews are now considered mythical creatures from the past, so I felt the presence of the Israeli group was a good reminder for the other visitors that there are indeed Jewish people alive today.

We then spent the rest of our Sunday in Silesia, hitting Katowice, Bytom, Ruda Slonska, and Gliwicia. We took some nice photos of the Huta Katowice steelworks from a neighboring hillside, and of some interesting looking old factories in Bytom. My hotel in Gliwicia was near a railway siding, which was both interesting to observe and not very conducive to sleeping.

Monday we went to Częstochowa, where I saw the famous Black Madonna painting presiding above a morning Mass. The reliquary that was open to the public had other fabulous pieces of art (paintings and metalworks, mainly), and the museum had lots of interesting artifacts from the Jasna Góra monastery's political and military history -- including the repulsion of the Swedish army in 1655 during The Deluge).

In the Łódź district we stopped to take photos of the Bełchatów Power Station. This resulted in our being detained by the guards of the plant, after we stopped to take some photos near one of the coal feeder conveyor belts and Marcin asked one of the workers if it would be ok with him. During our nearly an hour spent at the guard offices, one of the guards proceeded to tell us pretty much everything a terrorist could want to know about the plant -- including telling us which photo had the sensitive municipal power feeder line that I'd inadvertently snapped a picture of (and wouldn't have known what it was without his info). So, had we been terrorists, we'd have gotten more info than we ever hoped for. Of course, as Bruce Schneier points out, terrorists don't generally take photos (and if they did, they would not likely stop and ask the workers for permission).

Police were brought in, and we were taken to the station. For the most part, the Police thought the whole situation was a waste of their time. Marcin pointed out that we were movie makers taking reference photos, and the chief of police believed him but said he was being pressured by the guards to do something. He decided he'd have one of the younger cops take a report. The police were mostly quite nice. The officer assigned to our "case" took our statement and (at the request of the head of the factory guards, who called the station) checked out Marcin's laptop to see what other photos we had. Afterwards, he gave us a map to a location where we could take photos of the power plant without any problems. Clearly he didn't think we were much of a terrorist threat. Neither the factory guards nor the police made me delete the photos that had caused such consternation, and once we were released we were thus free to take hundreds more photos of the facility.

A fine example of the absurd, time-and-money-wasting, feel-good nonsense that Bruce Schneier calls "security theater." At least in this case the police knew their time was being wasted, and were all too happy to have the affair be over and done with as quickly as possible. Maybe Polish police have a more realistic perspective on the true nature of crime and terrorism than their paranoid American counterparts, like the Rodeo Police who illegally drove me out of town (literally, with a squad car less than 10 feet off my bumper until I left the city limits) after I took photos of the refinery in town while standing on a public street.

MeTV

I find it very strange to see and hear myself speak in a video interview. Gazeta.pl was one of four that interviewed me as a Pixar employee who had worked on WALL-E, and the video piece they put together from it for their website is actually fairly long. It is linked here, from the Platige community blog. Frankly, I can barely bring myself to watch it. Talking slowly and deliberately so as to (a) make it easier on the translators, and (b) not say anything Pixar would be embarrassed by, to me I sound like a dimwit when the English audio cuts through. The Polish announcer reading the translation (or whatever it is he's saying) has a much more melodious and focused delivery. It seems I haven't taken quite enough improv classes, so I suppose I should start going back to them. I wonder if people who are interviewed regularly, such as politicians and stars, get accustomed to seeing and hearing themselves on video (or even learn to enjoy it), or if it's always more of a disturbing "weird, there's an android on TV that looks just like me" kind of feeling?

The Days of Pickles, Coldcuts And Languages

One thing about traveling in Poland -- I keep having to defend American food, particularly American meat, to my Polish friends. Indeed, you find a greater variety of coldcuts in regular supermarkets and restaurants in Poland, and most of them are quite good. Personally, I prefer contintental breakfast, with its ham, rolls, hard-boiled eggs, mueseli, yogurt, and pickles (and in Poland, pickled mushrooms). But what many casual visitors to the U.S. don't realize is that it is possible to recreate this, and many other European treats, if one knows where to look for the ingredients. Higher-end supermarkets, artisanal cheese and meat shops, and specialized ethnic grocery stores abound in places like San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. Without a local guide who appreciates good food, one may easily wind up only going to T.G.I. Fridays and Von's and having an American food experience that fulfills all the expectations of greasy medocrity that most Europeans have of our food. However, with an American friend who likes good food, it is quite possible to find all manner of delicious items in the U.S., and not only American local items, but foods from Europe, Asia, South America and Africa as well. I don't think anyone really believes me, so I'll have to prove it when they visit the U.S.

Another thing about traveling to Poland is it gives me an opportunity to lament the fact that my mother didn't teach me Polish. It is a difficult language to learn, and it is not coming along very well for me. Believe it or not, words like "Szczecin" (a place name) and "Wyindywidualizowaliśmy" (looks like some form of a word related to "individualism") can actually be pronounced by some people. With seven noun cases and three genders, Polish is also vexing because words change out from under me at all times. As a native English speaker I'm not accustomed to, for example, grammatical variations on my own name.

But I also am reminded of how difficult English is for people who weren't born into it. While English isn't as grammatically complex as Polish, it has just as many irregularities and a vast vocabulary. Homonyms seem to be particularly distressig to non-native English speakers, but drifting phonetics also causes trouble -- such as why does through sound like threw, but trough sounds like off? My friend Marcin was also quizzing me about our various past constructions, such as "has been driving" vs. "drove." The idea that the former emphasizes the past process, where as the latter emphasizes the past accomplishment seemed to make sense to him, but if a native speaker hadn't given this explanation I am not sure it would have ever made sense.

It seems the most difficult languages are the ones that are farthest from your own. English and Polish are not very close at all, and mutual understanding is quite a laborious pursuit. Fortunately, the language of pickles, ham and beer is nearly universal.

Press The Meat

Today I had my first experience of being on a press junket. Because the Polish distributor got word that a member of the WALL-E crew would be in town, I was asked to give interviews about the film. Disney publicity liked this idea, and thus it came to pass. Fortunately, most of the questions were about what a great company Pixar is and what the job of a Technical Director entails. I knew how to answer those questions quite well.

Unfortunately, once the interviews are edited and translated, who knows what the Polish people will think I said -- but I guess that is the nature of interviews, especially for foreign-language press. You do your best in the room with the journalists, and hope that they are respectful and responsible with your words when they start editing.

It is a bit of an odd feeling knowing that in a few days millions of people will believe I said something which may or may not resemble what I actually said. The feeling is somewhat similar to when I wrote a few articles for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which were translated into German before publication, except that in that case I had a written record of what I had given the FAZ. In this case, I have no recourse but to trust the journalists (and they were all very nice folks) to do right by my words.

Despite being fairly exhausting, it was much more enjoyable than I had expected. Perhaps it wouldn't have been at all enjoyable if I had been discussing with fellow native English speakers anything more controversial than my experiences working on the latest film from the world's most beloved animation studio. By that measure, I suppose I couldn't have asked for a better first major press experience.

Greetings from Sunny Warsaw

While perhaps the title of this post seems like a joke to some, and it happens to be raining during the evening as I write this, Warsaw was indeed quite sunny all day today. In fact, it was almost Los Angeles hot here today.

I spent the day with Marcin, Adam and Olga tooling around Warsaw. The Warsaw Uprising Museum seems twice as large as it was when I last visited two years ago. The most interesting part of the museum is finding out about the people and their feats, but there is also military hardware to peruse (including a Liberator bomber hanging from the ceiling of a newer section). A recent purchase of letters with stamps minted during the rising itself was an especially interesting new curatorial find. During the uprising, a post office and newspaper was set up specifically to spread news during the fighting. It is an amazing testament to the drive for self-determination amongst Varsovians during that period.

We also went to a cemetery where soldiers, prominent citizens, and people who were persecuted by the Soviets in Siberia are buried, which was very interesting in its juxtapositions, such as being the home of both the Communist General Secretary Gomulka and a spy who turned over Warsaw Pact documents to the CIA named Kaminski. Many units of Armia Krajowa soldiers are buried there, as well as units from the 1920 Polish-Soviet war, and the January Uprising of 1863.
Beside them may lie victims of Soviet deportations to Siberia (those who returned to die at home, that is), as well as loyal Communists and pro-Soviet military units. Quite a lot of history is reflected in the graves in that cemetery.

Finally we went to the Praga district, pretty much the only place in Warsaw where there are pre-WWII buildings. The highlight, for me, was a disused Vodka factory that is slowly being converted into a mall for boutique shops and a cinema. Fortunately, for now, it is still mostly disused and therefore still interesting to look at.

Many of the oldest residential buildings in the district are very run-down, victims of a deliberate Soviet policy of moving the very poor into this district, and running out artists and intellectuals. Artists have begun to return, which is a good sign, but so have yuppies and now there are plenty of restaurants and boutiques in Praga that neither the desperate poor, working class, nor artists can afford to go to. Poland's economic modernization is still emergent, and the government is struggling to adapt a German model of quality social services but with a robust private sector. It is a work in progress.

(Note: I will update this post with photos when I get a chance to upload them. The connection in this hotel is very slow.)

The Lights Flickr As They Fade

I'm finally making good on a promise to myself to show my photo work outside my photo club (which I've been absent from for a long time) and circle of friends, and to try to do more with it in terms of both artistic growth and more professional exhibition venues.

I'm still not certain what I think of Flickr as a service (I don't like their un-customizable display interface, but there are some good things about them, like having an API, and the community aspect of groups), but I've decided to make use of it until I find something better or roll my own for my photo portfolio at bugaj.com website that I keep stalling on re-launching. I am, however, enjoying being able to organize and present my photos on-line.

My next step is to locate a good printer to work with, so I can create a portfolio and at least two full-scale works to present to galleries and nonprofits for show consideration. Thus far I've had no luck whatsoever finding a printer who does archival quality digital printing (preferably lightjet, but perhaps giclee) onto a vellum, frosted/translucent film, or a similar material. (If you know of a place, let me know.)

In my Flickr travels, I also found Diego Bauducco's Picto Browser, which lets you displa Flickr images in a Flash app for embedding in a blog post or other site. It's simple, yet effective. Here is my "atmospheric" images set from Flickr in Picto Browser (if you're using NoScript, you need to allow db798.com to have script access):

This set of images encompasses both some of my semi-abstract very soft focus work, as well as nice environmental atmospheric effects. Unless otherwise noted, all these effects are in-camera using one or more of: environmental atmospherics, defocus, and slow shutter + slight motion (but generally not enough to be a "motion" shot). It's more of an emotional / mood description than a technical one, anyway, but several of my favorite shots are in that group.

New Favorite Blog: Life Reboot

www.lifereboot.com/

Life Reboot is all about the how and why of starting over (in a career, mainly). It's well written, and inspiring. I just discovered it recently, and I find myself reading it almost as much as I read www.johnaugust.com. If you have ever changed careers, or are thinking of it -- especially if you're going or trying to go from a tech support job to something more interesting -- Life Reboot is a very compelling read.

Happy 4th of July

Happy Indepdendence Day, fellow Americans. Here's to some day getting our country back to our "long national nightmare of peace and prosperity," to a time where being an American abroad meant being a beacon of freedom and a symbol of self reliance rather than a harbinger of war and messenger of corruption, to those times -- mythical in proportion, and too often unequal in application, but still worth believing in if it allows us to ever live up to those national ideals -- when America was the good guy, the one willing to saunter up to Hitler and sock him in the jaw.

Every day the news is full of stories about economic crisis, a quagmire in Iraq, plans for a new quagmire in Iran, anti-American protests, corruption, political hypocracies, economic disparities, curtailing of civil rights, Chinese ascendency and American decline. Bloated, lazy spendthrifts who have followed the flock away from hard work and self-betterment and into the world of downing big gulps in front of big TVs are celebrated as the real face of proletarian America, while anorexic mental defectives parade their unclothed vaginas in the popular press and are heralded as our new elite. Jesus junkies impede our nation's scientific progress at every chance they get, and our Gini Index is one of the worst in the post-industrialized world as our rich get richer and our middle class gets scared into complacency by speculator-driven economic crises. As a nation, our history also pulls us down as much as it lifts us up. We've still never formally apologized or made reparations to the Native peoples, and the legacy of slavery still tugs at us to this day. There's a lot of work to do, and often it seems like our faddish predelictions and short attention spans are such that we'll never actually get it done.

However, beneath all that there are still people who represent the best of the American character, and perhaps someday America will live up to its own ideals. So, on this 4th of July, celebrate the best of what we can become if we put our minds to it, because we owe it to ourselves to make a go of it.

The Debate

The video I couldn't mention by name in a previous post is now able to be seen. It's called The Debate, and it was absolutely hilarious to me and the folks who helped me make it (well, at least a couple of them) when it was made. However, it's already outdated. I've therefore put it to use as the first substantial "war stories" posting over at The Indie Auteur.

Check Out My Sister's Theater Troupe

Bridging That Gap is a blog by the members of the Theater Why Not? troupe, of which my sister Katrina is the Artistic Director.

Theater Why Not?
Katharine, Troels, Katrina, Ravi

I've seen her work in-person in New York, read her writings, and discussed some of her performances with her. She's very good. I am very picky about theater performances (and known to walk out on boring ones), and simply seeing my sister isn't enough to make me like one -- so when I say her work is interesting and compelling, I mean it. So, if you happen to be in Canada, Ireland, or one of the other places they're showing up to perform (check the blog) then go check them out.