Praguelodyte

D C

2008-12-17T23:24:00.002+01:00

I miss you, my friend. You were the instigator of many a rant. Your comments on this blog egged me on.

But most of all, you kept me sane whenever I was forced to go back to the U.S. You were my friend of 20 years through good times and bad. You visited me in Prague and you knew the evils of the babi and the ecstasy of fried cheese and beer.

You took yor own own life. You chose not to have a funeral. Your ashes will be scattered at your favorite place. I wish I could be there. You are a victim of America.

This will be the last Praguelodyte blog. I am moving on.

How to Tell if Your Man Will Cheat On You

2008-11-26T10:45:00.001+01:00

Don't you love all those 'relationship advice' articles that pop up all over the media? I don't have to read one word of them to know the following:

- They're bullshit
- They're written by women about men, so see above
- The female writer in question is also a dyke. Why else is she getting paid to write?

So, in the interest of 'setting the record straight', from THE MAN's point of view, I offer you the real way to tell if a man will cheat on you ladies:

1) You ain't givin' up the booty.

Yup, that's a surefire way to make a man stray. Slam those doors shut--for any reason--and yer man will stray quicker than you can say 'I have a headache.'

2) You bitch and nag him up one side and down the other.

What man is gonna spend his precious time with a woman who doesn't appreciate all his flaws and piggish behavior? In the world of sheep, a good shepherd will always seek out the ewe which doesn't bleat so bitter.

3) You never feed your man.

He's taken you to dozens of fancy shmancy restaurants, threw dozens of burgers down yer throat, but the best meal you can offer him is microwaved Jenny Craig tofu shit. Pay attention: a man is simple. He only wants 2 things: a full belly and empty balls. Truer words have never been spoken. It was even a woman who pointed this out to me. If you don't believe me, I'll give you her name, number and a google map to her house.

4) Constantly asking your man if he loves you, wants to 'get serious' etc.

You know that a man will never buy a cow when he can get the milk for free. The man is going to milk you as long as he can before he buys. Deal with it. If you keep pressing him about love, marriage, etc., he will leave skid marks out of your bedroom, through your cold, unused kitchen and into the night.

5) You play games to make him jealous and thus prove his undying love to you.

If you think that doing a man's friends is the best way to get his attention, you are right. You'll get his undivided attention in the form of a boot up yer ass. Never mess with a man's food supply or his booty supply. Men are simple, women are complicated. We all know this. Ladies, make yourself even one iota more complex than being the food and booty supply and we will stray like a cat. A tomcat.

I hope that the above points have been taken to heart, gentle readers (all 3 of you). I am a simple man who loves the simple things in life: Beer, pizza, booty. I am also an educated man, one who knows a helluva lot about beer (goal in life: sample every beer in the world. #1 beer accomplishment: Oktoberfest), pizza (Chicago or N.Y. style. Fuck pizza from Europe; ESPECIALLY from Italy), and I'm enrolled in a lifelong course to learn about booty and what makes a woman tick. If its yer damn biological clock, please, ladies, on your way out, don't let the door hitcha where the Good Lord splitcha.

Amen.

Wacky Wooka and the Beatbox Kidz

2008-05-31T23:11:00.002+02:00

Nothing to say from Planet Praha, except I'm sitting in my room with an affliction.

I'm not sure what it is. I seem to drink alot o' vodka. It's gotten so cute, my little afffliction, that I refer to the vodka as 'wooka.' Sort of a corruption of the Russian pronunciation of 'vodka' as 'woodka.' Hence the word 'wooka.' See how my my mind works? In Russian, vodka literally means 'little water.' In Czech, 'voda' means 'water', so I can EASILY make that leap into Russian, after all, since they are the forefathers of These Here Bastard Czechs. So in the midst of my 'wookification' as I call it, I re-assess my life, plan my escape, curse 'the Man', all the usual shit One does when One has an Affliction.

So I offer you, as proof of my problem, the following video. Please stay til the end. It gets WACKY.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w2wHUx8Q7w

And then there's the BUSH MONKEY BEATBOX:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApfJqf9bpy0&feature=related

Finishing School for Panelak Girls

2007-12-11T17:49:00.000+01:00

"Yeah, she was a panelak* girl
Raised on sausages"

-Sung to the tune of 'American Girl' by Tom Petty

"Panelaks are just vertical trailer parks"

- Butthead, expats.cz

The panelak girl guffawed at a table behind me in the local Turkish mafia billiards/ casino/restaurant. At the end of my first beer it was sort of cute, the way a baby gorilla is at first glance. By the end of pet piv* it was my pet peeve. Y'know, long fingernails slowly dragging across 100-year-old blackboard.

She couldn't help her horse laugh. It was inbred inside her in a cold, gray box, stacked number 7 in a row of 13, multiplied by 15,675* across the former Eastern Bloc. She thought she was cool and funny. Her knuckle dragging date did as well. He struck a pose: Brezhnev uni-brow and baseball cap with a knockoff Adidas logo with 4 stripes instead of 3 (at the Trznice* the sign read 'more stripes = more Adidas' and he believed what he read, his lips moving to each line on the sign). Though he dragged his knuckles and acted tough, he was a pussy. I thought could take him and his date--Him on the floor, taken 'Night Tram Avenger' style, beaten and bloody; her bent over a billiard table, taken 'doggy' style. But I don't like beating up skinny punks. Nor do I like fucking crank-addled white trash girls with horse laughs. But I digress.

I am very experienced in the white trash realm. I lived in a trailer from age 5-7 or so (those oh-so-important-formative-years). I shagged actual white trash girls with tatoos and redneck accents inside of actual double wide trailers parked on hilltops (not when I was 7, sicko. But later, when I regressed into my second redneck childhood. That would be between the ages of 19-25) The white trash girls were grateful, not because I was the monster fuck of their young lives, not because I bought them dinner, but because I didn't beat the crap out of them at the end of the date.

So as I sat there years later in the awful concrete village restaurant, the horse guffaws of the girl behind me reminded me of all I had left behind. Except of course, the alcoholism. I done brung that with me.

Czuppies* abound. They vex me. I am terribly vexed. I can't imagine how any form of Yuppie Scummery could apply to a former soviet peasant. The Czuppies used to live in panelaks. They abandoned them for newer, post modern housing with flat screen tvs and SUV and luxury cars. The newer, post modern housing has large parking spaces for the large SUV and luxury cars and more wall space for bigger flat screen tvs. But at the end of the day, the laugh is on them. They've just bought the exact same panelak they left. Same blueprint, same stack of concrete prefab shit. Only painted yellow. With parking garages. Silly Czuppie, don't you know? You can put frosting on a piece of shit and call it a birthday cake, but at the end of the day all you have is a frosted turd. Fnar, fnar! Guffaw, guffaw!

I live in a panelak, yet again. I say it's because it's my slow season, that I move into panelaks every winter to escape the slimy clutches of the greedy Czech landlords. Read my former posts. I don't like Czechs. And neither would you if you lived here long enough. Trust me. They are not quality humans. And by living in the panelaks from time to time, I am reminded of just how low the white trash scale can measure. By living in the overpriced, in demand Central Prague historic buildings, I am reminded of the yuppie and his superficial, materialistic, shallow ways.

And I want to move to Berlin or Bombay and take my chances with a new riff raff.

Footnotes:

Panelak - a prefab soviet era housing block characterized by gray concrete material, identical windows and other montonous, soul crushing attributes.

Pet Piv - literally 'five beers'

15,675 - a number pulled directly from my ass. I am not a math major, so I make shit up. I don't know the actual number of panelaks but I figure it must be in the billions. Go here for actual studies on the large gray boxes built for commie peasants, lovingly referred to as panelaky by the Czechs.

Trznice - an outdoor market in a Czech city characterized by tragic Vietnamese and other South East Asian refugees robbing people blind by selling counterfeit knockoff 'goods.'

Czuppie - I made that word up. Czech + Yuppie = Czuppie. See how clever I am?

More panelak poo here.

Night Tram Avenger Part Deux

2007-09-02T01:51:00.000+02:00

The Night Tram Avenger found his kryptonite one night: his knees. God DAMN my knees. How am I supposed to avenge the night trams with these rickety, slipshod, godforsaken KNEES!!!???

In a country full of drunken creeps who scream, belch, smell, swear and occasionally smack they beotches up---WHAT'S A NINJA GONNA DO?

I had just boarded another night tram after a decent piss up (that's what the Brit majority in Prague calls it; we back home would've called it a HOOTENANY). I was standing and holding the rails for lack of a decent seat for my Elvisian lardy ass. I was staring at a public service announcement about how a decent citizen should help the blind people onto the tram. Even give em their seats. As if a decentgodfearingmoralcivilizedpeople would NEED this. But the Czechs are a bunch of vile, ignorant, selfish FUCKING peasants. YESSSS, PEASANTS. With the manners of a goat on crack. Hence the need for a public service announcement about common sense.

If you are Czech and you somehow can read this (Christ, they're teaching the peasants to READ?), then FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON. YOU SUCK.

So, having read this sign with its colorful illustrations of various blind people lurching about, I was brought back to my previous involuntary smackdown of one of the fine locals. His crime? He dared to smack his blind woman up. Repeatedly. In front of ME.

Well, if you read the previous post, there was one sorry sack of shit who would be wondering if he had spilled a huge bottle of ketchup on his shirt the next day. I don't imagine it was the first time he had his nose broken. Hell, I'll break it again if I ever see the douchebag.

Any WHO, as I was reading the customer service announcement and reminiscing on my previous NTA episode, I heard the screams. I looked to the left and saw a couple yelling at each other. I finished reading the public service announcement. I was waiting for the last frame, the one in which the ONE SOLITARITY SAMARITAN would help out the blind woman.

The domestic quarrel grew worse; she was trying to pull him out of his seat and was trying to get him to leave the tram. He refused and cursed her. She cried and pleaded with him. Then he stood up and hit her in the face.

Without breaking stride, I lurched down the tram and switched into the Night Tram Avenger. There was no costume change. There was only a personality change. I am not like this in real life. I am a large teddy bear, really. But as Mickey Rourke said in 'Sin City', "It really gets my goat when guys rough up dames."

The punk in question was a low life, drug-addled gypsy scumbag. If that appears to be politcally incorrect in any way, then check your reality. It was the truth. I tried to get in between the gypo scuzzbucket and the woman, but the tram lurched and I couldn't land a punch. So I went with plan B: I grabbed the scumbag in a head lock and proceeded to ram his head into the tram window, one, two, three. On the third thump, the woman involved asked me to stop.

At this point the slimy little bugger slipped my grip and ran away. He was shouting some gypo nonsense at me and at her, but I can't speak Czech when I am the NTA. Especially Gypo Czech. So I just told him to SIT THE FUCK DOWN BECAUSE I WILL WATCH HER KICK YOUR ASS AND YOU DON'T GET TO DO SHIT!

As the slime doggie was leaving the tram, I told the lady I was sorry to get involved, but that I hate it when guys rough up dames. She told me in English 'you are gentleman.' As the tram doors were closing on her erstwhile mate, he managed to scream his goodbyes with an umbrella thrown in between the closing doors. It flew between the woman and myself and smacked into the opposite tram window. The person sitting where the umbrella had struck said and did nothing, as is typical for a Czech.

The next day I was nursing my sore knee. How did it happen? I didn't feel anything as I rammed the gypo's head into the glass the previous night. Perhaps when he slipped my grip I twisted my knee. I dunno. I thought about whether the pain of my recurring knee troubles was worth the NTA thing.

Then I thought about it. How often do you get to beat up a real live gypsy in the Czech Republic?

For more global superhero vigilante action: http://www.oddee.com/item_87762.aspx

Abusive Drunk Hits Blind Woman; Gets a Taste of My Fists of Fury

2007-06-25T04:06:00.000+02:00

Many people said this to me in the past:

'Never get in the middle of a domestic dispute; you will always get beat up as a result.'

Well, I never listen to most people. Especially THOSE people.

Tonight--in fact, less than 30 minutes ago-- I punched a man on a Prague tram. I punched him 2 or 3 times to be sure. I punched him until his face was bloody.

I had been in a bar and was on my way home on the night tram. I normally keep to myself and just watch the drunken night owls bellowing and belching and hollering on their ride home. Tonight was different. A real DOUCHE BAG of a drunk was sitting behind a blind woman, apparently a woman he knew, yelling at her. I mean the man was a BAG of DOUCHE. I have seen some callous, swaggering, drunken, macho bullshit in the Czech Republic, but this took the cake.

I tried to shake it off and tell myself that:

a) it's not my problem
b) it's his and her business
c) it's her problem for being with such a BAG of DOUCHE
d) the cops would arrest and deport me should I get involved

Well, you get a pass for being drunk and stupid. Nobody gets a pass for pushing a blind woman around. I mean, she had the long white cane, the closed little mole eyes and everything.

I have had rage problems in this country. They generally center around ignorant, selfish, drunken boors that think they run things. In fact, many would describe the entire country as full of these fuckadors, especially in all of the branches of government, top to bottom.

After his shouts (in Czech) of 'BITCH' and 'CUNT' and other various terms of endearment hit this poor blind woman's ears, all she could do was hang her head down at her cane. I felt my heart race and told myself not to get involved. It really wasn't my problem. But this country is full of cowardly souls who stand by and watch people get beaten, robbed, and even raped (in one reported case).

Being drunk, and otherwise having my peaceful ride home interrupted by this boorish chap, I simply yelled out 'SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!' Being drunk, HE shook his head and continued his drunken verbal abuse of A SIGHTLESS WOMAN.

When he began pushing her and brandishing his arms around, I stood up, walked over and got his undivided attention. I repeated my previous warning. He ignored it. Then he hit her. I came unglued. I can't remember the exact words that came out of my mouth but it was my fists that were talking at the time. I blocked his flailing arms, planted two quick jabs to his nose, then BITCH SLAPPED him, backhand if you will, in front of all of the people on the tram.

I backed away and watched him bleed for a moment. Did I just do this? What will happen next? I heard clapping around the tram. I saw several people in the tram who had just witnessed the events CHEERING ME ON, nodding their heads and generally making me feel like a hero. Even THE POLICE--who were obviously SOMEWHERE IN THE BACK OF THE TRAM AND NOT DOING ANYTHING ABOUT THE FUCKWIT who had just abused the blind woman and had just seen me beating a drunk , as it were--didn't arrest me. The two officers appeared and said 'stop'; I told them I would not stand by and watch that. I said she was BLIND. I asked if THEY were, too. They didn't understand me, those Czech cops. Probably a good thing. But they weren't aggressive toward me and didn't handle me. Probably lucky for all of us. They listened to the drunken bleeder blubber for a minute, I said to anyone who was listening that this was my stop (and it was) and got off the tram. I kept walking about a block before I looked behind me. Nobody was following me.

I feel absolutely fantastic. And I think I will for a long time.

Another dead man

2006-12-02T23:13:00.000+01:00

"Ty vole!" was all the Czech guy on the back of the tram could say. Okay. Another friend calling another friend 'you fool' (the direct translation is too silly to mention).

But there were car brakes and tram brakes and people slamming into each other. People caught their breath. I looked out the tram window at the cars with the black snakes behind the wheels. I said to my girl that I see this every day and that Czechs can't drive. Another fender bender.
Then I saw the single black shoe in the crosswalk. She told me that it wasn't a fender bender. I agreed. Somebody got hit by a car in front of us.

The tram waited for a while. People made mobile phone calls. People said 'ty vole' alot. Then the tram lurched forward. I don't know why they do that. The lurching bit. It seems to imply that the driver was involved--and hurriedly needs to depart--or that he needs to stay on schedule. Nothing to see here, people, moving along now. The tram pulled forward and people pressed against the glass to get a look.

We looked. Of COURSE WE DID. You will too, when you get the chance (and you will, unless you live in a mountain cabin and don't leave it). It was in fact a dead man. Or maybe a dying man. I'm not a doctor, but an immobile body in the street with a meter-long blood smear leading up to his head could elicit a layman's prognosis. Or maybe it was the people standing around, not helping. Must've given up. Nobody helping. Right? Nobody's that apathetic...

We talked about the dead man later on. Or rather, she did. She had her theories about life and death. She bought a crystal rock thingie at a Christmas stand outside of an old Gothic church in Prague 2 (where all the saints live). She wondered if all of the horror films we had watched that weekend had something to do with our witnessing the vehicular manslaughter (not her words). I mentioned something about coincidence.

People have a lot to think about. I don't put too much of my thoughts into life and death. I just try to live. Dying is easy. Just step out in front of a driver in Prague on a Saturday night.

The Sand Monkeys

2006-09-26T01:29:00.000+02:00

Is anyone else getting sick and tired of the whiny, easily offended Muslim community? They say they are a religion of peace. They say they are a religion of tolerance. Yes, coming from a religious sect which regularly puts prices on writers' heads and has followers who embrace terror as a fashion statement--I'll believe them, sure...

Of course they regularly distance themselves from The Terrorists by saying 'We do not believe in terrorism. We are a religion of peace.' That's about as logical as the Bush Monkey saying 'We are fighting terror in (insert any country) because they have WMDs!' You don't support terrorism? Fine, bring us the heads of your religious idiot lapdogs who do. Then we'll believe you.

There was the Danish newspaper's Mohammed cartoon debacle, which under ordinary circumstances in most free countries, would be considered in poor taste at best. Not to the peaceful followers of Islam, nossir. They got their freak on and smashed and bashed and trashed as only rabid monkeys with wild eyes and foam-flecked beards can do.

Then there was the Pope quote, which was 'I guess' an attempt to start the Crusades all over again, cuz WTF was His Eminence thinking when he DARED to speak OUT against the PEACEFUL and sensitive Islamic people and their wacky prophet? He must've subscribed to the Madonna Controversy-as-sales-pitch formula of success.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5346480.stm

And there's the car dealership which declared 'Jihad sales incentives' and 'Fatwa Fridays' with free rubber swords for the kids.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-24-dealership-ad_x.htm

Me? I'm all for free rubber swords for the kids. Keeps em off the crack, I say.

What is the purpose of this rant, you may ask? Well, nobody reads the bleedin thing except a few friends and family members. But what I hope is this:

I want a fatwa. A Jihad on my head. Or whichever is grammatically correct, because I would HATE to be wearing a 'fatwa' on my head when a jihad is more sensible, practically, politically and grammatically correct.

I would like to have some genuine death threats by genuine sand monkeys (oh, by the way, I call all religious people 'monkeys' with sincere hopes that I'm not offending actual monkeys. Get a life and a brain, you zealots. 'Sand monkey' only refers to a religious monkey of sandy origins. Not any particular race. I'm a relgion hater, not a bigot, thankyuhverymuch).

What I'll do is this: any sincere, reasonable death threats by distinguished zealots of a sand monkey religion will get a map to my house. No, really. I'm just curious how many of them are out there. If they were to find this blog by some freaky coincidence and actually want me dead, I'll draw them a friggin map.

Why would someone call the wrath of the Sand Monkey upon their heads, you ask? Well, in a world where Popes and car salesmen get on their knees to apologize to a bunch of irrational, stupid followers of an archaic religion--I'll opt out in a heartbeat.

Don't worry. I believe in the Great Space Monkey who put us all here. I don't have any proof, but His divine opposable thumbs definitely plunked us all down here millenia ago. He doesn't mind that I misuse the word 'monkey' to describe the baddies with bombs and attitude. He knows in his Simian wisdom that I am trying to produce a bit of satire in the sandbox.

Not to mention, the Book of Monkey promises that any follower who is cut down by another monkey, whether they be from sand, mountain or snow, gets just a buttload of monkey virgins in the afterjungle. No, REALLY.

Return of the Mighty Tiki Bar

2006-08-07T02:44:00.000+02:00

We inhabitants of the Prague urban jungle unite in our primitive island getaway. We leave behind crowded trams, boring job commutes and the rigamarole (hey, even a city as beautiful as Prague eventually presents some form of rigamarole for its denizens).

We jump onto the comfy sofa in the Taky Tiki Cocktail Bar in Prague and dive into tropical seas of juicy, boozy cocktails aimed at taking the modern Urbanite on a journey to the lost islands of a simpler time. Drinks like the famous Mai Tai, Voodoo Punch and Scorpions light our way into the primordial mist. We see a volcano up ahead. Next stop: the Tiki Zone.

Dead Commies

2006-06-13T23:06:00.000+02:00

I finally got to go inside the infamous Vitkov monument to dead commies and soldiers/proletariat mausoleum. The giant block of concrete communist ugly sits high atop a prominent hill in Zizkov, Prague, and is directly behind the largest equestrian statue in the known universe. The horse and rider statue is so large in fact, that standing beneath it, you can only crane your neck and see horse naughty bits and hooves. It's actually quite frightening. Children cry and old ladies swoon.

The monument is rarely open to the public. This is because a) the hike up the hill can kill a bull moose and b) nobody really wants to see a bunch of marble memorials to dead bolsheviks and their misled leaders. Well, I do, but I doubt they keep it dusted solely for me and a few other freaks.

The occasion was an art installation as part of a larger whole; a citywide exhibition which covered several galleries in Prague. Having seen one of the other gallery's exhibition of 'art' (an exhibition of gay/lesbian art which was mainly a collection of dick photos), I decided to see what was on display in the now-open Museum of the Dead Commies.

The lighting was dim and the hall was vast. The whole monument was filled with rumbling vibrations, moans and distorted wails. I thought to myself 'what is WITH these Europeans and their sex obsessions?' I later found out that the entire exhibition was sound. Every corridor, stairwell and marble-encrusted balcony was jammed with speakers. As it happens, the sounds were industrial and mechanical in nature, not as 'organic' as I had first assumed. Or at least that's what the artists' statements read.

It was explained to me that the sound volumes of the various speakers were closely monitored to keep the monument from being damaged. Apparently, one artist's soundscape was rattling the concrete and had to be muted down considerably.

As I walked through the cavernous building, I observed a dog jumping playfully from coffin to coffin and a kissing couple off in a corner. I thought the hundreds of deceased socialists nearby would no doubt be spinning in their graves--if in fact they were actually in them. Apparently there was a screw-up in the embalming. What was supposed to yield the equivalent of the stuffed Lenin in Moscow actually fell short of the intended effect. Whatever poor bastards were in there shriveled and crumbled in mere weeks. So they cremated the shriveled mummies and took the bags of ashes elsewhere.

So after a little art and and too much history, I bade the dead commies farewell. I'm actually surprised the Czechs didn't dynamite the whole structure after the fall of Communism.

DANCE, monkey.....DANCE

2006-05-23T16:16:00.000+02:00

We interrupt this photo blog (again) for more nonsense emailed to us from cyberspace in greasy, sweating, unmarked, plainly-wrapped parcels.

This one involves some frivolous fun under the guise of anthropological education. I like the video. You will too, unless you are a religious nut. Then you've got worse problems than an offensive video on your hands.

Why do I post this? Because I love monkeys. And I love humans slightly more.

Bon apetit....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15KgyXBX24

A tribute to the public house

2006-04-22T16:55:00.000+02:00

The English pub has fascinated me ever since I saw the two lost American backpackers in "An American Werewolf in London" stroll off the foggy moors into the village pub named 'The Slaughtered Lamb.' They remarked something like 'Hmm, now there's an inviting name for a pub.' The pub denizens were sipping ales and throwing darts and telling jokes; a warm fire burned in the background. There was no explanation for the inexplicably morbid name for the pub.

Imagine my joy, 20 years after seeing that film, I'm sipping a pint of real ale in a countryside pub in the West Midlands called 'Headless Woman.' I can't describe the feeling of relaxation and general satisfaction with life that I feel when I'm in a village pub in the countryside of any country in Europe. My first pint of the famous real ale was on this recent trip to England. I'd been to London several times before, but the metropolis is dominated by lagers, stouts and ciders.

'Real ales' on the other hand, enjoy a cult following and even have several advocacy groups espousing the virtues of the liquid (not the least of which are purity and health).

But like any scientific mind, I needed proof, samples and control groups. So, with the help of the locals, I embarked upon a Real Ale Pub Tour of the West Midlands area, which included Staffordshire, Derbyshire and several other 'shires' that I can't quite remember. The tour lasted several days, naturally, since this region is known for hundreds of independently brewed ales and pubs serving them. And the human body has limits.

One of Walsall's regional ales is called 'Banks's', an ale which comes in Mild and Regular versions. I guess the mild is for wimps, but in the interest of scientific study, I had a few.

A sturdy brick public house named 'Donnelly's' caught my eye. There's a photo of it in my previous blog about the joys of rainsoaked bricks. It was no 'Slaughtered Lamb', but it would suffice to begin my real ale studies.

It was completely empty inside except for the barman and his friend, who were busy playing some game in the corner. I can't remember what game because I was transfixed by the row of taps at the bar. Prague pubs usually have only one or two beers on offer. Choice is good. Somebody tell these poor commie Czech slobs I live among, please?

So I had my first pints of real ale by myself, while I was waiting for the rain to stop. Later that week I would have the pleasure of being chauffered by a seasoned real ale pub crawler.

Ye Olde Publick House, aka the pub, has a rich history, including several battles with rival booze such as gin and whisky. Don't just click the pub link above to learn about beer history, nossir. Learn the cockney rhyming slang for 'pub' as well (including, 'boozer', 'battle cruiser', 'nuclear sub' and 'rub-a-dub-dub').

I was well impressed that each public house was, well, an actual house. While any Limeys reading this might say 'Yeah, DUH!', I must confess that most pubs I'd been to before my West Midlands trip were just part of a row of buildings. But these recently-visited pubs were actually stand-alone two-storey brick houses, in most cases not connected to any other building--especially in the villages. This adds to the overall warming effect of the pub.

<------ THE BLOGGER's FIRST PINT O' REAL ALE

On my last day in England, the father of the couple I was staying with took me on a very memorable real ale tour. This included the obligatory fish and chips at one cozy roadside pub. The sheer size of the breaded cod served at one pub blew me away. It was bigger than the man's head.

I became quite addicted to the English chips, which are like American french fries on steroids. Imagine twice the size, twice the flavor, twice the grease and all the joy.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM -

mmmmmmmmmmm.

CHIPS.

I'm salivating on my keyboard just THINKING about them. I'm not ashamed to say that I had chips each of the 8 days I was in England. One day I even had them twice.

Like a ton of bricks

2006-04-03T23:35:00.000+02:00

In addition to photographing people, I like taking photos of old buildings. I've tried to take full photographic advantage of my location in central Europe by photographing its immense collection of stone and brick buildings. While I could usually be seen strolling through village castles and ruins snapping away, recently I discovered the brilliant textures and myriad shades of rusty reds in the buildings in the West Midlands region of England.

I was in the Birmingham area for wedding photography, so I decided to explore the relatively undiscovered town of Walsall and its environs. I have never seen so many brick buildings in one place in my life. 95% of all buildings in this region are made of brick. Even the new malls and shops are made of brick (though not as nice to photograph as the old weathered British brick buildings).

Here are some examples and a few comments:

DAY ONE: WALSALL, WEST MIDLANDS, ENGLAND

A tricky thing about photographing England is the weather. It is often gray and dreary year-round. Even if the sky is an ugly gray, you can stick a tree in the composition as I did in the 1st photo. I had to expose for the bricks to get that rich red. In doing so the sky went almost pure white. The next two pics I took just after a rain storm. I had ducked into the Highgate Ales pub (2nd pic) to get out of the rain and have a pint (I love my job!). When a few rays of sun peeked out after the cloudburst, I set out once again to capture the now rainsoaked bricks. The hues and textures were beautiful.

I'm really amazed that one region can be so brick crazy. I guess it all boils down to what your resources are and how you utilize them. Living in Prague, I see almost no brick buildings. There is a tendency in Prague for buildings to be made of stone (the oldest ones), or with brick covered with plaster and paint. The few bare brick buildings in the Czech lands are dull gray and dusty red, whereas West Midlands brick buildings seem to have quite a variety of shades of red. Maybe it's the clay used, I don't know. But it certainly grabbed my attention on my first day in Walsall.

The last photo is a modern structure. Yes, you guessed it: we now have the origin of the expression 'built like a brick shithouse.'

NEXT BLOG: A bacchanalian soiree of real ales and fish and chips

Gentrification aka 'yuppiescumification'

2006-02-21T21:10:00.000+01:00

You take an ordinary, run-down historic part of any city in the civilized world. It contains a mix of all types of people of all colors and creeds. Often there are crackhouses in the more ragged of the neighborhoods. Students, artists and punks hang out in cafes, clubs and tatoo parlors.

Next, you plunk down a couple of Starbuck's coffee houses, a few juice bars, and a mall. You add a couple of trendy upscale bars, the type with cigar smoking rooms and wine cellars. You build a few parking garages to shield the Beamers and Lexii from the crackheads and punks.

Yuppies start moving in to what they think is a 'cute' and 'charming' neighborhood. The crackhouses get fixed up. The cafes start serving $4.00 coffees with 8 ingredients. The clubs start playing annoying 80s music. The tatoo parlors start offering 'tribal' and 'mystical' theme tatoos for tons of money. Then the mother of all insults: instant religion for the soulless: former hip bars in dingy warehouses are replaced by yoga and shiatsu courses, aromatherapy workshops, inner scream therapy and all that other new age bullshit.

Rents soar. The artists, students and punks move to a poorer area of town. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I've had to watch this happen to neighborhoods in Sacramento, San Francisco, London, Dublin, Berlin and Prague (click Prague and scroll down to see pix of what the bastards are doing to my beloved Praha. I was going to link to Dublin as well but I don't wanna start cryin like a wee babe at the yuppiescumification of me dear, dirty Dublin). In most cases I had to move to a poorer area because of the Yuppie Scourge. Die yuppie scum, die.

Last weekend I was strolling around the Neustadt (newtown) area of Dresden. Now if any town is in need of urban renewal, Dresden would qualify. Almost completely destroyed in WWII by bombs, most of the ragged city center was deserted on my several visits. The altstadt (old town) has been under reconstruction for years. The result? Not a memorial or an cultural center. Not an attempt to rebuild some of what was lost. Instead, a massive, modern shopping center about 6 blocks long. As I weaved through the steel and glass blight, I finally made my way to Neustadt. I was pleasantly surprised. It reminded me of some of the bits and pieces of my favorite city neighborhoods before they were eclipsed by the Yuppie Hordes.

Bright murals on 4 story buildings overlooked sunny courtyards with ivy-covered walls. Art galleries and music clubs and pubs and restaurants dotted the colorful streets. Punk rockers with dogs hung out in parking lots drinking and smoking. Bicycles carried colorful people up and down the narrow streets. Pedestrians outnumbered cars 10 to 1. It felt great.

But already you could see the first signs of the Yuppie Plague: a few trendy cafes with overpriced drinks were popping up here and there as I walked through the area. One had been neatly carved into a large brick building. It's huge glass windows allowed passersby to view what kind of 'hip' people might be sipping cappuccinos within. It had neon and chrome and people with designer clothes. Somebody had spraypainted 'yuppy inseid' on the outside wall. An accurate statement in spite of the spelling.

In one of the less yuppified cafes I sat and had my coffee. It afforded me a good corner view. I like to watch people and try to guess which people live in the neighborhood and which come to gawk. I saw a wide assortment of people in various modes of dress. But one man stood out: a middle-aged German man, very drunk for the time of day (noon), stood wobbling on the opposite corner. He looked perturbed. He was doing the 'drunken mumble' at the air, the walls, the cars. Then something dawned on me: he wasn't at home in this neighborhood. He shouted at the Mercedes which rolled by. He stared at the cafes with the trendy occupants and scowled. Maybe he was looking for a bierhaus or a friendly place that doesn't serve coffee with 8 ingredients. I thought he may have been a victim of the gentrification which was taking place around me. Maybe he used to live in one of those hip artist squat flats in the 70s and 80s. Maybe he got to watch as rents went up and his favorite bars got turned into trendy cafes and French restaurants (which, by the way, was odd. Not a single German restaurant for about 5 miles in any direction. Restaurants from every other country on earth, but no German food. The nice German girl at the Subway sandwich joint answered my query for German food: 'You're looking for good German food? Is that a JOKE? Another person replied 'Bavaria. Maybe Munich.')

While I was simply trying to take in a bit of another culture over a weekend out of Prague, I found no sign of anything uniquely German or Dresdener. What I did see was the last vestige of a once great city being turned into one giant strip mall with an adjacent yuppie Disneyland. They had to endure more bomb tonnage (and bombing deaths) than any other city in the war (more than 250,000 dead, double the casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined). Dresden WWII survivor Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. based 'Slaughterhouse 5' on the Dresden bombing.

Dresden was called the 'Florence of the North' before it was destroyed by bombs. Next the Communists left their concrete, utilitarian mark on it. Now the Yuppie Scourge is leaving its soulless stamp on it. What was once a thriving center of culture in the heart of Europe is being slowly reduced to just another vacuous temple to consumerism and fake material values.

I suppose I rant because I have to watch myself move farther and farther away from the best parts of Prague. I've lived in some very cool neighborhoods in Prague. They are now the kind of neighborhoods you have to be a stockbroker to afford to live in (rents in Prague are now pushing $1000 a month in some areas. Gimme a friggin break already). Friends ask me what hideous Prague suburb I live in now and how far away is it from the Center of Prague. 'I'm so far away, I'm almost in Germany' I answer.

I don't have any neat way to end this story. Because the story has no end. It continues in an Urban neighborhood near you.

SACRAMENTO REPRESENT! (YO)

2006-02-05T18:05:00.000+01:00

I was just watching an old episode of the Sopranos on the pc on a lazy Sunday afternoon. They played a Cake song ("Frank Sinatra") over the end credits as one of the mob guys scrambled around doing his mob stuff.

The young mob guy was slick in his suit and tie as he was shuffling toward his Lexus with an armful of newspapers about the latest mob hits. And in the background they were playing the band from Sacramento, those wacky Cake kids.

Yeah, we have nothing much to write home about, we Sacramentans. But there was a chain of memories associated with the suit and tie and the music. Please indulge me for a few minutes.

Last month I was crooning in a karaoke lounge lizard session in some swanky new Vinohrady cafe. Vinohrady is the Prague neighborhood where all the 'hip, monied' foreign expats live. By 'Vinohrady expat', I mean those kids who came to Prague but really never left home. They've got flats with satellites for fuck's sake. And dishwashers. And clothes dryers. And maids. The poor Czech families next door to them still hang their undies on the balcony to dry.

So, there I was, crooning away like, bada bing (pardon my Sopranoisms, I am very impressionable coming from a nowhere town). I saw a lot of my favorite local karaoke personalities there, including some I hadn't seen for a while. This one kid from the Zizkov neighborhood anarchy bar (now Zizkov, THERE'S a friggin neighborhood...) showed up and I didn't recognize him. He was minus the mohawk. He was minus the Elvis sideburns. But what really freaked me out was the suit and tie. I grabbed him and yelled 'BEGONE, BEELZEBUB! YUPPIE FROM HELL!' or some such drunken nonsense. 'What's with the TIE?'

He gave me the universal symbol for cunnilingus, the V finger with the vibrating tongue. I'm not sure if he was calling me a pussy, or whether the reason for the suit and tie was 'the pussy.' Who understands these young people?

Later he belted out a Cake song on that karaoke bar stage. I took him aside and told him I forgave him for his yuppie sins and transgressions, suit and tie and funny finger gestures and alleged business handshakes. I said 'Cake, brother!' He looked confused. I said 'Sacramento, REPRESENT!' and beat on my chest with a follow through salute. He still looked confused. Christ, these young kids these days. All that internet and no street cred.

Later on the owner of a prominent local English language website came up to talk to me. I know the guy. We had a few words about my photography business. He suggested that I might wear a suit and tie to let people know that I take my business seriously. I was shocked. I was also drunk and I believe I laughed and told him what he could do with his suggestion. I'm not very deft with tongue and fingers or I would have provided the 'ex punk in suit' answer.

If anyone hires me simply because of how I dress, I QUIT. If they can't see my photos, I mean, see something in there worth talking to me about, then they should hire the man in the monkey suit, the man with the corporate leash, the man with the fake smile.

I didn't come all the way to Prague to chug corporate cock for loose change.

Pardon my French, but photography is a passionate subject with me. My photography is a huge part of my life. So is living in a place where you can make your own life anew without all of the 'western' stereotypes about doing business. A place where people show up to work in offices unshaven, wearing track suits and sandals. A place where you can speak your mind without fear of being nailed to the wall by the p.c. speech police. Or the corporate fashion feds.

Well, it's either that or I watch way too much 'Sopranos' on a Sunday afternoon.

Czech Dream or Nightmare?

2006-01-30T12:55:00.000+01:00

I'm a documentary film nut. I'll line up in freezing cold at the most obscure film festivals just to see a film about unemployed Latvians drinking vodka and staring out the window. Okay, I exaggerate, there are no long lines for most documentaries. With the exception of the 'new documentarians', i.e. Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock--who point their critical fingers at a very large and easy target--most documentary filmmakers are unheard of.

I came across a gem of a film, "Cesky Sen" (The Czech Dream) while here in Prague. It was part hype, part prank and part social commentary. Two Czech film academy students created a completely artificial hypermarket (a really huge supermarket) in a field. It was just a facade wrapped in rainbow colors. The filmmakers created the thing from scratch: ad campaigns, slogans, logos, theme music, everything. They plastered Prague with the little 'Czech Dream' logo and flooded the media with hype--just to see if people would show up in droves at the opening of the made-up market.

As a former media student and a longtime resident of the Czech Republic, I have a strong interest in the effects of the megalithic media machine on former communist countries. Imagine a country before 1989 wherein 'consumer hype' consisted of randomly joining a long line of people outside of a market in hopes that they 'just might' have tropical fruit. Like an orange or a banana. Now imagine the same country today, crazed by consumerism, wherein people knock down barricades to get to the newly built mall. Where a new 'hypermarket' (something I've never seen in America)--a supermarket the size of a football stadium--has opened every year for 7 years straight. And the people can't get enough. I live in the Prague suburbs near one of the largest supermarkets in Europe, open 24/7. It scares the Bejesus outta me, and I come from a consumer country.

This film explores one of my favorite themes: the effect of mass media on the average person. As an American, I have probably been exposed to more advertising images, jingles, commercials and sales pitches than most. I qualify as one of the most manipulated media guinea pigs in the world. As we grew and became more 'discriminating', the ads became more clever. Modern marketing is 90% psychology and 10% product. I believe that the reason market campaigns work is that they convince us to take something out of a 'want' category and place it into a 'need' category. They get into our brains and move the synapses and gray jelly around a bit. I felt this effect so strongly that I boycotted all commercial media for several years. No television, no radio, no newspapers. It felt great. Maybe that's the reason people go camping: to get away from the mass brainwash.

So imagine my interest when somebody decided to take a country relatively new to the whole mass marketing concept and bombard them with a fake ad campaign. Just to see the reaction. Naturally, opinions on the film were divided: many people hated the idea of people being duped on such a massive scale. Others, like me, saw it as chance to witness the effects of the advertising media from a different angle. It's about empty promises delivered in rainbow wrapping. I mean, you need a shirt, but does it absolutely need a designer label?

The film 'Cesky Sen' (Czech Dream) explores and explains the themes of advertising and consumerism in a post Communist country brilliantly. And it was a couple of Czech film students who pulled it off. Coincidentally, the field in which the filmmakers erected their Potemkin village - Letnany exhibition grounds - is a few hundred meters from where I live. Just about the length of the real Tesco hypermarket that was built around the corner.

Prague is breeding...BOLSHEVIKS

2006-01-13T22:45:00.000+01:00

The new photo bolsheviks are coming to Prague. They've got all the latest gear. They've got the shmooze they learned in LA or NY or some other godforsakenly fake planet. They come here--like many other fakers before them--to sniff the Eastern European air, drink the beer, start a business. They've tried everything from shooting fashion photography to selling Russian relics on ebay. They've invested in the dotcoms, won some, lost some, came to Prague to start again. But now they're crowding in on my turf.

HOW YOU CAN SPOT A PHOTO BOLSHEVIK

1) The guy who's tried 25 jobs in Prague suddenly buys a digital camera and suddenly he's a 'photographer.' This works fine for scamming impresionable art babes out of their clothes (well, so the theory goes, it's never worked for me, ehem...), but please don't tell me you plan to start a business you know nothing about. Not to mention that you should probably know how to take a picture.

2) They've got slick websites. All content, very few photos. Flash and sound and all that jazz will fool some folks from LA or NY or....you get the picture.

3) A guy who advertises one minute as 'the hottest fashion photographer to snort coke with the skinny Milan models' one day--and the next day--he's a wedding photographer.

WHERE ARE YOU GOING WITH ALL OF THIS, PRAGUELODYTE?

Glad you asked. ;)

Well, y'see, it's like this: I'm the real deal. I was taking photos professionally for at least 5 years before I set up my photo business here. Now I've been providing high quality, natural documentary style wedding photography in Prague for over 3 years. I was the first one to do it here. Hell, I never even heard of the phrase 'documentary wedding photography' before I started doing it here. Now there are at least 5 other 'photographers' in Prague advertising this very service. Humph.

A business-minded friend of mine suggested to me the obvious: that any business in a normal capitalist environment will spawn competition. The market will grow and the weak ones will fall by the wayside. Okay, fair enough. But enough of the snake oil salesmen already, alright? I had to endure years of wannabe American 'Prague writers' who were perpetually 'working on The Novel.' Now the photography stampede.

My only concern with modern marketing is that it's main purpose isn't to provide high quality at reasonable prices (which is what I do), but it exists to confuse and manipulate the consumer. There are many people that will fall for a slick website or a clever tagline. But please look at the photos.

I guess what I'm saying is this: I know I don't have a super slick website (I did it myself and I'm not a web geek, sue me). I don't like to toot my own horn. Nor do I have a staff of underlings and capital to burn on target ad campaigns.

I'm a nice guy with a camera who happens to be a professional photographer. I guess I need to get lessons in marketing, self promotion, all that jazz. If not, they say nice guys finish last. I'm going to trust in my images to sell me, not a dotcom or a slick ad campaign. I may be nice, but I don't intend to finish last.

Fun You Can Have with Drunks in Prague on New Year’s Eve

2006-01-06T01:35:00.000+01:00

I decided to avoid the usual Prague New Year’s Eve madness and opt instead for a quiet party in one of those renovated attic flats in Mala Strana. In previous years I ran the gauntlet of fire and booze on the Charles Bridge and in the Old Town Square. Bottle rockets were fired horizontally at people just to see them duck. M80s were thrown between wobbly feet to instigate an impromptu jig on glass-riddled cobblestones. Beer and champagne bottles smashed all around. If there was any booze left in the shattering bottles it could either put out the flaming trousers or if strong enough—fuel the flames.

I used to revel in this weird festival of fire in Prague—if only to remind me that my home country does not allow either drinking in public or fireworks. What a boring fucking country. But we have guns, so I guess it balances out somewhere...

Enough writing and on with the pics. Self explanatory, really: people having fun in an old attic flat in Mala Strana.

And for anyone interested in technical photo details: to get the 'swirling blur of flame and booze' portraits, I simply set the camera dial on my Nikon D70 to 'drunk portrait', which is an icon with a leaning person and a bottle.

Just kidding. I set the exposure to the ambient light of the room
(combo of long exposure plus iso of about 800), then set the flash to ttl mode (or flash auto fill) -- et voila

Prague photography in winter

2005-12-18T23:27:00.000+01:00

That's me on the left taking pictures in Mala Strana, Prague. I was at the John Lennon wall again today as I strolled through the old city quarter taking portraits of a local businessman. I guess you could cite my 'hippy roots' as the reason I stopped to snap the multi-colored global wall message yet again. Or maybe it was my recent post about the 25th anniversary of Mr. Lennon's death. Since that particular wall seems to be in a state of constant flux, it seems worthy of snappage.

This particular photo (breathe sighs of relief, those who are wondering when I would get off the barstool stories and back to photo stuff, but hey, Prague does that to ya) was on a bright sunny winter morning. Since that particular weather almost never happens in December in Prague, I thought I'd play with the shadows a little. A shadowy photographer in silhouette taking a picture of a graffiti wall, a Prague lamp shadow, and a self-portrait. Perfect. Yes, I'll admit at this point that I am mainly amusing myself. I will admit a love for both Prague lamps, lampposts and all things 'street light' in the old quarters. I also love shooting a good graffiti blast--as I've been doing for years in many cities. It's not just the color and the vibrance, it's also the message and style of each piece. Let's just say I've run into my fair share of professional spray can artistes in my day.

Why am I in silhouette in the above photo, you ask? Well, some people are just better off behind the camera. I've seen a few shots people have taken of me in 'action' at Prague weddings and such. I'm behind the lens, bent or crouched or otherwise resembling Quasimodo with a pained look on his face as he focuses his lens on the people in the pretty medieval city. Basically I look like I'm either giving birth or taking a dump, such is the intensity of The Look. Therefore I stay behind the lens where God/Buddha/Allah meant me to be. But just to satisfy the crowd, the lump on the back of my shadow is my backpack, not the Quasimodo hump. Otherwise I look exactly like Tom Cruise, no, really--it's really uncanny.

Gotta be Mars or stars or somethin'

2005-12-13T03:56:00.000+01:00

So I just got back from my local herna* bar and they done did it to me again: drunk. I wasn't thinking I would write another bar piece at the time. Especially since I am not a writer. I'm a photographer, but I've got this weird flirtation with writing. I just want people to know that I'm not another one of those 'American writers in Prague' you've heard about. To be a writer in Prague these days is about as cliche as the waiter/actor in L.A. So I hereby promise you that I'm just recording minor events in Prague as would anyone. So, don't think of me as a writer. I'm not. I've shed my 'Prague writer' skin long ago. So, onto the journal already in progress...

...one of those misty Prague winter nights that could quite easily turn into snow before morning. Not too cold. Definitely not. Nossir. I wore my old crappy polyester raincoat--not to shield me from the mist, but only in assurance that the fucker wouldn't be stolen at the local dive bar. Have I told you lately? They like to steal in the Czech Republic. It's like a national sport. That and hockey. So I stepped into the all night game bar to have a couple of beers.

I sat down after waving to the locals who recognized me. It was Randy Middle-aged Woman Night. They all wanted to dance with me. Nobody wants to dance with me elsewhere. This is just to give a clue as to their intoxication level. There was an aggressive vibe in the air as one woman sunk her claws into my arm in a vain attempt to get me onto the dance floor. Since glasses were breaking on tables every few minutes, you could see that there was in fact no dance floor. Just a cigarette-butt-and-pistachio-shell floor. But they worked it.

I moved to the bar at the request of the barmaid. She also seems to like me. I don't want to give the impression that I'm the kind of guy that women like. Because they don't. Period. That's okay, I went there to drink a few.

Soon the dancing became a fight between two barflies: a woman and a man. The man was faring badly. The woman seemed to have the upper hand. It reminded me briefly of the Bukowski film 'Barfly.' I had to call the barmaid from the back hallway, where she was opening the backdoor cage in flirtatious swings to let in an obviously drunk boyfriend. She let the drunken ox in and went to take care of the fight.

The woman got tired of trying to claw out the man's eyes after a pep talk from the barmaid. The man sat in the corner holding his eyes. He was wearing sunglasses before. Now I saw why: he had black eyes and bandages. Apparently he had done this dance before. Without breaking stride she offered me another beer. I said 'why not? this is better than television.' It was a lead balloon joke. I apologized. Then I asked her if fighting was normal there. She assured me it was not. The Calfornia hippy inside me said 'oh, must be some sky shit, like Mars busting out of the house of Aquarius.' I was trying to make up for the lead balloon joke. Then I told her about last night, where some crazy old man tried to start a fight with me. He had plopped down next to me in a tight-squeeze night bus and kept pushing against me, adding insults in both Czech and English. I am a confirmed touch freak. I've almost hit friends or family who have tried to wake me. I wanted to smash the bus aggressor into the opposite wall of the bus. I resisted my urge and grit my teeth and rode it out.

I'm tempted to think that I somehow brought the aggro vibe into both the bus and that night bar. Soon after I had entered bus and bar, shit started. And this is ordinarily a very peaceful country. Either that or Mars is slamming up against the House of Aquarius, or some such hippy dippy nonsense.

#9 Dream

2005-12-08T21:50:00.000+01:00

I was reminded of the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death in an unlikely place: my local suburban Prague pub. The 'Ojai Music Pub' is a watering hole for disenfranchised young Czechs who sport dreadlocks and mohawks in equal proportions. Normally the music is deafening. Tonight I strolled in and heard Beatles music. I spent more than usual tonight.

My first memories of the Beatles were songs from the Abbey Road album. I have hazy memories of 'Come Together' and 'Here Comes the Sun' mixed with strange images of totem poles in parking lots in Sacramento, CA, my birthplace. I think those may have been wood sculptures outside of a pediatrician's office. I must have been 3 or 4 years old. My earliest childhood memories are comprised of Beatles music and folksy pre-corporate art.

The Ojai is bedecked with totem poles and psychadelic arts and crafts reminiscent of something Czechs know nothing about yet seem strangely attracted to: the American Indian culture. In a post-Communist country where the Marlboro cowboy carries a Coke to the average Czech, the mohawk and dreadlock crowd opts to play the indian instead of the cowboy. At least that's my theory. I've studied the Ojai environment under careful chemical analysis (1, 2, or 5 beers).

The John Lennon wall in Prague is a spraycan testimony to the power of a cultural icon and how it endures globally. I remember the wall when I first arrived in Prague in 1997: a huge spraycan portrait of Lennon was surrounded by multicolored peace signs; a sight which dominated the lonely street in this centuries old quarter of Old Prague. Years later, the original plaster from the old wall seems to have crumbled from the weight of the paint layers. The first portrait of Lennon is no longer there. Instead, world travelers have left their collective marks on the wall with messages of peace, love and understanding in many languages.

Imagine.

Photography in Prague

2005-11-15T00:20:00.000+01:00

Okay, enough about horsemeat, Elvis impersonation and alien abductions. No, waitaminit, that last one wasn't mine...

I've recently been thinking about the types of photography I do to make a living vs. what I do for 'art' or 'personal satisfaction.' My main income is derived through wedding photography, portraits and photojournalism in Prague and Central Europe. I also like to troll through the countryside snapping pics of castles and castle ruins. That would qualify as the non-paid part of my photography. But I also get personal satisfaction out of every picture I take.

For the longest time I had this notion that I had to separate the 'commercial' from the 'artistic.' I suppose this idea was instilled in me early in life; perhaps it was my upbringing in middle class America, where everybody hates their work and seeks personal fulfillment through either hobbies or chemical substances. I maintained that as a photographer I would never 'sell out', 'go commercial' or some other such crazy notion.

But I really love photography. All of it. Every job, every situation, every type of work that has come my way. And photography has taken me in the strangest directions. Last weekend I was caught up in the middle of one of those British stag group parties in Prague--aka 'the Big Prague Piss Up.' I was hired to document the occasion of a stag party. I was thinking to myself how I could make something artistic out of something so, well, blatantly hedonistic. This past week I have also been simultaneously working on a document of a Czech-American family, their roots, ancestral homes, etc. On Saturday I was taking portraits of senior citizens sipping coffee surrounded by antique furniture. On Saturday night I was taking pictures of a stag hanging out of the top of a stretch limousine with an inflatable sheep in one hand and a champagne bottle in the other. Quite a contrast.

I'd like to post some of the photos I've been taking to illustrate, but the hungover and apologetic stags told me not to do so, in no uncertain terms. I suppose they have bosses, wives or girlfriends who might frown upon the staggering stags and their hedonistic persuits. In future blogs (between slices of Prague life and general ramblings) I'll post some of my documentary photos (including the Czech family portraits). Maybe I'll even risk putting up a stag photo or two. I could put those black bars over the eyes of the inflatable sheep to protect the innocent...

Good GOD. I ate HORSE MEAT!

2005-11-10T23:06:00.000+01:00

Look, it was an honest mistake. I assure you I am in SHOCK. Who would have thought that modern Europeans would put HORSE MEAT IN THEIR FREAKING SAUSAGES?

I should know better. It's not their fault. I mean, I spent 10 years as a vegetarian, scrutinizing labels to make sure no piece of flesh would accidentally slide down my gullet. So why didn't I notice before that the package of smoked sausage contained MR. ED?

I moved to Prague years ago and maintained my vegetarian diet for a couple of years. Then I started feeling weak all the time. This is a meat eating country. I was living on fried cheese. I became a meat eater. I had to. First it was chicken. Then ham. Then all other pork items.

The Czechs eat a helluva lot of pork washed down with beer. In fact, I ordered something called a 'stuffed pork pocket' at a restaurant the other day. It was a grilled pork steak stuffed with ham, bacon and cheese. They REALLY like the pork here, okay?

But what gives? I was comparing prices on smoked sausages at the market, wondering why the ones I had bought a few times before were so much cheaper than the ones I was contemplating buying. So I compared the two side by side. One was about 3 bucks for two. The other pair, which I had bought and consumed several times, was only a buck and a half for two. I read the labels: THE CHEAPER ONES CONTAINED HORSE MEAT.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/29219

There it was below the harmless 'veprove maso' (pork meat), a few rows down below the fillers and additives: 'konske maso'. Kone is horse. Maso is meat. Do the math.

And I was wondering why I was getting the 'trots' at least once a week in the past months.

http://www.eurosurveillance.org/em/v03n08/0308-223.asp

A hunka burnin' karaoke love

2005-11-05T01:40:00.000+01:00

Okay, I'll fess up: I'm an Elvis Impersonator.

This isn't something I'm ashamed of. It's not a 12 step program ala 'Hi. My name is Craig. I dress up as Elvis.' Nothing of the sort. I just didn't want to scare you.

The fact is, I'm missing karaoke right about now. Normally on Friday nights around midnight I'd be getting my Elvis freak on. But the clubs the kj and myself normally play are on hiatus, on vacation, or just overtaken by those Limey hooligans I mentioned earlier in my blog. I host karaoke with my kj friend and partner in karaoke krime, Killer Karaoke Ken, the KJ with the AK, the Master of Disaster, etc, etc. I dress as Elvis. He dresses as a gas station attendant. Together we rock the karaoke universe as it is known in Prague, Czech Republic. I am known by the karaoke alias 'Melvis.'

It all started in 1994 as a gas, a goof, a bit o' the old fun in a London bar. Why not? I was in kollege and krazy, my first trip abroad, and most of the kids in the bar were singing with me. I sang Frank. I sang other things. But I didn't yet sing The Elvis. Karaoke is a long and winding road.

Years and yards of custom tailored polyester white jumpsuit later, I kroon on the karaoke stage in Prague clubs. Sometimes they cheer for me. Other times they call me names (well, they're mostly those Limey piss up hooligans, whaddaya want from inbred Island Monkeys?). But I get into the jumpsuit and I get caught in a trap, I can't walk out, because I love karaoke, baby. Sometimes middle aged couples who actually remember The King get up and dance. Sometimes the younguns get up and shake their booties to the radical swing of my Melvic region. I've even been on stage twice at the Czech karaoke championships held in Prague. The first year I was 4th place. This year I was a close 2nd. Hey, the suit only gets you so far in the kutthroat kompetition of karaoke life.

I chose the white jump suit because I admire the Viva Las Vegas Elvis. The Vegas Elvis is probably a metaphor for the American idol in decadent decline or something. Not for me. I just happen to be closer in appearance to the the bloated greasy dude in the jumpsuit than to the young pompadour in tight leather.

Once I rode a tram through Prague all the way from the airport dressed as Elvis. I had an interview there with some karaoke kids. On the hour long ride back nobody even bat an eye at me. Most Czechs on the tram are taciturn and grumpy even in the face of absurdly dressed people. I managed to plop myself down next to a nun on the Prague Metro. She seemed a bit put off. Maybe my white costume and rhinestones clashed with her black robes and rosary. I'll never know. Maybe she hasn't had the divine pleasure and the very religious experience of singing karaoke. How sad for the poor sister.

Karaoke in Prague: www.karaokeaddicts.com

Karaoke film: 'Duets' (Gwyneth Paltrow, etc. All actors sing in their own voices):

http://www.tribute.ca/synopsis.asp?m_id=1383

Flix for the Eye People

2005-11-03T00:57:00.000+01:00

I'm pretty excited today: I finally found a copy of the most beautiful film ever committed to celluloid--'Wings of Desire (der Himmel uber Berlin).' It has always been one of my favorite films--largely because of it's cinematography, atmosphere and mood. I'm not going to launch into a film review here, mainly because films are largely subjective.

Needless to say: it is a strongly visual film. It is shot in black and white. It screams 'ZEITGEIST!' loud enough to make you want to look up the word. And I finally found it in Prague. It can be ordered online in 'the West' on Amazon or whatever, but sadly it's hard to find in Prague.

I managed to find a copy in a small arty dvd rental outlet next to a popular Prague disco (Radost FX). Not that I'd ever go to a freaking DISCO.

I'm not feeling particularly verbose this evening, so I'll cut this blog short. In the future you can expect some shtuff with themes/titles like this:

- ‘everyone should impersonate Elvis at least once in life’

- the weird, wild, wacky world of filmmaking in Prague

- erasing communism: fruity-colored panelaks, malls built over socialist statues, etc.

- how to convert a gray soviet housing block into a luxury high rise apartment block; or ‘you can frost a turd and call it a wedding cake…’

And I'll probably post a link to a Czech-English dictionary for the occasional Czech word that slips out of my blogging mouth.

See you next post..................praguelodyte

Suburban Czech pub

2005-10-29T23:35:00.000+02:00

I used to curse the suburbs. ALL suburbs, 'Merican, European, any suburb; they symbolized some sort of slow complacent death to the creative soul. But I've changed my mind. Today.

I woke up on a post-Friday-in-Prague-karaoke-drunken-Elvis-impersonator Saturday around noon (he will sleep til noon BUT before it's dark, he'll have every picnic basket that's in Jellystone Park) thinking: 'I am bored.' If you spend any time wearing a large white jumpsuit entertaining drunk tourists in central Prague for a night, you might wonder what you can do to top that.

It started off as simple boredom. Granted, I am almost never bored. It's a weird thing about me; even if I am unemployed for months, I'll find some odd sidebar to fill my time between squeezing out the soul juice to maintain the rent money.

Recently, it's been working as a volunteer in a special fx make up studio. I'll tell you all about that as soon as the threat of Hollywood mafia hitmen is off my back.

Meanwhile, back in the suburban Czech pub.

I was sitting there as usual, just thinking I would have my usual 2 or 3 beers, listen to bad pop music blaring over speakers too good to carry such swill, then head home to watch a movie on the ole pc. I was sitting there marvelling at how such a wonderfully loud and crystal clear stereo could be misused to play such crap, when suddenly a middle aged Czech man across the bar shouted something at me. I tried to answer in my bad Czech, but he couldn't understand. The barmaid was more than helpful in asking 'Do you speak English?' I replied, 'yeah.' I remember hearing the word 'zachrane' which means something like 'ambulance.' She translated 'he wants to know if you work for the emergency service.' Hmmm. Oh, yeah. I was wearing one of those popular pseudo-white-trash-gas-station-attendant work shirts. The ones with 'abcd moving co' on one pocket and 'Bub' on the other. I tried to explain how this was one of those weird American creative music wannabe statement-on-the-proletariat fashion statments. That didn't work.

So, several shots of scotch later (bought by the shouting middle aged Czech man), I suddenly had an epiphany: Czechs don't suck. No, really. I have been experiencing my usual Czechophobia when I meet friends in the city center, wondering if the barman will rip us off for being foreigners, wondering if I will be robbed while passed out on the night tram home. Having done that 'Elvis karaoke' thing that I do (which will be addressed in future posts) in the center for so long, I was starting to get these cynical hourly thoughts about living in a den of thieves and such.

But what followed was magic. I've always considered myself a free thinker, open to new ideas and cultures, but as everyone who lives as a foreigner in a strange (albeit beautiful) land can attest: you can resent the locals.

But then I moved to the Prague suburbs. Where you are not a 'stupid tourist.' Where they want to know about you. Where you have to try out your rusty Czech to make friends. Where they insist on buying you shots. I thought they were going to offer me one of their wives. I really had a good time in that godawful suburban Czech panelak herna afterhours pub. And I think I may have even made a few friends.

Prague cemetary in Autumn

2005-10-28T00:56:00.000+02:00

I did in fact roam through Prague's Olsanska Cemetary as planned. The lighting was perfect for this type of photography; I wanted a subtle autumn light filtering through the canopy of trees to illuminate the weathered old stones. There was a magic quality to the light. It's common photographer knowledge that the best light is just after dawn or before sunset. But I've found that autumn tends to extend that period by a few hours--if it's not cloudy--to produce an almost constant 'dusky' light. I've always been a fan of black and white film, especially when photographing the textures of old stone. And Europe certainly has no shortage of old castles and cemetaries to troll rough. But this time I wanted to play with color digital and see what would come of it. Please let me know what you think.

Another great thing about photography is the surprises. You can have a preconceived notion in your head about what you set out to photograph--and return with something else. It could be completely different, sometimes even better than what you had originally planned. In this case I was seeking to contrast brightly colored autumn leaves with old gray stone. I feel that I accomplished that.

But what struck me most on that day in the cemetary was the sad state of disrepair the place was in. The cemetary is huge and I must have walked around in it for two hours. Elderly people were laying flowers on graves and tending the plots in the newer sections. But as I passed through the centuries backward, 1900s, 1800s, etc. I noticed the damage and disrepair.
In the oldest part of the cemetary, stones were knocked down and open graves could be seen. Either a bad zombie film became reality or somebody moved the former occupants. Massive ornate tombs lay in ruin. Huge statues were limbless.

It's ironic that the largest and most ornately decorated tombs and plots were the most destroyed. It's as if the wealthy families of the deceased spent a fortune on something no more permanent than the last yellow leaves in autumn's branches.

* I couldn't quite work out the formatting of photos and text on this blog, even after many attempts. Apologies for the skewed layout.

Itchy trigger finger

2005-10-26T11:55:00.000+02:00

It's a brilliant autumn day in Zlata Praha (golden Prague) and the leaves are just hitting their final burst of reds and yellows before they plunge earthward.

I'm tempted to crawl out of my praguelodyte lair and take my camera through the city. Now, I'm not a landscape photographer. People and monuments are my thing. So I suppose that I'll troll through the old city cemetary and catch the contrast between brightly colored leaf and cold stoney gravestone. Those are the monuments. I'll have to think of the leaves as people if I'm gonna pull this off. Will post some pix if it works.

I'm also working in a special fx studio part time, but I'm not supposed to talk about that as it is a Hollywood film shooting in Prague and the studio Men in Black could probably have me killed :0

They would just bury me in that same cemetary that I want to photograph. Hell, this is the former Eastern Bloc, who would miss another photographer/writer? Or they could just dress me as a Russian mafia dude (80s track suit and gold chain) and float my body down the river.

(shudder) See what happens when you combine strong Turkish coffee and cemetary imagery?

1st post @ Midnight

2005-10-26T00:00:00.000+02:00

1) troglodyte:

- A member of a fabulous or prehistoric race of people that lived in caves, dens, or holes.
- A person considered to be reclusive, reactionary, out of date, or brutish.

2) Prague:

- A golden city of 1000 spires in central Europe
- Tourist destination especially popular with drunken limey hooligan groups