Bruner Blog

So, my birthday is in about two weeks (June 11), and it’s a doozie. To be celebrated in a New-Orlean-style funeral party near the end of the month together with a similarly afflicted friend (details pending for those of you who actually know me). Meanwhile, I’ve got two weeks to lose 10 pounds. (Not looking so good.)

How can you make me feel better, you ask? (You’re sweet like that.) Please buy me lots of cool presents. (And don’t scrimp, for Christ sake. You only lose all illusions of still being young once.)

What did you say about my mama?

Seriously cute kitten action.

Note to self: leave New York City at your own peril.

First bad sign: at LaGuardia, waiting for a flight to Jacksonville Florida, an obese mother and obese daughter and an obese friendly stranger were conversing with one another in hickish accents about their respective visits to NYC. The mother and daughter had been to seen Phantom of the Opera, something else equally as awful sounding and Hairspray (which I presume they chose not realizing the friendly looking obese main character was actually a man in women’s clothing). So, the obese friendly stranger mentions that yesterday she saw Bono in Central Park. “Who?” says the mother. “Bono. Of the band U2.” “Never heard of them.”

So, I’m now here in Amelia Island Plantation, a so-called luxury resort in northern Florida. If this is what passes for luxury in America, I hope I never get rich. It’s basically a huge parking lot on the beach with a dozen or so stores, restaurants and boxy hotel buildings.

I dined at the Beach Club restaurant, with all the charm of a Denny’s, six muted TVs (if you’re going to ruin the atmosphere of a place with TVs, WTF is the point of putting them on mute?) and no view of the ocean, despite being about 100 feet from the Atlantic.

What really has me so bitter is this: they put me up in a condo unit, a complete apartment with its own kitchen, living room and three bedrooms (as if I’m going to get so lucky at the doubtlessly miserable resort “night club” tonight that I’m going to host an orgy at my fabulous pad…YET NO FUCKING INTERNET CONNECTION!!!! (Did I mention I’m here for an Internet conference, obviously, as that’s what I do for a living?) What is this, the 1950s? No Internet connections in the room? What’s wrong with these inbred hillbillies?!

So I’m blogging this from the bar area of the main Inn of the resort, which does have (highly unreliable) wifi. But it comes at a serious price: a hideous one-man-band-and-karaoke-machine strumming out deafening versions of James Taylor classics (he just mercifully finished “Cheeseburger in Paradise”) to the shrieking delight of a bunch of real-life desperate housewives on a group bender.

Dear God, I know I’ve never believed in you, but finding myself here in the Bible Belt, maybe I could see the light if you just sent a fork flying across the room into the eye of this talentless hack (without my finger prints on it).

UPDATE:

To be fair, by morning light, this place is still full of asphalt, but it’s prettier than perhaps last night’s harsh assessement does it credit. I woke up to the sound of a woodpecker, which we don’t have a lot of in Manhattan, putting me in a better mood. The workout facility is also pretty good. Haven’t yet gotten to the beach. That should also improve my mood. Still, though, my condo has not yet sprouted Internet (and another conference-goer who also has a condo was saying that the ocean view made up for the lack of Internet, which would be true if I had a view of the ocean instead of a golf course).

Shit. I am such a fucking lousy blogger. So, so busy at work, so, so lazy at home. Anyway, I spent last week in LA. (UPDATE: I actually started this blog post last week, so the “last week” noted above is actually going on two weeks ago at this poing.) Been meaning to mention that. Nice place to visit, but…. (Have I mentioned before that cars are evil?)

L.A. What can I say? I’m a New Yorker. I went to one supermarket and three employees greeted with with a smile and kind words and an eagerness to please me as soon as I walked in the door. What the fuck? “Can I help you find something?” asked one sycophant. “Sure. I’m looking for soy milk.” “Certainly. You’ll find that in aisle 3, half way down, on the right hand side. May I show you?” [Me thinking: ‘What, am I a fucking idiot? You just told me exactly where it is. And now you need to escort me to half-way down aisle 3 on the right-hand side because you think I’m too fucking stupid to know my right from my left, or to count to three?’]

L.A. Hmmm.

I describe the above encounter to a friend who lives in L.A., and she said, laughing, “Well, it’s probably just their store policy. I’m sure they’re not really that friendly, but management has required them to greet everyone like that.” No fucking shit. But, I explained to her, in NY, it wouldn’t even occur to management to require the staff to try to be that “friendly.”

I did, however, much enjoy seeing a few friends in L.A. Working in the Internet industry, I manage to get to San Francisco 2-3 times a year, but I haven’t been to L.A. in several years. Driving around there always makes me think one thing: this place is just like New Jersey. Nicer weather, but otherwise the same endless sprawl of roads and highways, strip malls, mediocre restaurants.

Anyway, the only real point of this post (aside from dissing L.A., just because that’s what we NYers do) was to name drop some L.A. bloggers I met at a “Failure Party” BBQ at the bohemian pad of Matt Welch and his lovely Friench wife Emmanuelle Richard, friends of mine from Budapest in the early ’90s. I was particularly excited to meet Tony Pierce, of whose blog I’m a huge fan. I was surprised to what extent he was a goofball (of the lovable variety). Nonetheless, he did not disappoint in my perception that he was always in the company of a hottie, which he was this night. (Goofball hottie-magnet — who would have thought that a likely combination?) Also in attendance were former Prognosticator Ben Sullivan (whom I’m overdue to make rich, he reminds me), the impressively tattooed Sean Bonner, the soon-to-be-rich Marc Brown (if there is any justice in the world), the lucky-to-be-alive Luke Thompson (whose recently extracted, exploded appendix seemed to be repeating a bit on him that night), and film director Michael Wohl, who is planning a film on Gen Expats in Prague, who couldn’t get over his luck at being invited on short notice to this meeting of many such one-time Prague expats after cold-calling Matt via Google. (Michael, a bit of advice on your web site: frames are very 20th Century.)

Pictures.

The Bruner Blog is happy to announce its Cafe Press store, with one piece of merchandise so far: The Nick Denton Trucker Hat.

Props to Steve Hall of Adrants for co-conceiving this idea with me in a phone conversation. Struck us as pretty funny.

I suppose I should start this post by mentioning how much I love my wife. This weekend we celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary (thank you, and yes we are actually that old).

But, were I not so happily married, I’d definitely propose marraige to the lovely woman’s voice on Hertz Neverlost GPS navigation system. It’s not that the voice is at all sexy. It’s not really. But it’s not robotish either, just officious. But God, I love her!

Simply put, Herzt Neverlost is one of the great products of the modern age. For an extra $9/day, you can drive around any city in America and feel like it was your hometown since grade school.

I spent all of last week in L.A., a city I’ve visited only three times before, if memory serves. But I didn’t take more than two wrong turns the entire week, thanks to Neverlost. It takes a bit of getting used to — the first couple of times you use it, you’re liable to get frustrated with a few wrong turns; highway driving can be particularly disorrienting until you understand it’s logic — but after you get the hang of paying attention to both its mapping and its voice commands, it truly lives up to its name.

In the hilarious “Daily Show” book America, they describe the potential government of the future as “Constitutional Robocracy.” If Neverlost is any indication, the robots have my vote.