Bruner Blog

I have to admit to a fair amount of self-censorship here on the Bruner Blog since I started my straight job, and I go out of my way to mention my employer as rarely as possible: DoubleClick. In no way is that because I’m in any way conflicted about said employment; just the opposite: I strangely enjoy it. But I just don’t want to be one of those many losers who gets fired for bad blogging.

But I’m going to break my tradition of silence to observe an anniversary I forgot to mention to all but one colleague: today is my one-year anniversary of working at DoubleClick.

Yay!

Here’s a happy update on my healthy obsession with the Gypsy punk cabaret band Gogol Bordello: the band’s inimatable frontman, Eugene Hutz, has broken into the movies with a starring role in the film adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s excellent book Everything Is Illuminated. Although I haven’t seen the film yet (I can’t wait!), he seems perfectly cast as the bizarre narrator and translator, Alex.

I heard a piece about it on the public radio show The World this afternoon, with the focus on Hutz. The film was directed by actor Liev Schreiber who said that he knew the movie would completely hang on the character Alex and he looked high and low for the right actor. When he met Hutz, he knew instantly he was ideal for the role.

This just in from my dad:

A: Ten

1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed.

2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed.

3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb.

4. One to tell the nations of the world that they are either for changing the light bulb or for darkness.

5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new light bulb.

6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner: ” Light Bulb Change Accomplished.”

7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally in the dark.

8. One to viciously smear #7.

9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along.

10. And finally, one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.

By brother Sean and his wife Elizabeth just filed another of their travel and photo essays. They have fallen in love with scuba diving and underwater photography in recent years, which fits perfectly with their interest in exotic travel. His early essays and photos included trips to Bali Papua New Guinea. The most recent is about Sulawesi, Indonesia.

You can say that again!

Via The Washington Note by way of Mark.

A friend writes:

This was the part of the president’s speech that really made the hair on the back of my neck stand up:

It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces.

There was no lack of federal authority to handle the situation. There was faulty organization, poor coordination and incompetence.

This is how repressive governments operate — mixing inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies.

You don’t repair disorganized or incompetent government by granting it more power. You fix it by making it more organized and more competent.

Another pack of lies. Right in front of everyone.

I couldn’t agree more.

Which is the most serious: a disaster, a catastophe, or a dis-astophe?

I did the NYCC’s “Escape New York Century” ride a few years ago, and it was really fun. I copped out and did the “metric century”: 62 miles.

This year’s ride is next weekend, Saturday Sept. 17th.

I’d be up for it again this year, though I’ll have to get in shape and do a ride this weekend. I’ll have to send an email to the NYC Ad Geek Cycle Club now.

Omri Ben-Amos, friend of Matt Welch and the Prognosis crew, is organizing a party this Saturday from 3pm celebrating “Generation
Expat,” dubbed Prague Fest (it’s a party with its own web site!), at the Bohemian Hall.

Reading accounts of the Katrina disaster, I’ve seen several articles make a comparison to how brave and commanding President Bush was after the terror attacks of September 11th 2001 in contrast to how absent he was for days after the Katrina disaster. This baffles me, because my impression of Bush in the immediate aftermath of September 11th is that he was a complete wreck.

In particular, I vividly remember one press conference, when I was glued to the TV for days after that event, where Bush, quite soon after the attack (the 11th, the 12th, the 13th, somewhere around there) was unnerved that he could barely form sentences (far worse than usual), and at one point he simply stared off into space for what seemed like a minute or two, nominally in response to a question, as if he were re-reading My Pet Goat in his mind.

Finally, he just lost his shit and with tears clearly in his eyes suddenly fled the stage in mid-conference, simply unable to deal with it.

In the years since, I’ve Googled my heart out trying to find evidence of that event again, to no avail. In particular before the 2004 election I thought if I could find the video clip of it, it might really have an impact. I failed in that mission, and the rest is sad, sad history.

I’m just wondering if anyone else out there remembers this incident. Better yet, do you have details like the exact date, the transcript or (I quiver at the thought) a video clip? Needless to say, the WhiteHouse.gov press archive for September 2001 fails to note anything about “President blubbers like a baby at press conference.”