Friday, August 16, 2002
Ben Tackles the KGB Spy Story
Ben Sullivan, one of the founders of Prognosis and eventually, the guy who was around to turn the lights off after it folded, has started recounting the story of why the British Embassy sued the paper for 1 million crowns in 1994. Ben manages to get a good deal of debauchery, sex and intrigue in his tale.
However, he readily acknowledges the gaps in the memories. And it proves my point - that now is a good time to recount these stories since the details are already fading. Ben concludes his post with this promise/plea: “To be continued, after others remind me what I got wrong in the above and help me remember what happened next.” Ben’s a nice guy. Help him out people.
For another dose of Prague nostalgia, read the last couple entries at the bottom of Matt’s online press clippings.
Thursday, August 15, 2002
Abroad
It’s August, so it’s time for the annual Peterborough Beer Festival. For the next two weeks, dear friends, you can reach me via the e-mail linked to this blog (lower left) or through my Yahoo account, which I will check from the UK.
Kulture
OK, I’ve got three recommendations for you: a book, a play and an exhibit. But not in that order.
The City of K: Franz Kafka and Prague showing through Jan. 5 at the Jewish Museum of New York. – Very bizarre and thoughtful exhibit, including some sections that will make you think you may have dropped acid before you started perusing the collection. Great old pictures of Prague, dark excerpts (“My job is unbearable to me” – Kafka Diaries 1910 –1913 was probably the most uplifting) and mind-bending installations of file cabinets, movies of nothing but a very active rubber stamp and finally a replica of the torture device from the Penal Colony. There’s an online store, but it doesn’t feature the $5 Kafka finger puppets you can buy at the museum.
Five-Finger Discount, A Crooked Family History by Helene Stapinski – you only thought you knew what a dive Jersey City is, or as my friend and former resident called it: The al Qaeda Ghetto. Stapinki’s memoir is about growing up in a screwed up family in a screwed up town. The book starts this way: “The night my grandfather tired to kill us, I was five years old. …” There’s just so much good stuff I could excerpt from this book, but really, just go read the book instead. It’s very funny and a good read.
Urinetown I know, I know, singing about defecation and urination doesn’t sound like the stuff of a Broadway musical. But oh man, it works. This is hilarious. The premise is that a big city gets in so much trouble 20 years into a drought that an evil, monopolistic company has taken over all the toilets in town and all the residents must “pay to pee.” It’s a very smart show.
More Memorials
I was in Penn Station this afternoon while some workers were installing a Sept. 11 memorial. It’s called “Sept. 12.” Three Trade Center steel girders are standing up forming the corners of a triangle. There are pictures of rescue workers standing and staring into the pile – presumably on Sept. 12, though I couldn’t get close enough to see the explanation.
I’m all for the need to remember, but the memorial seemed kind of weird located near the Amtrak waiting room. It’s almost as if it’s supposed to be a dark “Welcome to New York” for tourists who arrive by train as they haul their luggage and try to figure out which way to find a cab.
Behind the Details
Henry Copeland, the author of the hilarious – and true! – April 1992 story of Prognosis in Details magazine, has weighed in on his own blog with the story of how the story came to be.
Henry says Details offered him a $1,500 kill fee after he filed, but he bartered for another chance. (Didn’t someone call Prague the second-chance city?) Henry returned to Prague. “To save money, I bunked at Ben Sullivan's apartment way out in the frozen suburbs,” Henry recalls. And this is about the time I met Henry.
At the time, I was living in this tiny, damp place in Mala Strana. Although we had a core staff at Prognosis of at least 20, it probably surged to upwards of 50 when you counted people who were writing a little something now and then or who were thinking about writing or something. In the office, a multi-room complex just off Old Town Square at Male namesti, 13, there were no more than two working phone lines and zero to three working computers. When things were especially bad, you had to sign up for computer time on a 24-hour sheet. The night I met Henry, I had a slot beginning around midnight. In winter. And come to think of it, it was probably even on a weekend, when the office building had no heat at all and you eventually tried desperately typing with your gloves on.
I was alone in the office and just getting settled in when Ben showed up to use the other computer. He had Henry with him. And Henry, under deadline pressure, decided it would be a good time to interview me. I thought it was a horrible idea, since I was trying to write – while cold, sleepy and cranky. After about half an hour of trying to brush him off, I decided I’d just go home since I wasn’t getting much done on my story. And then Ben, dear Ben, who has been described hundreds of times as “a really nice guy,” tells Henry: Hey, Amy’s roommate is out of town, why don’t you just go home with her and you can have Tonya’s bed. Henry, as cold as any sane person would be, says something like “Great.”
Not the first time I thought my good friend Ben was way outta line.
So Henry and I start out from the office, along the royal route as its heads toward the castle. It’s freezing but the city is empty and especially beautiful in the stark cold of the middle of the night.
And this whole time, I’m worried that whatever I say to Henry is going to show up in print – if this guy is indeed a magazine writer as he has everyone convinced. (I always figured there were some folks showing up in Prague with a completely invented past and present.)
The bunking situations in the Mala Strana apartment were as sparse as the rest of the place. The bedroom consisted of two mattresses on the floor – with about a foot of space in between them. My side of the room had a pretty arch in the wall, but it was perpetually wet with water wicked up about four feet from the floor – though we were on the second story, so no telling how bad it was downstairs. The front room (kitchen/bathroom) had a little heater mounted to the wall. So whenever one of the roommates was gone, the other would drag her mattress to the kitchen and sleep as close as possible to the heater. But you just couldn’t politely do that with two people.
Since Ben invited Henry to stay, it meant I wouldn’t be curled up next to the heater in the kitchen. But I got over it. And as it turned out, everything was fine. Henry did turn out to be a writer and it wasn’t too creepy having a complete stranger sleep on the mattress a few feet away.
And yes, Henry did quote me – accurately I’m sure, though I sound as harried and rambling as I felt that night. I suppose it’s a good lesson for a reporter to see herself quoted by someone else and know that embarrassed feeling of thinking – did I say that?
The thing about Henry’s story for Details is that it was one of the very few stories about Prague and the ex-pats in Prague that were actually true. There were a lot of stories written about the ex-pats in Prague. I figured a lot of writers got editors interested in a story about Prague and got the cash to go. But once landing, they discovered it was extremely difficult to do the stories they wanted to do. There was nothing like a Yellow Pages in Czechoslovakia at the time, let alone a constitution. Everyone - including all the bureaucrats at every ministry of whatever that didn’t exist the week before – was making it up as they went along. So these reporters on expense accounts would quickly come to the conclusion that the easy story to do is the one about the American ex-pats since they speak English and are easy to find – in the Prognosis office or at the American Hospitality Center two doors down. Henry’s story was far better than everything else that was written at the time. And while he does have the great story about Matt crashing the Ivana Trump ball, my favorite part is the description of Kip:
You smell Kip before you see him, his cigar-burning-in-a-jockstrap odor turning your head. He looks like Ichabod Crane on mushrooms, tall and bony, his hooknose framed by squinting eyes that are in turn framed by greasy, chin-length hair. "Five phone callss to Germany, that'ss all it takess, Matt," he says, grinning and hissing, his body dancing with his words. "I've got an opinion piece for your fine paper, my friend Matt, that I will trade for five phone callss to Germany." He repeats this several times, his long, bony hands waving like they're beckoning a rabbit out of a hat.
Kip probably hates that, but that nails him pretty well back then.
Enough from me. I want more, more, more from you, dear readers with the pivo-drenched memories. The waters are receding in Prague finally, but please indulge with me for a few more days. Post your stories or send them to me and I’ll post ‘em here.
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
Ex-Pats Look Back
In response to my call yesterday for people’s recollections of Prague back in the early ‘90s, Matt Welch has posted a lot of interesting material on his site. Also, I received an e-mail from Lyle Zimskind, who shares some stories as well. His e-mail below has been edited - and the italics are mine:
I remember attending Prognosis's one-year anniversary press conference, where one of the big draws was a Mexican buffet, a pretty neat trick to pull off back in pre-Klaus (and pre-Copeland article) Czechoslovakia. The event was held at Lavka, which is now under nature's apparently tragic siege.
Also remember chatting with Matt and a group of Prognosis staff once at an "underground" club called U Zoufalcu. In '91 a group of 18- to 21-year olds found an empty bi-level cellar at Celetna 12, right on the beaten track, and surreptitiously opened a bar that was invisible and inaudible to the outside world. To get in you had to know which building entrance led to which vaulted passage leading to which inconspicuous stairway. It was the first place in Prague where you could go to hear Public Enemy, Sonic Youth, and the like.
One Tuesday night in February or March of '92, around midnight, the usual twenty or so regulars were hanging out when the door opened and in walked a largish group of middle-aged men in a tight pack. After a moment's glance one realized that the diminutive figure in a blue windbreaker at the center of the bunch was none other than President Havel himself, popping in unannounced to check the place out and drink a beer or two. Everybody kept a respectful distance, but I remember Pavel, the 18-year-old bar "owner," walking into the back room and breaking into a little victory dance.
Today that passageway's been renovated into a row of upscale boutiques. and walking by the old U Zoufalcu entrance, you'd never know.
Ended up contributing a couple pieces to the paper myself, including one feature article on the local film industry, for which I got to interview the French actor Philippe Noiret. Don't have any issues in my possession at this point, but I loved Prognosis. Always thought of it more as a magazine than a cover-all-the-news newspaper, but that only made it all the more valuable to anyone looking for significant exposure to the culture.
The (name of evil competitor deleted) never would have run big features on the mythical Czech hero Jara Cimrman, the Dukla soccer team, Gustav Mahler's Moravian roots and so on.
When I later wrote something for the (name of evil competitor deleted), after Prognosis's demise, the editor there specifically requested I make it "more like Prognosis" to spice the paper up a bit. And then just before the issue came out, he called to apologize that (editor’s name omitted) had nixed all the good stuff so don't do that again.
Sorry for the rambling, but those really were some great days and, again, for a while it really was a great paper.
Hoping the Vltava's waters recede very soon,
Lyle Zimskind
Pozor!
The flooding situation in Prague remains bad. The Vltava is still rising and the storied Charles Bridge along with hundreds of centuries-old buildings downtown all remain in danger. About 200,000 people have been evacuated, most of the city is without gas, electric and phone service, Kampa Island is submerged, the National Theater has flooded, the John Lennon wall is under several feet of water and some animals have died at the zoo. Find stories from the BBC, CTK, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Reuters, the Guardian, and Financial Times.
However, the latest AP story says the sun has come out and tourists have been allowed to return to Old Town Square. In total 94 people have died in Europe from the floods.
But to put it all in perspective, more than 850 people so far are dead due to floods in Nepal.
Tuesday, August 13, 2002
Farm Living is the Life for Me
The LA Times has a funny story about the dirty politics in one of the farm towns outside Bakersfield. Arvin, once famous only as the home to the United Farm Workers, now has this shame:
“The mayor of this community of 10,000 at the foot of Bear Mountain is facing a recall over allegations of corruption. To make sure the election isn't stolen Tuesday, the state is sending special monitors. Another member of the council, a minister, has been indicted on charges of stealing child-care money. The police chief pleaded guilty to charges of hijacking funds meant for a police awards dinner. (He paid off a loan on his truck.) The city manager left amid allegations that he had installed a secret videotaping system to spy on the mayor.”
But my favorite part is near the bottom, where you find the interview with the former city manager (who was the mayor of Bakersfield in the ‘80s, but the Times omits that.) From the Times:
The former city manager, Tom Payne, was accused of using city money to buy and install surveillance equipment in City Hall. Payne, the owner of Taps bar, said he had installed the equipment to spy on the mayor.
He said he had done it at the request of the police chief and the district attorney's office.
Payne interrupted a phone interview to say (Mayor Juan) Olivares had just pulled up behind his bar in his pickup truck. "Can you hear him revving his engine?" Payne said. "He's giving me the finger now."
Brooklyn vs. Manhattan (Part 2)
E-mail I received from a friend in SoHo congratulating me on my move to the hip digs in Brooklyn: “living in manhattan is starting to feel like those guys who were still sporting their flock of seagulls haircuts into the early 90s. very out of date!”
Editors are from Mars, and …
Evacuations in Prague
My old neighborhood in Prague has been evacuated due to this terrible 100-year flood. Now there are plenty of pictures all over the web. The Czech News Agency, CTK reports (in English) that there is now more water in the Vltava River than there was during the flood of 1890, “in which seven columns of the 14th century Charles Bridge were damaged.”
I found a Reuters story, with an accompanying video that features a quick shot of the river-side Lavka bar – with water nearly to top of the first floor. There are plenty of other reports, from outlets such as CNN, SkyNews and the New York Times. Matt Welch has also been posting e-mails from friends in Prague.
For a couple months I lived on Maltezske namesti in Mala Strana, a tiny, usually damp apartment that had a bedroom view of the top of Charles Bridge just a few blocks away. The place didn’t have much heat, and our fridge was a ledge outside the front door. The toilet and shower was in the kitchen, so we hung some fabric between the “bathroom” and the “kitchen.” All this for the fabulous price of $40 a month – divided by two of us. (I was making $100 a month at Prognosis – in Czech kcs. – if we got paid.)
The place in Maltezske nam. was across the street from the Japanese Embassy, with the Norwegian embassy, I think, just around the corner. Our building was attached to the music school for blind students. The archway leading to our front door was in a famous scene in Amadeus – where Cavaliere dresses up as Mozart’s dead father – with the Darth Vader-like mask and black cloak. He’s all in black, and he walks dramatically under the all white arches.
On the other side of the music school was a place where Beethoven lived for awhile. I passed it every day on my way to the Charles Bridge, which I had to cross to get to work over in the Old Town. The nostalgia could go on for ages.
You know, I had drinks with Jim Lowney last week and we were talking about this new novel about Budapest, called "Prague", and we both lamented how the wrong people keep writing the ex-pat story of Eastern Europe. I have a load of snobbishness on this point, and keep waiting for one of my friends to write about it. Shouldn’t the story really come from the likes of Matt Welch, Chris Scheer, Ben Sullivan, Ken Layne, Pat Whalen, Kip Bauersfeld or someone else in that talent pool?
There were a lot of people who went over there in 1991 to write their novel. I had no such aspirations. I went to work for a newspaper. I hit the ground in the final minutes of May 1991 (the joke years later was that the place peaked in May ’91, so I can say I got in just in time) and five days later was covering a press conference outside the Prague castle, with a press pass that didn’t belong to me – and the U.S. vice president standing about 10 inches from my face. (OK, it was Quayle.)
Around Thanksgiving of last year, I dug deep in my brain and came up with the story of how a bunch of the ex-pats celebrated Turkey Day that year. I was surprised how much my memories of Prague have faded already. So I’m planting a seed today – while everyone’s thinking of water rising in Prague and wiping out very memorable places – and asking all you ex-ex-pats and other Prognosis folks to start coming up with your best Prague stories. Write ‘em down. If they're not good enough for a publishing house, they're at least good enough for a web site.
And here's another question - does anyone besides the CIA have a complete set of Prognosis issues?
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