The good ole days - they were terrible

Dear blog,
sorry I've been neglecting you for such a long time. It's not exactly due to a lack of content. I've been busy, and also I didn't really know if anyone was reading you. But occasionally someone mentions you to me, and then I realize that maybe someone does, at least once in a while.

I often get gigs doing voice recordings about the history of various towns in the Czech Republic. This one is about the town of Žďár:

The two-storey Renaissance building of the Old Town Hall (Stará radnice) in the square Náměstí Republiky was perhaps already built in the 16th century. Vaults in the former gateway and the adjacent room called “mázhaus” in the interior come from that time. The Town Council and the Town Court used to sit here. The taproom of the town brewery and the master winery used to be located in the building. There used to be a prison with stones for delinquents and a torture chamber in the cellar.

According to my reading (mostly from these texts that I read into a microphone), this seems typical of many old towns here. So bear in mind - these were the important things that had to be protected, preserved, ensconced within the wall of buildings that were the concrete manifestations of the state:
1. power to decide who's guilty or innocent
2. drugs
3. torture

What progress we've made since then.

They still make things

My friend Milan Kohout, a Czech immigrant to the US, asked me once if I knew anyone who actually worked at a job making anything concrete (as opposed to the service sector). I could only think of a few people -- a friend who's an electrician (he doesn't exactly make things, but at least he's in the construction industry), and my brother, who's business is making wooden sash windows (Original Double Glazed Sash Window Replacement Co.) -- but he's in London.

But I'm not sure if the Plzen Tourism Commission would accept my postcard design...

How well do you really know your fairy tales?

... reads the caption of this billboard, located in Plzen's Skvrnany area, near the intersection of Vejprnice and Krimice streets. What are they trying to tell us / sell us? Is there a variation of the story where the wolf offers Little Red Riding Hood red wine?

Voodoo bench

This was on a park bench in Plzen on Smetanova Sady. But what is it -- a clever way for someone to reserve his favorite bench by scaring away would-be occupiers? Or could it be connected to the motorcycle accident we saw a few hours later?

Fear Toys

This toy for the baby was given to us by artist friend Mira Triska (www.triska.wz.cz), and we both laughed when we opened it.

My first thought was, If she grows up with this as one of her childhood toys, she'll never be afraid of anything. And then I realized how deep the Fear Toy concept is. Fear of the abject object. Look at, for example, Tibetian tantric deities, and as you look at their faces, remember these are deities and not demons. Or for example the figures of Japanese and Chinese temple guardians.

Or plenty of traditional fairy tales that don't have such pleasant endings. This is what Disneyfication and Spielbergization have stolen from us: how to make friends with the Fear Toy. Save your children from the warped and depraved influence of Disney and Spielberg! They are more dangerous to the psyche than any dark nightmare.

Kamala Talová, female, born 3 June 2007

(All dialogue verbatim. Translated from Czech).

Scene: domestic activites. Husband arrives home.

Husband: How are things going?

Wife: Oh you know, pooping, nursing, spitting up, stinky diapers, more pooping...

Husband: Yes, well. Don't we talk about anything anymore besides poo poo ka-ka and vomit? You know, like say politics, or current events in the Czech Republic?

Wife: Is there some difference?

Husband: Finally, someone around here got one of my jokes!

Wife: Finally, you made an intelligent joke!

corn flakes

well, it's been a while... but i guess i'm back after a long blog-hiatus.

photo: at Klášter Chotěšov

the whole city smelled faintly of corn flakes today, which of course happens regularly -- it's the pilsner urquell brewery, the big industry in this formerly industrial city (don't remember which phase of the process makes that smell). beer and heavy industry -- thinking of a great brewery city of the US, Milwaukee, and somehow it seems beer and heavy industry just go together.

of course in past years the heavy industry here was the skoda auto plant, which in its heyday employed i'm told 20 000 workers, about a third of the adult population. had it's own tram line for the shift workers. durng wwii it was commandeered by the nazis to make miliary stuff of course, and then bombed by the americans, whose forces under gen. patton's command proceeded to liberate pilsen, as they called it then. nobody was allowed to speak about that during communism, because officially it was the soviet army who liberated everyone. so after '89 it became a big event to celebrate, this liberation of pilsen from the germans. sitll, nobody has really explained two things to me: don't people here resent being "liberated" by the americans and then cynically traded to the soviets like a bargaining chip? and why did the americans bomb the city at the end of the war, after it was already blatantly clear the germans were on the run and about to surrender? did they deliberately want to weaken the industrial infrastructure of the regions they knew would become part of the soviet bloc?

last week one of these unexploded american bombs was found during the construction of a hotel. they had to evacuate the area, divert traffic and the tram and so on for a few hours... but not like anyone panicked about it, it was all more or less routine. this was kind of near the train station -- i'm told the 3 targets the americans tried to bomb were the skoda factory, the train station and the brewery. i can understand the first 2, but why the brewery? did they think the germans were making poison gas in those vats? or was it another way to weaken the industrial infrastructure -- we can re-build the factory, but my god! what will the workers drink after their shifts end?!