Hello there. I know, two posts in one day after no posts for eight months. I’ve been busy. I wrote a story about dairy farmers dumping their milk as part of a strike. So many people have asked me that I wanted to set the record straight. The answer is yes. Teetz exists.

The Scott McClellan book has brought the media’s role in Iraq back into the spotlight. Maybe Jimmy’s CNN tape will be posted on YouTube again.

Who says time travel is impossible? I rented a movie from 1998 the other day and they only had it on video cassette. Remember the dinosaur days before DVDs? The volume jacked up until the hissing envelops the dialogue and you can’t hear a thing? Ah, nostalgia.
But the biggest difference in content was the previews, a whole string of them. There was one for that Robin Williams movie “What Dreams May Come” where he’s dead and playing with Cuba Gooding Jr. and a multi-colored dalmatian (insert far-too-easy Cuba joke here). Studio executives drunk with the power of CGI attempt to tackle heaven. Screams “New Toy.”
Then comes the Tarantino Gen-Y, Echo Boom or whatever you want to call it. First “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”… (more…)

I’m guilty of blog neglect. That’s because this whole foreign corresponding job takes a lot of work.
Some moments along the way:
Driving the wrong way down a one-way road in Ulm, Germany, on zero sleep, eyes glued to the lying GPS, “Country Roads” blaring on the stereo, talking to my editors on the cell phone when I hear a car horn and finally look up at my near doom coming at me.
Buying a beer at a tiny grocery in Sofia, Bulgaria, Seinfeld playing dubbed on the little television over the refrigerator. (Why do they always make George’s voice even higher pitched when they dub poor Mr. Costanza?)
Breakfast with the waters of the Bosphorus lapping at the edge. Omelette made to order and glorious morning in Istanbul.
All told, not so bad.

Gdansk, as I hope to someday expound at length, is a beautiful town. It is attractive in a way that it’s name, like the sound of a car crashing into a bicycle and then the bicyclist sliding across the hood, could never warn you. Getting home from Gdansk seemed simple enough — a quick flight on genteel SAS through Copenhagen.
I’ve always wanted to see Copenhagen. When I heard that our plane had a flat tire and we would be delayed by several hours, I saw the hand of good fortune. It was extending to us — through our missed connection in Berlin — a free night to wander Copenhagen before another flight the next morning. This was foolish optimism.
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I’m not turning out to be the world-champion blogger, it appears. I have some excuses though, including the book itself, getting married to my lovely wife Lauren, and moving to the Berlin bureau of the New York Times. This evening we’re in not-quite lovely Warsaw, where a powerful electrical storm turned the sky into the original low-tech AV entertainment. Just before the storm struck, we enjoyed Asian fusion cuisine on ul. Foksal and somewhat more traditional cheesecake and apple strudel at the refined and charming Cafe A. Blikle on ul. Nowy Swiat, which specializes in pastry and an obsession with Charles De Gaulle, after whom a booze-soaked cake is named. Stand proud, Chuck D, wherever you are.

Dearest Readers,
It appears that a few books were printed with the pages out of order. This happens from time to time but I understand how deeply frustrating it can be. If it happens to you, I hope you’ll let me know about it and the publisher and I can make sure that you get a new copy. Email me at the following address: nick@nicholaskulish.com.
I will set things right.
Thanks for your patience,
Nick

So I did another radio show called Fair Game with Faith Salie. The interview was as much fun as it sounds. It’s not that easy to link to this one. Go to the page and in the search box in the upper right hand corner type “Kulish” and it’ll pop up. I’m in Los Angeles this Friday - July 20th - if anyone’s around and interested in coming out.

Here’s a link to an appearance I did recently on NPR’s All Things Considered. It was a great experience. Have a listen.

For those who don’t read the comments carefully (and indeed for those who do), a reader has posted asking whether she is “the only person who has read Chris Ayres’ work of non fiction, War Reporting for Cowards?” She wonders, therefore, “Kulish, are you familiar with the word, ‘plagiarism’?”
Thousands of journalists descended on Kuwait in the build-up to the Iraq invasion. Many memoirs were published in the aftermath. Ayres is a correspondent for the Times of London who wrote a memoir about his embedding experience after working as Los Angeles correspondent for his paper, shades of my protagonist Jimmy.
But when his book was published, Last One In had already been out with publishers, though unsold, for a year and a half. Dozens of people had read the novel in early 2004. In fact, the film option for Last One In had been purchased six months before War Reporting for Cowards hit shelves.
I haven’t read the book in its entirety. I skimmed it at the store when it came out, wondering what effect its publication would have on my own manuscript. It struck me that it was as much about Ayres’s life before the invasion, with lots of flashbacks, as his time there. Last One In dives into the invasion and pretty much stays there.
But it’s a matter of record that Last One In was done long before “Cowards” came out (probably around the same time he was done). A new book by Mr. Ayres, “Death by Leisure,” is coming out soon. According to Amazon it is a first-person romp through the leisure class that ends up taking him to the “Katrina-ravaged South,” where, coincidentally, I was writing for the New York Times. Perhaps this is like Fight Club, Ayres/Kulish, Kulish/Ayres…