Last One In

About That Dateline

nkulish — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:31:47 +0000

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.

Don’t Look Back in Anger

nkulish — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:26:52 +0000

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.

Time Capsule

nkulish — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:25:51 +0000

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”… which in German is “Jack, Queen, King, Pot” with a word-play of Ace and Grass for the marijuana. Chuckle. Watching the preview with 2007 eyes, the movie looks so derivative and dated that I probably should make a point of never watching the first “Matrix” ever again.
But there was another Tarantino rip coming, called “Thursday,” which I didn’t even realize had come out but is considered a lost classic of the era, judging from the comments on its IMDB page. Gore and giggles, juxtaposing Arizona suburbs with inner-city violence cue Rasta drug dealer. No seriously, sadly. I would watch this at 2 a.m. in a heartbeat.
I need to rent “Short Circuit” on video and relive sixth grade. By the way, through the magic of IMDB I just learned that the voice for the robot Johnny Five was also the voice for the pug in “Men In Black.” Nice comeback Tim Blaney.
To bring this weirdly full-circle, I heard “Who’s Johnny” playing on the radio while driving with a photographer and translator through the backroads of the Czech Republic and had it stuck in my head for days, and probably will again.
“Who’s Johnny?” she said
And smiled in her special way
“Johnny” she said
“You know I love you”
“Who’s Johnny?” she said
And tried to look the other way
Her eyes gave her away
Did you know that was by DeBarge, probably best known to an entire generation as nonsense in the OutKast lyrics, “DeBarge he large and got a ‘llac in the garage, few parts here and there, I declare hard”?
And I wonder why I have so few Shakespeare quotes at the tip of my tongue.

On the Road Again

nkulish — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:24:53 +0000

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.

From Gdansk to Berlin: Our LOT

nkulish — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 13:12:57 +0000

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.
The booker from SAS was kind enough instead to hand us over to the Polish airline LOT, for a connection through Warsaw with 50 minutes between flights. This felt a bit like a double-date bait-and-switch, to the less attractive member of the airline Star Alliance. “Maybe you make it,” booker suggested with that tone of hopeless resignation for hopeful statements native to Slavic lands. “It is last flight from Warsaw to Berlin.”
With new tickets we’d been officially handed off from our classy Scandanavian airline to the dodgy Polish one and from our night to explore Copenhagen to — what does LOT do for you anyway? A hammock in an aircraft hanger?
The bus at the gate sped past the decent-looking LOT jet closest to the terminal and dropped us at a two-prop mini-plane that I believe was used previously as a cropduster in the Sudan by people with distant connections to al Qaeda.
As my friends and family know, I’m 6′8″. The ride wasn’t pleasant.
We landed, to the screams of a child who had problems with the cabin pressure, hopped into a bus and found ourselves tearing across the airport. Luck was on our side and we found a passport control booth with no line. After scrutinizing the stamps that had been — literally, not figuratively — crossed out with ballpoint pen after we failed to leave the country in Gdansk, he waved us through.
We arrived in plenty of time to be ferried, by bus, back across the tarmac to…exactly the same tiny, two-propeller torture chamber and exactly the same two seats for our flight to Berlin. We made it only six hours later than scheduled, but happy at least to have avoided the hammocks.

Where Is Nick?

nkulish — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 20:50:46 +0000

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.

ALERT - Everything in Order?

nkulish — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:44:45 +0000

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

A Little More Audio

nkulish — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:56:31 +0000

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.

Something to Consider

nkulish — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:20:23 +0000

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

An Interesting Post

nkulish — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 12:25:14 +0000

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…