Recently on the publicity trip for promoting failed bands, FBO Admin watched Matrix III with two French people, a Canadian who had her backpack stolen in Serbia the day before, a Japanese farmer in ennui for abandoning his home, and a young German apologizing for 'how German' the hostel co-owner was. What was striking about the episode -- this weird international mix in a former communist country -- is how unstriking it was. A generation ago, our parents -- most of our parents -- never knew even a Canadian, and now it's relatively normal to watch bad Keanu Reeves movies with failed farmers and angst-ridden youth from former enemies.FBO Admin has travelled, in the past year, in pre-research and press-garnering trips to Vladivostok, Beijing, Plovdiv, Bogota, Mexico City, San Francisco, Brasov and Mandalay. Guesthouses in all had Chinese soap. This is something new. Two years ago in Bulgaria, notebooks were Bulgarian-made and said 'notebook' in Bulgarian on the cover; these don't exist anymore. Half the signs in Sofia, Bulgaria, meanwhile, are flashy 'Western-style' ads in Roman alphabet, not the Bulgarian-created Cyrillic.
The FBO recognizes this 20-year period -- the crux of the FBO generation, and a setting for massive world change -- is when different things on Romanian hand-tool farms and men-in-skirt sidewalks of Myanmar are becoming more and more the same. We are literally the ones who are living while this is happening.
Why bring this up?
--> The FBO recommends all of its members and fans to travel now. What is 'exotic' now will likely be a lot less so in another decade or more.
Meanwhile, FBO is considering putting Member #004 Asylum's Terry Waska back in the Penalty Box.
FBO Admin
Mobile HQ: Sibiu, Romania
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