22-V-2011.
They all sat in the saxo and went to Belgrade. Go, Stanley and Lena mostly buzzed around old downtown, there are shots made by the Horse, on Taš, and at some cafe where they met some folks Go knew from the web, who also do threedee modeling and game development.
When they went into a cakeshop somewhere, they noticed someone's newspaper left on their table, open on this page. This had to be picked up and a shot taken. What were the odds, that you come to your homeland, and stumble upon a crossword illustrated with your work... „actor in the picture“, solution Taško Načić. Except this is not a picture of him, it's not he who's on it, it's not even a picture in the first place. It's a render of a three dee character which Go made a couple of years ago, while she was into that kind of sculpture. She also did Humphrey Bogart and a few others back then.
Later searches yielded a scarcity of Taško's photographs, despite him acting in several cult movies. Because these didn't exist in decent digital format yet, what's circling the webs is a rough conversion of cassette editions, and what deevydees were circulating in the times when you'd get one with the newspaper (which was very popular last few years) weren't done in any decent quality. For example, it will take another dozen years until a remastered edition of „Marathon family“ would be published. Even today, when one searches for a photograph of Taško, regardless of search engine chosen, this render is in first five or first twenty, appears at least twice on the first page.
So someone composed a crossword where some line should solve into „Načić“, the editor decided that it would look well with his picture, the tech setting the page looks for one, this one turns out to be technically the best, will look really well when printed...
Nina, Ender and Raja were somewhere by the Danube meanwhile. Judging by the shots from her Nikon, that's a bit upstream from hotel Jugoslavija, probably on Zemun bank. They also met the friends they met on the web, a married couple who was indirectly famous already, he was in the team which ran a famous website here, did I say famous, it's a cult site, its name was already a word in the dictionary. Don't know how they got acquainted, but I guess it's about travels, as the two (plus kid now) have seen the world. A website can be maintained from a laptop on the beach (which I didn't do simply because I can't stand the idea of seeing a keyboard and sand in the same scene, and, besides, the nezavisni's monitor was smooth, why would I want to watch myself), so they spent a good part of each year having fun somewhere out there, while the site ran full speed. Now they finally met physically, walked the quay, ate on some splav. He was pushing a stroller with the kid, Nina carried Raja in a carrier, straps on shoulders.
It's possible that Go and Stanley stayed in Belgrade, maybe nighted at Lena's place or elsewhere, I see there are a couple of shots from Go's eos40 on the next day, at night and in some very urban environment, in company of a couple of youthful faces. At the time, we four (and Raja) went to „Roma“ for a pizza. The shots from there are somewhat crazy, at least those from Nina's Nikon - it was doing them subexposed, with elevated contrast, so on them I'm already looking somewhat tanned, and Ender looks like a real Mexican (which was the reason he got screwed often, the cops would pull him over, thinking he stole the car). What little I shot with the Fujica looked just normal.
Mentions: Ender Aquila (Ender), eos40, Fujica, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), nezavisni, Ryu (Raja), saxo, splav, Stanley Berger, in serbian
19-I-2025 - 23-XII-2025