New footage is up now of author Julian Rubinstein's visit to Attila in the prison:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MGmPju1JC9A

Click on videos to see Attila's special greeting to his Myspace friends, recorded in the prison.

A longer video from Attila's interview with author Julian Rubinstein will be posted shortly.

From the prison:

Attila would like to request that there not be public celebrations for his birthday.

Attila is extremely appreciative of the support, but after all of the celebrations last time, he was blamed in the Hungarian media for planning the celebrations, especially because his birthday--October 6--is the national mourning day. "This is the typical mentality here," he said.

There is a new prison interview video that will be posted this week in which he talks about this.

He also gave a special message to his Myspace friends which will also be posted this week.

This is Julian Rubinstein, author of the book about Attila. I have just returned from a visit with Attila in the prison. There will soon be video footage from the visit as soon as we can find someone to edit it. I can report that Attila is doing well and his security status has been upgraded, meaning he now has access to the library and is allowed more free time. He is extremely busy with schoolwork, as he is taking university correspondence courses to get a degree in journalism. He's also continued to be dedicated to making pottery and his work is extremely good--there is footage of it which you will see. His mood is generally good, he is working out daily, and he hopes that with time off for good behavior he could get out in 5 years. I brought with me printouts of all of the messages his myspace friends have sent him and he was amazed. He couldn't go through them all but he did record a special greeting for you. He also talked about George Bush and the Iraq war among many other things. I am away again, but hope to try to have the footage up in about a month.

Thanks to the following actors, musicians and writers, Attila's story is now available on iTunes and audible.com (where it is only $13.95).

From Attila:


The support has been keeping me going, thank you all, Köszönöm szépen. And sorry i cannot return individual notes, right now my time on the phone to relay this information is restricted to five minutes per week.

Special thanks to the cast of the audio performance:

Eric Bogosian
Tommy Ramone (who is a native Hungarian)
Demetri Martin from The Daily Show
Julian Rubinstein, author of the book Ballad of the Whiskey Robber
Writer/Performer Jonathan Ames
Bestselling writer Gary Shteyngart
Bestselling writer Arthur Phillips
Pulitzer Prize-winner Samantha Power
Bestselling writer Darin Strauss
Singer/musician Jonathan Spottiswoode of Spottiswoode and His Enemies
Comedian Eugene Mirman
Indie cult band One Ring Zero.


With music by author Julian Rubinstein and One Ring Zero

Free Sample clips at: www.julianrubinstein.com/news.html

From Attila:

I want to apologize for how long it has been since my last update. It is incredible how busy I am now with school. I have officially enrolled in Hungary..s media college and am doing it by correspondence. I would like to be a war correspondent and am studying journalism. I am taking many classes: basic journalism, style, literature and law. The law class is actually being taught to me here by a representative at the prison. All together it takes up most of my day, studying, reading and writing papers.

I am spending the little free time I have working with ceramics. Some of that work has been shown on Hungarian television and I have gotten a lot of positive feedback. Hopefully some photos of that work will be posted here soon. I..m doing figurative work. The only problem is that if there is a single air bubble in the work, it can explode in the oven, as it did the other day here, causing a mess.

My time on the phone is limited to five minutes so that is all for now. I am also sorry I do not have time to dictate responses to all of the individual email messages that have been sent to me but I am very appreciative of the support from everyone.

Szia (goodbye).

Thanks to everyone who made it happen, the new youtube video is here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CMHxUqe08cc