(----) In Russia Vol.5

A babushka punched me yesterday coming out of the metro. This particular metro stop was just a madhouse; it was impossible to walk in a straight line without bumping into someone or getting plowed into. I bumped into this lady and she hit me, not even breaking her stride or checking to see how the blow landed. I think she represents the overall attitude this city has to me. I keep stumbling, and it keeps punishing me for doing so.

Anyway.


Graffiti close to the stop where I was punched.


My favorite contemporary Russian musician, Mujuice, playing at a really cool space called 1980, which is basically a museum dedicated to Nike Air shoes. You can buy tons of Nike gear there, and they have a bunch of "artifacts" related to the birth of hip-hop in NYC in the 80s.




The shoes at 1980. I had Adidas on and therefore was not cool enough. See? Once again, Moscow smacks me in the face for trying.

A trip to a mall in Russia proved fruitful:


No comment necessary.




--"Vladimir, what should we do for the new window display? We gotta spice up our presentation. Just having some mannequins wearing suits is not enough."
--"Hmm, good point. People won't buy these clothes that we have marked up 300% from normal retail value unless we entice them somehow. Do we have any watermelons we could put around the mannequins? That might do the trick."
--"Fuck yeah, dude. I'll send Zhenya to the market right now. We're definitely getting promotions for this one."


Nothing makes a bag designed specifically for Russian women to drape across their arms while looking bitchy look better than an oil drum that some lazy fucker spilled paint on and called it art.


Sign says, "Opening soon."


Emerging from the metro. Some stations have really elaborate halls, like this one, with a floor-to-ceiling tapestry that has Lenin's visage on it. He's probably going nuts witnessing what has happened to this place in the past 10 years.


It costs 15 rubles to take a leak in a porta-potty. But all amenities are included, like mood lighting.


This is the building I work in. It houses The Moscow Times, a financial paper called Vedomosti, and 10 magazines, including the office for the Russian version of Esquire.


The newsroom. News is occurring.


A recent cover of Vedomosti. Pictured is Oleg Deripaska, the richest man in Russia ($28.6 billion). The headline says, "They didn't call Deripaska." The financial crisis here is hitting him hard. He might only have $20 billion by the end of the year.

I leave you with this series of photos. These are instructions on the soda machine at work. Now, I understand that buying a soda is complicated. We've all had to do it at some point. The confusing part is why the instructions have been translated into English. As if any native English speaker would not know how to do this.

What could be better than this?

Bull City HQ - Thurs Oct 16 - 9pm - $5

• Cantwell Gomez & Jordan - acrobatically boxing your ears in a mind-pleasing fashion


• Le Weekend - giving the face of music a close but comfortable shave


• Impossible Arms - what if Neil Young...was a Minuteman?

A birthday is occurring as we speak

Jowlhard Richter in the house (or, more specifically, in the NYC subway early in the morning of September 14).


Actual photo taken by RB's bedside (dans chez Mimmz) one month ago. To follow Rikk's lead, it's RB in a nutshell, but not literally.


This one is simply a present from RB's friends. A failed attempt at a double jowl. Fail-jowl. FOWL.

(----) In Russia Vol.4

"So yeah, I live in the most expensive city in the world, and I pay around $1500 a month for a two-room apartment in this neighborhood in north Moscow, and I bought this car with a loan that comes with 20% APR in an economy that is falsely confident because the country I live in has an enormous amount of oil and gas reserves that my government uses as political muscle throughout Europe, and most of my fellow Russian citizens earn less than $700 a month, but you know what? I'm gonna treat myself to something nice. I'm gonna splurge. I'm gonna get a fucking desert and a woman with snakes coming out of her face airbrushed onto the fucking side of this tiny car that I will end up paying more interest on than the car is worth. Why? Because it's fucking possible, you stupid American. And it wasn't possible 8 years ago, therefore it is extremely important that I do it now. And I happen to think women with snakes emerging from their pores are fucking AWESOME."


More graffiti from the stairwell of my hosts' place...Rostix is a KFC-style fast food chain here. I ate there once and it was fine, but maybe this person had a bad experience and needed to express it on the wall of this 5-story building in south Moscow.


Speaking of food ... this is what it comes to, folks. You're hungry at 2am but you don't have any groceries, so you create a makeshift sandwich out of your friends' refrigerator contents. Which include bread, cheese, and carrots that have been soaked in some sort of vinegar.


So part of my rent at my friends' place, at least of my own design, is doing their dishes. As I was paying my rent last week on my first day off from work, I broke a glass and cut my hand to the bone, which resulted in a trip to the hospital and four stitches. I called one clinic that was willing to use my insurance and apparently, once I told them I was American, dollar signs appeared in their eyes. They wanted to send an ambulance and keep me in the hospital for several days and perform surgery on me. I just decided to pay for it out of pocket somewhere else so I wouldn't have to wait any longer. The nurse who dressed the wound was typically Russian -- very cold, blunt and to the point -- but when they were applying anesthetic with a needle, every time I winced she would yell very loudly in Russian, "EVERYTHING IS FINE, EVERYTHING IS OK, EVERYTHING IS GOING OK", like some sort of robot. It could have been worse, I suppose.


The glass that cut me. Well, not the exact glass, but one exactly like it. My friends had 4 of them when I moved in, but I've broken 2 of them so far. Белый Медведь (Byeli Medvyed) means "White Bear"; "medvyed" means "bear", so the last name of the current president of Russia, Medvedev, means "of the bears", which is actually quite fitting for this blog, since bears, specifically those from the country, have provided an enormous amount of discussion among those "in the know." That was a lot of commas.


A corrupt douchebag pundit's commentary on a laptop viewed through a cheap digital camera. Fuck Giuliani.


Russian cat frontin' (the same one that was postin' up last week). This one is for Crash and Bronweezy.


Pourin' one on the Moscow ground for Cy.

Danny Binge and Lorrie Binge on the Oprah.

Danny gots them big lungz.

Get Your Pal-on(in)!

This is just creepy!

Cy Rawls Forever

.....Cy Rawls was a fan. Of music, of sports, and judging by the way he fought these last few months, of life. To say he was an unique individual, is a vast understatement. He was a living legend. One of the ways he earned his legendary status was to show up at an astonishing number of rock shows. Sometimes these shows were on the same night, great distances apart. If you were a band playing out of town, to spot Cy's friendly face at the show seemed like receiving some cosmic blessing. But it wasn't luck. He had to drive there.

.....My quintessential Cy story took place on New Year's Eve some years ago. We were throwing a party at the Big House. Cy showed up at 9:30. No one else would arrive for at least an hour and I still needed to get dressed. Cy ate a few snacks and hung out for about ten minutes before heading out. He said he'd be back a little later. By 4:30 am, only Zeke, Becca and myself remained awake. Side two of "Purple Rain" was playing, probably louder than it should have been. And in walked Cy, looking as sharp as he had hours earlier. Years later, at a soccer match, I remember being actually kind of disappointed when Cy had to call one of us on a cell phone to figure out where we were. Finn has that amazing story from South by Southwest where he plays a show, gets taken to a surprise "Gang of Four" show and winds up in a van with Andy Gill. It's a long and amazing night. And the coda, the punch line, is he finally gets taken to a hotel room to crash, and as he enters, Cy walks out. You never expected him to be there, but you were always glad when he was.

.....Cy was a loyal fan. His record of attending UNC home football games is more than impressive considering that sometimes the team's record wasn't very good. I didn't get to watch a lot of Carolina sports with Cy, mainly because he tended to be at the game more often than not. There used to be considerably more Washington Redskins fans in North Carolina before the Carolina Panthers came to town. Cy stuck by his skins. Again, not always easy. A friend of ours from Washington invited James and me to a Redskins game for his birthday. James couldn't make it, so knowing Cy was a Redskins fan, I invited him. I had known Cy for years, but most of our conversations were pretty short. I wasn't sure how easy it would be to share a 5 hour drive with him. The time flew by easily however, discussing music and sports and sitting behind the goal posts later, I surprisingly found myself rooting for the Skins, a team I had never liked. Unfortunately, The Giants won.

.....There is so much more that could be said. Cy on the dance floor. Cy at the cover up. Cy at trivia. I mean he was always going somewhere, doing something fun. And everywhere he went, he made friends; an astonishing amount of friends, as has been demonstrated these last few months. I'm appreciative that he got to see how much he was loved. We are all sad; sad that he won't be showing up anymore when we least expect it. Because you knew if he was there, then that place, that moment, was somewhere worth being. And often, he was the reason that was the case. So thanks Cy.

Sincerely,

Your fans.

(----) In Russia Vol.3

Ah, here he is in his full glory, advertising the Black Russian malt beverage.



Some more billboards:


This is for a blockbuster out now in Russian theaters called "Hitler Kaput" (but there's no "H" in Russian, so it turns into a "G", and therefore is "Gitler Kaput"). It's supposed to be a campy romp about the end of the titular dictator. Famous Russian rapper Timati (the guy on the top left) hams it up alongside the daughter of St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak.


An ad for a bank.


Limo.


Graffiti in the stairwell in my hosts' building. This took some dedication. I also like how the dandelion looks like a character from the Mr. Show skit about the altered state of "Druggachusetts".


While taking the trash out a few nights ago, I came across this chair next to the dumpster. Judging from the rest of the contents filling the dumpster, it was apparent that someone had just passed away, and I guess their family just put this wheelchair/toilet out to get thrown away with a huge pile of hospital tubing and clothing. To comment upon how intensely sad this scene was in person would be redundant, and in all seriousness, there is no making light of the situation going on. It just struck me as an example of how things seem to be in a city like this, at least to me so far: shit happens, move on.


Watching the debate on my hosts' laptop with 6 other Americans. The candidates failed to impress anyone with their (lack of) knowledge about Russia. FAIL.

(----) In Russia Vol.2

The metro. It's a beast. Smelly, crowded, full of people who think they are the only people in the world walking around, forcing you to have to dart all over the place to get where you are going in time. At certain times of the day the cars are so full that to get in you have to make yourself part of a human wave that just shoves its way in and out at each stop. And as a foreigner, you must be prepared to get stared at. A lot. By children, swarthy men, nosy babushkas, snotty-looking women in 5-inch pencil-thin heels, etc.



But the metro has its, um, charms. There's always some type of crazy/bizarre/absurd/massively depressing thing to see. For example: two days ago I was in one of the metro tunnels, crossing from one line to the other, and in the span of one minute, I saw:
--a very pregnant (as in ready to pop) woman playing violin
--a man with no arms begging for change
--an old lady in a blue rainslicker selling flags with a skull and crossbones on them

Visually, though, it's pretty stunning. Some of the stations have amazing architecture and crazy Soviet-era statues and sculptures. And there's always the ads on the walls to look at. Like this one, which I couldn't get a proper photo of because you're not allowed to take pictures in the metro so I had to be discreet. It's an ad for some sort of alcoholic drink called a "Black Russian". If you can't tell, it's an eagle wearing a suit and tie.



Extras:





At my second job interview I was escorted into a room to wait for the interviewer, and these guys' portraits were hanging on the wall facing me. As if to say, "You want job? You must wear tinted spectacles."


Russians hackey-sacking near Red Square.


Russian dogs. There are tons of homeless dogs all over the city. I have heard legends of dogs who actually ride the metro and get off at particular stops.


Russian cat postin' up outside my new hosts' place.


The front door of my friends' place where I am crashing.


My "bed".

Uh?

So this is tongue-in-cheek?
But this isn't?

(-----) In Russia 2008 Vol.1

Quick and to the point:


These British tourists in the Helsinki airport had an animatronic moose in yellow raingear that would play "Singin' In the Rain" when they pushed its tummy.


Gandalf checks his email in the Helsinki airport.


After an 8-hour layover in Helsinki, this was served on the plane. I was not sure what it was supposed to be and therefore did not eat it.


The view from the first apartment I attempted to stay in. I moved out within 24 hours after learning that there was not what you would call a strict policy among the roommates of locking the front door.


The ubiquitous set of beat-up Russian cars outside the place I am currently staying.


The front door of my current host's building (from the inside). The apartment itself is really swanky.


The hallway.


Russians breakdancing at the DMC World DJ Championship Finals in Moscow (first time ever they have been held in Moscow).


More breakdancing. These guys were really awesome, as were the DJs at the show. And there was a Russian beatboxer named Vantahng who was the best beatboxer I've ever seen. His voice had so much bass in it that I could feel the hairs on my head shaking.


ЩЕКАТЬ (shye'kat) v. 1, to shake one's face from side to side vigorously. 2, to ruin one's parents' expectations of normal photos of their child at historically important locations around the world (like, say, Red Square). 3, to jowl.