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June 30, 2005
E-mail scammers are to be congratulated on their inspired and topical scheming
Looks like Mikhail Khodorkovsky is the new Clements Kodobu.
Posted by michele at 1:44 PM | Comments (0)
June 29, 2005
Stare, slackjawed
This little piece of hypnosis is Russian in origin.
Posted by michele at 2:31 PM | Comments (2)
June 28, 2005
Photos by Alexey Tikhonov
Too much Bunin and Chekhov - I imagine the Crimea as the eternal site of wistful adultery for privileged Russians in white linen. Alexey Tikhonov's Yalta is more of a transplanted Coney Island.
I miss Petersburg's tramvais: what other form of transport can be consistently relied upon to be slower than walking? I boarded my customary tram in Petrogradskaya one morning and understood nothing of what the ticket-lady said to me as I handed over my seven rubles. Chto? Six or eight passengers got involved, one inspired old lady taking out a pen and notepad to write the message down. When I finally nodded understanding, there was applause in the tramcar. The message? "This tramvai stops running tomorrow, for the next three years." No mention was made of an alternative. So that's how I started walking to school and realised that the tramvai had been slowing me down twice over.
Alexey has a whole directory of Photo Stories.
Posted by michele at 10:18 AM | Comments (7)
June 27, 2005
Apologies
for entirely self-caused server error over the weekend. Am back in operation.
Posted by michele at 3:09 PM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2005
Marginally, marginally Russian.
Everybody needs to be playing Porntris.
Posted by michele at 10:40 PM | Comments (0)
In which I mock Russian pronunciation inferior to my own.
(Of interest only to Russian speakers/learners, if anyone.)
I forgot to mention the crowning moment of this past weekend, and possibly of my entire career as a student of Russian: Max said I could pronounce the above letter perfectly. Perhaps he was simply being polite, but at any rate I feel I've come leaps and bounds since my early days of fearing the plural (the unsatisfyingly-transliterated "y" is the standard Russian plural ending), and of delivering said letter, when otherwise unavoidable, with fingers crossed, excessive emphasis, and an involuntary, chickenlike, forward jerk of the head as though to expel the vowel like a lump of potato from my windpipe.
I had a friend and classmate in St Petersburg who had decided several years ago that the sound was quite beyond his reach, and used instead a substitute of his own making. "Ya tam bweel," he would say. "Esli bweelo bwee..." (In all other respects his Russian was quite fluent and expressive, I hasten to add.)
This is very nearly as annoying as my first-year classmate's really quite astonishing ability, in the face of overwhelming pointers to quite another direction, of clinging to his pronunciation of (confusingly-spelt, admittedly) personal pronoun "ego" as, well, "eggo", like the waffles. He was able to correctly pronounce it in context, but when faced with the pronoun in written form, spent nearly a year failing to put two and two together.
Posted by michele at 9:44 PM | Comments (1)
Absurd, yet compelling.
Does anybody have a lot of time and patience on their hands? Fair enough, I have plenty of time, but am still lacking in patience. I've discovered this bizarre little Flash game, in grammatically-odd yet somewhat native-sounding Russian, with English subtitles. Perhaps the painfully-tedious navigation system is intended, in some way, to evoke the painful tedium of Soviet living circa 1953, the year in which Wombat Tale is set. Somebody please play this strange, description-defying little game and tell me what happens once you've collected all the tomatoes.
Posted by michele at 5:13 PM | Comments (5)
June 21, 2005
Russophile Weekend
Recently I have been experimenting with taking up food offers posted on my comments scripts. Tatyana suggested rich tortes at the Cafe Sabarsky, and so, upon arriving in New York, I let her buy me a slice (!); an Uzbek gentleman whom I haven't seen in three years wanted me to try his native Samsa, so when he drove over from Pittsburgh this weekend we went on a quest for the doughy lamb pockets (and Boy wanted plov).
Max had come ready with addresses of recommended venues, but we decided to go deep into Brooklyn in search of the Bukharan Jews. We walked around, the men consulting some genial but unhelpful locals (po-russki, of course), and I being amused by the DIY improvisational school of Cyrillic signmaking, as practised by a local furniture store (featuring "MEBELb"). Finally, we settled blindly on an establishment named Vecherniy Tashkent (7222 18th Avenue), a corridor-like restaurant with bigscreen Russian MTV.
Neither Max nor even our waitress knew what many of the items on the menu consisted of; the bilingual menu provided not translations but simple transliterations of one-word dishes. I grew suspicious of the kitchen long before the food arrived; what kind of waitress starts off explaining a soup by mentioning that it contains water?
Our "Fresh Salad" arrived first: a not-unpleasant, innocuous little dish of sliced tomatoes, onions, peppers and cucumber, doused in brine and vinegar and sprinkled over with (surprise!) dill. Our pot of black tea was a single bag of Lipton suspended in boiling water, to the pronounced and lengthy tut-tutting of my two gentlemen friends. Then came our Samsa, of which Max had inexplicably ordered six for a party of three. Solid pastry parcels of greying lamb and onions, each the size of a bear's paw. I had a sudden craving for carrot salad po-koreiski, which arrived in a characteristically Russian parfait-glass, but was uncharacteristically so bland that I was forced to Koreanise it myself at the table with dried chilis, dill vinegar and bits of broken sugar cube.
The shit hit the fan when the shashlyk arrived. The lamb, though somewhat gristly, was edible. The beef, however, Boy described memorably as "testicles marinated in faeces juice". We decided that the plov and bread we'd ordered were not worth waiting for - not that we were in much immediate danger of being served any (neither, in any event, appeared on our bill) - and left. Boy frowned and muttered imprecations for what seemed like a year or so, but was probably closer to thirty minutes.
In a beastly twist of fate (for Boy, at least, as I took the experience much less to heart), the following day I found this review of Vecherniy Tashkent, featuring the taunting sentiment,
On the other hand, the plov, or "pilaff Uzbek style" is out of this world: a lush, unctuous fried rice studded with shredded carrots and stewed meat, all anointed with bright orange shmaltz.
On Monday I hit Brighton Beach with Max, where he dipped his toes in the Atlantic for the first time,
and we were a little irreverent and outright in our mockery of that much-loved Russian accessory, Pointy Elf Shoes For Men:
I stocked up on cyrki, adzhika, baklazhannaya ikra and real ikra (red, though - as I explained to the saleslady, I am unemployed), and, frivolously, a Cheburashka DVD. Max bought mainly beer.
Posted by michele at 3:54 PM | Comments (1)
June 17, 2005
On the inconsistency of ethnic policy in the entertainment industry
HBO On-demand is a beautiful thing. I will gain 80 pounds immediately from the movements I've stopped making.
So I've been watching the Sex and the City Aleksandr episodes I missed because I was actually in Russia meeting actual Aleksandrs. Poor Mishka Baryshnikov. (Did you know he has his own perfume line for women, Misha?) Reduced to playing the Laconic Slav, to speaking silly Russian half-truths ("In Russia, we sweeten our tea with cherry jam" - come on, not necessarily, sugar's kind of caught on).
One of the nicest things about now speaking Russian where once I did not is the new insight it gives me into Russian on tv and in films. And there's plenty of it, wherever a villain is called for. Gary Oldman spoke what seemed to me fantastic Russian in Air Force One with Harrison Ford; Pierce Brosnan and Denise Richards, in The World Is Not Enough, can not be said to have.
In general, though, Hollywood seems to make an effort to find genuine Russians to say genuine Russian things in movies, not something that can be said for films calling for orientals, apparently viewed as interchangeable (witness Ziyi Zhang as the lead in the upcoming Memoirs of a Geisha, and the oriental patchwork horror that is the screen adaptation of Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club), or, arguably worse, playable by second-generation Chinese in faltering possession of two of the six tones of Cantonese.
Surely Asian immigrants in America far outnumber their Russian counterparts. What could explain this inequality of policy?
Posted by michele at 12:17 PM | Comments (1)
June 15, 2005
Moscow -SO- is Russia
Having been told again and again that "Moscow is not Russia", ABC correspondent Emma Griffiths and her partner Simon Johnson set off on the trans-Siberian in the hope of gaining at least a small insight into the "real Russia".
As much as I remain unconvinced of such silly notions as Moscow's un-Russianness (what?), this, sponsored by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is still a fun (and ongoing) Trans-Siberian travelogue. Probably only interesting to the impressionable foreigners among us, though. Like me.
Why is it only the most decrepit aspects of a country that are permitted to be representative of "reality"? The conspicuous consumption which goes down in Moscow, to which, I assume, is what those who label it "inauthentically Russian" object, seems to me to be the distilled essence of how many Russians would act if they could. In any case - plenty of urban poor in Moscow to satisfy the pedants.
Posted by michele at 9:09 AM | Comments (7)
June 14, 2005
"Why do all Russian boys look like someone shit on them and then lit them on fire?"
Archives of Big Cheese Press' Everyone Drunk But Me, an inspired comic strip blog by an American student in Moscow.
This was totally my first week at the Nevsky Institute!
Posted by michele at 1:05 PM | Comments (2)
Nascent dictionary of My Private Runglish
Selections from language I am wont to speak with Boy:
Whence you?
I want of the cheese.
At me there is not of the money.
Eat him. (referring to cookie)
...and infinite selections of actual Russian, as pronounced by a guest on the Jerry Springer Show: Poe-chay-mooo?
Posted by michele at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)
Russian Hot Girl takes NYC by storm.
I'm stealing this link from Languor Management; basically if something is Russian-themed and sexually trashy in some way, it's getting posted here. I actually don't like this genre of article at all - alternately hard-assed/tender self-proclaimed-slut narrative, in the vein of My date with Suzi Suzuki - but hey, it's topical.
I'm reading Languor Management with renewed vigour these days, as the author has started, or resumed, asserting his presence in his own text a bit more, kind of a prerequisite for blogs, I think.
Posted by michele at 10:25 AM | Comments (3)
June 13, 2005
This is so newsworthy I haven't the words.
Mosnews.com photo-essay on wet t-shirted school-leavers.
This might have a shred of summer human-interest credibility if the reporter hadn't captioned the last photo, "A wet Moscow Lolita has just got out of the fountain".
Why is the expat press in Russia so perverted? Well, I know why, but WHY?
It's out in the open now: yes, I'm a closet, tut-tutting conservative.
Posted by michele at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)
Feeling curmudgeonly
At the Taste of Russia grocery store in Brooklyn, many people order potatoes by asking for "potyaytoaz."
Article in today's New York Times on Brighton Beach Runglish, featuring a number of incorrect transliterations ("khartoshka") - but then I am just a big hairy pedant. So much promise in this this premise, but the article is lazily researched and falls a bit flat. Also, I don't think the Russian accent is represented very accurately.
Starbucks - that latter-day emblem of American culture - seemed a sensible place to witness Runglish being spoken. After all, one can assume there is no direct translation for a venti latte with soy milk.At the Starbucks on Brighton Beach Avenue and Brighton 6th Street, the patrons did indeed Runglicize their orders. Calls went out for "tyall cyawfeh" with the Russian word for milk and for "white chedyah chiz bree-yoach." "At first there was a culture clash," said one employee, his voice low because he was breaking Starbucks' policy of not speaking with the news media. "But they adopted pretty fast."
Ok, I've been to this Starbucks, and I don't remember seeing a single employee who wasn't latino - why a Russian immigrant would say "s molokom" to a Puerto Rican is beyond me. Furthermore, Starbucks has a self-service milk/sugar bar so I am thinking that maybe the reporter is making this one up. Also, "white chedyah chiz bree-yoach" is not really "Runglicized", is it? The speaker just has an accent.
Bleh. An "exotic" theme is not an excuse for a surface-skimming article.
Posted by michele at 10:07 AM | Comments (1)
June 9, 2005
Summer heat rots the brain
This is all I am capable of passing on to you today:
"The frisky creature tore down the curtains and stole the breadcrumbs from an open kitchen cabinet," said Lyudmila Vaseneva.
Residents of Akademgorodok terrorised by bushy-tailed things.
Posted by michele at 12:54 PM | Comments (2)
June 8, 2005
Seriously?
Maryland Transit Administration denies involvement.
Posted by michele at 3:47 PM | Comments (2)
June 6, 2005
Snack scandal in London
Excerpted from an e-mail from an old and much-loved ally, reporting on attendance of a Russian-themed launch party in London:
Was also bewildered by the nibbles on offer. Everything seemed to be either stale or pickled: munchable-looking biscuit rings were toothcrackingly hard, while apparently innocuous cherry tomatoes turned out to be soused in dill-infused vinegar. In addition, there were Spam-like slabs on dry white bread and thick, floury scone-like things that resembled English baby biscuits (so I'm told). Is any of this sounding familiar to you?
Yes, yes and more yes! All of this is undeniably Russian, but it seems like the organisers were banking on the attendees knowing nothing of zakuski in order to get away with serving the very cheapest of fare. Russians and Russianists, are we agreed?
Posted by michele at 10:33 AM | Comments (6)
Ludmila (calculatingly?) spills the beans
The man - a terse, authoritarian workaholic - comes home, knackered, to his kitchen table in the leafy suburbs between 11.30 and midnight, slumps into a chair, and drinks a glass of yoghurty milk. The family know this is the time to approach him to seek his consent for things, but never to ask him about work. He grunts, makes dark and ironic jokes that bemuse his long-serving and adoring wife, seldom asks his family's advice about the myriad of incurable problems besetting his brow and beloved motherland, and then goes to sleep.
The man? Volodya Putin, according to his missus.
The interview text, or at least the Guardian's summary of it, reminds me of unreliable narrator Olga in Nedelya kak nedelya; tenderly, and apparently unknowingly, painting a portrait of a true domestic tyrant. But the Guardian (and they probably know better) is of the opinion that the interview is anything but innocent.
The interview text that appears in each of the three newspapers is identical, suggesting that Putina's spin doctors may have had as much play in its conception as the four participants of the interview. But all the same, it shows us how the Kremlin's Alastair Campbells want us to think life in the Putin home works. For Kremlin watchers, it also provides the intriguing possibility that a president increasingly criticised for his authoritarian and anti-democratic methods, first learned how to dominate in the home.
Posted by michele at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)
June 2, 2005
"Uzky Tonky Grotesk" - I've dated a couple
The most exhaustive reference list for Cyrillic fontmania one could ever hope for, featuring the most pleasing font name ever - "Uzky Tonky Grotesk", which translates rather disappointingly as "Condensed Thin Sans[-Serif]". I find that widely-used Cyrillic fonts tend to suck a lot of ass, and it's not only because I am not a native Russian speaker that Russian text can be very difficult, visually, to read. I suppose it's due to the blockishness of and lack of variation in printed Cyrillic letters - no hilly horizons as there are in the Roman alphabet.
Posted by michele at 3:35 PM | Comments (0)
June 1, 2005
Where centenarians bloom
I'd like to find out more about the famed centenarians of Soviet Georgia and Azerbaijan, but have been unable to find anything substantial on the internet. I've always been as sceptical about these old claims as I continue to be about China's claims of everything being 100% Fine and Dandy in the People's Republic.
This website on the many centenarians of Okinawa provides a brief alternative explanation, which seems sensible and believable:
In-depth studies of [Georgian and other] populations have shown that age-exaggeration is rampant and life expectancy is actually shorter than in the U.S., nor are there high concentrations of centenarians. The reasons behind the age exaggeration are complex but include the prestige that goes along with being the oldest individual in a village, avoidance of military service while young by assuming the identity of a deceased elder, and a general tendency for the elderly to inflate their ages.
Add to this the Soviet obsession with veneer, and victory in all and arbitrary fields - this would tie in with the commemorative stamps issued on the occasion of Mahmud Eyvazov's 148th.
Azerbaijan International isn't sceptical at all, and puts it down to lots and lots of yoghurt.
Posted by michele at 1:46 PM | Comments (0)