Fidel is a ‘student’ bar, which I realized only last night is a euphemism for unconnected, stingy, and/or unimaginative. I would add poor, but in reality no poor person would be willing to cough up 60 rubles (about $2.50) for a shot of vodka. What it really is is ’poor chic,' that style which compels trend-seeking American teenagers to pay $300 and up for a pair of pre-ripped jeans, or fill their wardrobes with ‘quirky’ clothes they found at a thrift store. To this crowd, Fidel Castro is less a complicated political figure, than that cool kid who lived down the hall in your dorm, the one who wore a scraggly beard, smoked, and thought big, beautiful, independent thoughts.
Sitting on a bench with my back to the wall opposite the bar, I had the sense that extremely cool and enticingly dangerous things were happening somewhere else. All the ‘New Russian’ kids, the ones who race around in brand-new BMWs (don’t I feel at home!) were going wild in a lavish nightclub with go-go dancers and trance music, dropping ‘e’ tablets like M&Ms and making-out with each-other in-between sips of fine champagne brought around by nude waitresses on roller-skates. And here I was, watching suspiciously aged women get their groove on with lanky men dancing like Bill Nye the Science Guy––pumping their bony appendages in rapid motion like the pistons of a horrible machine, or drunken peasants reenacting a furiously paced chicken-plucking ritual.
The only two remotely attractive Russian girls happened to be sitting to my left, and after about half-and-hour I brought them into the conversation my friends and I were having. Their English was excellent, which was unfortunate because we’d been talking about them for the last fifteen minutes. They assured us they hadn’t heard anything and the music was loud enough that I believed them. I told the blond one I thought Fidel sucked and she gave me a smile which said disagreed but wasn’t the type to argue. A few minutes later I asked her to dance; she moved like a dancer, and spun with the powerful, refined velocity of a lead bullet, practically knocking me over when she wrapped into me. Sadly, she must have found me less impressive; after one song she took my hand and lead me back to the table.
On the dance floor she’d tried to whisper something in my ear I couldn’t make sense of. I kept looking at her confoundedly, trying to communicate with a single expression that I was neither dumb nor deaf, and just as confused at my lack of understanding as she was. Back at the table I realized what the problem was. Along with a breathy little voice that was easily drowned out by the music, she had this classic ‘valley girl’ accent, meaning she inflected the end of every clause as if she was firing off countless glib questions. How the hell did she pick that up, I thought to myself. Nobody here talks like that.
By this point it was 11:50, time to catch the metro home. The girls had taken interest in another guy (they took him home, I found out later. Turns out they’d been angling for foreigners all night long––call it the forth type of Fidel-goers) and I had no desire to stay in this place anyways. I grabbed my coat, leapt from the bar, and sprinted through the streets like a criminal fleeing the scene. I’d forgotten how fast I could run, and now delighted my speed and agility––bounding over potholes and curbs, dodging cars, and skidding past pedestrians who threw me contemptuous or indifferent looks. In front of blue Peugeot I cut too fast and had to brace myself against the passenger side, causing the alarm to go off. Running away from its shrieking siren, I really did feel like a criminal.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
My Third Day at the Gallery of Navicular Artis
It’s 3:30 in the afternoon and I haven’t eaten since breakfast, which consisted of two boiled eggs, a cold, sliced-up tomato, two halves of black bread, and a glass of orange juice. I had to get to the gallery by 3:00 so I headed for the metro directly after class. On the way I stopped by a bookstore to see if they had the Ozhigov portable Russian dictionary, my latest love-object. I need this dictionary like Gollum needs his ring––a body-spirit, psycho-pathological, atomic yen for five-hundred pages of supple genius which, I imagine, pines for me from between those glossy, mahogany-tinted covers. Besides, how’s a man supposed to learn Russian if he doesn’t have the finest portable Russian-Russian dictionary with him all times right there in a holster beside his faithful Katzner (the best English-Russian dictionary for students)? See, if you use Katzner exclusively, you’re not gleaning novel Russian words and phrases, definitive phraseology used to clarify abstract and everyday concepts alike. Am I supposed to breathe this language in?
When I realized they didn’t have a copy I had a sudden urge to call in an airstrike.
I arrived at the gallery late. Fifteen minutes––not bad for Russia. It could have been ten minutes, but I ducked into a grocery store to grab a snack. I bought yogurt and a plastic container of what looked like potato salad. ‘Salad olivier’ they call it, a French import which resembles potato salad with hard-boiled eggs and lots of mayonnaise. This one had chicken in it, and a sticker that told me it was ‘New!’. I usually don’t buy food with that label but I was in a hurry and I didn’t understand the labels on the other products.
I’ve been in the gallery an hour now and we’ve had two visitors, a couple who came in asking for Gleb, one of the curators. The man had shoulder-length, dirty-blonde hair and a crowded, toothy smile and he handed me a cell phone with a woman on the other end speaking faster than the announcer at the Kentucky Derby. Something about brochures and students and the verb ‘to bring.’ I said yes to all her demands then handed the phone back to the man. God, I hope she doesn’t expect me to do anything for her; it’s not in my job description to leave this room. What did she want anyways? Normally I’d be in a panic, thinking I’d set some terrible set of events in motion, but I can’t think of any plausibly threatening combination of the words ‘brochures,' ‘students’, and ‘to bring.' Is it really possible that the students are bringing pain, destruction or Linkin’ Park to me because I’m carrying brochures for the gallery? Maybe they’re looking to trade for brochures?
Now my stomach is growling again. I’ll have to suck it up and finish the olivier and wait for the students to show up. If they bring me some food I’ll give them all the brochures they want.
When I realized they didn’t have a copy I had a sudden urge to call in an airstrike.
I arrived at the gallery late. Fifteen minutes––not bad for Russia. It could have been ten minutes, but I ducked into a grocery store to grab a snack. I bought yogurt and a plastic container of what looked like potato salad. ‘Salad olivier’ they call it, a French import which resembles potato salad with hard-boiled eggs and lots of mayonnaise. This one had chicken in it, and a sticker that told me it was ‘New!’. I usually don’t buy food with that label but I was in a hurry and I didn’t understand the labels on the other products.
I’ve been in the gallery an hour now and we’ve had two visitors, a couple who came in asking for Gleb, one of the curators. The man had shoulder-length, dirty-blonde hair and a crowded, toothy smile and he handed me a cell phone with a woman on the other end speaking faster than the announcer at the Kentucky Derby. Something about brochures and students and the verb ‘to bring.’ I said yes to all her demands then handed the phone back to the man. God, I hope she doesn’t expect me to do anything for her; it’s not in my job description to leave this room. What did she want anyways? Normally I’d be in a panic, thinking I’d set some terrible set of events in motion, but I can’t think of any plausibly threatening combination of the words ‘brochures,' ‘students’, and ‘to bring.' Is it really possible that the students are bringing pain, destruction or Linkin’ Park to me because I’m carrying brochures for the gallery? Maybe they’re looking to trade for brochures?
Now my stomach is growling again. I’ll have to suck it up and finish the olivier and wait for the students to show up. If they bring me some food I’ll give them all the brochures they want.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Linkin' Park
The members of Linkin’ Park have become millionaires performing music any healthy quail could write for fourteen-year-old boys who have either never heard of Rage Against the Machine or prefer their antiestablishment rock watered-down like Mom’s lemonade.
And yet, despite my loathing, I possess the ability to hum along to half-a-dozen of their songs and even recite a few choruses––an anything-but-super power I developed by living with my host brother. Serioga is Linkin’ Park’s #1 fan east of Lincoln Park, the type of rabid devotee (we’ve all been one at some point) for whom listening to the music is just a tiny sliver of the pie of adoration. The others are drawing and redrawing their stylized monicker; downloading photographs and videos of them playing concerts or just sitting around being cool (he recently realized he could photograph these photographs with my camera); painting their name on his bicycle; and wearing LP gear.
From time to time he also asks me to translate random bits of profanity, which I’ve figured out are mostly Linkin’ Park lyrics. Of all the expressions of his love, this one interests me the most. Think about it: aside from what I translate, he can’t understand a single word they say. His favorite band! It’s all image and music to him. And yet judging by his manner of dressing, his antagonism toward school and his mother, and the sense I get of his hobbies and friends, I’d say he’s got the gist of it. Lyrics would simply reinforce and clarify what he’s already gleaned from context––from the kind of people who listen to Linkin’ Park, where the band advertises, how the members act in their videos/photos, etc.
My brother's love of Linkin' Park strikes me as a case study for two much larger subjects I've been chewing on: the place of the English language in St. Petersburg, and American imported culture in St. Petersburg. Consider the following observations:
1. Whereas in the US, where people learn foreign languages for primarily personal reasons––I’ve never heard “I’m learning Russian/Spanish/French/Italian for the money,” even it has to do with their career. The exception is probably Chinese.––Russians learn English, by and large, to make more money, either by emigrating or working for a foreign firm.
2. English has firmly established itself as the second language of Russia, but it’s often more than that. Sometimes it’s mixed with Russian, as in a prominent advertisement for Tuborg beer which plays on the word for ‘party’ (‘vecherinka’), using ‘vechergreenka,’ a reference to Tuborg’s signature green bottles. Other times it supersedes it, as when the entire advertisement is in English. In addition, many imported goods have only English on the packaging.
3.Swearing in English is one of the coolest things you can do if you’re between nine and fifteen years old.
4. Russian license plates say “Russian Federation” in English, not Russian.
5. Business and technical words (computing especially) are almost all of English origin.
6. English-language graffiti is perhaps more common than Russian-language. American rappers (50 Cent), commercial brands, and sexual topics are common.
7. There’s now a Russian version of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” which imitates everything from the format to the host’s delivery to the jingle. The big exception: no shots at the president.
8. English-language films such as “The Borne Identity,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” and even “Catwoman” get prime-time slots on television, and there are entire channels which play dubbed programming almost exclusively (especially animated shows like South Park, Daria, Bevis and Butthead, etc.).
And yet, despite my loathing, I possess the ability to hum along to half-a-dozen of their songs and even recite a few choruses––an anything-but-super power I developed by living with my host brother. Serioga is Linkin’ Park’s #1 fan east of Lincoln Park, the type of rabid devotee (we’ve all been one at some point) for whom listening to the music is just a tiny sliver of the pie of adoration. The others are drawing and redrawing their stylized monicker; downloading photographs and videos of them playing concerts or just sitting around being cool (he recently realized he could photograph these photographs with my camera); painting their name on his bicycle; and wearing LP gear.
From time to time he also asks me to translate random bits of profanity, which I’ve figured out are mostly Linkin’ Park lyrics. Of all the expressions of his love, this one interests me the most. Think about it: aside from what I translate, he can’t understand a single word they say. His favorite band! It’s all image and music to him. And yet judging by his manner of dressing, his antagonism toward school and his mother, and the sense I get of his hobbies and friends, I’d say he’s got the gist of it. Lyrics would simply reinforce and clarify what he’s already gleaned from context––from the kind of people who listen to Linkin’ Park, where the band advertises, how the members act in their videos/photos, etc.
My brother's love of Linkin' Park strikes me as a case study for two much larger subjects I've been chewing on: the place of the English language in St. Petersburg, and American imported culture in St. Petersburg. Consider the following observations:
1. Whereas in the US, where people learn foreign languages for primarily personal reasons––I’ve never heard “I’m learning Russian/Spanish/French/Italian for the money,” even it has to do with their career. The exception is probably Chinese.––Russians learn English, by and large, to make more money, either by emigrating or working for a foreign firm.
2. English has firmly established itself as the second language of Russia, but it’s often more than that. Sometimes it’s mixed with Russian, as in a prominent advertisement for Tuborg beer which plays on the word for ‘party’ (‘vecherinka’), using ‘vechergreenka,’ a reference to Tuborg’s signature green bottles. Other times it supersedes it, as when the entire advertisement is in English. In addition, many imported goods have only English on the packaging.
3.Swearing in English is one of the coolest things you can do if you’re between nine and fifteen years old.
4. Russian license plates say “Russian Federation” in English, not Russian.
5. Business and technical words (computing especially) are almost all of English origin.
6. English-language graffiti is perhaps more common than Russian-language. American rappers (50 Cent), commercial brands, and sexual topics are common.
7. There’s now a Russian version of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” which imitates everything from the format to the host’s delivery to the jingle. The big exception: no shots at the president.
8. English-language films such as “The Borne Identity,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” and even “Catwoman” get prime-time slots on television, and there are entire channels which play dubbed programming almost exclusively (especially animated shows like South Park, Daria, Bevis and Butthead, etc.).
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Because of Sputnik
‘Sputnik’ means ‘travelling companion’ in Russian, and in fact that's what the little capsule was--a travelling companion to the ICBM it rode atop, a side-project to what was really a weapons test. Nikita Khruschev’s son writes that at first, neither his father, nor the Soviet government saw the launch, which took place fifty years ago yesterday, as a milestone. Indeed, it didn’t even make the front page of Pravda. Only after international press made a sensation of Sputnik, did the Russians claim it as such, four days later.
I initially wanted to write an ode to Sputnik. The fact is that if Sputnik had never been launched, I wouldn’t be in Russia. But then I thought that an ode was a little premature--I've only been here six weeks.
Sputnik is what first got me interested in Russia and the Soviet Union. It started with the film October Sky, which starred a very young Jake Gyllenhaal as Homer Hickham, Jr., the son of West Virginia coal miner, who dreams of becoming a rocket scientist when he sees Sputnik whizzing across the sky (what he really saw was the spent rocket, but oh well). That summer I went to Space Camp which, in addition to being perhaps the lowest apple on the satire tree (saying you've gone is like telling people your sexual-sounding middle name), is also a really great place to relive the Cold War. You spend ten days fixated on the glory days of NASA (1961-1971); you learn exclusively about the American manned space program; you're constantly reminded of the great 'space race' but not why it was important, against whom it was run (more than just the USSR), or why we won. They do, however, go out of their way to point out that the Soviets screwed up a lot more than we did, lost many cosmonauts, and always covered it up. We saw photos of Proton rockets and Soyuz spacecrafts and, of course, Sputnik but only as if they were UFOs. To me it all looked so cool, so much less practical than our stuff, and with all those strange cyrillic letters and Russian names--Gagarin, Tereshkova, Korolev. The Russians even had a space station at that point, the ill-fated "Mir," which, by 1998 was seriously ailing, though some reason, that made me love it more.
I initially wanted to write an ode to Sputnik. The fact is that if Sputnik had never been launched, I wouldn’t be in Russia. But then I thought that an ode was a little premature--I've only been here six weeks.
Sputnik is what first got me interested in Russia and the Soviet Union. It started with the film October Sky, which starred a very young Jake Gyllenhaal as Homer Hickham, Jr., the son of West Virginia coal miner, who dreams of becoming a rocket scientist when he sees Sputnik whizzing across the sky (what he really saw was the spent rocket, but oh well). That summer I went to Space Camp which, in addition to being perhaps the lowest apple on the satire tree (saying you've gone is like telling people your sexual-sounding middle name), is also a really great place to relive the Cold War. You spend ten days fixated on the glory days of NASA (1961-1971); you learn exclusively about the American manned space program; you're constantly reminded of the great 'space race' but not why it was important, against whom it was run (more than just the USSR), or why we won. They do, however, go out of their way to point out that the Soviets screwed up a lot more than we did, lost many cosmonauts, and always covered it up. We saw photos of Proton rockets and Soyuz spacecrafts and, of course, Sputnik but only as if they were UFOs. To me it all looked so cool, so much less practical than our stuff, and with all those strange cyrillic letters and Russian names--Gagarin, Tereshkova, Korolev. The Russians even had a space station at that point, the ill-fated "Mir," which, by 1998 was seriously ailing, though some reason, that made me love it more.
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