Friday, June 30, 2006
Amsterdam Survival Guide...
(A precursor to a longer description)
Sun Glasses
Camera
Sun Screen
Pocket full of euros
Good walking shoes
Euors
A dog shit-radar
French Gauloises "yellows" cigarettes
Tolerance for small glasses of bier
Lighter from Europe sans child proofing
Lots of time on your hands
Did I mention Euros?
Clean clothing helps
Fake accent, to avoid talking to Americans
Quick feet to jump out of the way of bicycles
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Well, hash is legal there, right?
VINCENT: Yeah, it's legal, but is ain't a hundred percent legal. I mean you can't walk into a restaurant, roll a joint, and start puffin' away. You're only supposed to smoke in your home or certain designated places.
JULES: Those are hash bars?
VINCENT: Yeah, it breaks down like this: it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it and, if you're the proprietor of a hash bar, it's legal to sell it. It's legal to carry it, which doesn't really matter 'cause -- get a load of this -- if the cops stop you, it's illegal for them to search you. Searching you is a right that the cops in Amsterdam don't have.
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VINCENT: Well, in Amsterdam, you can buy beer in a movie theatre. And I don't mean in a paper cup either. They give you a glass of beer, like in a bar. In Paris, you can buy beer at MacDonald's. Also, you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
JULES: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?
VINCENT: No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.
JULES: What'd they call it?
VINCENT: Royale with Cheese.
JULES: Royale with Cheese. What'd they call a Big Mac?
VINCENT: Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac.
JULES: What do they call a Whopper?
VINCENT: I dunno, I didn't go into a Burger King. But you know what they put on french fries in Holland instead of ketchup?
JULES: What?
VINCENT: Mayonnaise.
JULES: Goddamn!
VINCENT: I seen 'em do it. And I don't mean a little bit on the side of the plate, they fuckin' drown 'em in it.
JULES: Those are hash bars?
VINCENT: Yeah, it breaks down like this: it's legal to buy it, it's legal to own it and, if you're the proprietor of a hash bar, it's legal to sell it. It's legal to carry it, which doesn't really matter 'cause -- get a load of this -- if the cops stop you, it's illegal for them to search you. Searching you is a right that the cops in Amsterdam don't have.
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VINCENT: Well, in Amsterdam, you can buy beer in a movie theatre. And I don't mean in a paper cup either. They give you a glass of beer, like in a bar. In Paris, you can buy beer at MacDonald's. Also, you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
JULES: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?
VINCENT: No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.
JULES: What'd they call it?
VINCENT: Royale with Cheese.
JULES: Royale with Cheese. What'd they call a Big Mac?
VINCENT: Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac.
JULES: What do they call a Whopper?
VINCENT: I dunno, I didn't go into a Burger King. But you know what they put on french fries in Holland instead of ketchup?
JULES: What?
VINCENT: Mayonnaise.
JULES: Goddamn!
VINCENT: I seen 'em do it. And I don't mean a little bit on the side of the plate, they fuckin' drown 'em in it.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
A bottle of champagne,on the house!
We did as we said, we went back to the little French place we that Dennis, Greg and I ate at last night, but along came JD, Laura and steve. The owner, being a good restaurateur, recognized us immediately, shook my hand and we chose an outside table as the evening was still warm, overcast, but pleasant. As we sat down, he said in his very thick French accent, what would you like to drink, its on the house, and suggested champagne, so we drank a bottle of a nice, smooth and light champagne and then proceeded to order a ton of appetizers all groaning with epicurean delight as we went through a sardine tart, monk fish carpacio, foirse gras, calamari in a sea of olive oil with a tart herb and an Andalusian sausage cooked just long enough to warm it up with boiled potatoes. It was sheer heaven. We passed the plates around as the tables were small and we couldn't be bothered with individual appetizer plates. The decision was made then and there to come back tomorrow night. Yes, there are many fine eateries, but our time is limited, and considering that not a single thing we had in 2 nights was bad, this place seems to fit the bill. Oh the pain of knowing that we must at some point soon leave this fine dinning experience and head back to over sized portions of processed slosh. The dairy products in Brussels are just as good as in Russia, and a million times better than home. Why is that we think things like skim milk and over pasteurized sour cream are good for us? It really boggles the mind I tell you.
The main course, after several glasses of chimay, consisted for me, of Duck Confit on a bed of greens with thinly sliced and pan fried potatoes with bacon; JD had the same. Laura had a beef stew with a huge shank sheared and stuffed with marrow, that I happily spooned out, mixed with mustard and ate to my heart's content. Steve ordered sweet breads and was floored by the holindaise which was rich beyond compare, and generous in a small bucket size. Dennis had a sea bass that was magnificent and Greg had the duck breast in a reduction sauce. This was no ordinary meal, this was a feast and a slow dinning experience that included a round of deserts randing from ice cream stuffed crepes, to something like zabiligioni, to caramelized bananas and JD's rum soaked coffee ice cream wih melted Belgian chocolate. To top it off and add a little acid we had double espressos with lemon. As we were finishing up along came another, somewhat more sauced group of MAAWGers that we convinced to sit and eat, we ran into one of them later that had a great smile across his face. I have a feeling that when we go back tomorrow, we'll have two bottles of champagne.
From there we headed to the hotel, to Le Bar, yeah folks, its really called Le Bar, but it was packed and quiet as everyone sat transfixed on the Italy vs. France game, which France won 3 to 1. We decided were far too boisterous for this venue and headed up Waterloo to People that had pumping techno music coming out smoking cuban cigars that we bought in Le Bar. Partagas is a fine smoke in the montechristo size, a good one hour puff really. We had a bear and watched as the alchemists behind the bar mixed a concoction of shaved ice, cranberry juice 2 different kinds of vodka, passion juice and something else. Greg decided we were all going to have one, and ordered a round. We took our fruity beverages outside and sat on the street taking pictures and talking. Glorious... glorious.
From there it was back to Le Bar, which was now half filled with Return Path personnel that we sat next two and bought us a round of drinks, however we didn't know that at the time. Dennis ordered a 30 year McCalmon which was out of this world once you got the fire out your mouth and felt the burn of age, oak and hand crafted glory. It was more pictures at the bar and then finally we parted paths.
The panels and discussions today were ok, seems to be a different vibe here than in Montreal or SF. I'm slowly making my way through the crowd and identifying the representatives from the ISPs. I'm passing out cards in hopes of scoring some good connections here in Europe, or at least collecting names and numbers that I can try and start a dialogue with when I get home. I was thrown onto a panel with Habeus and Return Path this morning. I wasn't ready, very sleepy, and although I lobbed one salvo at them, it wasn't nearly as sassy as if Kate had been here. I have a feeling that might've started an all out brawl. Damn it, we need Kate here! Still it was odd and kind of fun sitting up there discussion reputation and accreditation services in the bulk mail space. I basically called their numbers anecdotal, they were quick to defend. Funny how JF basically agreed with everything that George said.
Tomorrow start the joint sessions of the APWG and MAAWG, I may skip the morning and do a bit of work and then take a walk down to the grand platz for breakfast. There's nothing particularly interesting, the afternoon will be better.
Thursday I leave for Amsterdam for one night of cafes, van gogh and walk abouts. Foy is taking the train with me up to Amsterdam, lawrd have mercy on our souls. I'm staying at a hotel around the corner from Anne Franke's house. I hear its pretty much in the middle of things. I'm not looking forward to the train ride, three hours without a smoke, but at the same time, I could spend 3 days on that train staring out the window and taking pictures.
Photos are up from our first night of fun... more soon.
Adieu!
-L
The main course, after several glasses of chimay, consisted for me, of Duck Confit on a bed of greens with thinly sliced and pan fried potatoes with bacon; JD had the same. Laura had a beef stew with a huge shank sheared and stuffed with marrow, that I happily spooned out, mixed with mustard and ate to my heart's content. Steve ordered sweet breads and was floored by the holindaise which was rich beyond compare, and generous in a small bucket size. Dennis had a sea bass that was magnificent and Greg had the duck breast in a reduction sauce. This was no ordinary meal, this was a feast and a slow dinning experience that included a round of deserts randing from ice cream stuffed crepes, to something like zabiligioni, to caramelized bananas and JD's rum soaked coffee ice cream wih melted Belgian chocolate. To top it off and add a little acid we had double espressos with lemon. As we were finishing up along came another, somewhat more sauced group of MAAWGers that we convinced to sit and eat, we ran into one of them later that had a great smile across his face. I have a feeling that when we go back tomorrow, we'll have two bottles of champagne.
From there we headed to the hotel, to Le Bar, yeah folks, its really called Le Bar, but it was packed and quiet as everyone sat transfixed on the Italy vs. France game, which France won 3 to 1. We decided were far too boisterous for this venue and headed up Waterloo to People that had pumping techno music coming out smoking cuban cigars that we bought in Le Bar. Partagas is a fine smoke in the montechristo size, a good one hour puff really. We had a bear and watched as the alchemists behind the bar mixed a concoction of shaved ice, cranberry juice 2 different kinds of vodka, passion juice and something else. Greg decided we were all going to have one, and ordered a round. We took our fruity beverages outside and sat on the street taking pictures and talking. Glorious... glorious.
From there it was back to Le Bar, which was now half filled with Return Path personnel that we sat next two and bought us a round of drinks, however we didn't know that at the time. Dennis ordered a 30 year McCalmon which was out of this world once you got the fire out your mouth and felt the burn of age, oak and hand crafted glory. It was more pictures at the bar and then finally we parted paths.
The panels and discussions today were ok, seems to be a different vibe here than in Montreal or SF. I'm slowly making my way through the crowd and identifying the representatives from the ISPs. I'm passing out cards in hopes of scoring some good connections here in Europe, or at least collecting names and numbers that I can try and start a dialogue with when I get home. I was thrown onto a panel with Habeus and Return Path this morning. I wasn't ready, very sleepy, and although I lobbed one salvo at them, it wasn't nearly as sassy as if Kate had been here. I have a feeling that might've started an all out brawl. Damn it, we need Kate here! Still it was odd and kind of fun sitting up there discussion reputation and accreditation services in the bulk mail space. I basically called their numbers anecdotal, they were quick to defend. Funny how JF basically agreed with everything that George said.
Tomorrow start the joint sessions of the APWG and MAAWG, I may skip the morning and do a bit of work and then take a walk down to the grand platz for breakfast. There's nothing particularly interesting, the afternoon will be better.
Thursday I leave for Amsterdam for one night of cafes, van gogh and walk abouts. Foy is taking the train with me up to Amsterdam, lawrd have mercy on our souls. I'm staying at a hotel around the corner from Anne Franke's house. I hear its pretty much in the middle of things. I'm not looking forward to the train ride, three hours without a smoke, but at the same time, I could spend 3 days on that train staring out the window and taking pictures.
Photos are up from our first night of fun... more soon.
Adieu!
-L
Why aren't you looing at Flickr?
You should be, I've been uploading all bloody night and day!
MAAWG, well its MAAWG. I met a guy from Yandex.ru, which is a really good thing, cause he gave me the email of a guy that runs the show at mail.ru, who I have been emailing the past 2 years trying to get a meeting with them. Needless to say, those emails have gone unanswered, they were directed to the general support group, but now having this guy as a contact will hopefully afford me a someone I can talk to and get shit done with. This is good, this is very good.
I suppose next on my hitlist of people to courte and swap business cards would be the France Telecom, Wanadoo if they show up tomorrow and the Germans. One thing I have to tell you about: Cingular... its driving me nuts! I tell you Megafon in Russia is more reliable. I called up Cingular last night and activated my international calling options. I've managed to get through twice here, the rest of the time either people can't hear what I'm saying or vice versa, truly dissapointing.
Oh well, time to head back down for the discussion on postmaster parctices and abuse pages, then off to dinner at the awesome French place we went to the night before. I'm definately ready to eat... haven't been eating too much here... but for some reason I don't think I'll have a problem with duck confit and foise gras.
-L
MAAWG, well its MAAWG. I met a guy from Yandex.ru, which is a really good thing, cause he gave me the email of a guy that runs the show at mail.ru, who I have been emailing the past 2 years trying to get a meeting with them. Needless to say, those emails have gone unanswered, they were directed to the general support group, but now having this guy as a contact will hopefully afford me a someone I can talk to and get shit done with. This is good, this is very good.
I suppose next on my hitlist of people to courte and swap business cards would be the France Telecom, Wanadoo if they show up tomorrow and the Germans. One thing I have to tell you about: Cingular... its driving me nuts! I tell you Megafon in Russia is more reliable. I called up Cingular last night and activated my international calling options. I've managed to get through twice here, the rest of the time either people can't hear what I'm saying or vice versa, truly dissapointing.
Oh well, time to head back down for the discussion on postmaster parctices and abuse pages, then off to dinner at the awesome French place we went to the night before. I'm definately ready to eat... haven't been eating too much here... but for some reason I don't think I'll have a problem with duck confit and foise gras.
-L
Monday, June 26, 2006
LOTS OF NEW PHOTOS!
GO LOOK!!!!
(ps, Kris, the FLICKR updater is driving me nuts, half of what I think its uploaded doesn't show up... grrrrrrr!)
(ps, Kris, the FLICKR updater is driving me nuts, half of what I think its uploaded doesn't show up... grrrrrrr!)
Quick Update
I'm in Brussels, I arrived late this afternoon by train from Amsterdam where I met Dennis. We very nearly didn't meet each other which would've sucked as I could hardly keep my eyes open on the train, which would've meant I would probably have been robbed blind, or something to that effect. Beside the safety of travelling with another person, his company is always welcome as he's just good people.
My day started quite early, or late, not sure at this point, but lets put it this way, I was drinking vodka and eating pickled herring until almost 4 in the morning when I rushed back to the mini hotel, showered, finished packing, bought some water for myself and James, who was in a piss drunk alcoholic slumber and didn't stir regardless of the noise, and then walked out to meet my cab at 5. I was driven to the airport, deposited, after a brief argument over the cab fare, a matter of 50 rubles, but I was told 500, he wanted 550, oh well, I loose, or something like that.
Then it was wait until the airport is unlocked, register, wait, walk through security, wait, get on plane, pass out for 10 minutes, seats are bloody tiny on the tupelovs. From there it was the Moscow shuffle when I landed from Shermitiva 1 to 2 and then through passport control where I watched a man successfully bribe a passport official with something like a watch or bottle, made my gate with just minutes to spare following a hard time getting water as I was beyond deyhydrated. The next flight from Moscow to Amsterdam, 3 hours, was much more pleasant, bigger leather seats, and no one sitting next to me, I slept most of the way.
Got through passport and customs, met dennis, discovered my shaving cream had eruped in my cheap bag which was killing my back so I said fuck it, I can afford a rolly thing, so i bought an ultra sleak little carry on samsonite on wheels, my hands are thanking me, that thing had no straps, and with 2 liters of vodka, a carton of Gallouise cigarettes and conference clothing, it has just made my life bliss, even though I paid way too much!
Brussels, well, first impression, lots of graffitti, not unlike amsterdam... which I saw briefly after a circular train ride because the 2:30 from the airport to Brussels was cancelled due to tecnical malfunction, so we got there, then turned around and caught the righr train back to brussels. Anyway, we had a fabo dinner of French food, I had lobster bisque, snails in burgundy and sweet breads with the most divine holindaise sauce I've ever had... brilliant. I think I'll go back there. Reminds me a little of the basque restaurant in Montreal, The Pyrannease, which I fellin love with in November.
Currenly, I'm trying to catch up on some email, uploading photos... YES LOTS OF PHOTOS go FLIKR, and then having a bath and passing out... more thorough posts and impressions later.
My day started quite early, or late, not sure at this point, but lets put it this way, I was drinking vodka and eating pickled herring until almost 4 in the morning when I rushed back to the mini hotel, showered, finished packing, bought some water for myself and James, who was in a piss drunk alcoholic slumber and didn't stir regardless of the noise, and then walked out to meet my cab at 5. I was driven to the airport, deposited, after a brief argument over the cab fare, a matter of 50 rubles, but I was told 500, he wanted 550, oh well, I loose, or something like that.
Then it was wait until the airport is unlocked, register, wait, walk through security, wait, get on plane, pass out for 10 minutes, seats are bloody tiny on the tupelovs. From there it was the Moscow shuffle when I landed from Shermitiva 1 to 2 and then through passport control where I watched a man successfully bribe a passport official with something like a watch or bottle, made my gate with just minutes to spare following a hard time getting water as I was beyond deyhydrated. The next flight from Moscow to Amsterdam, 3 hours, was much more pleasant, bigger leather seats, and no one sitting next to me, I slept most of the way.
Got through passport and customs, met dennis, discovered my shaving cream had eruped in my cheap bag which was killing my back so I said fuck it, I can afford a rolly thing, so i bought an ultra sleak little carry on samsonite on wheels, my hands are thanking me, that thing had no straps, and with 2 liters of vodka, a carton of Gallouise cigarettes and conference clothing, it has just made my life bliss, even though I paid way too much!
Brussels, well, first impression, lots of graffitti, not unlike amsterdam... which I saw briefly after a circular train ride because the 2:30 from the airport to Brussels was cancelled due to tecnical malfunction, so we got there, then turned around and caught the righr train back to brussels. Anyway, we had a fabo dinner of French food, I had lobster bisque, snails in burgundy and sweet breads with the most divine holindaise sauce I've ever had... brilliant. I think I'll go back there. Reminds me a little of the basque restaurant in Montreal, The Pyrannease, which I fellin love with in November.
Currenly, I'm trying to catch up on some email, uploading photos... YES LOTS OF PHOTOS go FLIKR, and then having a bath and passing out... more thorough posts and impressions later.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Captain Mini Rides Again!
Ok folks... I rule, just plain and simple. So as I've said before we've been stealing internet access from some local wireless network that hasn't been secured. Well a few days ago we lost it, not the signal, but the ability to get out on the internet. Everyone thought we were "locked out", but I looked at the connection and noticed that it was still registering as an unsecured wireless link. I had a thought, well what if this person is a dolt and has no clue how to lock down a router, to change the default gateway and the HTML interface from 192.168.1.1 to something that can't quite guess... guess what, I was right, they're idiots... when the page came up for the router config I knew I was going to be a "golden god". D-Link, well guess what, I have one of these puppy's at home, the router that is, and I know the factory default password and guess what, they didn't even bother to change that, so I gave myself permission to crawl into their router, rebooted it and viola, we're back online. Oh I so rule... and those with wireless laptops in the hotel are going to be buying me free beer till the day I leave! This is a good ego day night for Len.
I tell you, I could really use it. I've spent the day greating new arrivals, saying goodbye to people leaving, and contemplating when I will have time to make it to several museums that I'm craving to explore, like another day at the hermitage, the defense of leningrad, the russian museum, nabokov museum and the peter paul fortress which is a really cool place to walk aout... just one of my favorite strolls on a clear day, walking atop the ramparts that held the prisoners just before the Russian Revolution. V. I. Lenin's brother was executed in the fortress which sits as an island inthe nevya, well the island is really just a moat that drains into the Nevya, but its quite beautiful.
Monday I leave for Brussels which is going to be a full day of plane plane and train travel through Moscow and Amsterdam to my final desitnation. I'm looking forward to the air conditioning of the Hilton and even a long bath with a glass of scotch. Oh yes, the bath and the shower tub, marbled, maybe even full of chanel number five, a la Trainspotting. I'm going to spend tomorrow morning running errands, buying vodka, packing and preparing for my trip. I still have to arrange the cab ride to Pulkova Airport and then buy some vodka for the boys in brussels... I'm going to beg JD to bring back a liter to california with him so I can have "more" than I'm allowed when I get home. Speaking of which, I better call the parentals who were enjoying a day in a birch forest on the Kazakstan border eating "zemlinika" from the bush, to remind them to buy Russian Standard Platinum for me to bring back home... after 2 years of buying it for everyone else, I'm buying it for myself this year damn it!
Oh so the boat ride last night, awesome, can't wait to post the pics when I get on a faster line. The crimson sail schooner was on the river, fireworks, classical music from the bridges and the mass of teenagers and military cadets marching up and down nevsky prospect... it was awesome, just awesome... wish you all could've been there...
Ok, I think I had better sign off and or get to bed, cause its late and I have a shit load of crap to do tomorrow... so, from st. pete's shislivo... xo!
I tell you, I could really use it. I've spent the day greating new arrivals, saying goodbye to people leaving, and contemplating when I will have time to make it to several museums that I'm craving to explore, like another day at the hermitage, the defense of leningrad, the russian museum, nabokov museum and the peter paul fortress which is a really cool place to walk aout... just one of my favorite strolls on a clear day, walking atop the ramparts that held the prisoners just before the Russian Revolution. V. I. Lenin's brother was executed in the fortress which sits as an island inthe nevya, well the island is really just a moat that drains into the Nevya, but its quite beautiful.
Monday I leave for Brussels which is going to be a full day of plane plane and train travel through Moscow and Amsterdam to my final desitnation. I'm looking forward to the air conditioning of the Hilton and even a long bath with a glass of scotch. Oh yes, the bath and the shower tub, marbled, maybe even full of chanel number five, a la Trainspotting. I'm going to spend tomorrow morning running errands, buying vodka, packing and preparing for my trip. I still have to arrange the cab ride to Pulkova Airport and then buy some vodka for the boys in brussels... I'm going to beg JD to bring back a liter to california with him so I can have "more" than I'm allowed when I get home. Speaking of which, I better call the parentals who were enjoying a day in a birch forest on the Kazakstan border eating "zemlinika" from the bush, to remind them to buy Russian Standard Platinum for me to bring back home... after 2 years of buying it for everyone else, I'm buying it for myself this year damn it!
Oh so the boat ride last night, awesome, can't wait to post the pics when I get on a faster line. The crimson sail schooner was on the river, fireworks, classical music from the bridges and the mass of teenagers and military cadets marching up and down nevsky prospect... it was awesome, just awesome... wish you all could've been there...
Ok, I think I had better sign off and or get to bed, cause its late and I have a shit load of crap to do tomorrow... so, from st. pete's shislivo... xo!
Friday, June 23, 2006
Red sails...
Tonight is going to be insane. The city is being taken over by cadets and high school kids, they are closing Nevsky Prospect, the main and grandest street in the city, they are marching up and down the street, no cars allowed, till 8 in the morning. They are drinking heavily, and singing songs. There won't be a bottle of beer within 5 km of any point on Nevsky. We're taking a boat ride at midnight on the Nevya where there'll be a historic 3 mast schooner with red sails, fireworks and classical music blasting from the bridges... this is the last bell.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Out with the old in with the new...
The first session of SLS 2006 will be over tomorrow. The departures are beginning and will continue throughout the weekend. The arrivals have started, just on here, on there, the bulk of them will be arriving saturday and sunday. This marks the official half way point, or rather when we survive this weekend. This is why I'm here, I guess, to help get these people oriented, situated and accomodated. Once all of that is over, I pack my bags and head to brussels on monday for MAAWG. Its going to be dreadfully difficult to get my head out of St. Pete's. If last year was a kind of "heart of darkness" then this year is definately "days of our lives". I suppose you would have to go back and read my blogs from last year. This one definately feels a little calmer than the previous year, but there's something overly emotional about it. Maybe I'm just empathisizing too much with my recently heart broken friend, maybe its a bit of the dead romantic in me poking his head out from under the manhole cover and wondering if its safe to come out, but it has been an emotional rollercoaster, even from the sidelines.
The last couple days have been mostly mellow. I don't know if its been 2 days or 1 since my last post, I'm at the Internet cafe Players right now... everyone else is at Misha's apartment here on Kazanskaya, its way too packed in there, and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and boxed in by people. I got the rather large group there, and then snuck out as they were getting situated. I gave Tanya a hug and said, I'm gone, she understood, mostly, but she can be all business. She said to me in Russian, take some people home then, I said to her with a smile and a kiss on the cheek, its not my night for night duty darling, I'm off, and I did a marvelous job last night, making sure Swafford, Wendy & Nancy all made it home safely along with jenya and Stacy... done, done done. Stacy is leaving tomorrow, Nancy is here for the month, Wendy left this afternoon, I keep teasing Stacy that I won't miss her and refer to her as a cold hearted bitch for what she did to Tom, but truth be known, she is marvelously quick tongued and that I will miss...
Today was a good banya trip... took three guys down there and beat the crap out of them until they were gelatin. Albeit I didn't get worked over, working them over, gave me a hell of a workout. I should've waited longer between the first and the second, I was a little eager to get it done thinking I would have time to do some nice heatin' myself, but iI became dizzy. Dad was right, its far more stressful to do the work than to get the punmishment so to speak. The boys were very thankful for my efforts and took me to dinner, or that after banya, afternoon, meal thing where you have 1 shot of vodka, 1 beer, and are ready for a glorious nap. Saly my nap came in the thick of the afternoon heat when I was listening to Matthew Zapruder, Eugene Osteshevsky and Anne Lauterbach read... I dozed in and out. The previous night, slam dancing with Zapruder, took a lot out of me. Yeah, we were slammin' to billy idol at Datcha, I know, we shouldn't have been there, but fuck it, we speak the language... and what's more, it was my bloody night off!
Well I can keep going like this for hours, telling you the sordid details how a drunk skinhead fuck accosted us as I was taking Jenya and Stacy back to the dorms, but I'll skip that. I don't think I'll soon forget his yellow toothey drunken leer as he laughed and forgot the basic rules of proximics entering our safe little triangle, then he harassed the gypsy cab driver who picked us up... the nerve of him... good thing I managed to spill most of my violence on the dance floor, otherwise, I might've beat his ass. I did see one glorious thing last night though... as my little tajik cab driver, the one who drove Swafford home first, then came back and grabbed me and Wendy so I could escort her to the Astoria, as he rounded the corner, I thought I was being driven around by Short-Round from the temple of doom. he turned on that street that runs parallel to the gardens in front of the admiralty, the street runs into Nevsky prospect right infront of Aleksander Plaza and the winter palace. The sun was seconds from bursting over the top of the hermitage. The building is already gilded and golden in all the right places, but at 5:30 in the morning, with the sun ready to explode, maybe it was earlier, I can't remember, it was nothing short of divine... a truly marvelous sight... I think I might've even swallowed harder and taken a deeper breath than normal in that moment, forgetting my driver thought he was evil kanevil...
-L
The last couple days have been mostly mellow. I don't know if its been 2 days or 1 since my last post, I'm at the Internet cafe Players right now... everyone else is at Misha's apartment here on Kazanskaya, its way too packed in there, and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and boxed in by people. I got the rather large group there, and then snuck out as they were getting situated. I gave Tanya a hug and said, I'm gone, she understood, mostly, but she can be all business. She said to me in Russian, take some people home then, I said to her with a smile and a kiss on the cheek, its not my night for night duty darling, I'm off, and I did a marvelous job last night, making sure Swafford, Wendy & Nancy all made it home safely along with jenya and Stacy... done, done done. Stacy is leaving tomorrow, Nancy is here for the month, Wendy left this afternoon, I keep teasing Stacy that I won't miss her and refer to her as a cold hearted bitch for what she did to Tom, but truth be known, she is marvelously quick tongued and that I will miss...
Today was a good banya trip... took three guys down there and beat the crap out of them until they were gelatin. Albeit I didn't get worked over, working them over, gave me a hell of a workout. I should've waited longer between the first and the second, I was a little eager to get it done thinking I would have time to do some nice heatin' myself, but iI became dizzy. Dad was right, its far more stressful to do the work than to get the punmishment so to speak. The boys were very thankful for my efforts and took me to dinner, or that after banya, afternoon, meal thing where you have 1 shot of vodka, 1 beer, and are ready for a glorious nap. Saly my nap came in the thick of the afternoon heat when I was listening to Matthew Zapruder, Eugene Osteshevsky and Anne Lauterbach read... I dozed in and out. The previous night, slam dancing with Zapruder, took a lot out of me. Yeah, we were slammin' to billy idol at Datcha, I know, we shouldn't have been there, but fuck it, we speak the language... and what's more, it was my bloody night off!
Well I can keep going like this for hours, telling you the sordid details how a drunk skinhead fuck accosted us as I was taking Jenya and Stacy back to the dorms, but I'll skip that. I don't think I'll soon forget his yellow toothey drunken leer as he laughed and forgot the basic rules of proximics entering our safe little triangle, then he harassed the gypsy cab driver who picked us up... the nerve of him... good thing I managed to spill most of my violence on the dance floor, otherwise, I might've beat his ass. I did see one glorious thing last night though... as my little tajik cab driver, the one who drove Swafford home first, then came back and grabbed me and Wendy so I could escort her to the Astoria, as he rounded the corner, I thought I was being driven around by Short-Round from the temple of doom. he turned on that street that runs parallel to the gardens in front of the admiralty, the street runs into Nevsky prospect right infront of Aleksander Plaza and the winter palace. The sun was seconds from bursting over the top of the hermitage. The building is already gilded and golden in all the right places, but at 5:30 in the morning, with the sun ready to explode, maybe it was earlier, I can't remember, it was nothing short of divine... a truly marvelous sight... I think I might've even swallowed harder and taken a deeper breath than normal in that moment, forgetting my driver thought he was evil kanevil...
-L
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Somehwere in headacheville
It wasn't the beluga, or the sevruga, or the ostreiga, or the russian standard platinum with beef tongue salad and pickled herring, no, it definately wasn't any of htat, it was the beer afterall. Shit... but I'll get to that later.
I started a post the day before, a rather lengthy one, that vanished, like tears in rain, when I tried to post. This wireless line in the hostel is as much a curse when you try and rely on it, as it is a blessing if and when it actually chooses to work. So I think it was this past Sunday when I went to Peterhoff with my folks. I was the other liason along with Sasha, who took the tour group from the program to Peterhoff. I was somewhat excited to go down there as I'd never quite been able to make it inside the castle which was destroyed and brought to complete ruin during WWII. The russian government, having saved as much of the interior pieces, art, tapestry, wall paper and hand carved oak panels from the library, used these basic materials to rebuild it and the gravity fountains all along the spill way that drains into the bay of finland. The castle's interior is a hodge podge of blue silk wallpaper, turkish motifs, chinese opium themed dens with rich lacquered paints, a room with 365 portraits of women meant to show off all the styles of the day and Peter the Great's original Oak Study. The castle is known as the versailles of Russia, albeit much smaller.
Now some of the frustrations: american travellers, in the bathroom, I over heard "this shit is so gaudy! they love that gaudy shit don't they?" I wanted to turn to the black knee highed and shorted speaker and screamm "well what would you call vegas you inbreader?!" But i didn't, I just wished that he would fall into the bay of finland and vanish from this planet leaving the tour groups to get in just a bit smaller. The palace gardens are my favorite, walking amonth the various sprays of water, and the long tree lined pathways out to the ocean is a treat, even if you're sharing it with tens of thousands of other people.
Finally, after a bite to eat, a little more wandering, it was time to head back, and this is when I totally felt like crap, well, most of the day was an uphill battle. I had only slept 2 hours the night before. I can hardly, at this point, remember what the hell we were doing that kept me up to the wee hours of the morning, oh wait, I remember now, we were saying goodbye to Nathan. He left back to New York on Sunday morning. Nathan recently got a jo as an editor at the rolling stone and as such couldn't stay for more than a week. It was sad to say goodbye, but hey, I'll see him in the big apple for sure. At the very least, I got to speak to his wife, Kelly McEvers of NPR broadcasting fame, on the phone. She was in Armenia, a little incapacittated by the local cognac, can't blame here, that's good stuff.
When the bus pulled into our final destination back at number 6 Kazanskaya, Sasha gently woke me up and I felt a wave of diziness come over me. I warbled, said goodbye to the folks and then headed back to the hostel to get some shut eye. This plan worked out, I went to bed and slept for 6 hours. I woke around 11 at night, changed my sweat soaked shirt, have I mentioned this is the hottest year I've seen here? Its only rained once since I arrived, its in the low 80s right now and muggy as all hell. Tomorrow will be hotter, and then friday about the same as today, with some cooling and rain, finally, on saturday. That'll be nice to get the contrast to this blazing sun. I'm very much missing my Richmond fog bank... can someone please send me some fog from back home? So it was off to dinner at Fasol around the corner (fasol, in Russian means bean, like a kidney bean). Albeit the name of the restaurant is somewhat provinncial, evoking something of the heartiness of country food, its anything but. The menu is eclectic and the kitchen serves everything from russian fare to sushi and Italian. I settled for a soup with cabbage and duck and for the main course it was all about roast liver and potatoes, a pot of mint tea (which I'm thinking about now) rounded out the experience. Seems to be a favorite of the young and hip, I notced that the waitress from Kafe Haus on Nevsky was eating sushi there, her mass of blonde tight curls pulled back, and the somewhat cheerful expression she had when she brought Mariya and I our cherry strudel, was replaced with a look of concentration.
The rest of the night was supposed to be an alcohol free kind of experience. I had planned on hanging out at the hotel, avoiding my cell phone and generally doing little of anything, well these plans went south just as I sat down to edit my manuscript a bit... in comes Tom with a sack of beers and a bottle of vodka. We drank and talked till four in the morning at which point he lifted himself and sauntered off to bed. I was glad for the company, but more glad for being able to fall asleep. I managed another five hours, starting around 5 or 6 in the morning.
The next day, hm... Monday... there was an open mic reading at the mayakovsky that I mc'ed. After the reading I took a large group of participants to Uzbeki. The belly dancer, of my, she turned some heads and I watched as certain eyes shrank and slightly dialated to the rhythm of her girating hips. I, a veteran of caravan sarai, was equally moved, butt I think I just had way to much fun watching the newly initated succumb to her charms. Ofcourse Tony had to go and ruin it, that little shit. The dance is one of seduction, its a beautiful thing to watch, its not a fucken strip tease! When she came up around him, he stood from his chair and began to freak her waist, as he barely comes up past it. We all yelled for him to sit down. I really wish he hadn't have gone with us, I would've been ar happier without him there.
So after dinner I made my way back to the hotel to drop off gear (camera), and suit up like some cowboy for "the night watch". Jenya met me at the gribojedeva canal where we set out for Avla Bar and an eventual loop to datcha. There was a small band of merry SLSers watching a match on the wall that was being fed by a projector from the back of the open air seating. We sat and talked, when Tanya came up, I took her by the hand and we went to Datcha for a quick peak in to see which of our less than bright participants went to try and score with wasted russian. The joint, it and Fidel's, were empty. On the way back I told her that I had lost a contingent, two people, on the walk back from uzbeki. They chose to go to Purgo (purgatorio) a bar where every night is new year's eve somewhere on the Fontanka. I haven't been there yet, nor do I realy have a desire to see it. I handed her the remained of my cigarettes and sent her on a mission to fish Tony and Uday out from purgatario. She truly is an angel that way, she is she is she is.
Mission successful, and after another bottle of water, Tom had the bright idea that maybe "we" he Stacy, Jenya and I, should go to Datch for a quick vodka, a dance or two, and then we can split while its early. Well guess what, not happening... no the leaving early part at least. We did have that vodka, then another, then we were dancing, as Swafford arrived with nancy and wendy, to the B52s and Jet, along with something other... that I can't remember. Jenya and I stopped after two shots and a few dances. Wendy was already 6 sheets to the wind when she arrived, and wound up dancing on a table, a low table mind you, but the ceiling isn't that high and she stands at 6'1" without heels, so you get the picture. After a while Jenya began to feel guilty that we were shirking our responsibility, I didn't think so, we were preempting what I knew would happen that night, everyone would wind up at datcha and fidel's. This did come to pass mind you. We left Datch and went for a walk holding hands and walking very close to pretend we're a couple. The cops are less likely to stop you if you engage in something like that, they were driving by in groups of 2 and four every five minutes, looking to get paid. This is something I detest about this country, really I do. We cleared the guantlet, get to the beer garden, that we received an SMS message about was a haven for some participants and no one is there. We walk down Kazanskaya to check The Office, its empty too, and then we see, as we're approaching, a group of our participants heading toward Datcha... AHA! They run away from us, namely Tony, when I call his name, I really was thinking evil things at this point, cool man cool... as he always says. We caught up with them onthe griffon bridge, the same one we told them to stay the fuck off of at night. They were hanging out, granted there were six of them, its stupid, to hang out on the bridge, yet there they were. How you like them apples? Jenya and I shoed them off the bride, went back to Datcha and began a long night of standing between Fidel's and Datcha, watching them run back and forth until I finally through in the towel around four thirty in the morning. I called Parker and said that three morons were left and they weren't leaving despite my best efforts to offer them trips of safe passage back along with meals. "Fuck em" was our general thought at that point. Jenya and I went to Laima with Morgon, also drunk, shushing him when cops drove by so they wouldn't hear his English while she and I bantered in Russian. He couldn't have been more looking like a foreigner if he tried, white shorts, an orange polo shirt, and a timbuktu bag... hello... oh but I forgot to tell you the best part... I took Wendy back to the Astoria.. its one of the 2 most expensive hotels in St. petersburg, and yes she has money... she was hammered and falling down in Datcha. One of my three problem children thinks he's being a gentleman by getting her a cab and sending her off in it alone. I see Dannny walking her out on the street, still wearing that black dress she wore to the opera earlier that night. I take hold of the situation, tell jenya I'll be back in 15 and tell Danny to fuck off as he's a moron thinking he can put her in a cab alone in this condition. After like 2 seconds of holding my arm out, a cab stops, says he wants 200 rubles for a round trip. I'm still feeling cheap, even though wendy's purse is stuffed with 1000 ruble notes, I get him down to 150, throw her in the back and off we go.
So the cabby asks me as we hit the Gribojedeva canal "Brother, you wouldn't happen to be rich in cigarettes?" I say yes to him in Russian and hand him 2, one for the way there and another for the way back. He laughs, thanks me and then picks up speed as we round Garoxiva... The Astoria comes into sight as St. Isaac's massive dome dominates the sky around the next bend. Its right across from the plaza of St. Isaacs, and is guarded by suited bell hops and guards, just like any other hotel that is filled nightly with business men, high end hookers and has free porn in every room. Wendy later told us it was almost exclusively man on woman anal. Go figure, a place for travelling business where prices are in Euro, like he grand hotel Europa on Nevsky, and they get that to boot. But I digress... the cabby looks at me and asks me where I'm from after I send Wendy into the lobby unharmed, but just slightly humiliated, and sans her 6k wedding ring, which I found out later that night, was given to Stacy, who later returned it to Wendy. I tell him that I'm from "sa-she-ah" or the USA, he laughs and asks me if all American women drink that way. I tell him no, only the memorable ones, he laughs again... and then tells me that there's a large population of Armenians in LA and that they are calling it Los Armenianos... I laughed, a lot, and then told him that my brother's wedding took place at an Armenian joint... so the legend was true.
That was that, went to bed around half past five in the morning, woke up around 10 to meet dad. The old man really wanted to go to Banya with me one more time, to really show me what it was like, just the two of us, without all the participants that came with last time. It was, in a word, something knocked me on my ass so quickly that I didn't see it coming. The purpose of banya is to penetrate the bone and organ substrate of the body with heat using the leafy brooms. If done incorectly you can burn the person receiving the bana, if done right, you feel as if you've been reborn. 3 times, that's all I could take before my head started getting a litle spinny, but not unpleasantly. 3 times, that's enough for a first go. There was another guy, with longish hair, in that Russian Orthodox style, could've been a priest for all i know, who arrived to be worked over from what I can only assume was a professional "parilchik". This guy had 6 brooms, wore clothing inside the 150 degree, celsius folks, "parilka" and had this guy on sweating left and right. He was a bright red before we left, and he wasn't done.
After banya it was back to meet mom at a georgian place where the sleepies hit me in a big way, they both laghed and after an earlyd dinner I went back to the hostel and lay down for a 2 hour nap. After the nap, refreshed, I rose and took a group of people over to the mayakovsky for a reading by Padget Powell & Jonathan Dee. Powell, well hell, he just rocks! His reading voice is too much... just too damn much.
After the reading there was the usual gathering and banter outside the library over where to go and what to do. I was definately not on night duty so I was left to my own devices. Wendy comes up to me with Stacy and Tom and says lets quietly sneak off, I'm going to treat you, for rescueing me... and so the four of us make our way to the grand hotel europa for what turns into a very expensive course of apetizers in the form of black caviar, herring, most of a liter of Russian Standard Platinum vodka, creme brule and the beef tongue "olivye". WOW! We all laughed heartily, I wasn't surprised to learn Wenndy was quite wealthy and lived on the upper east side in manhattan...so I didn't feel bad about letting her pay, quite the contrary, it was great, as I'd never shell out that much money for something that to me, is good, but way over priced, however, the experience of not one but multiple waiters standing hand and foot, at your every blink, is awesome.
After the caviar bar it was off to beer garden, where wendy bid us goodbye, a few pints, and friends later, I was charged with the purchase of beer for the mini hotel party to end all parties. I won't go into details, but here's the rub: tom is leaving today around 6pm on a train to moscow, he'll be back next wednesday while I'm in Brusels, for Cushman's wedding, the bachelor party is on Sunday, lord have mercy on our souls! To make things more complex, he's sprung, in a big way, and it breaks my heart to see a case of bad timing ruin this thing, cause she is too, but she has a thing back home, I really feel for the guy, its really making him miserable, as he's so in to her... so it was one last hoorah with american music and 30 some odd of our closest friends in the mini hotel with more beer than I can cout... yeah, this was the biggest, I have pics, they're all ugly and sorted kind of pale faced shaky cam daugerotypes, but man, was it a blast... that's where the headache is from... it sucks, but after writing this massive post, I can feel it starting to wear off. I'm going to put on the sunglasses and head to Zoom for a spot to eat, then to find Tom to say goodbye, and then my parents to also say goodbye as they leave for Samara (on the Kazakstann border, or near it) tomorrow...
shislivo!
I started a post the day before, a rather lengthy one, that vanished, like tears in rain, when I tried to post. This wireless line in the hostel is as much a curse when you try and rely on it, as it is a blessing if and when it actually chooses to work. So I think it was this past Sunday when I went to Peterhoff with my folks. I was the other liason along with Sasha, who took the tour group from the program to Peterhoff. I was somewhat excited to go down there as I'd never quite been able to make it inside the castle which was destroyed and brought to complete ruin during WWII. The russian government, having saved as much of the interior pieces, art, tapestry, wall paper and hand carved oak panels from the library, used these basic materials to rebuild it and the gravity fountains all along the spill way that drains into the bay of finland. The castle's interior is a hodge podge of blue silk wallpaper, turkish motifs, chinese opium themed dens with rich lacquered paints, a room with 365 portraits of women meant to show off all the styles of the day and Peter the Great's original Oak Study. The castle is known as the versailles of Russia, albeit much smaller.
Now some of the frustrations: american travellers, in the bathroom, I over heard "this shit is so gaudy! they love that gaudy shit don't they?" I wanted to turn to the black knee highed and shorted speaker and screamm "well what would you call vegas you inbreader?!" But i didn't, I just wished that he would fall into the bay of finland and vanish from this planet leaving the tour groups to get in just a bit smaller. The palace gardens are my favorite, walking amonth the various sprays of water, and the long tree lined pathways out to the ocean is a treat, even if you're sharing it with tens of thousands of other people.
Finally, after a bite to eat, a little more wandering, it was time to head back, and this is when I totally felt like crap, well, most of the day was an uphill battle. I had only slept 2 hours the night before. I can hardly, at this point, remember what the hell we were doing that kept me up to the wee hours of the morning, oh wait, I remember now, we were saying goodbye to Nathan. He left back to New York on Sunday morning. Nathan recently got a jo as an editor at the rolling stone and as such couldn't stay for more than a week. It was sad to say goodbye, but hey, I'll see him in the big apple for sure. At the very least, I got to speak to his wife, Kelly McEvers of NPR broadcasting fame, on the phone. She was in Armenia, a little incapacittated by the local cognac, can't blame here, that's good stuff.
When the bus pulled into our final destination back at number 6 Kazanskaya, Sasha gently woke me up and I felt a wave of diziness come over me. I warbled, said goodbye to the folks and then headed back to the hostel to get some shut eye. This plan worked out, I went to bed and slept for 6 hours. I woke around 11 at night, changed my sweat soaked shirt, have I mentioned this is the hottest year I've seen here? Its only rained once since I arrived, its in the low 80s right now and muggy as all hell. Tomorrow will be hotter, and then friday about the same as today, with some cooling and rain, finally, on saturday. That'll be nice to get the contrast to this blazing sun. I'm very much missing my Richmond fog bank... can someone please send me some fog from back home? So it was off to dinner at Fasol around the corner (fasol, in Russian means bean, like a kidney bean). Albeit the name of the restaurant is somewhat provinncial, evoking something of the heartiness of country food, its anything but. The menu is eclectic and the kitchen serves everything from russian fare to sushi and Italian. I settled for a soup with cabbage and duck and for the main course it was all about roast liver and potatoes, a pot of mint tea (which I'm thinking about now) rounded out the experience. Seems to be a favorite of the young and hip, I notced that the waitress from Kafe Haus on Nevsky was eating sushi there, her mass of blonde tight curls pulled back, and the somewhat cheerful expression she had when she brought Mariya and I our cherry strudel, was replaced with a look of concentration.
The rest of the night was supposed to be an alcohol free kind of experience. I had planned on hanging out at the hotel, avoiding my cell phone and generally doing little of anything, well these plans went south just as I sat down to edit my manuscript a bit... in comes Tom with a sack of beers and a bottle of vodka. We drank and talked till four in the morning at which point he lifted himself and sauntered off to bed. I was glad for the company, but more glad for being able to fall asleep. I managed another five hours, starting around 5 or 6 in the morning.
The next day, hm... Monday... there was an open mic reading at the mayakovsky that I mc'ed. After the reading I took a large group of participants to Uzbeki. The belly dancer, of my, she turned some heads and I watched as certain eyes shrank and slightly dialated to the rhythm of her girating hips. I, a veteran of caravan sarai, was equally moved, butt I think I just had way to much fun watching the newly initated succumb to her charms. Ofcourse Tony had to go and ruin it, that little shit. The dance is one of seduction, its a beautiful thing to watch, its not a fucken strip tease! When she came up around him, he stood from his chair and began to freak her waist, as he barely comes up past it. We all yelled for him to sit down. I really wish he hadn't have gone with us, I would've been ar happier without him there.
So after dinner I made my way back to the hotel to drop off gear (camera), and suit up like some cowboy for "the night watch". Jenya met me at the gribojedeva canal where we set out for Avla Bar and an eventual loop to datcha. There was a small band of merry SLSers watching a match on the wall that was being fed by a projector from the back of the open air seating. We sat and talked, when Tanya came up, I took her by the hand and we went to Datcha for a quick peak in to see which of our less than bright participants went to try and score with wasted russian. The joint, it and Fidel's, were empty. On the way back I told her that I had lost a contingent, two people, on the walk back from uzbeki. They chose to go to Purgo (purgatorio) a bar where every night is new year's eve somewhere on the Fontanka. I haven't been there yet, nor do I realy have a desire to see it. I handed her the remained of my cigarettes and sent her on a mission to fish Tony and Uday out from purgatario. She truly is an angel that way, she is she is she is.
Mission successful, and after another bottle of water, Tom had the bright idea that maybe "we" he Stacy, Jenya and I, should go to Datch for a quick vodka, a dance or two, and then we can split while its early. Well guess what, not happening... no the leaving early part at least. We did have that vodka, then another, then we were dancing, as Swafford arrived with nancy and wendy, to the B52s and Jet, along with something other... that I can't remember. Jenya and I stopped after two shots and a few dances. Wendy was already 6 sheets to the wind when she arrived, and wound up dancing on a table, a low table mind you, but the ceiling isn't that high and she stands at 6'1" without heels, so you get the picture. After a while Jenya began to feel guilty that we were shirking our responsibility, I didn't think so, we were preempting what I knew would happen that night, everyone would wind up at datcha and fidel's. This did come to pass mind you. We left Datch and went for a walk holding hands and walking very close to pretend we're a couple. The cops are less likely to stop you if you engage in something like that, they were driving by in groups of 2 and four every five minutes, looking to get paid. This is something I detest about this country, really I do. We cleared the guantlet, get to the beer garden, that we received an SMS message about was a haven for some participants and no one is there. We walk down Kazanskaya to check The Office, its empty too, and then we see, as we're approaching, a group of our participants heading toward Datcha... AHA! They run away from us, namely Tony, when I call his name, I really was thinking evil things at this point, cool man cool... as he always says. We caught up with them onthe griffon bridge, the same one we told them to stay the fuck off of at night. They were hanging out, granted there were six of them, its stupid, to hang out on the bridge, yet there they were. How you like them apples? Jenya and I shoed them off the bride, went back to Datcha and began a long night of standing between Fidel's and Datcha, watching them run back and forth until I finally through in the towel around four thirty in the morning. I called Parker and said that three morons were left and they weren't leaving despite my best efforts to offer them trips of safe passage back along with meals. "Fuck em" was our general thought at that point. Jenya and I went to Laima with Morgon, also drunk, shushing him when cops drove by so they wouldn't hear his English while she and I bantered in Russian. He couldn't have been more looking like a foreigner if he tried, white shorts, an orange polo shirt, and a timbuktu bag... hello... oh but I forgot to tell you the best part... I took Wendy back to the Astoria.. its one of the 2 most expensive hotels in St. petersburg, and yes she has money... she was hammered and falling down in Datcha. One of my three problem children thinks he's being a gentleman by getting her a cab and sending her off in it alone. I see Dannny walking her out on the street, still wearing that black dress she wore to the opera earlier that night. I take hold of the situation, tell jenya I'll be back in 15 and tell Danny to fuck off as he's a moron thinking he can put her in a cab alone in this condition. After like 2 seconds of holding my arm out, a cab stops, says he wants 200 rubles for a round trip. I'm still feeling cheap, even though wendy's purse is stuffed with 1000 ruble notes, I get him down to 150, throw her in the back and off we go.
So the cabby asks me as we hit the Gribojedeva canal "Brother, you wouldn't happen to be rich in cigarettes?" I say yes to him in Russian and hand him 2, one for the way there and another for the way back. He laughs, thanks me and then picks up speed as we round Garoxiva... The Astoria comes into sight as St. Isaac's massive dome dominates the sky around the next bend. Its right across from the plaza of St. Isaacs, and is guarded by suited bell hops and guards, just like any other hotel that is filled nightly with business men, high end hookers and has free porn in every room. Wendy later told us it was almost exclusively man on woman anal. Go figure, a place for travelling business where prices are in Euro, like he grand hotel Europa on Nevsky, and they get that to boot. But I digress... the cabby looks at me and asks me where I'm from after I send Wendy into the lobby unharmed, but just slightly humiliated, and sans her 6k wedding ring, which I found out later that night, was given to Stacy, who later returned it to Wendy. I tell him that I'm from "sa-she-ah" or the USA, he laughs and asks me if all American women drink that way. I tell him no, only the memorable ones, he laughs again... and then tells me that there's a large population of Armenians in LA and that they are calling it Los Armenianos... I laughed, a lot, and then told him that my brother's wedding took place at an Armenian joint... so the legend was true.
That was that, went to bed around half past five in the morning, woke up around 10 to meet dad. The old man really wanted to go to Banya with me one more time, to really show me what it was like, just the two of us, without all the participants that came with last time. It was, in a word, something knocked me on my ass so quickly that I didn't see it coming. The purpose of banya is to penetrate the bone and organ substrate of the body with heat using the leafy brooms. If done incorectly you can burn the person receiving the bana, if done right, you feel as if you've been reborn. 3 times, that's all I could take before my head started getting a litle spinny, but not unpleasantly. 3 times, that's enough for a first go. There was another guy, with longish hair, in that Russian Orthodox style, could've been a priest for all i know, who arrived to be worked over from what I can only assume was a professional "parilchik". This guy had 6 brooms, wore clothing inside the 150 degree, celsius folks, "parilka" and had this guy on sweating left and right. He was a bright red before we left, and he wasn't done.
After banya it was back to meet mom at a georgian place where the sleepies hit me in a big way, they both laghed and after an earlyd dinner I went back to the hostel and lay down for a 2 hour nap. After the nap, refreshed, I rose and took a group of people over to the mayakovsky for a reading by Padget Powell & Jonathan Dee. Powell, well hell, he just rocks! His reading voice is too much... just too damn much.
After the reading there was the usual gathering and banter outside the library over where to go and what to do. I was definately not on night duty so I was left to my own devices. Wendy comes up to me with Stacy and Tom and says lets quietly sneak off, I'm going to treat you, for rescueing me... and so the four of us make our way to the grand hotel europa for what turns into a very expensive course of apetizers in the form of black caviar, herring, most of a liter of Russian Standard Platinum vodka, creme brule and the beef tongue "olivye". WOW! We all laughed heartily, I wasn't surprised to learn Wenndy was quite wealthy and lived on the upper east side in manhattan...so I didn't feel bad about letting her pay, quite the contrary, it was great, as I'd never shell out that much money for something that to me, is good, but way over priced, however, the experience of not one but multiple waiters standing hand and foot, at your every blink, is awesome.
After the caviar bar it was off to beer garden, where wendy bid us goodbye, a few pints, and friends later, I was charged with the purchase of beer for the mini hotel party to end all parties. I won't go into details, but here's the rub: tom is leaving today around 6pm on a train to moscow, he'll be back next wednesday while I'm in Brusels, for Cushman's wedding, the bachelor party is on Sunday, lord have mercy on our souls! To make things more complex, he's sprung, in a big way, and it breaks my heart to see a case of bad timing ruin this thing, cause she is too, but she has a thing back home, I really feel for the guy, its really making him miserable, as he's so in to her... so it was one last hoorah with american music and 30 some odd of our closest friends in the mini hotel with more beer than I can cout... yeah, this was the biggest, I have pics, they're all ugly and sorted kind of pale faced shaky cam daugerotypes, but man, was it a blast... that's where the headache is from... it sucks, but after writing this massive post, I can feel it starting to wear off. I'm going to put on the sunglasses and head to Zoom for a spot to eat, then to find Tom to say goodbye, and then my parents to also say goodbye as they leave for Samara (on the Kazakstann border, or near it) tomorrow...
shislivo!
Friday, June 16, 2006
SOTS Art
Komar & Melamid
Yesterday was a long and wonderful day punctuated by a trip back to the Banya with my parents and 19 some odd participants and staff. We took over the banya and experienced the joy of an incredibly hot room, oak and birch brooms for whipping and the best kvas that a russian ex-con can make.
I was looking forward to taking everyone to a cafateria not far from the banya which is just up the street from the museum (house) where Dostoyevsky died but alas it was no longer there. Fortune being what it was, we stumbled into "sheenok" a Ukranian restaurant (means puppy in Russian), that served amazing dumblings stuffed with sour cherries (vareniki s' vishniy). We ate and found ourselves even more tired than before, but being the troopers that we sometimes are, we made our way down to the fontanka canal and up to the Mayakovsky gallery for a lecture by Vitally Komar, one half of the soviet SOTS art movement that was happening at almost the same time as pop art took off her in the states.
What's the deifference between sots and pop you ask? Well it has to do with the society in which its rooted: american consumerasim vs. russian propoganda culture. Does this mean that Americans live out of the shadow of ultra nationalistic propoganda? No, not at all, however, what is most prevalent in our world is advertising and media. Warhols images of the Campbell Soup Can stands out as that mass market comodified pop art that attacks the banality of labels and media and, almost reappropriating it from its consumerists roots and, denying the dollar, and at the same time, completely worshipping money by taking an every day image and saying that this is art and its price tag is ever so much higher than the actual object represented. Russian media was about the state, a state that Komar said was more paranoid than the west and very touchy about the messages that artists put out and tried to convey to the soviet people. Sots art is a response and mockery to that culture and paranoia. Komar took the Campbell soup can and painted it in such a way that it was a rusted hulk, what it might look like in a thousand years. The projection into the future is nothing short of the soviety agenda that said things are bad now, but communism will make them better and they are always improving. The future, albeit bright and shinning in terms of the rhetotoric, is shown ironically in Sots.
Komar and Melamid as Lenin & Stalin
Komar had a slide show going that started with a picture of himwith warholl. There was a dialogue between these two groups of artists. Along with his own work he linked the massive soviety architecture that was emblamatic of the huge government and the might of the soviet regieme to American nationalist symbols. A small town in Siberia has the largest "head of lenin" in all of the former soviet union outside its central government office. That head, in its enormity has a particular resemblance to the head of Washington on Mt. Rushmore. The end object may differ but the iconography and its application is quite similar between both cultures. The Rockefeller center has an image of two figures around one of the doorways, one with a sickle and the other with a hammer, this is a hallmark of 30's art, and here it is, soviety in nature, its an interesting link between two diametrically opposing regimes that have so much in common.
Another self portrait of Komar and Melamid paying homage to Stalin, but are they really?
So the rest of the night was the usual, lets get food and beer. We made our way to the Bronze horseman statue and a british pub called The Red Lion. After a bit of food and a few liters we walked along the ebankment and found a comfy beer garden from which we watched the bridges open, fireworks from a boat celebrating the graduation of the high schools, colleges and military academies are next, and then eventually home where I slept till 2 this afternoon, finally caught up on that damn sleep that I've been missing for so long... oh my god it was glorious. Next up on the agenda is a reading by George Saunders in the Theatre Museum and then who knows what. Tomorrow is the baltika brewery tour, 2nd larges in Europe, and then Sunday is glorious Peterhoff... I uploaded some more photos, I think some became corrupted, the damn wifi connection keeps dropping left and right... I have to find a damn coax line in this town or I will go insane, maybe I'll do a mass dump in a week or so when I get to Brussels.
Shislivo!
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Good times, bad times... how does that song go?
So the good news is that we found a spot in the mini hotel/hostel that I'm staying in, that has an internet hotspot. To be honest, its kinda rocking and totally free. You can't really complaint that much. The bad news is that it drops out every 10 minutes or so and since the uploads to FLIKR take so bloody long, it still seems as though I had better find a way to shrink the photos before I try and upload them, or find a land line over which to upload the photos.
Before I left I stood at the counter of looking glass photo with my heard earned money in hand. I had put a down payment on a D200, that had come in that afternoon. Accepting the fact that I was about to buy the most expensive piece of camera gear I had ever invested in was more than difficult to swallow. I wanted reassurance, I asked the girl behind the counter "its a good camera right?" Its like asking your broker, just tell me this is how people make money, or something like that. She said in a tender voice with just enough smile to make me feel calm and a bit more for added pleasantness "its a great camera."
Thus far is been a more than beautiful camera and I'm taking picutres like a madman when I bring it with me. The fact that I can delete things with the touch of a button, selectively choos what I want, and what I don't, take long night exposures without thinking this is a waste of film, using nothing more than beer cans for tripods, yeah man, this is a great camera.
So as for the program, well the readings last night were ok, the reading of the play was by far the best thing, Laura Maria Censebella read from a work in progress. It was about three generations of Italian women, discussing events during WWII as the grandmother claimed to have hidden jews and resistence fighters. The "mother" found it all quite unbelievable and continued to pretend drink from a wineglass while rolling her eyes. The "daughter" was desperate to find out the truth about her aged grand progenitor and her mother, the great grandmother, who had sent this girl away at one time. Censabella's reading voice was strong and the accent quite good as she tried to portray this 80 year old woman. Swafford's excerpt from his up and coming book didn't grab me. I spoke to several other people, they agreed, it had a nice ending, nothing terribly shocking, but it was storng in the finish and witty, but it didn't make me want to pick up the book and start diving in because the characters were written in an interesting fashion, something about it left me feeling flat. Binyavanga arrived two hours before the reading, if not less, he came in and read form his laptop, a kind of personal account of his experiences in Nairobi, with that wonderful African/British English where the R's roll off his tongue with the greatest of ease in the most rrrrrrobust tones. Still, it seemed a little too personal to really be comrehensible, it didn't grab either.
The parents called me this afternoon. They're at the hermitage, we have to walk a group of people over to the Ahkmatova museum for a reading in Russian. The address is 53 Litenny Prospect from which we're heading over to Nekrasova and Litenny to meet the folks for a little Uzbekistanian feast and allow my mother the pleasure of ordering for the entire group... WOO HOOO!!! I've been dreaming about this stuff for a year.
The group this year is mostly mellow, older, more mature, and sometimes even seperating out by age groups. I overheard certain conversations that lead me to believe that the generation gap here is strong and without a doubt divides our participants, but its always like that. Even art can't seem to bridge the gap between what once was revolutionary and now is simply archaic.
I'll see if I can post some pictures at the Players cafe tomorrow morning... for now... adieu... and shislivo...
Before I left I stood at the counter of looking glass photo with my heard earned money in hand. I had put a down payment on a D200, that had come in that afternoon. Accepting the fact that I was about to buy the most expensive piece of camera gear I had ever invested in was more than difficult to swallow. I wanted reassurance, I asked the girl behind the counter "its a good camera right?" Its like asking your broker, just tell me this is how people make money, or something like that. She said in a tender voice with just enough smile to make me feel calm and a bit more for added pleasantness "its a great camera."
Thus far is been a more than beautiful camera and I'm taking picutres like a madman when I bring it with me. The fact that I can delete things with the touch of a button, selectively choos what I want, and what I don't, take long night exposures without thinking this is a waste of film, using nothing more than beer cans for tripods, yeah man, this is a great camera.
So as for the program, well the readings last night were ok, the reading of the play was by far the best thing, Laura Maria Censebella read from a work in progress. It was about three generations of Italian women, discussing events during WWII as the grandmother claimed to have hidden jews and resistence fighters. The "mother" found it all quite unbelievable and continued to pretend drink from a wineglass while rolling her eyes. The "daughter" was desperate to find out the truth about her aged grand progenitor and her mother, the great grandmother, who had sent this girl away at one time. Censabella's reading voice was strong and the accent quite good as she tried to portray this 80 year old woman. Swafford's excerpt from his up and coming book didn't grab me. I spoke to several other people, they agreed, it had a nice ending, nothing terribly shocking, but it was storng in the finish and witty, but it didn't make me want to pick up the book and start diving in because the characters were written in an interesting fashion, something about it left me feeling flat. Binyavanga arrived two hours before the reading, if not less, he came in and read form his laptop, a kind of personal account of his experiences in Nairobi, with that wonderful African/British English where the R's roll off his tongue with the greatest of ease in the most rrrrrrobust tones. Still, it seemed a little too personal to really be comrehensible, it didn't grab either.
The parents called me this afternoon. They're at the hermitage, we have to walk a group of people over to the Ahkmatova museum for a reading in Russian. The address is 53 Litenny Prospect from which we're heading over to Nekrasova and Litenny to meet the folks for a little Uzbekistanian feast and allow my mother the pleasure of ordering for the entire group... WOO HOOO!!! I've been dreaming about this stuff for a year.
The group this year is mostly mellow, older, more mature, and sometimes even seperating out by age groups. I overheard certain conversations that lead me to believe that the generation gap here is strong and without a doubt divides our participants, but its always like that. Even art can't seem to bridge the gap between what once was revolutionary and now is simply archaic.
I'll see if I can post some pictures at the Players cafe tomorrow morning... for now... adieu... and shislivo...
Monday, June 12, 2006
I took him down...
Anthony Swafford is here, the author of Jarhead turned into a film starring Jake Gyllenhall and Jamie Foxx. Last night was a rather late one with a few of us at the British pub. You know, you get enough testosterone flowing and you're bound to either get heads butting or some other deomonstration of manhood. Well for us it started as a question of weight and age and next thing you know, Semper Fi Do or Die, went down town... 3 in a row, both arms...
You can wait or you can go back
I'm not dead, no, I felt that way by the time I arrived in this city, but I'm alive and finally starting to hit my stride. Where do I begin?
The flight was fairly uneventful: Oakland to JFK, two hours on the ground after five hours of flying, then caught the Finn Air connection to Helsinki, seven hours of flying with screaming chilredn that I wanted to jetison like ming the merciless. On my left sat a giant bull the size of a house with a shaved head that was heading for a singles tour of Kazan. Read between the lines: sex tour! On my right was a suburbanite heading to show her dog in some European dog show in Helsinki. She kept making faces and rolling her eyes at the poor parenting of the screaming children. She must've thought that they should've been treated just like her mut and quiet and attentive with a choke collar. Needless to say the flight was less than stellar and I couldn't wait till it was over. I spent half the flight standing and pacing up and down the plane. The only redeeming thing about it was the free beer and wine. Finn Air, very humane for just that. I spent an hour in the airport and then caught my connection to St. Petersburg where the real fun began. I arrive and make my way down to immigration. The lines move quickly, quicker than Moscow, and I'm at the terminal. I can see the customs area beyond, hope, my double entry visa will work, I can get through and get into the country.
"When were you born?"
"August 4, 1975"
"Your visa says April 8th"
"That's a mistaken"
"I know it doesn't match your passport page."
"Well what can we do?"
"You can wait for the diplomat or go back to Helsinki."
And so I began my 2 hour wait in the lobby of the airport for this diplomant who would correct my visa and give me a new one, cancelling a second visa in my now overburdened passport. A new visa later, third one for this trip alone, I'm in the country, my ride has left thinking I'm MIA in some scandanavian paradise. I catch a cab, mercedes, 1800 rubles, way too much, I don't care, I'm tired, hungry, head is pounding, I have 5000 US in my pocket for the program's use, and a big suitcase, not risking a gypsy cab.
And that was how I got here. and now, I'm going to shut this down, laptop is almmost out of juice and I don't see a nearby plug. The 24 hour internet cafe, Quo Vadis, is gone... sadly... so its all slow wi-fi at zoom and the british pub, the office.
More soon... once I juice this thing up.
liebe,
-L
The flight was fairly uneventful: Oakland to JFK, two hours on the ground after five hours of flying, then caught the Finn Air connection to Helsinki, seven hours of flying with screaming chilredn that I wanted to jetison like ming the merciless. On my left sat a giant bull the size of a house with a shaved head that was heading for a singles tour of Kazan. Read between the lines: sex tour! On my right was a suburbanite heading to show her dog in some European dog show in Helsinki. She kept making faces and rolling her eyes at the poor parenting of the screaming children. She must've thought that they should've been treated just like her mut and quiet and attentive with a choke collar. Needless to say the flight was less than stellar and I couldn't wait till it was over. I spent half the flight standing and pacing up and down the plane. The only redeeming thing about it was the free beer and wine. Finn Air, very humane for just that. I spent an hour in the airport and then caught my connection to St. Petersburg where the real fun began. I arrive and make my way down to immigration. The lines move quickly, quicker than Moscow, and I'm at the terminal. I can see the customs area beyond, hope, my double entry visa will work, I can get through and get into the country.
"When were you born?"
"August 4, 1975"
"Your visa says April 8th"
"That's a mistaken"
"I know it doesn't match your passport page."
"Well what can we do?"
"You can wait for the diplomat or go back to Helsinki."
And so I began my 2 hour wait in the lobby of the airport for this diplomant who would correct my visa and give me a new one, cancelling a second visa in my now overburdened passport. A new visa later, third one for this trip alone, I'm in the country, my ride has left thinking I'm MIA in some scandanavian paradise. I catch a cab, mercedes, 1800 rubles, way too much, I don't care, I'm tired, hungry, head is pounding, I have 5000 US in my pocket for the program's use, and a big suitcase, not risking a gypsy cab.
And that was how I got here. and now, I'm going to shut this down, laptop is almmost out of juice and I don't see a nearby plug. The 24 hour internet cafe, Quo Vadis, is gone... sadly... so its all slow wi-fi at zoom and the british pub, the office.
More soon... once I juice this thing up.
liebe,
-L
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
13 hours...
or in the words of J. Cash:
I can see the buzzards I can hear the crows 1 more minute to go
And now I'm swingin' and here I go-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!
I can see the buzzards I can hear the crows 1 more minute to go
And now I'm swingin' and here I go-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Nazerman - The imbossibility of sympathy or disdan...
Jean Amery, in his essay, On the Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jew, writes “On my left forearm I wear the
Through the perversion of everyday symbols, acts and traditions, the Jewish population of Europe, began in 1935, to be identified as abstractions, numbers, bills of lading, cargo and chattel transported at their own expense across borders and into what became known simply as “the final solution.” But, before this final solution was possible the Jew had to be debased and removed from popular culture, from society by being denied his dignity and right to live. In this final bedraggled state a solution could be had that seemed fitting to the state of being that Jews had been reduced too. Now, sixty years later, we are left with varying degrees of images to remind us of the facts. Stories in their multitudes, more forgotten than remembered are recorded and transformed into film and narrative as a means of commemorating and meditating on a brutal chapter in human history.
Amery describes striking a Kapo in the face as an act of dignity even though he was beaten severely for this brief and ultimately fruitless act of resistance. Dignity is at the heart of Sydney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker. Nazerman claims he has come to terms with the holocaust because he doesn’t care about nostalgia, he doesn’t believe in pity and ultimately is incapable of extending dignity to other people. Those that come into his pawnshop are greeted with nothing more than base courtesy. People respect the pawnbroker but hate him for his mercantile prowess as he lords over them a single dollar for their possessions. It’s impossible to speak to Nazerman because he has become an exclusive being, a problem, exteriorized by the numbers on his forearm, and thus ultimately incapable of meaningful human connections.
Nazerman’s inability to recognize “other” than himself, to extend a human courtesy could be viewed as a direct result of his experience in the camps where images are wounds that don’t heal according to Insdorf[3]. When forced to bear witness to horror, Nazerman chooses to ignore humanity as it is both the source and victim of that horror; as dehumanized as Nazerman is in the camps, it’s the human master that reduces him to a state of inhumanity and forces him to bear witness to his own wife’s brutal rape and eventual murder. To “see”, to have those visions that are like wounds, is also a state of absolute powerlessness; it’s the inability to act in a fashion that would salvage one’s dignity as in Amery’s case, but more accurately it is a state of being an object[4], inanimate in the sense that death is the only form of salvation and inevitable conclusion.
In 1844 Karl Marx wrote his essay, Estranged Labor, to identify, philosophically, the problem faced by the worker. Marx spoke of an objectification that happens when the product of labor becomes more valuable than the act of labor; a worker’s labor becomes a commodity when the product of that labor is no longer owned by the worker. Labor’s only means is a means to a ‘subsistence end’ and has no value in the act of ‘working’. Thus the individual that performs that labor is ultimately unable to claim the act and begins a long line of dissociations that make it impossible for the worker to recognize “other” than himself, through a loss of language, identity and finally a kind of psychological recognition of ‘other’ people. Nazerman’s objectification, a catalogue number on his arm, which has closed him off from other people, from humanity, a dissociation and inability to understand that his (in)actions are capable of causing the same harm that befell him from a lack of recognizing “other”. His flashbacks begin to haunt him as witness mutates into a kind of constant reliving of historical reality.
The further reality of this dissociation is based on Marx’s concept of the ‘laws of political economy’[5] which posits an inverse relationship between the worker and the object of his labor, or the labor object. As Nazerman accumulates ever greater value, he is devalued himself as he is beholden to Rodriguez thereby denying any real ownership of that wealth. Nazerman is ever the courier of blood money and eventually, his conscience gets the better of him. Every object in his pawnshop is labor objectified, dissociated from the memory of that object and the person who retains that memory. Every offer made to Nazerman, of something to be pawned, is accompanied by a personal experience that is checked at the bars inside the pawnshop.
The world of the pawnshop is as much a cage and prison as was the camp with its bars that hold back the teaming masses of people that remind Nazerman that other people did him an injustice and denied him both his dignity and forced upon him images that robbed him of his humanity. The pawnshop’s bars are the middle-man of the transactions where Nazerman gives out as little as he can for customer’s memories, for their effects and human tropes, it’s a speech grill through which all human dialogue becomes impossible:
SPRACHGITTER
Augenrund zwischen den Stäben.
Flimmertier Lid rudert nach oben, gibt einen Blick frei.
Iris, Schwimmerin, traumlos und trüb: der Himmel, herzgrau, muß nah sein.
Schräg, in der eisernen Tülle, der blakende Span. Am Lichtsinn errätst du die Seele.
(Wär ich wie du. Wärst du wie ich. Standen wir nicht unter einem Passat? Wir sind Fremde.)
Die Fliesen. Darauf, dicht beieinander, die beiden herzgrauen Lachen: zwei Mundvoll Schweigen.
-Paul Celan (1959)
Eye's roundness between the bars.
Vibrarile monad eyelid propels itself upward, releases a glance.
Iris, swimmer, dreamless and dreary: the sky, heart-grey, must be near.
Athwart, in the iron holder, the smoking splinter. By its sense of light you divine the soul.
(If I were like you. If you were like me. Did we not stand under one trade wind? We are strangers.)
The flagstones. On them, close to each other, the two heart-grey puddles: two mouths full of silence.
-Paul Celan (1959)
Celan’s poem echoes what Nazerman himself would claim he has become, a mouthful of silence, content within himself, and yet reflective. A puddle has the potential for reflection, so the question has to be asked, what is being reflected if not that which has made him silent: the shear inability to convey the horror. He claims that “bitterness has passed him by” and that he is content with simply being. This passive vessel of suppressed memories acts as a reflection for the ghosts and the collection of random objects in his shop that remind him at every step and turn, consciously or not, that he too is a bill of lading, tagged and shelved, inside and out.
However, Nazerman’s lack of humanity doesn’t begin with the number on his forearm, rather you get a sense that it’s much older than the experiences he had in the camps. The first dissociation occurs thousands of years ago and is a byproduct of what Nazerman refers to as the bearded legend in his speech to Ortiz:
“First of all you start off with a period of several thousand years, during which you have nothing to sustain you but a great bearded legend. Oh my friend you have no land to call your own, to grow food on or to hunt. You have nothing. You're never in one place long enough to have a geography or an army or a land myth. All you have is a little brain. A little brain and a great bearded legend to sustain you and convince you that you are special, even in poverty.”
The concept of God as a bearded legend, distant and abstract, is the beginning of a process of dissociation that makes it impossible for the Jew, and ultimately Nazerman, to feel beyond himself. His emotion stops at the gate of the numbers on his forearm. To further confound the problem, without an afterlife built into the covenant with God, the Jew has nothing but the fact that death is the end; the promise of a land of milk and honey and a good life here on Earth is the only established pay off to follow the 613 rules of a good Jew’s life. Paz notes that Death defines life and that we don’t transform or transfigure as in western doctrines of Christianity, but rather we disappear; thus, if our deaths lack meaning so do our lives[6]. Confronted with so much senseless death, and a legend filled with empty promises, the shell of the self becomes the only place where meaning can be created.
In reducing God to a bearded legend, an abstract with a goatee, Nazerman has effectively transferred any belief he had into idolatry: “Then, Mr. Teacher, aint there nothing you do believe in?” asks Ortiz to which Nazerman replies: “Money.” Salvation is found in the proclamation of “In God We Trust” emblazoned on every dollar bill. For Nazerman, this salvation, this reality, holds true that he can enjoy a sterile and servile life beholden to Rodriguez through an agreement that so long as money flows, then there is peace on Earth. Yet consider the rich that went to the furnaces of
Lumet’s near charicature of Nazerman, a usurer, a heartless pawnbroker, victim turned victimizer doesn’t evoke sympathy easily. It’s difficult to truly feel sympathetic toward someone who hasn’t learned from the experience and hasn’t walked away with an appreciation for humanity above and beyond the fact that people are other living creatures. Simultaneously, it’s nearly impossible to hate Nazerman or scorn him for his inhumanity because he is ultimately brought back from believing that suffering didn’t exist outside of
It’s exactly a warning, from Rodriguez, that sends Nazerman into a tail spin that ends with a betrayal by Ortiz that backfires and ends up killing him. The only option at this point is to feel something, and so Nazerman impales himself in the final scenes of the film, turning his body into both a human check and assuming the role of an impotent man, unable to create life, nor save it, and according to Insdorff, a broken pawn[8]. To Insdorff’s point of the inheritance of the Nazis concept, self mutilation, a wound that never closes, Amery would say that this wound is the result of “the Jewish question”, historically and socially determined conceptual phenomena as a matter for the disgrace of the antisemites as their disgrace[9].
Ortiz’s death reminds Nazerman how fleeting life can be, and even a silent wail is important, a shriek to better understand why the Jews were sacrificed by fire. The term holocaust is the first stage of dissociation, on the tongue, in the mouth, when discussing genocide. If it is through images that we have come to terms with the unsettling facts that comprise the catastrophe of those war torn years, then it is in language that we falter by using a term that intones something of a religious quality to what is the destruction of a people. To whom, is the Jew sacrificed? What cause is furthered by the sacrifice? Is the Jewish Question answered by fire? It would seem, through Lanzmann’s documentary, that no answer suffices, but rather one must understand the roles and personalities that kept the wheels turning, the trains running, the ovens cooking.
Shoah illuminates three categories of witness: those that suffered, those that stood by and those that committed the crimes of genocide. The bystanders are inculpated into the crime by doing nothing, and more importantly, feeling nothing. This method of tackling the fact of the event, examines the function or role of each separate part of what was a very large bureaucracy surrounding the Nazis machine. This is not murder, nor is this genocide in the frenzied sense of the Hutus slaughtering the Tutsis. Participation isn’t simply defined by those that wielded machetes but everyone surrounding the system that worked like business. The veneer of engineering and punctuality, as is the myth surrounding German trains being on time, is broken open to show the foulness of the task at hand. You walk away with a sense that nothing of this order could be clean, and no one comes out clean for dipping his hands into that well.
If the misunderstandings surrounding the holocaust begin, like the new testament, in the beginning was a word, then they end in the final scenes of Alain Renais and Jean Cayrol’s, Night & Fog: who is responsible? That question was asked before the film was made of the perpetrators in Nuremburg. It was asked once more but in the context of how do you talk about something that begins as a misnomer? Every generation has had to face catastrophe and give it new meaning through various art forms. In the cinematic age, the options are almost never ending in terms of how to create a narrative, which story to choose, it’s a limitless pool now.
Ten years passed before Night & Fog was made, before cinema was given the right to deal with a wound still open, and gaping considering what happened in 1948 with the creation of the Israeli state and the conflict surrounding its genesis. Since then, technology and the speed of information has overwhelmed us. There is a film ready a week after the disaster. We are approaching an age where we won’t need actors anymore, only their voices. The fresh wounds of September 11th, 2001 are still open and festering while
There will always be questions and concerns surrounding how we remember this event, or the next catastrophe for that matter, and how it shapes our memory of prior events. Thankfully we have film to remind us as a kind of malleable and artistic conscience. The same concerns of how do we go about ‘remembering’ what happened and what representations of that memory might mean to society, are as important today as they were in 1955. We’ve had numerous documentaries and theories that recount the blunders, the missteps, a made for TV movie, and now, a
[1] Amery, Jean, At The Mind’s Limits, Indiana University Press,
[2] From Paul Celan’s Der Totes Fuge (Death Dance) …Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland…
[3] Insdorf, Annette, Indelible Shadows: Film & The Holocaust, Pgs. 28-30. “When Nazerman refuses to look a soldier pushes his bald head through the glass forcing him to see. In this film, one pays a price for vision: images are wounds that will not heal.”
[4] Paz, Octavio, The Labrynth of Solitude, Grove Press, New York, NY, 1985 – “Modern criminals and statesmen do not kill: they abolish. They experiment with beings who have lost their human qualities. Prisoners in the concentration camps are first degraded, changed into mere objects; then they are exterminated en masse.”
[5] online source: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm:
(The estrangement of the worker in his object is expressed according to the laws of political economy in the following way:
1. the more the worker produces, the less he has to consume;
2. the more value he creates, the more worthless he becomes;
3. the more his product is shaped, the more misshapen the worker;
4. the more civilized his object, the more barbarous the worker;
5. the more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker;
6. the more intelligent the work, the duller the worker and the more he becomes a slave of nature.)
[6] Paz, Octavio, The Labrynth of Solitude, Grove Press, New York, NY, 1985 – “Death is a mirror which reflects the vain gesticulations of the living. The whole motley confusion of acts, commissions, regress and hopes which is the life of each one of us finds in death, not meaning or explanation but an end. Death defines life; a death depicts a life in immutable forms; we do not change except to disappear. Our deaths illuminate our lives. If our deaths lack meaning, our lives also lacked it.”
[7] Mehmedinovic, Semezdin, Sarajevo Blues, City Lights Press San Francisc, CA, 1998 – From the poem Corpse: “…I heard the crunch of snow under tires / like teeth biting into an apple / and felt the wild desire to laugh / at you / because you call this place hell / and you fele from here convinced / that death outside Sarajevo does not exist …”
[8] Insdorf, Annette, Indelible Shadows: Film & The Holocaust, Pgs. 31.
[9] Amery, Jean, At The Mind’s Limits, Indiana University Press,
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