| February 23, 12:00 AM A Viral Marketing Thing We Feel Dirty About Spreading |
There’s nothing like a well-made fake. And conspiracy theory blog MIR-12 is nothing like a well-made fake. Granted, the production values for the site, part of the viral campaign for an upcoming video game called Singularity, are very high. But that’s just the problem. If real conspiracy theorists had made it, the homepage logo wouldn’t be nearly as slick, nor would the conspiracy, which involves a Chernobyl-type accident at a top-secret Russian weapons facility, be so involved. Then again, the fact that we’re sitting here writing about the stupid thing probably means the advertisers are getting exactly the response they want. |
February 25, 12:00 AM Book Review: The Sacred Book of the Werewolf |
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February 25, 12:00 AM Fast Food Chain As Exemplar |
Who said all empires in Russia are built on blood, lies, and connections? Some are built on homemade potato recipes — hold the vodka jokes. A new video from state press agency RIA Novosti follows Andrei Kononchuk and Vitaly Naumenko, co-owners of the baked-potato chain Kroshka Kartoshka [Крошка Картошка]. Now moneybags, the two tell of their humble but honest beginnings in the baked-potato biz, which they began in 1998, when the Russian economy was in the proverbial crapper. At first, all their revenue was eaten up by hyperinflation and their only other employees were their wives. But within a year their fortunes turned, and now Kroshka is an iconic and delicious symbol of post-default Russia, often imitated but never replicated by copycat brands. Wait, this video is just a carb-veiled parable intended to inspire more Russian entrepreneurship! Is nothing sacred? |
February 24, 12:00 AM Short Films About Modern Russia Are The New Google Video Search |
Oh, the hours of procrastination ahead of us. Russian weekly Russky Reporter [Русский Репортер] has joined forces with MySpace in launching a competition for short films about “real life” in modern Russia. The contest is designed to expose young filmmakers, cinematographers and other “creatives” to the world around them. All entries must focus on something in the public sphere, and must run no longer than 25 minutes. They must contain conflict, characters and a plot, and cannot be “silent” (some sort of text is mandatory). Those last three rules are a tactful way of saying, "Go easy on the art school stuff, kids." |
February 24, 12:00 AM Naomi Campbell Gets Slavic Soul Transplant |
We’re going to rehash some celebrity gossip and we’re going to enjoy it. Supermodel Naomi Campbell, who’s been dating Russian property tycoon Vladislav Doronin for almost a year now, has been spending an increasing amount of time in Doronin’s Moscow penthouse and his vacation mansion in the über-expensive oligarch suburb of Rublyovka. Not because Campbell’s under house arrest for assault, but because she’s becoming a “Moscow housewife,” according to British tabloid Daily Mail and various Russian papers. What backs this allegation? The love-struck supermodel has been spotted at banyas (steam bath houses) across town. She gets her hair cut “locally” for about $50. And she’s reportedly adopting the Russian Orthodox faith. Sounds like somebody’s angling for a reality TV show. |
February 23, 12:00 AM Eurasia Prepares For Influx Of Dancing, Histrionic Teens |
From the producers and composer of the High School Musical trilogy: a bona fide Russian rip-off! First Love: Now That's Music! [Первая любовь: Вот такая музыка!] is premiering in Russian and Kazakh theatres March 5. If it’s anything like the trailer (link with subtitles after the jump), it will be a puberty-charged romp teeming with vibrantly clothed break dancers. The glossiness and skilled promo are pure Hollywood, but the underlying machismo and melodrama? All Russia, baby. |
February 23, 12:00 AM Government Snubs 100+ Languages On Endangered List |
Turns out there’s another February holiday that gives us reason to be depressed: It’s called Native Language Day, and it came and went on the 21st. Created by the United Nations a decade ago, the holiday was observed this year with the release of UNESCO’s Atlas of Languages in Danger, a work whose findings on Russia are being heralded as “disturbing” by researchers and members of the media alike. Linguists, brace yourselves for what follows. |
February 20, 8:00 AM Bag of Hope: The Avoska |
Avos. “Perhaps.” “God willing.” “Hope against hope.” Pushkin baptized his fellow Slavs with this very phrase in Eugene Onegin: “Perhaps, o people's Shibboleth…” In Goncharov’s Oblomov, the spineless protagonist can barely splutter a sentence without its invocation: “And perhaps Zahar will contrive something… let's hope they'll manage without turning me out…well, things will be arranged somehow!" It is said that few words characterize the Russian outlook as succinctly as avos—a compact expression of the belief that, against all reason, something good might still turn up. So it should come as no surprise that the word eventually morphed into the avoska—the USSR’s portable, fishnet shopping sack. |
February 20, 12:00 AM 02/20/09: More Airline Stupidity And The Most Curious Thing About Benjamin Button |
The Russian blogosphere conveniently, if bafflingly, revolves around LJ. Each week, RUSSIA! scans the chatter and brings you the top five topics. |
February 20, 8:00 AM Belarus Suffers Porn Shortage |
In an otherwise alarming report about Internet crimes, this hilarious bit of information from news site Lenta.ru: at present, there’s no porn of any kind on Belarusian Internet servers. That's right, zero porn. This according to officials from the country's Ministry of Internal Affairs, who claim instead that the majority of Internet porn comes from countries like the United States. Ironclad logic here: the U.S. has a lot of porn, so we must have none. If this is some sort of New Cold War strategy, we’re not sure to whose advantage it’s working. |
February 20, 12:00 AM Lawyer: Kremlin's Goal Is To Keep Khodorkovsky Jailed Indefinitely |
Yesterday, Mikhail Khodorkovsky – the oil tycoon who has found his empire stripped bare and himself in Siberia after developing a hint of a political ambition in 2003 – returned to Moscow for the first time in years. The occasion was not joyous: there are new charges in the case. Khodorkovsky is now more than halfway into his ludicrous nine-year sentence; are the authorities planning a display of magnanimity or a show trial to keep him locked up into the 2020s? For once, we actually picked up the phone and asked someone: Robert Amsterdam, the world-renowned lawyer who represented Khodorkovsky in the original trial. Here's his take. |
February 20, 12:00 AM Georgia Slams Putin With Syntactically Iffy Disco Routine |
First, Georgia threatened to boycott this year’s Eurovision Song Contest because it’s to be held in Moscow. Then Georgia recanted on the boycott and applied late. Now Georgia has gone ahead and selected its entry to the competition: an English-language song titled, “We Don’t Wanna Put In.” Ahem. If you don’t get it yet, consider the ersatz-disco refrain: “We don’t wanna put in / The negative move / Is killing the groove.” It’s certainly no Vysotsky song, but a “subtle” political slight it is. |
February 19, 12:00 AM Beware the Fakes: Russian LOLcats Articulate, Poetic |
So, the other day BoingBoing featured a link to a seemingly harmless blog called rolcats.com. The site's author purports to be offering translations of images he takes from a Russian lolcat site called kotomatrix.ru. The twist is that they're not real translations at all, but an excuse to make Cold War jokes about Marxism and the KGB. BoingBoing seemed to get that it's a hoax, but in the past few days we've received queries about the site's authenticity from friends who aren't stupid. So let's put an end to the madness! After the jump, a real Russian lolcat caption for the photo seen above. |
February 19, 12:00 AM Return Of The Runaway Mullet |
Just hours ago, ex-mobile phone mogul and exiled oligarch du jour Yevgeny Chichvarkin made his first public appearance since going AWOL last December. His re-emergence takes the form of a vaguely allegorical, highly effusive LiveJournal post. The somewhat odd story included some characters living in America, and dialogue about “following one's dreams” and “reaching one's potential.” Plus, a music link! (The song’s opening lyrics are: “The fog/the fog…”) With a warrant out for his arrest, we're not sure this is a wise move on Chichvarkin’s part, but it's nice to see him following in the literary footsteps of other famous Russian exiles. Like Trotsky. |
February 19, 12:00 AM Brodsky Monument A Big Unfunded Maybe |
Anathema to the Soviet government, poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky was hounded by the authorities for “parasitism,” sentenced to a stint in a remote northern village, and finally forced to leave the country in 1972. Once in the U.S., conversely, he was hounded by the adoring press, sentenced to a teaching stint in Ann Arbor, and finally forced to leave the country to pick up his Nobel Prize in 1987. Now that he’s dead, Russia, as usual, has realized its loss and wants a piece of J-Bro, too. And, soon enough, it should be getting one. |
