More Jet Packs, Please: Memories of Olympic Glory

Ever since I was a wee zygote, I have had zero interest in sport. Soccer? Swimming? Table-tennis? Nah. It’s only during the Olympics, when the coverage is so overwhelming that I become aware of what’s going on in the world of running and jumping. And indeed, when I look back, I see that in spite of my indifference I actually have numerous memories of Games past.

Take the Moscow Olympics of 1980 for instance. I was five years old and a girl from my small Scottish town was doing something over there. Our teachers told us all about it. Anyway, she didn’t win a medal, but they did name a street in a rubbish suburb in her honor fifteen years later, so her glory is undiminished, although I can’t actually remember her name.

Nazis, Gangsters, Sex Kittens and Unfortunate Tattoos

Earlier this week the directors of the Bayreuth Festival got into a kerfuffle with the Russian bass-baritone Yevgeny Nikitin when a German TV show revealed that he has a swastika tattoo on one of his man-boobs. This was a problem because Nikitin had been invited to perform the lead in “The Flying Dutchman,” an opera by Richard Wagner, the music world’s most famous anti-Semite, whose work was much beloved by Adolph Hitler, another noted anti-Semite. It was a Nazi supernova!

Around the World with Embalmed Communists

Recently there’s been some blather about removing Lenin from Red Square and inserting him into a hole in the ground. Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it. About once a year some Russian public figure suggests burying the Father of the Proletariat, everybody talks about it for a day or two, and then the idea fades away. You see, the interesting thing about Lenin is that, after you’ve seen him once you forget that he’s there. I mean, I’m sure Putin never thinks that there’s a hollowed out shell of a human located in a glass box a stone’s throw from his office. I lived in central Moscow for three years and hardly ever thought about it myself. Lenin’s basically invisible. Familiarity breeds indifference.

Why I Love Bad Movies (With a Few Exceptions)

One of the stranger aspects of human nature is our capacity to take delight in things that are awful. For instance, in my late teens I embarked upon an intense study of the horror movies I had been forbidden to watch as a child: Dracula flicks starring Christopher Lee, or B-movies with Vincent Price. None were scary, most were boring and then I stumbled upon Dracula AD 1972, in which the vampire drinks the blood of groovy people in 70s London. It was awful. And yet I enjoyed it more than the others, as my tears of boredom alternated with laughter and amazement at the poor judgment of it all. I was hooked: bad films were good.

Somebody Still Loves You, Tom Cruise

Last week, I was mildly surprised to hear that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are getting divorced. Why, only a few days before I had read an interview in People magazine in which Cruise kept banging on about “Kate” and his daughter Suri, and how he was looking forward to a happy 50^th birthday celebration with his family. And then this Tuesday Tom turned 50, alone… How could it all have gone so wrong so quickly?

A Short History of Useful Idiots

Mussolini: you might think he was just a blustering fool in a fez, but once upon a time many people took him very seriously. I remember my shock when, aged 15 or so, I learned from my history teacher that Churchill had spoken approvingly of the black shirts in the 1920s. This week however I was reading a biography of the first Fascist and learned that Winston was not alone. Franklin Roosevelt praised the Italian dictator as a gentleman; Chiang Kai-shek asked for a signed photograph; and even Gandhi (yes lovely, non-violent, vegetable-munching Gandhi) described him as the “Savior of Italy.” Hmm. That’ll be the guy who let his soldiers use live Ethiopians for target practice and ended his political career shipping Jews to Hitler for extermination? All right then!

The Best of British!

This summer, London will host the Olympic Games, and many foreign visitors will visit Great Britain. Although the games are still a few weeks away, I am pleased to report that my green and pleasant homeland’s reputation for hospitality is already proving well-deserved. This week for instance a gentleman named David Beckham, who is married to one of our famous “Spice Girls,” released his “Best of British” guide for visitors. Alas I cannot tell you what it contains, for Mr. Beckham requested that I acquire an “app” for my “phone,” whereas I still rely on carrier pigeons for long distance communications. But not to worry! This week, for those planning a visit, or who are simply curious about our Sceptred Isle, I have prepared my own list. Tally ho!

America Has No Problems

Problems, problems, everybody has problems. Look at Russia right now. Those protesters - they’ve got problems. If they don’t get prior permission for their rallies they will now be fined thousands of dollars. The opposition leaders have problems: the police raided their apartments, seized all their hi-tech gear and “investigations are ongoing.” Pussy Riot has problems. Ksenia Sobchak has problems… jeez… so many problems.

Save Us From The Moderates

Recently in Texas we had some elections, and I was very interested in the smears politicians hurled at each other. The worst thing a politician can be called here is a “Washington Insider” as the Federal Government obviously represents nothing but waste, incompetence, cronyism and assaults on freedom. Some of this contempt is undoubtedly deserved, but it’s not as if the Feds are entirely awful. For instance, Washington runs the military, which most Texans support very strongly.

YOU SAY “помидор” I SAY “помідор”

Last week, fists flew in the Ukrainian parliament over the latest attempt to grant the Russian language a measure of official status in the country. Fat politicians brawled with other fat politicians, while outside, an angry crowd protested. From her jail cell, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko denounced the bill as a “crime.” Earlier, she had characterized it as an apparently sacrilegious assault on “an issue that is holy for many of us.”

White Indians

Recently there’s been a bit of a kerfuffle in Massachusetts, where Ted Kennedy’s old senate seat will soon be up for grabs. Having kept it in the family since 1955, it went Republican at the last election, which is akin to the Biblical prophecy of “'The Awful Horror' standing in the place where he should not be" (Mark  13:14) as far as Democrats are concerned. Hoping to win it back this November, the party has put forward a high cheek-boned member of the privileged, white, upper middle class liberal intelligentsia, a Harvard law professor named Elizabeth Warren.

How I Got Back to Nature

Like many British people, I grew up disconnected from nature. Though my small town was close to forests and woods and water, we pretty much left the animals and plants alone. Specialists, known as “farmers”, were our mediators. Every now and then you might go for a ramble between fields, but that was about it, even though (in Scotland at least) you are never very far away from a herd of sheep.

March of the Pygmies

Right now it seems as if the leadership of the entire planet is coming up for election. At least that’s the impression I get from the news: there are changes of leadership everywhere, or at least in those places where the population is allowed to have a say in such matters. But when I look at the results, I can’t help thinking that the people coming into power are completely incapable of meeting the challenges of our times.

Watching Kim Jong-un

What would it be like to be told at age 27 that for the next four decades you were going to have to kill, starve and oppress millions of people if you wanted to stay alive? A strange question you may think, and yet not an unreasonable one. It is after all, precisely what happened to Kim Jong-un, the son of Kim Jong-il and now leader of the world’s most oppressive state.

Sacred Monsters: A Conversation About Russian Literature

Lev Danilkin is the most influential literary critic in Russia today. Recently I interviewed him about the past, present and future of the book in the homeland of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Dictator Girl Pop

Last week I was very excited to hear that GooGoosha plans to release some new music. After all, it’s not every day that the daughter of a despot goes into a music studio and cuts an album’s worth of tunes.

2012: A Texas Meat Odyssey

Last week a caterpillar the size of a kid’s finger bit me. There I was, driving along a country lane when I felt something hairy brush up against my forearm. The next thing I knew my skin was aflame. Looking down I saw this fat, writhing, spiny thing, doing a multi-legged dance of victory.

Kremlin Kids Gone Wild!

Life is not easy for the offspring of dictators. Look at Gaddafi’s kids, who are either dead, in prison or in exile. Bashar al-Assad would have been an ophthalmologist if his elder brother hadn’t died. But now he has to kill thousands or be killed himself. Even Kim Jong-un, allegedly the supreme overlord of 24 million North Koreans looks vaguely terrified by the awesome responsibility of carrying on the family tradition of EVIL.

Requiem For A Hitler

The first time I saw Alexander Shishkin, the greatest Adolf Hitler lookalike in the history of the planet, I was in awe. This tall, cadaverous man didn’t just look like Hitler, he looked like a Hitler that had died and been dug up again. It was eerie: the sunken cheekbones, the severe parting and of course the black moustache were almost enough to persuade you that Hitler was indeed back from the dead.

World Goes Crazy, Gorilla Makes Break for Freedom

The world, friends, is a preposterous place. I thought that this week when, intending to write a newsy column, I started perusing headlines. Very soon my head was aching from all the absurdity and violence.

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Russian and American Crime

Sometimes I wonder if a nation’s crime, like its cuisine, can tell us something about its character. When I was first exposed to Russian crime in the 1990s in the Death Porn section of the eXile newspaper, it certainly seemed to have a unique flavor. There was a heavy emphasis on vodka, businessmen getting shot in the pod’yezd, provincial misery, child victims, corrupt cops, and lots of Really Stupid Criminals.

Beware of Falling Space Rocks!

Earlier this week, I read that a Tunguska-sized meteorite is hurtling in our direction at great speed and immediately felt quite excited at the apocalyptic potential of this space-rock. For those not in the know, “Tunguska” refers to an earlier piece of cosmic debris that exploded above the Krasnoyarsk region in 1908, with a force 1000 times as powerful as that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Notes on the Landscapes Spotted in the Backgrounds of News Reports

Recently I started a daily ritual of watching Euronews after dinner. I’m not sure why I find the channel so absorbing, as when I actually lived in Europe I found it incredibly dull. And not dull in a smug, irritating BBC way but just… soul-crushingly boring, as is characteristic of anything that begins with the chilling prefix “Euro-”. Perhaps it’s only now, after years spent in a land where the news is delivered exclusively by pompous, Botoxed egomaniacs that I can appreciate the channel’s relatively understated style. Or then again, maybe I’m just digging the stuff I can see in the backgrounds.

Congratulations President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan on Your Outstanding Election Victory!

With the world currently rocked by political unrest and open rebellion, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan on his resounding victory in last week’s elections. Apparently he won 97% of the vote! This is quite spectacular, although admittedly not as spectacular as the type of result his predecessor Saparmurat “Turkmenbashi” Niyazov regularly enjoyed. He could win reelection with 99.5% support. But it’s pretty good all the same.

Russia in Revolt as Viewed from Afar

Whenever something major happens in Russia, I wish it were a lot easier to get over there and witness conditions on the ground. For instance when Boris Yeltsin died, I really wanted to visit his corpse as it lay in state in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior to see for myself how people were reacting to this man who had caused so much chaos in his 8-year rule.

Right now I’m feeling the same frustration. Important events are taking place in Russia, the greatest symbol of which (for me) was the sight of Sergei Udaltsov tearing up a picture of Vladimir Putin at last weekend’s protest rally. Not so long ago only Eduard Limonov’s kiddie army did that sort of thing and they’d get arrested, beaten and jailed for their troubles. So what is the likelihood of meaningful change? How substantial is the protest movement?

A Young Person's Guide to Russian Politics

Following the recent street protests in Russia, international attention has been focused on the country’s political scene. A young person tuning in to the news coverage might be confused by all the long names ending with –ov and –sky, and the series of heads that resemble slabs of meat, lumpy potatoes or some other comestible. Too much of the commentary is targeted at initiates; beginners need a jumping on point. After all, today’s 20 year olds were barely crawling the last time Vladimir Zhirinovsky scored serious headlines in the West. So strap on your shapka and let’s go!

Learn Japanese the World War II Way!

Recently I was browsing in a used book store when I stumbled upon a soldier’s Japanese phrasebook from World War II. Between faded orange covers I found a treasure trove of fascinating words and phrases- certainly it’s the most useful text published by the U.S. War Department I’ve encountered since that pamphlet on sexual hygiene for GIs I found in a Texas ghost town a few years back. It does lack for detailed diagrams of human genitalia, however.

Scotland's Bid for Independence Explained!

Last week, Scotland made international headlines when First Minister Alex Salmond announced plans to hold a referendum on independence in 2014, potentially dissolving Great Britain FOREVER. As a Scot living abroad, I am often asked questions about my homeland and its relationship with England. So for those perplexed by all this independence malarkey, this week I decided to answer all the most important questions on the topic in one E-Z cut out n’keep guide. Let’s go!

1)    Is Scotland a country, or what?

The Art of Naming

This week I was very excited to learn that after all the scandal surrounding the baby bump of Beyonce Knowles (OMG, is it real or fake?!) the mega pop star had finally given birth to a beautiful baby girl, named Blue Ivy. What a great way to start 2012!

My New Year's Resolution- Become More Like Lenin

So it’s that time of year again, when - although our problems remain pretty much the same as they were on December 31st - the illusion of the “New Year” provides a sense that things are starting over. I don’t know about you, but this gives me a burst of energy that lasts around, oh, three weeks or so before inertia kicks in.

Anyway, given that I only have a very short time before the bubble pops, I’ve been looking for inspirational figures to help me attack 2012 with gusto. That’s why I just read Lenin, written by the English historian Robert Service.

2011- The Year in Dictators

The year 2011 was an alarming one for dictators, as a series of mass uprisings toppled several authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. The so-called “Arab Spring” inspired wild hopes, with some optimists even declaring that the 20th century phenomenon of the dictator was finished, and a new era of democracy was dawning- just like in Eastern Europe in 1989. True? False? Let’s survey the Year in Dictators and find out!

What I Don't Want for Christmas

It’s that time of year again, when the perennial question is answered- will I get what I want for Christmas?

Sometimes of course, Santa gets it wrong, and this can be disappointing. Your inner child craved that Millennium Falcon scale replica, but the bearded old duffer at the North Pole decided you were too old and so- no dice. Perhaps, on the other hand, you got exactly what you wanted, but after opening the presents you experienced feelings of ennui and emptiness. What was the point of that? Did the acquisition of yet more material goods make me happy? Not really. And despair descends. 

Wind of Change

Sometime around the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a long period of abject Western media failure regarding the Putin phenomenon began. Journalists were so busy making fatuous comparisons to Stalin or hyping The New Cold War™ that they refused to address why the president was so popular in Russia. I suspect this is because many of them missed the 1990s, when Americans and Europeans had enjoyed near godlike status. Yeltsin had been no catastrophe for them, even if he was for 99.99% of everybody else.

Cloning the Mammoth

The other day I read that some Russian and Japanese scientists have decided to clone a mammoth. Apparently they’ve been thinking about it for some time, but it was only this year that they found a specimen frozen in Siberia, with “good nuclei” in its bone marrow, whatever that means.  Still, they sound like they know what they’re doing.

Like many people, the whole idea of cloning leaves me feeling queasy. For instance, what if a fly buzzes into the Petri dish while the scientists are fiddling about with cells, and a monstrous half- mammoth, half-fly creature with compound eyes and giant tusks emerges from the lab?  Or what if a renegade Nazi scientist living in Argentina gets his hands on the technology and breeds a new strain of Nazi mammoth that hates Jews and wants to conquer the world? Then we’d really be in trouble.

Attack of the Little Satan

In June 2009, I found myself glued to the TV set, watching the crowds in Tehran protesting the rigged reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran. I was amazed that things seemed to be falling apart so quickly for the motley crew of thugs, thieves, killers and millenarian fantasists that run the country. After all, their despotic regime was only 30 years old, and at that age the USSR was in the full, terrifying flower of Stalinism. It would be another four decades before it collapsed due to institutional senility and internal decay.

Even so, the revolutionary Islamists in Iran were still virile enough to repress those protests. And as the fists and boots hammered down, and young girls were shot dead in the street, there was precious little light relief until the Iranian authorities declared the British responsible for all the unrest.

Eh?

American Poverty

Last weekend, I met a woman who was in the process of selling off her house and many of her possessions. After losing her job over a year ago, she had scraped by on unemployment benefits for a while until she fell so far behind on her mortgage that she had no choice but to sell up. And that was how, in her mid-50s, not only a mother but also a grandmother, she found herself moving back in with her own 84-year-old mom.

It’s the story of our era, I think- at least it is if the newspapers and government statistics are to be believed. Indeed, I read in The New York Times not so long ago that 100 million people in America are either living in poverty or “near poverty.” Apparently the last census deployed a new system of wealth assessment, only to reveal the astonishing fact that one-third of Americans are either really poor or on the verge of destitution. 

Surprised By Fame

On Sunday, I was leafing through People, the journal of American celebrity worship when I spotted somebody I used to work with in the gossip pages. Apparently she’s dating a movie star and they are about to get married.

Wow.

The fact that she was marrying a movie star didn’t shock me so much (her sister is a well-known actress) but rather that somebody I knew had made it into the pages of a tabloid. A law of nature had been violated: celebrity magazines should contain pictures of people I don’t know, like Angelina Jolie, or Jennifer Aniston, or Michael Jackson’s (ex) doctor.

So, I thought if my former colleague can get in then why not me?

Climbing Inside The Horse; or- The Uses of Animals

So anyway, yesterday I was driving down a country road when I spotted a decapitated stag lying in a ditch. The strange thing was that its head had been cleaved neatly from the body, leaving a perfect anatomical cross-section-type view of the interior of the neck. A car accident doesn’t do that - and even if it did, I’d still expect to see the head nearby, surrounded by turkey vultures pecking at the soft parts.

New Sensations

As you get older it’s easy to fall into a rut, to repeat yourself and to lose the child’s sense of wonder at the world. Fortunately new sensations can be found in unexpected corners of everyday life - you just have to keep your eyes open. Recently I’ve had three such experiences that came out of nowhere and added a little magic to my day. I’m glad each one happened.

#1- Generator of roadkill

American Election Watch III

So, since my last election watch update, a great deal has happened. We have witnessed a major flameout in the Republican race, and the “rising without trace” of a new contender. On the Democrat side, Mr. Obama is still, ah, doing stuff.

First, the flameout. When last I wrote, Rick Perry had just announced his candidacy and leapt to the front of the pack. He’s tall, Texan, masculine, has a good record on job creation… plus he once shot a coyote. The right developed a serious mancrush; the left started raving about a rock Perry’s dad had painted over decades earlier. Meanwhile, Perry opened his mouth.

Mr. Gorbachev Goes To Mexico

Like many children of the Cold War, I grew up anxious about Nuclear Armageddon, so when Gorbachev eased relations between the USSR and the West I was grateful. For many years I viewed him as a hero, pure and simple. It was not until I moved to Russia that I realized his reforms had been intended to strengthen the USSR, not destroy it.

Oops.

Bourgeois Kids Of The World Unite!

When I first saw the mob of pasty-faced bourgeois Bohemian children camped out on Wall Street I thought: not again. Ever since the late 1980s, when all that hippy nonsense turned two decades old, a segment of Western youth has suffered from 60s envy. Thus we periodically witness attempts to rekindle the romantic flame of protest which - we are constantly reminded - burned so brightly in those halcyon days.

Me, I’ve never suffered from 60s envy. Woodstock is to blame: I was 16 when I watched the concert film and was shocked to learn how much of the music was not Jimi Hendrix but rather, puerile and twee garbage like Country Joe and the Fish or John Sebastian.

It was these 60s clowns who were responsible for the wasteland my peers and I inhabited in the 1980s, I realized. The Woodstock generation had jettisoned all that peace and love tosh to pursue money, power and status.

Operation Fast And Furious: A Very Baffling Scandal

A few months back I read about a truly mind-blowing scandal involving the Bureau of Alcohol Firearms and Tobacco. Apparently the organization had been supplying guns to Mexican drug cartels which - unsurprisingly- had since been used to kill people.

Now in many parts of the world you would assume that corrupt members of the ATF were boosting their income by moonlighting as arms dealers. In Mexico the police, government and gangs are closely interlinked, and nobody is shocked.  In the 1990s some Russian soldiers sold weapons to the Chechen militants they were fighting. Why? Everybody knew: to supplement their miserable earnings.

After The Fire; or - How The Chihuahua Was Spared

Last week, my friend Sandy sent me an email:

“Dan, do you want to come with me to Bastrop? I’m going to shoot some pictures of the ruins.”

Sandy is a photographer who documents disasters, and since Bastrop just suffered the most destructive wildfire in Texas history- a raging inferno laid waste to 1,600 houses and 34,000 acres of land - he was keen to record the aftermath for posterity. As for me, I had never witnessed the effects of Biblical hellfire before, so I was curious. I agreed to go.

Cherokees vs. African Americans in the 21st Century

Recently I saw a fascinating story in the news: the Cherokee Nation had just voted to expel the descendants of freed slaves from their tribe.

Reading on, I discovered layers of suffering spread across multiple generations.  When the Cherokee were expelled from their homelands in the 19th century and forced to resettle in what would become Oklahoma, the richer members of the tribe brought their black slaves with them. This doesn’t quite fit the modern image of the Indian as a New Age guru spouting wisdom about buffalo and rivers, but then again, the myths constructed by guilty white folks to compensate for past sins always disintegrate upon contact with reality.

Why Solzhenitsyn Still Matters

When I first moved to Russia I set myself the goal of getting to grips with the titans of Russian literature. Ultimately I would spend six years reading primarily Russian authors, but in those early days the prospect of battling my way through all those massive texts seemed intimidating, the reading equivalent of crossing Siberia on foot.

One author I was especially intimidated by was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, at least in part because the book I had brought with me from Scotland was Cancer Ward. I mean, why didn’t I bring Ivan Denisovich? That book was about the GULAG yes, but it was very short. Cancer Ward was about cancer AND Stalinism AND it was 560 pages long. Hey, why not read The Master and Margarita instead? It’s got the devil in it!

Waiting To Burn

This past Monday was Labor Day, a rare and precious day off for most Americans. As I am self-employed I was faced with three options:

1)    Work and get the edge on my competitors while they are napping - or at least stave off homelessness a little longer

2)    Work, but dedicate the time to my more esoteric writing projects

3)    Do nothing

Colonel Gaddafi's Conan The Barbarian Moment

Ah, the unpredictable world of the dictator. One minute you’re a living god with a gold toilet, multiple palaces and a personal bodyguard of nubile female ninjas, and then the next it’s all over, as if all that splendor was nothing more than a very long - and mostly quite pleasant - dream.

Such is the reality Muammar Gaddafi finds himself inhabiting right now. Until recently he was not only the planet’s most famous colonel (after the guy who makes fried chicken, of course) but also Africa’s longest reigning head of state. Less than nine months ago he was still being feted by world leaders and fawned over by a prestigious English university hungry for oil money. His children enjoyed expensive educations at European and American institutions. And what about those tender, personal moments spent leafing through his album of Condoleezza Rice portraits?

Faith In Helicopters

The other night I was working in my backyard when I caught a whiff of smoke on the wind: a barbecue? I wondered. But there were no smoke trails coming from behind my neighbor’s fences; nor could I smell sizzling meat.

I checked the green belt behind my house- no tongues of flame there either. Furthermore, the odor was different, not a wood fire, but rather…. Ah that’s it! It was the same burning plastic/chemical/metal aroma that had hovered over my Austin apartment last year after an angry man had flown a plane into the local tax office, hoping to inflict a mini 9/11 on the IRS (He got there too early, before most of the staff were at their desks, and so killed only himself and one other person).

American Election Watch II: The Cowboy Cometh

In June, I wrote an overview of Republican candidates for the 2012 presidential nomination, and concluded with the suggestion that readers keep a close watch on Rick Perry, governor of Texas. Well, last weekend Perry declared his candidacy and immediately leaped into second place, behind Mitt Romney (who is a Mormon). That’s what happens when you run against such obvious losers. Now we are swamped with critical articles about Perry and Texas, most of them by people who knew very little about the state or its governor until a few days ago. Today, I will analyze the effectiveness of these criticisms, and once I’m finished you won’t need to read any more articles about Perry (unless I write them, of course).

When Fools Go To War

What was the central lesson that the Great Powers learned from the carnage of World War II? I firmly believe it was “never again”- that is, “never again will we fight a country that has even a remotely comparable military strength to our own.” Even so, beating the crap out of weak nations is not always as straightforward as one would imagine.