Hello Europe! Cheeseville calling!

I stayed up far too late last night watching the Eurovision song contest final. It is amazing that the same noble impulse that led to the European Union and decades of peace and prosperity also inspired this pan-continent cheesefest. It is very compelling viewing, sort of a cross between a shameless American Idol contest and international football tournaments, and raises many compelling questions about Europe today. Like, how come all the states of the former Yugoslavia voted for one another? Is this the unifying power of pop culture spreading peace and reconciliation over a troubled land, or is it because the whole thing is massively rigged? And like the clumsy bully that no one on the playground is scared of anymore, Russia could not play with the other kids without getting its feelings hurt. Traditionally, this involves conspiracy theories about how Russia is being shafted. And considering how majestically, awesomely, awful Russian pop music is, they may have a point. This year the big insult came from the Ukraine's representative, a transvestite with an entourage of tin-foil wearing dancers. I was rooting for them because they seemed to have the right spirit for something like this, unlike the over earnest entries from places like Armenia and Bulgaria. Last week, it actually made the news here that some folks thought they heard her sing the line "Russia, goodbye," which is a bit of an insult to Russia's perennially wounded pride. The singer claims it was a random Mongolian phrase. Either way... Did I mention it issued from a bunch of adults capering about in tin-foil? And since Estonia gave most of its votes to the rubbishy Russian entry -- a handful of oligarch mistresses that sang about being prostitutes, I think -- maybe we can finally get past the Bronze Soldier nonsense.

Around the neighborhood; May 10

A few photos Mila and I took around the neighborhood this afternoon...

Our apartment building.

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The playground in our block.

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Our apartment building from the back.

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A placard about Marshal Vasilyevsky, the Second World War hero who our street is named after.

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Another view.

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A local cinema that's seen better days.

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The "lyes-park" across the street from our house, where Mila goes for her walk every afternoon.

Victory Day

Naïve American I am, I was all set to go watch my first Victory Day parade today. In America a parade is a public celebration when you line Main Street and wave flags and watch bands, and cheerleaders and city councilors march past. But in Russia there’s nothing public about it. They close off Red Square and you watch on television from home as lots of soldiers marching about, with government officials standing up straight in open Zil limousines as they tour the assembled masses. But there was a military band playing the grocery store this afternoon, and at the checkout line the cashier gave me one of the orange and black striped ribbons everyone around the city has been wearing for the past week.

Victory Day is when Russians take justifiable pride in the accomplishment of defeating fascism in the Second World War, and a time of remembrance for those lost in a human catastrophe whose totality is so vast it may never be conclusively determined. But unfortunately, it is also an opportunity for Russia’s intense persecution complex and chauvinism to run amok. On Monday Interfax reported on a somewhat flawed recent poll that found two-thirds of Russians believe the Soviets would have won without the Allies.

The public memory of the war is depressingly selective. You hear nothing about Hitler and Stalin’s non-aggression pact, or the opportunistic war against Japan, joined in the final days just long enough to seize a few Pacific islands that Russia won’t give back. No mention is made of on how tragically and callously the war was mismanaged at first by Stalin and his henchmen.

It underscores how maddening a nation Russia can be. RIA Novosti put together a pretty decent website about the victory, but you don’t have to look long to find something horrible. Consider one writer’s remembrance of his grandfather, and this colorful take on Stalin’s mismanaged and disastrous attack on Finland:

He began fighting in 1940 against the Finns and took part in the famous landing at Hango. The Finns had machine guns and the Russians only had rifles. But Russian marines are different from anyone else because they do not fear anyone anywhere. They took Hango and soaked the Finns in blood. My grandfather used to say that Finns were a more cunning and skilled enemy than Germans. Finnish soldiers are courageous and stubborn, not afraid of difficulties, just like Russians. Besides, they fought for their own land. Every time I visit Karelia I remember my grandfather: had he and his comrades been less courageous and brave, we would not have seen this beauty. Russians forever discouraged Finns from venturing into what was originally Russian land.

There is a spit-take in nearly every sentence.

This year, the ugly prologue to Victory Day has been the manufactured outrage over the “Bronze Soldier” in Estonia. Earlier this year the Estonian government moved a Soviet war memorial away from downtown Tallinn, which stirred up a hornet’s nest of bad feelings between Russia and the Baltics. Emotions run very high, but the heart of the situation is really nothing. It is not as if the Bronze Solider was taken to the dump: it was moved to a cemetery on the outskirts of town and rededicated with full honors. Newspaper Novaya Gazeta last week dared to note that it is not unheard of in Russia for war memorials to be moved when elite real estate developments are planned. But most news coverage has been designed specifically to work over Russia’s worst impulses.

As Woody Guthrie sang in one of his best war songs, “The world is digging Hitler’s grave and when the job is done, that’ll be the biggest thing that man has ever done.” Leave it at that.

The voyage out

We got to JFK in plenty of time for our flight, so I could have a last hot dog from a stand and play with Mila for awhile as Olya shopped for gifts from duty-free. In all hectic preparation to move, I didn't think about the magnitude of what we're doing, until I stopped by the newsstand and realized that I wanted to buy almost everything because it would be a long time before I'd have that kind of choice again.

Aeroflot was in rare form our flight. We were delayed on the runway for nearly two hours (making us extremely glad that at the last moment we found someone to take care of Gryeka for us!). We took off without a word of warning, causing the lady behind us who was looking for something in the overhead compartment to tumble down and injure herself. They kept all the cabin lights on for a very long time at takeoff and landing, helping to keep Mila wide awake. The food was hilarious -- for breakfast they served a sort of pizza flavored Hot Pocket.

But we made it one piece, we all got to sleep a little bit, and to my incredible amazement, there were almost no lines at passport control once we got to Sheremetyevo! This is perhaps because it took us a long time to round up our incredible amount of carry-on baggage before we got off the plane.

B Moskve

After a hectic few weeks of packing and preparing, the three of us finally arrived here in Moscow on Tuesday. We're still getting settled, and among our top priorities is securing acceptable Internet service. So posting will be light for a few more days.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Hard to believe, but it was a morning more than three years ago that I walked into the North Adams bureau of the Berkshire Eagle for my first full day of work. The office was empty, and my editor politely told me over the phone that staff writers were expected to come up with at least two stories a day. So I set about trying to teach myself NewsEditPro, looked up Mayor John Barrett III’s phone number and got to work. Now after a blur of budget seasons, selectmen meetings, elections, and six different bureau-mates, I’m moving on. I gave notice last week, and am about to join journalists like Gustav Niebuhr and Alan Cooperman in the Eagle North County Bureau Alumni Association. April 18 will be my last day. And shortly thereafter I’m off to Moscow with the family. More on that to come…

Seriously, 2008? what the frak?

In that commonly obnoxious way people can be about this, I am quite pleased with myself for cutting my television consumption down to a very reasonable amount of appointment viewing and sporting events. Thanks go to my wife’s healthy hostility to the medium, and to the birth of a my absolute favorite time-sink of all time, Mila. But I’d been working on this even before, because unlike every thoughtful t.v. viewer I know, the whole genre of hour-long primetime dramas about cops, doctors, or lawyers all seemed like the same contrived rubbish to me. But somehow, to my surprise, I became pretty seriously into Battlestar Galactica last year. I heard enough smart people go on and on about the New Caprica insurrection episodes that I thought I’d check it out -- you know, as a student of history and cultural representations of collective trauma and guilt blah blah blah. And it got me. I have greatly enjoyed this season, and thought that was a fab season finale on Sunday. But seriously, we are now expected to wait until January 2008 for the next season? That ‘s rough, especially as it is so hard to find and keep as viewers snobs like me. I had originally been somewhat hostile to the “reimagined” show. It seemed to me that it was a little too cute to make the Cylons cyborgs, because as I remembered the original show, the Cylons were these clunky, malevolent robots that wanted to kill humans for some odd reason or other. I realize that sci-fi reflects the cultural worries of the moment – runaway technology, civilization ending holocausts, etc. – which are by their nature relative and mutable, but this seemed a bit much. And I will still insist the Cylons themselves in the new series are pretty weak – dressing like ABBA and roaming around their trippy-lit spaceships etc. The centurions are still pretty scary, but what’s scary about Tricia Helfer? I got over that though, and have spend many nights out walking Gryeka thinking about Cylons, and noting the preadolescent absurdity of spending so much time thinking about things called “Cylons.” But there is one things that consistently irks me about the show. If only about 41,000 humans survive the Cylon attack, how come so many of them are journalists? Every time Roslin gives a press conference there is a horde of reporters with their recorders out harping and yelping like a mob of angry dogs. And they are well-dressed, which suggests these are the Beltway, David Gregory-type reporters too. I find it hard to believe that the entire leadership was wiped out in the Cylon attack but the capital press corps survived intact – with their wardrobes to boot. Then again, I am coming to the show late and will have to work my up through the DVDs of the early seasons, in which I hope they explain this.

A trip to Florida

That’s Olga giving Mila her first introduction to the Atlantic Ocean, at Melbourne Beach in Florida on March 1. We went down for a week to visit my parents, who moved last year to the “Sunshine State.” Mila took to the ocean pretty well, kicking up a storm and sticking her tongue out wide to taste the salty air.

Melbourne Beach was the first stop on our trip before heading up to parents’ house in Ocala. We wanted to show Mila the ocean for the first time and visit an aunt who lives nearby. The weather mostly cooperated, and we all got a (very) little bit of color our first day there.

Though we were only there a few days, we did a lot of traveling around. Mila had a blast on the trip because she is generally quite adventurous so far and like to do new things. Olga and I however, being snobs, had some considerable reservations about the Union’s most dong-shaped member, mostly because we don’t believe that strip malls, giant detached homes, and trying to force green lawns to grow where green lawns do not want to be makes sound ecological sense. We made frequent catty remarks about how excited Jean Baudrillard would be about the whole place (so it was a little ironic when we found out later that he passed away while we were there).

Among our stops was Fort Myers, in the Southwest part of the state on the Gulf Coast. One of the conditions of my visiting Florida in March was that I was darned well going to be going to Spring Training. And I did, getting to see the Sox lose to the Dodgers at City of Palms Park.

Spring training ball is really a unique treat, although the prices and the traffic jam outside is vaguely reminiscent of going to a regular game back home. When you don’t have to worry about winning or loosing or the standings you can approach the game like a true aficionado. Bottom line, after watching a 2-1 defeat, is that Josh Beckett looked really good in two strong innings, and our coaches need to get to work with the fungoes we’ve got a lot of work to do. And the one moment I wish I was close enough to hear what they were saying came when JD Drew got a base hit and started talking to our old friend Nomar, who was playing first for the Dodgers. I imagine him saying something like, “If you can believe it, they’ll get worse.” But I hope not, because we gave him a very nice round of applause when his name was announced.

After the game we went down to the beach to see one of those famous Gulf Coast sunsets, which was duly spectacular. Then we had a nice gyro dinner at an outdoor place near the beach, and drove all the way back up to Ocala.

When Mooninites attack

The debacle in Boston on Wednesday, in which viral market LED displays mounted in public spaces around the city caused mass mayhem and national headlines, appears to be a zeitgeist moment. If you step away from whatever your particular first response to all this nonsense may have been -- whether horror at a stupid stunt or hilarity at Mooninites bringing a major city to a standstill -- you’ll see some interesting themes here.

Credit is due to the police and emergency responders who did the best job they could, and a few appropriate tsk-tsks should be aimed at the company who thought up the idea that – looking back – probably wasn’t so bright in the first place. But clearly, considering that nine other cities had been ‘victimized’ by these things for weeks without incident, this story should have died somewhere between being of regional interest and when it went national. Cult show or no, you have to think someone in authority would have caught what was up much earlier. These are honest mistakes though, and should be set aside with a brief set of mutual chuckles as we get on with our lives.

But what pitches this story into real hilarity is the official response. The way local politicians tripped over themselves in hyperbole and half-cocked, ignorant statements was astounding. I don’t blame the two guys they arrested over this for making a joke of their court proceedings Thursday: the whole thing is, in fact, a joke, unless you are serious about pissing on the Constitution – in which case we are having a different conversation. But that’s to be expected from politicians – cheap pandering is as natural to those that reach a certain level as breathing is to the rest of us.

What bugs the heck out of me is the media response. We know what cheap nonsense to expect from the Herald, and have gotten it, but the Globe has really crapped itself. We have been treated to one columnist speculating that people in those other nine other cities perhaps aren’t as observant as Bostonians. We’ve had one decide to abandon sympathy for the two patsies after their court appearance when they weren’t dutifully solemn and repentant in front of the cameras. A hasty editorial sternly warned us that in this uniquely dangerous post-Sept. 11 world, civic vigilance and discipline must shove aside our Constitutional rights, freedom to live in an open consumer society, and sense of humor. Really, with thinking like this, no wonder the media let itself get tricked into invading Iraq.

Now as someone whose livelihood, principles, and happiness depend heavily on a strong and vibrant First Amendment, I take even slight threats to it very seriously. And much of the talk about this event comes too close to the issue. Dan Kennedy made brief mention of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s wise adage that the Constitution does not give you the right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. I respond that the Constitution does indeed protect you if you whisper loudly to your date “Parsnips!” and a few people hear “Fire!” and cause widespread panic.

But what struck me most is the enormous generational sense of humor gap. Consider the image on the left… it was splashed on the front page of the Globe Thursday, and I am astonished that a very large portion of the population – including apparently every journalist in the Boston area – doesn’t think this is the funniest news photo in recent memory. It is not about laughing at the policeman, who is doing his job and doing it well. I’m a fan of “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” I know a bit about the Mooninites and what is funny about them. Punk pranks that would tie up major cities for hours is exactly the kind of thing Ignignokt and Err would do. And to see these two-dimensional pixel creatures causing such a stir in real life is almost too much.

I should perhaps be more charitable toward people who are in on the joke. I first realized I was on the wrong side of the generational humor gap a few years ago when Napoleon Dynamite. It seemed every high school and college kid thought it was hilarious, but while I could see how it could be funny, I actually found it quite stupid.

Of course, I strongly suspect much of the response is more about anger at viral marketing than anything else. And perhaps it is a bit underhanded and unfair, but its fair game if you ask me. And people that complain about it strike me as the same sort that complain they can’t get fresh milk delivered right to the doorstep, and about those damn kids and their troublemaking cartoons.

For this round at least, I can’t wait until the "Aqua Teen" movie comes out.

Mila in NYC

Mila had a great adventure last week, taking her first trip to New York. Here she is in Grand Central on the way home…