I’ve never made a trip to Chicago I didn’t like. Travelling by train and booking hotels on priceline.com makes it an affordable and fun weekend trip. While visiting Chicago is always exciting, winter is a good time to enjoy indoor activities. During a recent trip we visited the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry – probably the most awesome museum in the country which we would’ve enjoyed more if it didn’t close at 4pm; saw a comedy show at the Second City, if you laugh non-stop when watching SNL you’ll probably love this one; saw a Broadway show American Idiot – I liked it a lot and I am not even a fan of Green Day, the first musical I’ve seen without an intermission; we took a tour of Chicago Pedway and walked for 90 minutes without getting out in the cold; went to the top of the John Hancock building – we didn’t use the skating rink but in case you were wondering – it’s small, lame and not even real ice. In between, we ate a lot of good food, walked around in the cold as much as we liked, saw a light show at the Millennium Park and even had time to visit relatives. And all of this in one short weekend. I’ve been to Chicago many times and never had to do the same thing twice or eat twice at the same place (unless I wanted to). There is a never-ending list of things to do, see and eat.
I had this article saved up for some time but only now got around to translating it.
To the best of my knowledge, the Star Wars were never shown in the Soviet Union, at least not in the wide distribution. Certain people always had access to the Western movies, the legendary uncensored versions, which included sex and violence and images of the Western lifestyles that were so detrimental to the psychological well-being of the Soviet people. For the rest of us, the press published articles like this, to nip the desire to see the banned movie in the bud. Even though some people could have read a much better review (links to the Google-translated version) in the limited distribution of the Amerika Magazine, in the pre-VCR era there just were no other options for and average Soviet Citizen to see the movie an decide for himself.
Published under the heading “Mass Culture -77” in the box tiled “Their Sensations”
Cosmic Movie Horrors*
by Yulia Warshavskaya
This summer a new wave of the movie mania washed over the American movie theaters. As reported in the press, the movie Star Wars directed by an American director George Lucas beat all the box office records: it made sixty million dollars just in its first month of release. From morning to midnight the Star Wars is being shown in the crowed theaters. To get in, one either needs to stand in line for several hours, or buy a ticket from a scalper for an unheard price of $50.
Following the monsters, mass catastrophes and giant sharks, American movie screens are overtaken by the horrors on a truly cosmic scale – terrifying tyrants terrorizing our Galaxy. They are being fought by the characters of the movie, a round-faced princess, a country boy, an old knight of the Round Table, an ape-man and two robots. One of them – huge and gilded Tripio possesses human speech, the other one – Artwo-Detwo – looks like an automobile and communicates with the “star signals”.
The plot, as reported by the French weekly “Express”, is fairly primitive.**
But to further terrify the audiences the creators of the movie employ the most menacing weapon ever – the laser beam – which the movie characters use to fight like a rapier. The screen is constantly filled with horrifying monsters – a lizard-man, faceless gnomes, a live mummy, whose head is covered with rubber tubes, fantastic animals…
Along with this blood-curdling “masterpiece” which director George Lucas calls a “Western of the future”, several parallel commercial operations were undertaken. Ballantine Books published a novel with the same title; Marvel Comics, a publisher specializing in comic books, divided the screenplay into six parts and started publishing a million copies every month. Other classic attributes of mass culture followed – pins, shirts, promotional posters, soundtrack. And closer to the New Year the stores will be filled with toys – miniature Artwo-Detwo making the same noises as its prototype, as well as the gilded Tripio. The famous laser sword is not invented yet, but it’s in the works.
In the near future the next episode of the Star Wars will be released, but, most likely, it will be as mediocre as it will be profitable. It’s not surprising at all. Mass viewer often “bites” on these “pieces of art”, so the life outside of the theater walls feels a lot safer…
* amateur translation mine
**obviously the author did not see the movie and has to cite another publication
Exactly 20 years ago, on July 8th, 1988 I had to report for duty at the local draft station. Several hundred young men gathered in the yard waiting for their fate to be decided by chance and lucky or unlucky circumstances. We all wore old clothes and had backpacks with personal items, we all tried to act brave pretending that this was just another day in our so far mostly care-free lives. In reality, for many of us it was the first day of our adult lives. Most of us have never been separated from our parents for more than a few weeks, many of us never traveled far away from home, we stood there looking like we could care less but our future couldn’t have been any more uncertain.
In the middle of the yard on a desk there were stacks of personal files. Once in a while an officer walked in (they called them “buyers”) with a requisition for a certain number of people and grabbed a handful of files from the top of the stack. That simple act decided where the draftee would spend the next few years: the most unlucky ones were stuck for 3 years in the Navy where being short almost guaranteed a submarine; the others got the Army and shorter guys didn’t fare much better – they were a perfect fit for a tank. In 1988 they were still sending people to Afghanistan, so your file being on top in the wrong time could ultimately decide if you would come home in a zinc coffin. And then there were locations – anywhere from remote posts inside the Arctic Circle, to scorching desert sands; mountains, faraway borders, big cities, resort towns, or somewhere deep in the woods where you’d see people once in 6 months – military was everywhere and all these places needed new “meat”.
My parents didn’t try our “Jewish luck” – a friendly (bribed) officer kept taking my file off the top of the stack until a good buyer showed up. I ended up only a few hundred miles away in the engineering regiment. My parents were happy – I was not too far, I never found out how much money and favors did it cost my Dad. I was happy – I didn’t end up in some horrible dump. “Friendly” officer was happy – he had a reason to celebrate. And the Soviet Army got one of the most worthless soldiers in its history.
That hot day in July of ’88 is still with me. Anxiety and fear long ago faded away but I still remember the buyer grabbing my file from the stack, like a hand of fate grabbing my life and pulling it into a mysterious unknown future.
We only had one full day in Minneapolis so we had to make it count. Getting around the Twin Cities is easy, even considering horribly confusing twin I35 highways. On any highway you will probably find yourself to be the fastest driver in the city – the rest of the population competes in out-slowing each other and driving under the speed limit without actually coming to a complete stop.
Once, while I was walking somewhere with my Father, we met one of his patients. The guy had a pronounced limp. “He damaged his leg parachuting into Hungary in 1956”, my Dad told me when the guy schlepped away. For a long time this was all I’ve ever heard about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Hungarians tried to overthrow the communist regime years before a similar event happened in Czechoslovakia, and were just as brutally run over by the Soviet tanks. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the fighting.
When I was growing up© every able-bodied male over 18 years old was drafted to serve 2 years in the Army or 3 years in the Navy. Very few people were able to escape the draft based on health and other reasons. Going to college resulted in getting the lowest officer rank but even then a person had to serve some time and if you quit or got kicked out of school, guys in uniform came looking for you without delay. Threat of the military service was probably the single largest stimulus for getting into and staying in college for any male.