A little worm asks his father:
-Daddy, why do some worms get to live in apples and oranges and we live in a pile of shit?
-Because it’s our Motherland, son…
Old Soviet Joke

When I was boarding a plane to Los Angeles last Wednesday I knew all about my destination.
It was full of aging hippies…

…who wear Birkenstocks year round…

…overrun with crime (I am pretty proud of this shot right in front of the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre)…

…chronic diseases…

…about to be washed out by a tsunami…

…infested with illegal tax preparers…

…where fat people are discriminated against while being taunted with snacks…

…and skinny people are being put on a pedestal.

But somewhere during my five days in LA, my American dream got kicked in the groin. For years I was arguing with my friends on both coasts that I live in a better place, full of parking and almost devoid of traffic, safe and with good schools, reasonable and affordable, while still having a chance to see recent Broadway shows and dine at ethnic restaurants. After every trip I returned home complaining about the crowding, overpriced real estate and horrible traffic everywhere I went, feeling good about the rush hour slowdown on the highway we refer to as “traffic” and my relatively minuscule mortgage payment.

LA made me realize how badly I was mistaken. My friends were right, I live in a Podunk town, in a boring provincial backwater where the foodies are taking turns revisiting the same 10 restaurants and 3 markets; where the same 6 women (and probably men) are at the top of all dating sites (albeit under different handles); where finding a date with at least two degrees of separation from your previous one is almost impossible; where any chain restaurant opening is an event worthy of TV news coverage and traffic congestion; where the only bragging rights are “at least we are not Tulsa or Omaha”. Indeed we are not.

At the same time there are wonderful magical places where it’s almost always warm and sunny but you can look up in the mountains and see the snow; where at any given time more women are dressed in heels and bikinis than the whole statistical female population of the KC Metro Area; where the people are always in a sunny mood and free of depression or PMS and are happily smiling even while being arrested; where the 52-week donut project would take 52 years and still will not be able to eat a donut at every one of them; where the restaurants from all over the world are open even in the areas that are not scary without bars on the windows; where the oranges and lemons grow in people’s backyards instead of the allergy-inducing trees that are planted here for some mystical reasons; where the produce is not an imitation food sold here; where fat people are magically drawn outside to ride bikes or walk or run so even their over-consumption of donuts or cakes from a Cuban bakery around the corner is not detrimental to their health; where driving up and down the mountain roads makes one feel like James Bond; where you “can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile”.

So I told my daughter to pick a college in California, the only place where my American dream can make another run for it.

Maybe I can take a ride on the “Possibility bus”…

…or just mount my Focus on top of a school bus…

…I can trow down my magical money blanket on the sand…

…or pour my lifetime savings into a yacht…

…just so I can see this…

…or this…

…and this…

…and I will wait as long as I have to.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4J0HD_82hw

P.S. I don’t need to know why it’s so great to live here and why it sucks in California. Trust me – I know. And learn about hyperbole.

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A recent clip of a base jump from the 404 ft. spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St.Petersburg was widely discussed on the Russian-speaking internet.

httpvh://youtu.be/1cVRD0x_ask

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My previous post reminded me that learning English (or any other language other than your own) takes a lifetime. I feel pretty comfortable with where I am now but almost daily I pick something up or correct something that I already know.
When I started many years ago one of the biggest revelations was that when a person says “How Do You Do” they don’t expect a short blurb on the state of your affairs. You just say “How Do You Do” back. Over the years I learned not to answer in length to “How Are You”, “What’s Up” and “Did You Find Everything You Need?”. These and other words lost their original meaning and became something you say to a person walking towards you in the narrow hallway when just silently passing them is awkward. Many foreigners who don’t know these secret English handshakes always complain that Americans are insincere, they ask how are you, but they don’t really want to know. Literal understanding of the language leads to cultural misunderstanding. Another common foreigner gripe is that Americans are always smiling with those false evil smiles while probably hating your guts. I am guilty of betraying my immigrant brothers and starting to smile some more although it took me years to get used to it. Unfortunately years of soviet evil dentistry don’t allow me to look like Howdy Doody.
This brings me to my main subject. Does it bother me when people wish me Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or Happy Hanukkah? Not at all for several reasons. One of the main ones is that these words pretty much lost their meaning. Does a Walmart cashier really care if my Christmas is merry, or do I even celebrate Christmas. Probably not. I just don’t understand the people who get mad. This clerk has to say it so Walmart doesn’t have to endure another year of being pounded on by blowhard O’Reilly. Some people may say it sincerely but by the end of their shift I doubt their desire to add to the merriness of my holidays. I understand. I just hope that they wish at the same time that O’Reilly goes to hell. I also understand that this is a long-standing American tradition, something that people did since they were children, and who am I to challenge it. I understand that for many people religious meaning is long gone and I don’t judge. Once in awhile it’s fun to reply “I am Jewish” and watch well-wisher squirm, but I’d never do it to a working stiff. There are plenty of snooty people who deserve it.
When people say nice things to me I like it, even if they don’t mean it. When people smile at me I smile back even though I know that it’s more of a reflex than their excitement to see me. It’s always better than meeting one of the students of The D or Emaw who can tell me to fuck off, or even to fuck myself. If I only could…

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Recently I was watching one of the most popular Soviet comedies of all time Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future for the millionth time, recalling how almost every phrase in that movie was enshrined in the pop culture. In the movie a home-grown scientist sends a regular Soviet bureaucrat to the past where he just happens to look like Ivan The Terrible, who in turn travels back to the 1973 Moscow. In one of the scenes the fake Tsar is having a feast and the dishes are being announced as they arrive: “Black Caviar” (huge bowl), “Red Caviar” (huge bowl), “And from overseas, Eggplant Caviar” (a small drop of supposed delicacy).

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPfTAX590Wg

This is a tongue-in-check reference to the Soviet food supply system where the real caviar was hard to find and was resold on the black market while so called “eggplant caviar” and “zucchini caviar” where sometimes the only items on the mostly empty shelves and were frowned upon by the Soviet people. That’s why I don’t recommend most Russian comedies to an unprepared American viewers they need to be thoroughly explained.

Needless to say that I didn’t miss these not-so-good vegetable concoctions, but when I read this recipe it sounded good enough to try.

For this recipe you will need about 3-4 lbs of zucchini, 3 medium onions, 2 large red peppers, 6-8 tomatoes, 4 oz of tomato paste, 1 pepperoncino (this lady lives in Italy, I used some pepper I grabbed in the Mexican aisle), salt,  pepper and olive oil.

Cut zucchini into small cubes, put in a separate dish and sprinkle with salt. Cube peppers and onions. Heat up some olive oil in a skillet, add chopped pepperoncino (or whatever you are using) and red peppers and saute on both sides. Remove to another dish, I used my enameled cast iron pot. Add more oil to the skillet and saute the onions until translucent; when done, move them to the pot. Squeeze the liquid from zucchini and saute in the skillet, add to the pot. Cube the tomatoes (I removed the seeds), saute them in the olive oil adding the tomato paste. Combine with the rest of the vegetables. Add salt and pepper to taste and cook on a medium heat for about 20 minutes stirring occasionally.


It’s probably a good thing that this zucchini caviar doesn’t taste like the stuff I remember from my childhood. Sometimes the memory is good enough to satisfy the food nostalgia without having to subject the taste buds to the horrible taste of the past.

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Today, on April 22nd all progressive humanity celebrates the n-Th birthday of the Leader of the World Proletariat, founder of the USSR and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Vladimir Illyich Lenin. Something like this would make a traditional headline in every newspaper in the USSR as recently as twenty years ago. For years Lenin’s likeness was everywhere, every classroom had a portrait, every school had a bust, every city had a monument or ten, and then there were countless pins, flags, medals, certificates, photos, paintings and other visual aids. On this picture I am posing with Lenin in the parade uniform which I had to borrow because I was too lazy to sew the badges onto my own. In my day, Lenin was not as revered as he was in years before, but we still had to read the stories about his childhood, his love for the common men, his wisdom, his humbleness, his bravery and genius. We didn’t care but it was something that had to be done. As we grew up he was growing up with us, from “Grandpa Lenin” to “Comrade Lenin”, always omnipresent, always watching us from every wall and every city square. Stories of his childhood were replaced by his works that we had to study and quote. Every respectable establishment would have all 55 volumes of his “Collected Works“,which were lovingly translated into every language known to man.We didn’t know about “Red Terror“, hunger, repressions, killings,murder of the Romanov family; people who remembered knew better not to discuss it, every mention of the horrors wiped out or edited to look necessary to establish and protect the new country. Just a kindly old man who cared about us.
No one knows how the world history would have turned out without Lenin. Probably the same. Lenin wasn’t the one killing, robbing, kicking out of the country, starving and raping. He was just issuing the orders.

His body is still out there as a morbid reminder of his genius, evil and determination, a lethal combination which affected billions of people in every corner of the world for generations to come.

 

httpvh://youtu.be/bvweq8NYsN0

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