Let me preface this by saying: I despise ugly video-bloggers. If you don’t look like this but still have something important to say, please do everyone a favor and type it; your wife lied to you when she said you were handsome, you are not. That said, my charity participation gives me a temporary excuse to use any means possible to collect the money and help out the people with prostate cancer.

So far my team has almost $500 collected and even more pledged. Thanks to your generous support and your sudden unexplained interest in Google Ads on this website I collected $50 so far and another $90 was donated to me and the team as a direct result of my various forms of begging for money on Facebook, Twitter and in person. As a cheap person I feel your pain, but extend your hand and feel the pain of prostate cancer (not there…little lower…still  lower…to the left…right here…ooooh) and you will understand why I defaced my own face by growing a mustache.

As the Month of Movember progressed along, my uncanny resemblance of a certain celebrity became obvious.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W-dD-hSPgc

I am sure after seeing this you immediately recognized my mustache-double, but below is a clue for the slow ones among you.

Continue reading →

By the time I was growing up, the International Day of Worker Solidarity celebrated on the 1st of May became just another day in a long weekend of partying, spring outings, camping trips and fun. May Day usually started with the demonstration, the biggest one of course in Moscow, attended by the Politburo of the CPSU with the General Secretary himself, broadcast for hours on all three TV channels. Each self-respecting city had a smaller version with the local Party bosses in charge. During my years in technical school I’ve participated in one or two demonstrations. We were issued some uniforms and signs and walked with the crowds through the central streets of my city. Although the event was mandatory, we were happy to oblige, sixteen-year-olds don’t need much to entertain themselves in a crowd. So the smiles you see in the clip below are genuine, however, I highly doubt they have much to do with the world proletariat and their solidarity. “Workers of the world, unite!”

Happy May Day!

The text on the poster is “May 1st 1920″ and on the bottom ” Through the debris of capitalism to the world brotherhood of workers”.

Now take a short trip thirty-some years and several thousand miles away.

Continue reading →

Recently legendary Charles Ferruzza wrote in his article about the annoying habits of the restaurant servers:

​There’s no boot camp for waiters and waitresses, but there should be.

Apparently such a place existed in Wichita, KS in the late 1940’s according to this article in the Life Magazine.

The undeclared but stubborn warfare which exists between waitresses and the eating public has long been despair of restaurant keepers. Too often the comforting cling of an owner’s cash register dwindles rapidly because his employees hook an occasional thumb in the beef stew..  Other arguments for home cooking usually involve waitresses who assume that too-short skirts, bright ail lacquer and plunging necklines are superior to deft hands and tidy uniforms as serving assets. This keeps wives (and their husbands) away in droves. Such practices are dismaying to a 52-year r-old ex-bellboy named John O’Meara who has been touring the U.S. since 1931, spreading the gospel of good waitership.

And now for some vintage photos (original captions preserved):

Continue reading →

Previously: Thomas Hart Benton Paints the Persephone.

In 1935 the Missouri legislature commissioned Thomas Hart Benton to paint a mural history of the State on the walls of the lounge in the State House in Jefferson City. It chose Tom Benton because he is Missouri’s ablest painter and comes from one of Missouri’s most distinguished families. The legislature, however, never expected to get anything like the Benton History of Missouri which was completed just before this year’s session began in January. No pretty glorification, the murals turned out to be a raw and animated review of Missouri’s past and present. They gave full space to Missouri’s first settlers, its first railroad, its agriculture and industry, its great Champ Clark. But they also gave space to a slave auction, a lynching, Jesse James of Clay County, Frankie and Johnny of St.Louis. Loud were complaints that Benton was vulgar, that he had distorted Missouri into a “houn’ dog State”. But Benton Supporters pointed out that Missouri was, after all , a “houn’ dog State” whose natives did call each other “pukes.” As the fuss subsided, Missourians began to look at the murals more calmly. Though they admitted that the pictures were interesting, they still felt that it wasn’t a fitting way for a son of Missouri to tell the story of his native State.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →