So we made it another year, which went by so fast it didn’t even pause for the end of the world. Apparently I have a habit of writing nostalgicretrospectiveposts around this time of the year, and this being the fifth year of this here blog they are all starting to look the same; even the photos have been posted before. I’ll be brief for a change.
Here I stand in 1976, barely 7 years old, not knowing that even 36 years later this is the biggest and the only beard I will ever have. I don’t even know what 36 years feels like. I can’t yet say to my friend “I’ve known you for 39 years.”, or “It’s been 15 years since we talked face-to-face.” I guess that’s why I am smiling.
Odessa, Ukraine. 1976
On January 1st, I will wake up after 2 hours of sleep, with a headache and a hangover and my only New Year Resolution will be not to do this ever again; I know that’s not going to stick.
I’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year. I hope you are better at Resolutions than I am and everything you wish for comes true. And if we find ourselves at the bottom o a fiscal or whatever else cliff, I hope there is a lot of alcohol down there.
And now we dance – Kola Beldy – I will take you to the tundra:
Germany wasn’t on my bucket list. I don’t even have a list. The only reason I use it to name my travel posts is because I like the way they look on my travel page, all nicely lined up.
The original plan was to stop at Bruges on the way from Amsterdam to Paris, but the prospect of spending a day with my childhood friend, riding on an autobahn, while still adding another country to the itinerary outweighed my desire to see the exact spot where the body of a killer plopped down from the tower in that one movie. A chance to see the famous Cologne Cathedral in person and me having only a vague idea of how to make the trip from Amsterdam to Bruges and still make it to Paris the same night tipped the scale and the next morning we were on the way to Düsseldorf.
Face:
I was underwhelmed by the autobahn. Besides not having a speed limit in some places it wasn’t that much different from the stretch of I-70 between Kansas City and St.Louis. My friend drove fairly fast on some stretches, but just like here we were frequently slowed down by construction and slow drivers in the passing lane. My eye was missing my favorite highway entertainment – the billboards. It took about 2.5 hours to arrive in Düsseldorf.
Düsseldorf turned out to be a lively town with an interesting but fairly generic historic center and a large and expensive shopping district. That one restaurant downtown with a German name serves the best liver I’ve ever had. Make sure to check it out while you there.
Pretty interesting article about a local (now-defunct) piano seller. It’s notable how in 1940 people didn’t think twice about the phrase “salesman lures the farmer’s daughter into the truck”
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
Citizen journalism in this town is celebrating a huge victory and I am here to take all the credit. My recent ground-breaking report on a possible contender for the biggest pothole in the State of Missouri sent seismic waves through the City Hall and the solution came swiftly – a bigger barrier.
Parts of the previous orange obstacle that weren’t swallowed by the pothole were recycled…
…and replaced with the state-of-the-art early warning system.
City geologists used the circular cracks around the barrier to size up a new commemorative steel plate which will be placed over the pothole in the near future.
The City Council ordered the City Attorney to draft a letter to BP demanding reimbursement for the repairs (mostly for the barricade) since the appearance of the pothole is directly related to the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
On behalf of myself and many residents of the nearby property tax-free building I’d like to thank the City for paying attention and quick decisive action.
