What?  

You think I cannot write a Lazy Quote Diary?  

You think I am incapable of a quick copy and paste job, followed by a cigarette and lounging about in bed?  

Ok.  You are right.  But right after I post this I will stretch out and act lazy-like.  

Eventually...

(image © Velibor Bozovic)

Wikipedia : Aleksandar Hemon

Aleksandar Hemon (born 1964) is a Bosnian fiction writer living in the United States.  Hemon was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, then Yugoslavia, to a father of Ukrainian descent and Serbian mother. Hemon's great-grandfather, Teodor Hemon, came to Bosnia from Western Ukraine prior to World War I, when both countries were a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Hemon graduated from the University of Sarajevo with a degree in literature in 1990. After moving to Chicago in 1992 knowing little English, and finding himself unable to write in his native Bosnian, he resolved to learn English within five years.

In 1995, he began to write in English, and his work soon appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. In 2000 Hemon published his first book, The Question of Bruno, which included short stories and a novella. His first novel, Nowhere Man, followed in 2002. Nowhere Man concerns Jozef Pronek, a character who earlier appeared in one of the stories in The Question of Bruno.

As an accomplished fiction writer who learned English as an adult, Hemon has some similarities to Joseph Conrad, which he acknowledges through allusion in The Question of Bruno. All of his stories deal in some way with the Yugoslav wars, Bosnia, or Chicago, but they vary substantially in genre.

Hemon was awarded a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2004.

Hemon has a bi-weekly column called "Hemonwood" in the Sarajevo-based magazine, BH Dani (BH Days).

This is officially sucking.  

Term limits and democratic elections have robbed us of a highly entertaining Russian President.  Sexism and term limits have robbed us of a highly entertaining US election.  Capitalism and audits have robbed us of a highly entertaining and sexist newspaper.  It's so ironic, Alanis.  We live in a period when freedom of speech is more widely enjoyed than perhaps at any previous point in human history, and yet no one will say anything remarkably intelligent or witty for fear of being labelled something.  Like in Junior High.  Mass culture has become one endless bore-a-thon.  Never before have humans had the ability to communicate provocative and insightful ideas to such a vast audience, with so little interference.  And yet we are content to post commentary on our choice of breakfast cereal or pictures of our cats.  At no point in history have we possessed more scientific knowledge about the universe, but we are nevertheless certain that if we say something one shade more intense than beige the earth will spin right off its axis.  Which would be pretty interesting, if that were to actually happen.  Which is why we try so desperately to avoid it.

I'm inventing a new philosophical theory.  It goes like this:  There exists a threshold at which the mediocre becomes too mediocre to warrant or inspire satire.  The increasing absence of satire limits the opportunity for self-reflection.  The increasing absence of self-reflection leaves the prevailing mediocrity unchecked.  Mediocrity, unchecked, persists and grows like a cancer.  The end result for the human race, were it to get caught in this social trap, could be something like what happened to the dinosaurs.  Only much much less interesting.  

I am declaring a GWOMB:  Global War on Mediocrity/Boringness.  You can join my coalition of the willing.  You don't have to kill people who don't look like you or lie to the public.  You just have to say something brilliant.  You can do that.

Jesus.  I hate-love it when this happens.   Remember when I was talking about the eerie, satisfying, deflating experience of learning that your own thoughts were previously thought by someone else (the ancient Greeks, Marx, Sartre, ...Matt Taibbi)?  It's happened again.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.   ~John Stuart Mill.

Either I am as brilliant as John Stuart Mill, or I retained more from that Ethics 101 class than my professor was able to appreciate at the time.  Omg, I'm mediocre in my own anti-mediocritism!  Oh well.  You can still join my war.  Which will begin at the time of my choosing.  But not before I post the following practice in unabashed mediocrity.

This is dedicated to the one я люблю...

Self-indulgent Backstory

Anyone who has read almost anything I've ever written here, especially those diaries that are no longer with us (may they rest in peace), will know that I rely on The eXile for a significant portion of my content.  Without The eXile, one wonders if the Odds & Ends would ever have existed at all.  And not simply because of my copious reproduction of their feature stories.  At a vulnerable time in my life I began reading the eXile, and it has shaped my entire philosophy of writing, which is ... give me a minute ... uhm ... that the only requirements of good writing are that one be smart and have some sense of humour about one's self.  Or ... maybe it is that it is effective to use humour when tackling serious subjects.  Or maybe that tackling a serious subject now and then should get you off the hook for flying in the face of all that is decent and dignified the rest of the time. ... Or maybe it is this: just write whatever insanity you want.  It's a free country.  Someone will read it.  

The eXile showed up on the scene after I came back from Moscow.  I'd been in America a few months and reeling from culture shock and homesickness.  I was living in a town of 2000 people.  No one I knew there had been to Russia, let alone through the chaos that was 1990's Moscow.  It was like coming back from Nam, without the parade.  Then my mother (may she rest in peace), who ran a computer lab for disabled students at the local university and was therefore several years ahead of the technology curve than I (who did not "believe in" the Internet - true) came home one day with this stack of printouts.  She'd been worried about my transition back to civil society, and found this site where they were talking about all of the lawlessness and hedonism I'd been trying to make some sense of myself.  These were Americans living in Moscow and writing about it.  My mom read Playboy for the articles back in the day, right, so she became a fan of The eXile even before I learned of its existence.  

The eXile is notorious for its misogyny and lewd frat-boy humour.  I voted for Hillary Clinton, despite disagreeing with her on a number of issues, because she was a woman.  My inner feminist kicked my inner everything else's ass.  I'm one of those people Kos refers to as "the womens' studies set."  In fact, I not only took some womens' studies classes, I excelled in them to the point that my TA was trying to bribe me to take over her job.  And yet, here I was, looking forward to each new disgustingly misogynistic issue of The eXile like it was a cracker and I had not eaten in two weeks.  Why?  Because it was a validation that I had not just hallucinated the previous year.  Seriously, every MSM news item on Russia was all about how totally super and just like us everything was there.  These journalists were either lying outright, or there were two countries called Russia.  This was about a year before the economy TANKED.  The eXile was ostensibly the first to "break" that story, but like the current situation in the US, anyone who'd been living there recently knew it was only a matter of time...  Also, reading The eXile assured me that even if Russia had permanently messed up my head, I wasn't alone.  These guys were certifiably insane.  Mad.  Maybe even evil...  Certainly brilliant.  And you know how I dig the crazy/evil/brilliant combo.  Hot.  Plus, they were good writers, impressive journalists when the mood caught them, and unbelievably funny.  Like, make you writhe and shed tears irreverent.  And you know how I like irreverent.  Hot.

Worth noting, perhaps, is a curious, if not petty, animosity between 2 classes of expats in Russia at that time, and perhaps even to this day.  I sense it in the fora I invite myself into.  There were the establishment types, usually conservative, people seriously concerned about resumes and reputable professional employment.  People who worked at the embassy or Moscow Times.  They had a Very Good Reason to be in Russia, took appropriate interest in historical matters, and went to the Bolshoi.  Then there were people who probably should never have been let in to the country to begin with, who had some vague reason for being there amounting to a general disdain for America and an obsession with Russian lit.  Who, in addition taking appropriate interest in historical matters and the Bolshoi, also partied like the world just might end tomorrow.  In a city where vodka cost less than water, gangsters were mowing down people in public and a recent bombing of the US embassy was material for jokes, this did not seem like a far-flung possibility.  We were just riding the wave.  No one knew what the laws were from one day to the next, so why fret over doing things you were pretty confident were not legal in most civil societies.  You were just as likely to be arrested just for standing at the bus stop and looking foreign as you were to be for partaking of actual crimes.  Anyway, when was the next time you were ever going to be able to get high with a famous Georgian artist?  To such people, Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi were simply more genuine characters than those people who always smelled way too clean to be part of the "real" Russia.  

So, all this brings me to something I've been cursing about in the Open Threads.  Something I think deserves a diary.  Particularly since the only interesting thing Putin has done recently is being mistaken for the President of Germany by quite possibly the next leader of the free world.  So I'm short on material.  Which makes the possible termination of The eXile even more dire!  

Previous posts:
May Film Blog: Introduction
May Film Blog: FAQ

I began this little survey of recent Russian film knowing next to nothing about the subject.  Which is kind of embarrassing, since I spent all my undergraduate tuition money on the study of film (specifically film theory and nationalism) and Slavic studies (specifically Russian).  I thought I'd use this ET Film Blog series to do some serious repenting.  Also, it dovetails nicely with my ongoing propaganda campaign to convert you all into crazy Russophiles.  So my motives are entirely selfish.  Vanity and manipulation.  Fortunately for me, I've learned a lot and have rediscovered a passion of mine.  Unfortunately for you, I've learned that there is a lot left that I don't know, and have rediscovered a passion of mine.  I'm like a crack fiend.  I can't stop!  And I'm going to drag you down with me!

Before we get to the films themselves, I'd like to take a moment to share with you a few brilliant observations I've made.  To put things in context.  And I'm going to qualify everything I say from here on out with the possibility that I may be entirely wrong, but something I say is bound to be right, so you should pay attention anyway.  Ok, Context:

Promoted by Migeru

"The think tanks are coming!  The think tanks are coming!"

It's not a policy paper.  It's not an agenda.  It's not European.  It's not progressive.  It's not activism.  It's not multi-lingual.  It has neither bells nor whistles.

It's just some odds and some ends.  

But reading it will make you better informed.  I'm sure of that.  And if we can't make people better informed, then the rest means nothing, my friends.  Nothing, damn it!

Ok.  It's a bit multi-lingual...

The topic for next[editor's note, by Migeru] this month's ET film blog is

Contemporary Russian Film (1991-) : Everything But the Kitchen Sink.  

First, if you have not yet, please read the main introductory diary here.  Basically, you just see a movie and come back here and talk about it in a few weeks.

Now, I would like to take the time to answer some Frequently Asked Questions.
 

Promoted by Migeru

No.

As I sat down on the train heading to work the other day, the woman across the aisle from me leaned over and said, "Excuse me."  Oh God.  I dread talking to strangers on the train on the way to work.  First, it is too early for anything intelligible to exit my mouth.  Secondly, the primary purpose of a train is to convey one from point A to point B - not to provide a forum for mingling.  Intense socializing aboard a train usually means some disaster or inconvenience has occurred, some collective trauma has been suffered, a trauma that makes us aware of our own morality or afraid of terrorists, a trauma we are talking ourselves through because this might be our last moment on earth and we don't want to be alone, afraid, helpless...  Mostly I'm just annoyed by chatty people while I'm trying to read, write, sleep, daydream or whatever other antisocial activity I am engaged in while commuting.

"Yes?"    

"I just love your shoes.  Those are just great."

"Oh.  Thanks."  I smile politely and go back to pretending she doesn't exist.  But on the inside, I am relieved.  Because I wasn't sure if I should be wearing these shoes. They are pointy-toed Mary Janes.  Not unlike the Manolo Blahniks on SATC, but very cheap and probably made in a Thai sweatshop by a 6 yr. old.  

They look just like these:

Exactly.  Except for the brand printed on the insole...  Spooky.  Anyway, not what you'd expect a Marxist librarian type to be wearing to work, perhaps.  Esp. one who has spent the last 7 years in Danskos and Merrells.  

Contemporary Russian Film (1991-) : Everything But the Kitchen Sink

I know everyone decided to nix the ET Film Blog Series, but I'm always the person who stays after they've started putting the chairs on the tables.  So I'm going to still do mine.  It's for May (date tbd), so you all have a month to prepare.  And just to make sure you all show up for the final exam, I'm going to use this diary as office hours where you can drop by and tell me what movie you plan to see.  I like office hours...

Anyway.  I was originally thinking of limiting the May Film Blog to "The Cinema of Alexandr Sokurov."  But I am worried about what is available to everyone in the ET diaspora.  I also want it to be a learning experience for me.  So, like, why write about what I already know?  

Promoted by Migeru

So, normally I'm your source for all breaking news Putiniana.  Heck, normally I'm your source for all breaking news having to do with Russia.  Which is either absolutely nuts or a complete lie, since you are, on average, 7 hours ahead of me.  Heck, sometimes people who really honestly do concern themselves with such matters on a professional basis come to me clandestinely and offer juicy inside scoops and are amazed to find, yeah, I already knew that.  Heck, every once in a while, Dima needs to read Odds & Ends just to find out what the hell is going on in his vast Princedom.  It is a really big country, after all.  Not Putin, though; he knows all.  (How do you think I find everything out?)  Anyway, it appears that our fine Russian President-PM-General Secretary-Soulless KGB Agent-Shirtless Fisherman has finally repaid my long hours spent spinning to his advantage every catastrophe and scandal and gaffe and outright violation of all things noble coming outta Russia.  He's returned the favor with a "Made For Odds & Ends" special event!  

It's not breaking news - I know.  Bit of a problem, that.  Still, I couldn't possibly live with myself if I didn't mention it.  So get out your clubs.  We're going to beat this naughty dead horse!  

"You really must write that sovok diary. It's so true. And all the signposts are there, complete with the Brezhnevian corruption and mediocrity..."

--redstar.

Promoted by Migeru

Can I just get one little thing out of the way?  I like the Olympics.  No.  I love the Olympics.  I cry over the Olympics.  They make my heart jump out of my throat the same way the story about the cat who ran into a burning building and saved her baby kittens does.  I mean, I shed real tears over the very idea of the Olympics.  Not because I care about sport.  I don't, really.  I don't even care much about competition.  I care about the Olympics for the very same reason I write at ET and not my own blog or a specifically American one.  (Well, aside from the fanbase...)

I really wish to fucking god we could all just get along.  I really do.  It's what deep down I want more than anything in the entire world.

I think countries are lies we tell ourselves and fragile foundations for personal pride.  I think the games are rife with corporatism and corruption.  I think synchronized swimming is embarrassing.  I think I don't care if your nation gets the most medals.  But at the end of the day, I am not a cynic.  At the end of the day, I see people from every corner of the world parading through the opening ceremonies without shooting each other or arguing about language in resolutions, and I think to myself, "It's a start at least."  Then I cry.  I won't even answer the phone, I get so consumed with the beauty of the moment.  Your country is fascist and treating people like animals?  Your country denies everyone free healthcare?  Your country limits freedom of speech?  Your country is arrogant?  Your country is not recognized by some as even being a country?  Your country invaded mine?  For a few days every few years, someone besides your power elite gets to represent your country.  For a few days every few years in America, we turn on the tv each day, and we are told "day-in-the-life" stories about people in other countries.  Crazy.  Almost like school!  For a few days every few years, people from every corner of the globe tune in for the same international convention, the results of which determine who gets a silly prize, not who gets killed or ignored or nuclear weapons or the right to all of your money.  The worst that can happen is that we will be reminded that we share a little planet with a bazillion other people who, if we are to judge by looks, we have to admit, are mostly not psycho-fascists from outer-space who want to kill us.  This is sadly something of which we need to be regularly reminded.    

I don't want to sound like my grandmother who used to tell the same stories all the time, so I wont tell you about the time I was in this little cafe in Paris, and it was just me, this guy from Russia, and the French fellow running the place, closing up, and how on the television monitor the Olympics were playing, and they listed the top-ranking countries: and they were America, Russia and France, and well, Americans are supposed to hate the French and Russia and all that, but we were all happy and chummy and like, wow, how small is this world!, and the whole little episode in that French cafe just blew my mind a little bit and remains near the top of my why list of "why it is good/why it sucks", in the first column.  Instead of telling you that old story, I will just say, Free Tibet, protest your little hearts out, I really hope this chaos will lead to Chinese gov't. realizing they should not and cannot shelter their citizens from reality or otherwise treat them like shit.  

But ... forest ... trees.  Understand?  

Ok, now that I've finished proselytizing on the global community and the virtue of humility, please join me on the other side the fold for some unabashed hypocrisy, in which I repeatedly exclaim the superiority of one country and demand you to support me in the pursuit of my own selfish desires!  Willl be fun!!    

N. Korean Soldier 1:  Ooooh, the elusive Siberian Crane, Grus leucogeranus.  So elegant, so beautiful...

N. Korean Soldier 2:  Lemme have a look.

Soldier 1:  Ok, I have to go read the Odds & Ends anyway, upon orders of Dear Leader.  Frankly I don't know what DL sees in it, but you know how grumpy he gets when everyone doesn't read his favorite blog series.  And, well, you know what happens when he gets grumpy...

Soldier 2:  I didn't even know a new Odds & Ends was posted.  

Soldier 1:  You didn't receive the message?  How is that possible, an order was issued to every subject of the DL.  ...  Why don't you ever check your facebook page, comrade?!  Think you are too special for facebook or something?  EVERYONE is on facebook.  EVERYONE is doing it.  Your dangerous anti-socialist networking ideas are subverting the goals of the great DPRK!  Give me back those binoculars - I'm going to find the idiot who just took our picture.  I can't afford to be documented in the presence of an enemy of the State, an enemy of ... Facebook!

Soldier 2:  Ok.  But can I look at the pretty bird when you're done?

Contents:  
Look, someone elsewhere in the Internets has posted a link to the greatest Putin-homage site, which I can't not share with you, if only because I need to prove I am not the only deranged one out there, and then someone in the ET higher-ups (well, the higher up...) asked me to write about this supposed 2 party United Russia split and I guess I should do it because the fact is I really, really do want to come to Paris - OTHERWISE, I would not be here, writing this.  I'd be hiding from all of you.  Because you infuriate me.  That's right: I am blogging while infuriated.  Get a helmet and a stiff drink if you plan to proceed.

...

Oh, yeah.  And some hot guys.

Yes, it is a true and sad fact: I have become the very person for whom I have the deepest disdain: The Russia Expert.  On what grounds do I make this bold assertion?  Well, because Jerome said so.  And in case there is anyone here who does not take Jerome's word as gospel truth (after his "yes, you should contact Sergei," I'm inclined to count myself among those people), there is also the fact that Peter Lavelle let me join his "expert" discussion group.  So right there are two facts in support of my audacious claim.  And that, my dear readers, is twice as many facts as you're bound to find in anything you'll ever read in anything calling itself an expert analysis of anything having to do with Russia.

Now, on to the analysis:

from the diaries. The best commentary on the net on all things (and men) Russian! -- Jérôme.

"That Loud Sound You Hear is Capitalism, Democracy, the BBC Sucking ..."

As of about 5 hours ago I have completely exhausted every comment, insight, rant, brilliant revelation or cynical witticism I could ever possibly make in relation to these topics.  From now on Odds & Ends will be agit-prop free.  

Listen closely, can you hear its breath getting weaker, more delayed?  Such a tragedy to pass so young...  "Hold on, Odds & Ends.  You can't go just yet!  That charming Putin fellow still has a few months left in office, and Viggo Mortensen is hopefully going to be on the Oscars this weekend.  Don't die on us now..."

Bad Guys:

Some days you wake up to discover that George W. Bush has been elected President, that madmen have hijacked planes and are flying them into buildings or that your brother has a brain tumour and needs surgery.  At these times it is normal to feel that, after today, nothing will ever be the same.  "What's next?" you wonder, "Will the earth stop spinning on its axis?  Will I come home to find my cat building a time machine?  Is this the beginning of the end?"  The screeching sound of metal on metal as your world grinds to a stop drowns out the voices in your head which are telling you to sleep, eat, mail your bills.  Functioning becomes what other people do.  You crawl into bed and close your eyes with the hope that when you open them, you'll awake to the hours before you found out.  Like nothing ever happened to disrupt your routine life.  Like a computer problem you can rectify by making the settings retroactive to an earlier date.

You pull the covers over your head.

And -voila!- you open them at 7am, and NPR is running a story about how evil Putin is and how desperate the Kremlin is, and they are telling you the Cliffs Notes version of something you read in the eXile last year about clan infighting, and assuring you that just because Putin will no longer be president in a few days, things will still be bad under Medvedev, just you wait and see, and thank god we live in a sane lawful society, whew, but don't get too comfortable because the Russians want to start a nuclear war with us.  What's this?  Groundhog day?  The same old recycled New Cold War story every morning?  They are more reliable than the sun! (which has not shone for months)  And you sigh, a deep sigh of relief.  You close your eyes for 10 extra minutes of the best sleep you've had in days.  You get up and eat some Cheerios and write some checks to some large evil corporations and Working Assets, and you thank Vladimir Putin and NPR for their continued evilness and incompetence, which have given you the peace of mind to face your fears, be they Republicans, terrorists or brain tumours.  

Ben Franklin remarked that there are only 2 certainties in life: Death and Taxes.  He was wrong; there are 3 certainties in life:

Death.  Taxes.  And anti-Russian propaganda.

(Also, Pride and Prejudice was on the other night, which really really helped.  There are few kinds of suffering that cannot be cured by a healthy dose of Firthian Darcy.)

Follow me below the fold for the recycled stories NPR should have been reporting.

I want.

So, imagine my deep disappointment when I learned that the rogue French banker bad boy who bucked the system was not, in fact, my Jerome a Paris, who, as it turns out, has been on some disgustingly bourgeois bankers' ski trip instead of on the lam.  And who is still a capitalist, keen to inform me of my "competition" at ET.  Competition?  Surely there is room in this world for a Vysotsky fan who likes to translate in his spare time and a brilliant political satirist who is going to make you do your own translating, no?  Competition exists for those who need constant reassurance and money.  Impoverished geniuses need not apply.  We spit on the grave of your competition!  We kick its dead corpse!  Jerome is dead!  Long live Jerome!!  

This calendar is inhumane.  

Must.not.FP.O&E... Can't resist - Diary rescue by Migeru