...for Dummies

Life Lessons

You can't make wine-flavored chocolate by melting chocolate chips soaked in red wine. 

It looks like shit and tastes like nothing.

I might make it again.

Bounce, Bounce, Bounce, Bounce...

I hate myself for finding this adorable:

But seriously,  who leaves the "Murder, She Wrote" reference out?

Can I get a toot, toot? Beep,  beep?

Damn it, Billie...

...you burned my tilapia. 

I forgive you.

Hardboiled and Loaded with Sin

"I kissed her. Her eyes were shining up at me like two blue stars. It was like being in church."

-James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

the precious, the incommunicable past

This song reminds me of one of my favorite novels, Willa Cather's My Ántonia. There's an Emmylou Harris and Davis Matthews duet supposedly based on the novel, but don't listen to it--it's terrible.

Who They Were, or Claimed to Be

     "The lewd flesh. Ringworm circling through his crew cut. Excitable, stewing with passions and depressions and petty angers, a taker of every small advantage, a believer in striking hard and fast and first. Daring when the odds looked good. Distrustful but still eager to place trust at the drop of a flattering word. Wiry and short and strong, wound up like a cuckoo clock...Stink Harris came from a family of seven. A brother among sisters. A mechanic, a tinker, Stink took immense pains to care for his rifle, oiling it and cleaning it and keeping it dry during the rains, sleeping curled around it like a boy with his teddy bear, always toying with the moving parts. His weapon, he said, was his best friend. So when Bernie Lynn acted kindly toward him during the first weeks of June, Stink Harris took it very seriously, even spoke to Doc about how in war a guy needs buddies, and how Bernie might make a pretty decent buddy. Wary at first, but then melting, he introduced Bernie by letter to his youngest sister, Carla, and took great pride when his new friend and his favorite sister began exchanging a daily correspondence. He viewed it solemnly. His inquiries were always discreet, hopeful. It ended on June 30, when Stink found Carla's snapshot in Bernie Lynn's wallet. Undressed, his best-loved sister face the camera without the least embarrassment, high  in a midair jumping jack. Stink was made to be betrayed."
     -Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato

Stronger than me

Poor Amy. I heard this song outside an Irish pub on my street on my last night out in St. Petersburg. 

Beyond symbolic, beyond beautiful.

Seven Minutes in Heaven

There is only one queen . . .

. . . and she is Dinah Washington. There is always a Dinah for how I'm feeling:

Like when I have the blues.

Or when I don't.

And any man who can't be seduced by Dinah isn't worth seducing at all.

6ft 6in of Opportunity

WHY ISN'T MY LIFE LIKE THIS? Oh yeah, because Rock Hudson is gay.

Locks

Characters

      "CASSANDRA WHITESIDE enters at the door on the right. She is dark and strikingly beautiful, of a type rather peculiar to the South--physically delicate with clear translucent skin and luminous eyes as though burnt thin by her intensity of feeling. With people she has a rather disdainful ease, not deliberate or conscious, but rooted in her class origin and the cynical candor with which she recognizes herself and the social contradictions and tragic falsity of the world she lives in. SANDRA is the only woman of aristocratic extraction in the group. Her family is the oldest in this part of the Delta and was once the richest, but their plantation has dwindled with each successive generation. SANDRA has been "going out" for ten years and is still unmarried, which is enough in itself to destroy a girl's reputation."

     -character description from Tennessee Williams' Battle of Angels (1940)

    I'm compiling a list of Tennessee Williams' character descriptions, because they're often my favorite part of reading his scripts--so beautifully written and essential to the humanity of his characters.

l'enfer au purgatoire

Save Me The Waltz 2

     "Alabama could not read the letter. It was in French. She tore it in a hundred little pieces and scattered it over the black water of the harbor beneath the masts of many fishing boats from Shanghai and Madrid, Colombia and Portugal. Though it broke her heart, she tore the picture too. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever owned in her life, that photograph. What was the use of keeping it? Jacques Chevre-Feuille had gone to China. There wasn't a way to hold on to the summer, no French phrase to preserve its rising broken harmonies, no hopes to be salvaged from a cheap French photograph. Whatever it was that she wanted from Jacques, Jacques took it with him to squander on the Chinese. You took what you wanted from life, if you could get it, and you did without the rest."   -Zelda Fitzgerald

Save Me The Waltz

     "Dancing with David, he smelled like new goods. Being close to him with her face in the space between his ear and his stiff army collar was like being initiated into the subterranean reserves of a fine fabric store exuding the delicacy of cambrics and linen and luxury bound in bales. She was jealous of his pale aloofness. When she saw him leave the dance floor with other girls, the resentment she felt was not against any blending of his personality with theirs, but against his leading others than herself into those cooler detached regions which he inhabited alone." -Zelda Fitzgerald

The Absinthe Drinker

Pablo Picasso, 1901.

Street Art

Graffiti in Budapest

Nearest to My Heart

I dig this song almost as much as I dig the couch at 1:08, but I have a tendency to love furniture more than music.

A Cross

In a dream I saw a cross
one arm was short
and the other infinitely long
Some say
it's simple
All problems have already been solved
the burden is light and every tear
will be wiped away
it's enough
to live your life from start to finish
then simply awaken to eternity


But I keep carrying the other arm
the endless one
and I know that the light thing is a burden
that what must be wiped away is a tear
larger than the planet
there are days that drag on longer
than forever
And I can't imagine a death
that means awakening
a darkness
that is light
a moment
that is immortality
a love
that is not you
-Anna Kamieńska

The World's Gone Mad

Trench coat from Banana Republic's impending Mad Men-inspired line

This coat cannot exist unless I own it. Not buying any clothing the rest of the summer (ok, Goodwill and vintage clothing will probably make a liar out of me) so I can justify purchasing it.

In a Perfect Situation

There's the pitch, slow and straight.
All I have to do is swing
and I'm a hero, but I'm a zero.

Abelardo Morell

I ran across some Abelardo Morell works the other day, and I can't stop looking. Here are some of my favorite images from his Museums series:

The Philadelphia Museum of Art East Entrance in Gallery #171 with a DeChirico Painting, 2005

Early Sunday Morning By Hopper - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2007

Two Paintings by Zacarias Gonzalez Velasquez, Lazaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid, Spain, 2009

More M P

I'm dying to see this, but for the moment this is satisfactory. 

Mildred Pierce-Chapter 6

"But he looked so pitiful."

"Baby, they all do. That's what gets us."

The Way We Are Feeling

It's a Grease soundtrack kind of day:

I HATE this movie, but shit, I love the soundtrack.

Our feet just where they had to go

Lady and a Greyhound, Václav Brožík, 1895-7

The Last Post in Russia

Well, it's about time to head home to the states. I'd like to leave you, my faithful readers (hah), with one of my final impressions of Russia, which I predict will remain with me for many years to come:

"Ах, Джейк!" сказала Брет, "Как бы нам хорошо было вместе." 

..."Да," сказал я, "Этим можно утешаться, правда?"

Graffiti Collection

I've picked up the habit of collecting graffiti. Here's a look at some of my recent favorites from around St. Petersburg:

Who doesn't?

"Rap Sucks...Rock 'n' roll!"

This one was around the corner from one of Lenin with a swastika on his forehead =Awkward.

Suck it, skinheads!

I've also seen a lot of graffiti advertisements which I hate. Vandalizing buildings that have survived a revolution, the siege of Leningrad, and the collapse of the Soviet Union for your commercial interests is a dick move. Do what everyone else here does, and hire a babushka to push fliers onto the masses.

Never Thought I'd See This

GRASS!!!

Today I saw grass for the first time since January. It's a  (post-)St. Patrick's Day miracle! 

Welcome to the Neighborhood

I'm digging the graffiti of the Sovyetskayas (my hood):

Insert poem about unrequited love and mortality here

Definitely caused a setback in overcoming  my fear of clowns

Russian Cinema

While looking through a bin of movies at a bookstore today I came across several promising titles dubbed into Russian, including this beauty:

Not only was I pleased to know that Russians like a J-Lo flick as much as I do, but I really enjoyed the irony of the film's translated title, "План Б" (that's Plan B in Cyrillic, Eva). Maybe if whoever came up with such a terrible idea for a movie had had some EC nobody (Russians included) would have to sit through such a shitty movie (actually, I never saw it).

Russian Literature

Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Nabokov are so passé. My хозяйка (host mother) loves: 

For those of you who don't read Cyrillic (or are too lazy to), that would be Danielle Steel's The Bachelors' Club. 


 Personally, I'd rather find a Jackie Collins while I'm here.

I have arrived

Here's the DL on the short time I've spent in St. Petersburg:

St. Petersburg = Winter Wonderland (if WW's include a lot of slush and ice)

Number of times I've looked foolish in front of Russians = too many to count

My neighborhood = nice; I live on Soviet Street (the 8th of 9 Soviet Streets actually), just off the Square of the Proletariat Dictatorship, very close to the city center and very convenient for nightlife

My school = originally a convent built by Tsarina Elizabeth; converted into a girls' school by Catherine the Great; housed Lenin's government during the 1917 Revolution (NBD)

My apartment building= sketchy (looks kinda like Jimmy's (Bobby DeNiro) warehouse in Goodfellas where he freaks Karen out)

My apartment = Soviet-retro chic

My host parents (Irina and Yuri)= Soviet-retro chic; she talks to the food while she's cooking ("Where are you my cup?" "What are you doing my macaroni?"), and he wears wife-beaters and loves television; she works at Peter and Paul Fortress and he's a musician.

My host cats = BAMFS, except not really, because Sonya is a bitch and Serekshka (Irina calls him her boyfriend) is afraid of me, maybe because I accidently locked him in my room for 30 mintues; really beautiful though

The food: not as bad as expected, but there is a lot of it. For my first meal with my homestay family I had soup (potato with chicken), pasta and meat (I have no idea what kind of meat-Irina just said "meat") and tea; we had blini and coffee (pancakes) for breakfast. Irina gives me so much food; what I ate for dinner was probably the equivalent of what I normally eat for an entire day.

And now, what you really want, pics:

 The airport

 Alex seems excited to be in Russia (he's in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral, btw)

Tsar Nicolas the First 

 One of the Rostral Columns

 The Winter Palace (part of the Hertimage): really, really amazing!

I saw some of the Dutch and Flemish galleries, and they were great.

I haven't been to the Modern galleries yet, but I plan to soon

Smolnyy Cathedral (where my school is)
side note: this was on a sunny day (very rare and very beautiful) in St. Petersburg

 School Again

School (Are you jealous yet?)

Гуф Респект (Guf Respect)

I've been exploring Russian music, and according to MTV Russia, this is very popular:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bPinvBrDQU

Obligatory Pre-departure Post

Привет товарищи! (Hey Comrades!)

Just wanted to get this thing set up before I left. I still have a ton to buy and organize and pack, but none of that merits its own post, so I'll just leave you some valuable phrases from my book of dirty Russian:

Хай всем нормальным пиплам! (Shout out to all the cool peeps in the house!)
Я ищу себе спонсора. (I'm looking for a sugar daddy.)
Печень болит. (My liver hurts.)
Пойдём бухнём! (Let's get hammered!)

Hopefully by the next post I'll be in Санкт-Петербург (St. Petersburg)!


-Colleen

Глаза боятся, а руки делают.