Holiday films and concerts

It’s a working day here, but on the other hand, in the Russian pre-new-year’s flurry of activity a lot of my students have cancelled their lessons, so I’m having a relaxed week. The best part is that I don’t have any morning lessons, so I can sleep until 10, when there’s some light in the sky. Of course, I’m not earning as much money, but on the other hand I’m still earning more this week than I did in a week when I worked 40+ hours at that horribly exploitative kindergarten (though apparently salaries have improved there now), so I can’t complain.

Kostia and I had ”the full cultural program” last weekend. On Saturday night we went to see Akvarium (check out that web site, it’s got six language options including Esperanto), which is really just one man, Boris Grebenshikov, since he writes all the songs and lyrics and the rest of the band’s personnel has changed over the past 35 years. It was a good concert, but I was a little disappointed because I kind of expected it to be The Best Concert Ever, since Grebenshikov is the God (or perhaps more aptly, the Buddha, since he’s all into the eastern religions) of Russian rock, and this is entirely deserved - his albums are incredible. In order to be the the best concert ever, though, it would have needed more energy, more polished playing on the part of the band and a better sound engineer. Kostia also suggested that for it to be the best concert ever we should have been standing in the orchestra pit rather than sitting in the theater seats, and drunk. Maybe so. Still, it was a good concert. Perhaps the most interesting part was seeing such a high concentration of nerds and hippies in one place - it was certainly a different part of St. Petersburg society than that which I usually see.

The second part of the full cultural program was going to see the sequel to “The Irony of Fate” on Sunday. It hasn’t received good reviews, but I actually enjoyed it a lot. The premise is weak and the sequel is only watchable as a sequel and not as a stand-alone film, but as a modern take (or perhaps parody) on the original it was really funny and well-done. Most importantly, it puts you in the New Year’s mood.

Last night Kostia and I celebrated Western Christmas by watching ”Love Actually” and drinking Bailey’s. If you’ve seen it you know that this is an embarrassingly stupid movie, but Kostia really loves it for some reason and I find it amusing and don’t mind looking at certain British actors, so it seems watching it has become a Christmas tradition. 

An Inconvenient Meal

So my friend Hugh was visiting from Canada, and we went to Stockholm for the weekend. On Friday night we had dinner in a nice vegetarian cafe in Södermalm. It was a little crowded, so we took a table that was pushed right up against another table that was occupied. By a crazy middle-aged earth mother.

After sizing her up and deciding that she might possibly be nutty, I tried to avoid eye contact and therefore conversation. To no avail. She informed us that we were allowed to ask for second helpings on our meals. We felt that the first helping was generous enough, plus there was unlimited salad and bread, so we decided against it. She herself got thirds. One of the times when she was getting up she told the people at the next table that the overhead light was shining into their newborn baby’s (closed) eyes and that they ought to hold him in such a way that it wasn’t. I don’t know much about parenting, but I do know that new parents love getting advice from strangers.

Later she engaged us in more conversation. I mentioned that I was studying in Falun, and she said that it must be very nice and clean there, and then it became clear that all this small talk was just a pretext to get around to her main point, which was to talk about environmental issues, and in particular, to exhort us to see Al Gore’s environmental movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Apparently at the end of the movie, they say something like, “go tell other people to see this movie, and they’ll tell others, and the message will spread”. OK, fine. I believe in this principle, but not so much that I’d beat total strangers over the head with it in a restaurant. She made us each repeat the name of the movie and the guy who — what? produced? directed? sponsored? narrated? — whose name is attached to the movie. “You won’t forget that name? Al Gore?” No, I won’t forget. I worked on Ralph Nader’s 2000 campaign and there are people who credit me with costing him the presidency.

It was just so silly, because I am SO ON BOARD with the environmental movement, as is Hugh. Hugh, in particular, doesn’t even have a driver’s license, much less a car, he’s still a vegetarian (when so many of us who once were have given up), and he’s been wearing the same winter coat for the ten years I’ve known him. I mean, you can’t get more preaching-to-the-choir than that was. Of course, she had no way of knowing that.

I have a theory that she goes to that restaurant every day, getting her three helpings, and haranguing people. The experience was a useful reminder that one walks a fine line between spreading the message and turning people off completely.

But there we are, the link’s up there, and while I haven’t seen the film yet, I would if it were playing somewhere near me, or if the university library had the DVD. So now I’ve done the earth mother proud.