School today was pretty much only bearable because we got to watch a movie in Politologia. For those who are fans of Bulgakov, we watched this Italian version of The Master and Margarita. This is a tough book to read, let alone to translate into film, and I was really impressed. I can't say that I particularly liked the film, but I was impressed by the faithfulness of the adaptation and some of the other artistic choices made a lot of sense. Apparently the same dude who directed The Idiot tv series also did The Master and Margarita last year in a ten hour series. I would love to watch this if I can find it with English subtitles, because I'm not cool enough to understand most Russian conversation.
I do watch a lot of tv, though. Mostly because my host family hasn't been around much this week and it's very lonely in the apartment. They combine VH1 and MTV into one channel, and I watch a lot of dubbed shows and music videos. There's also a soap opera that I really like: it's like the worst of American daytime tv, but worse, because it's Russian and they're still figuring out the whole soap opera thing. It's called Five Minutes from the Metro, and it's got to be one of the worst show's I've watched somewhat regularly since Who Wants to be a Superhero? and I only watched that because it was on at the bar. (I'm not going to talk about the fact that I would go to the bar so that I could watch tv...) Katie, they also have Cash Cab here—it's just called Taxi.
I still didn't have cell phone service when I woke up this morning. I saved my receipt (you have to save all your receipts here, so that when shit goes wrong, you can have something to wave in their faces) so that I could go back to the store and demand that the 200 rubles I put on my account actually be put on my account. I left early for school so that I go to the store before, but the store was closed at 9am, even though the sign on the door said that it opened at 8. This type of situation calls for the typical Russian Ny, shto delat? (So, what are you going to do?) accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders. While I'd like to say that I can be philosophical about these things, I was pretty fucking pissed at this point. It only started working around 3 today, roughly 22 hours after I paid for the service. And as pissed as I was about the whole thing, the only thing that I felt when I saw the service bars was relief that I wouldn't have to go deal with the unhelpful people at the phone store.
Thank God for small favors.
Tonight was also the gallery opening for Lafleur's photo show. It was a decent time: I met Meg's friend Jenna again and hung out a little with her and Lafleur. It was however marred by the presence of Claire. And because I'd had a beer and was just about ready to tell her where she could put her nonexistent boobs (She likes to show off her bra and talk about walking around in her boots and underwear. Seriously...) and her anorexic issues, I spent a lot of time wandering around the gallery, talking to Jenna, and not being around Claire. It was good to see Lafleur again and she seems like she's doing okay, or at least better than I'd heard she was doing before. Which doesn't say much, but anyway... Yeah. I was also expecting more hipster artist types. I'm very curious about the phenomenon of the Russian hipster and I have yet to meet one. They're probably just as pretentious, obnoxious, and as full of shit as the ones on Portland...but they're Russian! The "other" is only cool until you figure out that they're just as lame as you.
All things considered, it was a pretty decent day.
I do watch a lot of tv, though. Mostly because my host family hasn't been around much this week and it's very lonely in the apartment. They combine VH1 and MTV into one channel, and I watch a lot of dubbed shows and music videos. There's also a soap opera that I really like: it's like the worst of American daytime tv, but worse, because it's Russian and they're still figuring out the whole soap opera thing. It's called Five Minutes from the Metro, and it's got to be one of the worst show's I've watched somewhat regularly since Who Wants to be a Superhero? and I only watched that because it was on at the bar. (I'm not going to talk about the fact that I would go to the bar so that I could watch tv...) Katie, they also have Cash Cab here—it's just called Taxi.
I still didn't have cell phone service when I woke up this morning. I saved my receipt (you have to save all your receipts here, so that when shit goes wrong, you can have something to wave in their faces) so that I could go back to the store and demand that the 200 rubles I put on my account actually be put on my account. I left early for school so that I go to the store before, but the store was closed at 9am, even though the sign on the door said that it opened at 8. This type of situation calls for the typical Russian Ny, shto delat? (So, what are you going to do?) accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders. While I'd like to say that I can be philosophical about these things, I was pretty fucking pissed at this point. It only started working around 3 today, roughly 22 hours after I paid for the service. And as pissed as I was about the whole thing, the only thing that I felt when I saw the service bars was relief that I wouldn't have to go deal with the unhelpful people at the phone store.
Thank God for small favors.
Tonight was also the gallery opening for Lafleur's photo show. It was a decent time: I met Meg's friend Jenna again and hung out a little with her and Lafleur. It was however marred by the presence of Claire. And because I'd had a beer and was just about ready to tell her where she could put her nonexistent boobs (She likes to show off her bra and talk about walking around in her boots and underwear. Seriously...) and her anorexic issues, I spent a lot of time wandering around the gallery, talking to Jenna, and not being around Claire. It was good to see Lafleur again and she seems like she's doing okay, or at least better than I'd heard she was doing before. Which doesn't say much, but anyway... Yeah. I was also expecting more hipster artist types. I'm very curious about the phenomenon of the Russian hipster and I have yet to meet one. They're probably just as pretentious, obnoxious, and as full of shit as the ones on Portland...but they're Russian! The "other" is only cool until you figure out that they're just as lame as you.
All things considered, it was a pretty decent day.
posted by hillary at 3:06 AM
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