“Ultranationalist” politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky apparently likes what he sees: “Everyone who sees the film will understand that Russians and Ukrainians are one people — and that the enemy is from the West.”

Meanwhile, “The premiere inspired viewers in Krasnodar to shave their heads into Cossack haircuts, and early this month Russian Fashion Week devoted an afternoon to a collection called Cossacks in the City.”

Everybody now!
April 1 is Gogol’s 200th birthday
now we drink Cosmos when we’re thirstay

That all changed when someone gave me Astral Weeks on vinyl. It was akin to hearing Rod Stewart and the Faces do “Stay with Me” as in, wow, this guy used to be amazing!

Of course not amazing enough to want to pay 300 bones to hear him perform the album live this week, but certainly enough to repost this fantastic Talk of the Town piece of his reflections on one of my favorite juke boxes in New York:

When someone grouped Donegan with other practitioners of “pre-Beatles rock and roll,” Morrison pulled up short.

“That’s a cliché,” he said, adjusting his sunglasses. “I don’t think ‘pre-Beatles’ means anything, because there was stuff before them. Over here, you have a different slant. You measure things in terms of the Beatles. We don’t think music started there. Rolling Stone magazine does, because it’s their mythology. The Beatles were peripheral. If you had more knowledge about music, it didn’t really mean anything. To me, it was meaningless.”

(source)

Zombie recipe
Crushed ice
1 1/2 oz. lemon juice
3/4 oz. blood orange juice
3/4 oz. grenadine
3/4 oz. Cherry Heering
3/4 oz. white rum
2 oz. brown rum
3/4 oz. high-proof brown rum

Under these circumstances, the thinking goes, P.B.R. needs to stay neutral, ”always look and act the underdog” and not worry about those who look down on the beer, presumably because they’re snobs whose negative opinion only boosts its street cred. The Plan B analysis even says that P.B.R.’s embrace by punks, skaters and bike messengers make it a political, ”social protest” brand. These ”lifestyle as dissent” or ”consumption as protest” constituencies are about freedom and rejecting middle-class mores, and ”P.B.R. is seen as a symbol and fellow dissenter.” Eventually all of this sounds like satire, but the punch line is that it isn’t really that far off from P.B.R.’s strategy.

You know who has a lot of friends? John McCain. Have you noticed that? And no, I’m not talking about any of the recent talk. I’m saying that everywhere he goes, he keeps saying, “And when that happens, my friends, they will raise your taxes,” and “My friend, you don’t want to know what would happen if we pulled out of Iraq now,” and “Let me tell you my friend, that the McRib sandwich is indeed an excellent sandwich, I believe that my friends at Esquire got that one right.” There is no doubt in my mind that the “My Friend McCain” drinking game is going to be huge this election season … though perhaps not as huge as the “How many times will he say ‘hope,” Barack Obama drinking game.

McRib!

¹ “You know who…..?”

On a sadder note, email forwards are a constant reminder to oxymorons such as “Military Intelligence”, etc… but can somebody really be an “unwitting suicide bomber“?

Thank God it is Strong Beer Month. Leap year to boot.

Until about a month ago, when they finally opened the doors, flat screens, internet jukebox, bottle service (!) and all. The bottle service, my friend, is your giveaway: this bar is not for my people. It is for those who were here before me. The twenty-somethings born and raised here need their own place, and this is their liquor fubu.

Enough of the backstory, now the point: This fellow-gentrifier’s blog description of Leo’s has wrought forth my favorite comment thread of 2007, put it in the bank.