This is the trailer of a movie called Hammer and Tickle that played at the Tribeca Film Festival last May:
There is a BBC article on this film that I have tagged on my del.icio.us. (yay plug!)
I found out about this film because I discovered a book by the same name buried in the "old soviet stuff" section of the CEU library the other day. The book and the movie are totally unrelated, but I find all this fascinating none-the-less, despite the "toilet humor-cum-revolutionary claim to autonomy" turn that is made at the end of this clip. That part is pretty lame. But otherwise, I smell a final paper in the brew. Thankgod the Israelis dont set deadlines till 3 weeks past the end of term. I might actually have time to think about this before I write something.
In the meantime, can someone please explain to me why we are still reading Bordieu? Why have we allowed 'habitus' to become the bread and butter of introductory paragraphs? Its just depressing.
"The Poetics of Culture: Anthropologists wanted. Makes more than most poets." (m.sahlins)
GARY BECKER An interview with Professor Gary Becker, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, about the War on Drugs. By Matthew Bristow http://www.colombia-reports.blogspot.com/
What effect do you think legalization would have on Colombia and the Andean region?
I think it would be a significant improvement for Colombia and these other countries. It may increase the amount of activities that go into drugs, but I think it will greatly weaken the cartels because now this would be more of an open competitive market, so drug cartels would be less important. Now you need cartels to fight the legal system. If it’s legalized, you don’t need it. So if you go back to experience of the war on alcohol, prohibition, in the United States, we had Al Capone and a lot of gangsters involved in that industry, as soon as we legalized it again it pretty much all disappeared. I think it would be a great boon, maybe more important for Colombia and the other countries in that Andean region than even for the United States.
You know you have hit all the hot tourist spots when you are able to read everying you come across all day in English. Kinda weird.
So, Stephen's friend Kim is staying with us this weekend. She is teaching highschool at the Ramstein air force base in Germany, and was able to get away for the long thanksgiving weekend. I think Rammstein might be the only place in Europe that even knows what Thanksgiving is. It definately confused a few students at CEU. Common beleif is that this is the holiday where we give Indians the Small Pox. I told them that that was basically it, but with jello and football.
Today, we went to City Park to go to another flea market. We are flea market whores. We love them because, well, for me, the Hungarians have a sock technology that is way beyond our own in the States. I mean, you can get blue and white checked thigh high socks for a dollar. seriously. That's amazing. And Stephen likes buying flashy things for his cellphone, and Marko likes buying fake art. Its rad.
This building houses the largest baths in Budapest, in the middle of City Park.
There is also lots of "art" scattered around the fields there.
The flea market had an excellent assortment of random crap, not the least of which was the most extensive hood ornament colletion I have ever seen.
But this place was really touristy and commercialized, so we were getting charged like 5-10 times what we should have been for some of the crap there. Just cause someone from Bristol is willing to pay 5000 forints for a postcard from 1920 doesnt mean that its not totaloly ridiculous. lord.
So, instead, we left and got excited about a big checkers board painted on the asphalt.
And ran amok in the beams of the monument of the 1956 revolution. Look at it. At the back, they are divided, and weak, pitted and rusted, but where the beams are togehter at the front, its united, its smooth and steel and sharp, and cuts through the iceberg of communism! So symbolic!
We went to our favorite Hare Krisna restaurant for lunch, and passed some poi jugglers up at Nygati. Stephen was like "whatever. That shit's not on fire. I don't care. Let's go eat." Ha.
After lunch, we went up to Vörösmarty Ter for the Christmas market that has just opened up. They are setting one of these up in the square in front of our house too. I cant wait. Mulled wine for breakfast lunch and dinner, dude. Rawk.
The place is full of touristy junk, but also blacksmiths and glass blowers, which are really fun to watch.
There was also food. Oh my word. We were pained to not eat more after stuffing ourselves on Krisna food. There were pastries, and these crazy rolls of chocolate marzipan. Plus TONS of roasted onions and paprikas and shrooms...there was even a place selling black pudding. ew. And buckets. BUCKETS. of mulled wine, selling for like a dollar. Amazing and yum.
They also sold these awesome pasteries that is made of sweet fluffy bread dough wrapped around a huge metal dowel, rolled in sugar and maybe something else exciting like crushed walnut and then fire roasted. They sell them in the subways, but never piping fresh like this. I was totally amazed.
People were walking around eating these things so piping hot that steam was shooting out the top of htem like chimneys. OMG yum. Kim got in the pastry mood as well.
Im telling you, I have never had white bread of the caliber availible here in Hungary. In July, I am coming home fat and happy.
A very unorganized attempt at dinner that started with a thought no deeper than "Hey, Its thanksgiving. Should we, like, eat some stuff?" turned into a fabulous house party a la Americana.
We had to do the best we could with what incredients were available to us. We ended up with the following menu:
Homemade mashed potatoes and gravy (thank you very much) Corn Real StoveTop stuffing, compliments of Kim, who is visiting us from Rammstein this week 2 rotisserie chickens from the szupermart Lots and lots of cheese Bosnian meat Cherry pie-type thing Lots of bread and rolls about 12 bottles of red wine
So, we had accepted the fate long ago that canned pumpkin just DOESNT exist outside the US. But we couldnt find any real pumpkins (too late in the season) or anything even remotly close to cranberries anywhere. And no one from anywhere in eastern europe that we could find even KNEW what a sweet potato was. Such sadness. But we made up for lost dishes by making a lot of everything else and basically suffocating ourselves. It was good.
The potatos have affected me. Sasha helps cook. Stephen is ready to eat. Like, now. Peter tortures the dog. Charlie, the pup, is staying with us for the night, andis contribting by licking fallen scraps up off the floor. It is so nice to be cooking with a dog in the kitchen again. Peter contributed a Pizza Hut pizza to the dinner. We actually kind of got in over our heads. We didn't have neraly enough in the way of plats, forks, or chairs. But the sheer quantity of carbs on the table pretty much took everyone's attention away from that fact rather quickly.
The gorging begins.
We can actually see the food colleting in our eyeballs, giving us that glazed over look. Some of us lasted till 2am. But all the excitement got the better of a few.
Ok, so I JUST now noticed that the link to the Joseph Sywenkjy photography link, off to the right there, was dead cause I hade a typo in my HTML script. Its fixed now. And its amazing. You really should take a look at it.
So, I have had a TON of work to do for class lately, a mountain whih is made only bigger by the fact that I have fallen behind from being sick the last few weeks. So, to handle this stress, I have been doling out a heavy dose of procrastination, and have, as a direct consequence, been discovering some awesome things.
For example: *Facebook. wow. I found two guys from summer camp, an ex boyfriend from when I was 15, and Jesus. woot! *I have been watching a lot of music videos with Marko in YouTube. Radiohead's "Little Plastic Trees" is particularly good. *I have seen the whole first season of Drawn Together. And there is really nothing like it. *I have started cutting people's hair in my kitchen again. First was Wyatt. he asked for a simple de-mulletting, but I did a pretty good job, so Sasha came over for a cut tonight, and Stephen has put his name on my dance card as well. *I have fallen in love with a band from Colorado named Matson Jones and a band from Belgium called Styrofoam. I have also been known to dance around the living room to a Ukranian group called тартак. *I have been planning my trips. If all goes well, I will have both the time and money to go to Rome, Morocco, Cairo, Athens, Bucharest, Zagreb, Split, Slovenia, Odessa, and Minsk. Yea right. *I am on Skype all the time. All the time. *I have been watching a bunch of weird european and middle eastern movies, including The Battle of Algiers, Yossi and Jagger (the Israeli BrokeBack Mountain), and Leila (Iranian story of patriarchy, sexroles, modernity, and rice pudding). *I am now a frequent visitor of technorati and del.icio.us *I have been wildly distributing pornography from the 1920s across the US. Literally. *I know more falafel places in town than that guy who sells falafel downstairs. And I think I am a few threads away from breaking Asa's resistance to coming over and making real, true, yummy, fried jew food for me and the house. HOOMOOS! *I am a SoulSeex addict. *I have renamed our network password like 7 times now. There was a while when it was "The Action Packed Mentalist Brings You the Fucking Jams" but Tyler threw a fit, so we changed it again. *I have started playing planarity again. *Podcasts. Oh, dear sweet podcasts. NYT, BBC, NPR, Mars Hill, This American Life. There is never a moment when I dont have something to listen to while not working...
Wikipedia, and its various warring factions, has recently become a centerpeice of house life. That being said, this is the best idea ever, and I love it:
Post midterm, meta-functionalist, uber-nihilistic students bumbling through the faculty tower... Mucha Luca rocks the multivitamin juice. Burts Beeees!
Are you frikin ready for it? Buy some beers to drink on the way, hop the red line to the Ors, and drag our sappy selves to the place of all that is not holy. Welcome to TESCO. This lady sells me my shoes laces. She rocks. *gasp!* 3000g. Plastic toy aisle! In eastern Europe, the coffee maker aisle is always the long aisle. These candles are strictly "cemetary only" Head, shoulders, knees, and toes, knees, and toes! Tesco, local purveyors of fried rice and cultural sensitivity. Pepsi-cino. What the hell is it? And why does it frighten us so?... If there is ever a world in which giant fish crammed into a tiny tank isn't fascinating, well, I'm not sure I want to be alive to see it. This guy sells breakfast cereal to children. Hooray! All Corona is called Coronita here. Its a trade mark issue. And its awesome. The Liquor Aisle!! TESCO brand rum. 739HUF/litre. gross. Nothing makes a party like tequila in a sombrero. Unicum. Ok, I have a story about unicum. Unicum is like glorified cough syrup. It is to jagermeister what jagermeister is to...to anything really. Its made by a company called Zwack. Well, Mr. Zwack, the owner of Zwack incorporated, makers of Zwack Unicum, gave a speech at the opening gala at my university. He actually talked at great length to the cultural relevance of Unicum, and its symbolic meaning for Hungarian society. Then he began reminiscing about the 56 revolution, and told us that, while he was too busy being a fat cat in Austria to be here to fight off the commies, his bottles were perfectly round, just like a soft ball, or a grenade, and were excellent for making Molotov cocktails, and that that was his contribution to the revolution.
Once outside, I suggest we break open the Pepsi-cino we bought, cause we live wrecklessly. Sasha reacts with horror. And the verdict is....
it tastes like ass. Like gross instant coffee Mr. K cola powdered vanilla flavor horrible unredemable ass. god. awful.
If only we had seen this first. Oh! Pepsi-CINO! like Cappucino! Yuck!
Location: Ukrainian Village, Chicago, Illinois, United States
I am addicted to donuts.
I love running around after dark.
I am a beer snob and a vodka nerd.
I change my hair color alot.
Sometimes junior highers make more sense to me than anyone else in the world.
I am really good at finding neat things in dumpsters.
I can fix your bike for you.
I people watch.
I keep plants.
Whatever I am doing, I would rather be in the water.
We actually kind of got in over our heads. We didn't have neraly enough in the way of plats, forks, or chairs. But the sheer quantity of carbs on the table pretty much took everyone's attention away from that fact rather quickly.
