MOG

Since my friend tolkovyislovar' and I are on a "things-Russian" roll these days, what with discussions of lard, (a.k.a. sandwich fat), pickled apples and melon, Russian teenagers impersonating gangsters, and the cultural dissonance of Sonic Youth meets the St. Petersburg scene - ballistic beer bottles and all... Well, my thought is - why not continue the roll? Why not just snowball the hell out of it?

I'm going to feature a couple of songs from my favorite Russian band - Leningrad. They are raunchy, gritty, swear like fishermen every chance they get, and I love them for it. Maybe I lust them for it...

My nasty little secret is - I spent years doing a PhD in Russian Lit. I mean YEARS. Painful ones at that. The main problem was, as I see it - my years in Russia, (burrowing in the frigid winter archives while writing my dissertation syllable by agonizing syllable), rather than fostering an authentic love of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, well, they actually bashed me over the head with a love of the seamier side of things, shall we say - Russian ska bands, Russian beer and vodka, strange little Lebanese restaurants in Moscow that sported hookahs with flavored tobacco, ultimate frisbee playing Russians. I guess I left Russia in 2001 schlepping a strange fascination with the underbelly of life in Russia back to the US.

This made for interesting moments while teaching Russian at a little Ivy League college that shares my Mog-listed City and State. On those rare days when we actually had time to introduce "culture" into the course - I didn't choose to do an architectural survey of 18th Century Petersburg, or chronicle the greats of the Moscow Philharmonic.

I played these guys: