05.10.2008

I should be doing my homework right now, but I really just don't want to do a damned thing, so I figure I might as well do something minorly productive and write an overall entry for the weekend.

As I mentioned in my last entry, Saturday was just damned stupid. The only thing worth mentioning is that I decided to go ahead and eat lunch at one of the cafes I stopped at to use internet (unfortunately, this particular cafe's wi-fi had "ended" not long ago... they probably just wanted me to leave or something. They were kind of swanky). Well. I was dumb, and ordered a damned FISH dish. I HATE fish. HATE HATE HATE fish. It was quite expensive, so I figure I may as well eat it all to save myself the embarassment. It had a couple pieces of shrimp, a clam of some sort, and then other various fish parts, but it was mostly comprised of pasta and sauce. I ate the pasta and sauce fairly well, with very little fishy taste. I ate both shrimps, just barely, and wanted to die in the process, chugging a cup of tea to choke it down. I couldn't eat the rest of it, and I almost DIED when I realised I had eaten a small tentacle. So I just gathered the rest of the fish on the side of my plate, and inconspicuously wrapped it all in a tissue and stuffed it in my bag so the waiter wouldn't see. That was awful.

Today was half decent -- Was going to Pavlovsk, as the leaves had turned, so, yeah. Tatyana fed me ... hot dog pirozhki this morning. Which was ... interesting. Then I left for the train station (last time, I went to Pavlovsk by bus) and had my first Russian train experience. Which was about as terrible as it sounds. Truly, the metro is luxury compared. But, it only cost 28 rubles, which is a little over one dollar, so, whatever.

Pavlovsk was beautiful, fun was had, whatever. The only exciting thing was that there were a lot of people there, which isn't all that exciting. I have, however, noticed that women were wearing HIGH HEELS. Which is bizarre, because Pavlovsk is mostly one big 700 hectare park forest thing. At one point I saw this woman walking around with a bunch of leaves IMPALED on her heels, just walking around like she didn't care. Luckily, she kept walking back and forth around this cafe, so I got a photo, AND a video. YES, A VIDEO. While the group was getting food, I was food watching and got the idea to video the scenes around me. Because my mom wants to see Russian people, or something. I don't know.

In any case, when we got back into St. Petersburg, Bryan wanted to show us this neat DVD and music store ... when we got there, I stopped dead. I heard fucking TONY WAKEFORD'S VOICE playing. I was like, 'what the hell is this?' and wanted to kill Bryan for not showing me this place before. So, somehow, I gravitate to the DVDs and land in front of the music DVD section and find ... Fad Gadget? And Death in June? What the FUCK? Some other good stuff, too, and a huge rack of Soviet classics and whatnot, but I was more interested in Fad Gadget and Death in June at this point. There were three different Death in June DVDs, so I bought a skeezy looking documentary, "Death in June: Behind the Mask" and "Fad Gadget By Frank Tovey," which has two discs of live performances, TV appearances, and a documentary. The documentary cost about six dollars, the Fad Gadget 12. I think they're both pirated, but Frank Tovey is dead and I doubt Douglas Pearce cares.

Then ... when I was buying the DVDs, I saw a poster saying that Sonne Hagal and Of the Wand and the Moon are both playing in St. Petersburg on October 17th. I almost had a stroke right there. But, despite my initial excitement, I'm not sure I'm going to go... Not because of the artists, but because of the possible crowd. I mean, I know (am fairly sure?) that the musicians do not espouse fascist ideas and are not fascists themselves, they are just ... very ... ambiguous about it and twist it around in a very provocative fashion. Of course, if I remember correctly at least one member of Sonne Hagal is openly gay, but whatever. In any case, St. Petersburg is home to a very large and continually growing neo-fascist population, and Russians seem to have a problem grasping artistic ambiguity and irony, SO, even if the groups themselves are not fascists, the audience might be FILLED with them. I'm going to ask around about the venue (The "Revolution Club") and make my decision based around that, I guess.

Oh, speaking of Revoltions... Pyaterochka, the major super market chain here, is advertising a month long sale... of "October Revolution Revolutionary Prices!" The flier is read, and features a picture of the Potemkin. And ends with something like, "Shop at Pyaterochka, comrade!" So, it's nice to know that the U.S. does not have a monopoly on commercialising our history and national holidays.