Left Buttons vs. Right Hooks

Movies are a window into other cultures when watching foreign films. Despite performing the same activity, it sometimes catches us unaware and leaves us thinking 'something's wrong'. Occasionally it's obvious: watching Irish films, the cars are on the wrong side of the road, which just feels wrong until you actively stop and think "oh, yeah, it's from [insert country that didn't bother to kick out the English before 1900]. There are other things which pop up, trigger "something just feels wrong".

Masterpiece Mystery: Sherlock is a modern re-take of Doyle. I highly recommend it - so much so that I'm planning to write a review of it. Holmes & Watson are going up an escalator. For you Americans, imagine a pair of escalators side by side. One up, one down. On which side is the Up escalator? On the right, right? Same as the side of the road we drive on. The scene on the English TV show, however, caught my attention by "something's wrong". The pair of escalators has the Up escalator on the left. It just looks wrong.

The Man with a Camera, a Russian film from 1929, is a fascinating look at ordinary life there. Short - a few seconds each - images of activities ranging from cars driving in town around horse-drawn carts, coal mining, factories, store fronts, and a woman waking up and rising from bed. The film returns to the woman several times, doing the various things one does, including getting dressed. With her back to the camera, she put on a bra. Again, my brain catches and my thumb hits 'pause'. The bra has a button/loop closure, and not a hook & eye. I've never actually seen a bra with that kind of closure. I'm left wondering if we used them here. I'm all the more amused because she's clasping it behind her back, rather than the hook-in-front-then-rotate method every women I know uses.

Calligraphic attraction

There is an International Exhibition of Calligraphy in Moscow. Barring the mediocre English on their website (by both the exhibit and contributors), it looks like there is actually something in Moscow I would like to see.There are a couple of pieces in their collection which are stunningly breathtaking. A couple contributors are German. Their brief essay (2-3 paragraphs) were in a spectrum of opinions as well as English competency. At least one of which I wish I could have read in German, because it didn't make a lot of sense in English.

Two of the pieces I particularly liked:


Truth, texts from Demokrit, Aristoteles, Leibniz, Feuerbach, Goethe, Schiller, Lichtenberg, La Mettrie, Hebel, Berger, by Joachim Propfe
If you look carefully at some of the dark & light shadowing is actually text.





Psalm 25:7, Remember not the sins of my youth, by Avraham-Hersh Borshevsky
this is one which took my breath away.

Russian poetry

After reading Polar Star, I was intrigued by the poetry quoted by two of the characters. It was a passionate interchange between lovers. The novel's text gave the impression the author was very famous and equally unapproved by the Soviet state. I looked, and - lo and behold! - it is a real author. The current view is that Anna Akhmatova is one of the greatest Russian poets in the 20th Century. While looking for her work at the library (which uses the Library of Congress system, ug!), I was forced to look through several other works of Russian literature. I checked out another author, Yevtushenko, published in the 60s. Given the front piece's claim "approved translation" and print date of 1966, I assumed this was going to be Soviet-filtered work and expected it to be an interesting comparison. So, here's a brief exerpt from both of their work:


Anna Akhmatova

Excerpt from White Flock, 1915

I don’t know if you’re alive or dead.
Can you on Earth be sought,
Or only when the sunsets fade
Be mourned serenely in my thought?

All is for you: the daily prayer,
The sleepless heat at night,
And of my verses, the white
Flock, and of my eyes the blue fire.

No one was more cherished, no one tortured
Me more, not
even the one who betrayed me to torture,
Not even the one who caressed me and forgot.


Excerpt from Poem without a Hero, a series written between '40 & '62

... the prince of Darkness, whoever
Would dare to bring him here?
Mask or skull or face, his
Expression of malice and ache I
Doubt even Goya could paint

The suavest and the sickest,
Compared with whom what sinner
is not incarnate grace? ...




Yvegney Yevtuschenko

A Russian Toy: Roly-Poly
[note, this is about a man creating a roly-poly toy - one of those things that, when knocked over rocks back up - for an invading Mongolian Khan]

...
For those peasants, buffoons
and simpletons at first seeming,
are like those dolls within a doll,
secrets within secrets concealing.
...
But Roly himself remained,
as the russian people remains,
and the spirit of Roly-Poly
every Russian sustains.

We’re the people of Roly Poly
By God we never been saved
But how many jackboots crushed us down,
flat on our backs like slaves?

But, putting their trust in Heaven,
they never knew our real worth,
neither the French nor the Germans,
nor any Prince or Czar on earth.

All they knew: we were Rolies.
And wanted us flat on our face.
But the fact we were Roly Polies
they forgot, and paid the price
...
who laughs undaunted, and rises
from the mud untrodden, mocking,
that simple peasant fellow,
to and fro slightly rocking

Vologodsky Province, 1962



None of Akhmatova's work (in the little volume I read) mentions peasants. In fact, one of the nicer 'romantic' ones is a young girl pining for the Czar who will come and make her empress (of course, he dies first - this is, after all, Russian poetry). Definitiely not supporting Socialist Realism. I find I really enjoy her work.

Not to be unfair, some of Yevtushenko's work is elegant. It's just liberally sprinkled with atheistic adoration of The Russian Peasant.

.

The powerhouses

Who's going to win the Olympic basketball games? Well, it's no longer a sure thing we will, but no one is going to write us off. Baseball? Well, I might start betting on Cuba or Puerto Rico, but no one's going to be surprised if we do. American football? No one else plays it, so who cares? Soccer? Only our women are seen as a serious threat internationally. Ice hockey ... hmmm....

Well, gone are the days of 1980's "miracle", mostly because all of the amazing Soviet players moved here. Still, they're retired. The Russians clogging the NHL now, that's different - or perhaps no so different.

Russia 7 : 2 France

They play ice hockey in France? Where?

Sweden is the powerhouse of ice hockey. The largest nationality group for the Red Wings is from Sweden. Sight unseen, if I had to pick a best bet, it would be them. Of course, no one is immune from failure.

Sweden 2 : 3 Latvia.

Do most people here even know where Latvia is?

“We are obviously going to need that killer instinct when we play the Swedes,” [the US coach] said. “They are a very good team, a puck possession team, and play a little different from what we’ve seen so far.” Well, it's good that someone has explained to them that you need to actually get your stick on the puck in order to score.

I'm curious as to why this is going on concurrently w/ the Stanley Cup. A couple of the teams have yet to announce their line up for the next round, due to the players being distracted by the Cup. Sorry, Mr. Gopher, the Fatherland is (probably) out by another one of the Germanic countries (CH), although we took out the other one.

Canada 9 : 0 Hungary

Sure, rooting for the underdog is great - but the finals are likely to be the same-old-same-old: Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Czech, & Slovakia, and and the U.S. Although, just checking, the Russia-Switzerland game is 2:2. If I can't root for Germany, at least I can hope one of the other underdogs take down the big boys.

But, the power game for the Gopher household is tomorrow: U.S. vs. Svenska (Hey, Mr. Gopher, did you know Linköping has an ice hockey team?) The only way Mr. Gopher will cheer for us is if we're not playing Germany or Sweden. Unfortunately, 8:15 p.m. Central European Time isn't exactly coordinated with Minnesota Central Time. I suspect my professors won't be too keen on ice hockey rather than a boring goddamned waste of my time field trip tomorrow.