This Den of Theives

Address in Moscow

2008-08-26T12:25:50Z

Hey folks, Those of you wishing to contact me by snail mail may do so at the following: 125040 Москва ул. Скаковая, дом 9 ком. 724 (Бенджамин Бересфорд) АСПРЯЛ РОССИЯ/RUSSIA I don't have a phone yet, but will in a few days probably. Peace and love to all. I'm in DC for a few days and then on to Moscow.

Follow-up on this whole Caucasus thing...

2008-08-21T18:19:28Z

Well, this whole Russia/Georgia business is spiraling out of control. I'm still not convinced that the West's stance is the correct path. People in the West (especially the press) conveniently forget that this whole business started when the Georgian military started shelling South Ossetia's capitol. I got into a small argument with a friend yesterday who is very pro-Georgia and distrusts the Russians. I'm not saying I think the Georgians should be saying "uncle" here, but it's like the little brother broke the vase and the parents are punishing the big brother as if it was entirely his fault. No matter what Saakashvili says (and he's as big a blow-hard as any Russian politician), Georgia is not some sort of angelic, utopian democracy. I mean, sure Russia probably overkilled their invasion and are being real sticks-in-the-mud with this whole, "we'll pull out when we feel like it" charade, but Georgia is the guy int he background whistling with his hands behind his back while he kicks the shards of the vase under the carpet. I say let Russia look after Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They were a pain for Georgia to maintain and if they really really want to be independent, well I guess they're Russia's problem now...and I'm sure Russia doesn't want another Chechnya on their hands. Cause frankly, things seem to be getting out of hand, what with NATO and Russia severing their ties and all that stuff. What do you say, Mikheil Saakashvili? How about you, Mikhail Gorbachev?

Time to chime in, I suppose.

2008-08-11T17:12:15Z

Well, as I'm sure most of you are aware, Russia and Georgia are pretty much at war right now. I would imagine a lot of you are reading about it in the newspapers and hearing commentators discuss it on TV. My two main sources have been the BBC website and the Guardian's website. This is the BBC's special section on the conflict, which I think is quite good. Here is the Guardian's "Georgia" page. Being a leftist paper, it is naturally somewhat critical of the US at times, but the coverage is pretty good. Just make a point not to read the readers' comments at the bottom of the articles, because most of the people writing those things don't have a clue what they're talking about. My own thoughts on the situation are as follows: First of all, I think Georgia's decision to all-of-a-sudden start shelling South Ossetia was a gamble bordering on stupidity. I think they were hoping to catch Russia with its pants down (with both Putin and Medvedev in Beijing) while also assuming that the international community would step in more quickly, which is an assumption NOBODY should ever make. They must have known that Russia, with a new President and Prime Minister trying to send a message to the international and domestic community, would not mess around. Secondly, Russia is in a bit of a bind. They can't let Georgia, the US' most vocal ally, come out victorious in this conflict. On the other hand they risk losing a lot of political and moral capitol by moving much further into Georgian territory (though one Moscow resident stated that, since the US set the precedent of military invasion without international sanction, Russia was perfectly in the right to do so as well). As one BBC commentator stated, for Russia to support South Ossetia's independance while making such a stink about Kosovo's would appear two-faced to the international community. On the other hand, most people seem to recognize that Russia has not been altogether neutral in regards to the region from the get-go. With most of the South Ossetians being "ethnic" Russians (whatever that means), the government has been supportive of the region's breakaway efforts for years. So essentially this is a case of neither side being particularly in the right. Both sides have been antagonizing each other for years and this war is only the latest in a series of major disputes. There is one thing that Guardian writer Jonathan Steele points out that I think is worth mentioning: don't let anyone tell you that this is an example of Russian aggression towards Western-style democracy. Georgia is no "ideal-type" and it was less than a year ago that there were massive protests in the street against Saakashvili's supposedly corrupt government. He claimed that the protesters were Russian-backed, but if we are to believe that, then what is to stop us from believing that the pro-Western protesters in Kiev in 2004 were EU-backed (which most Russians believe) or that anti-Putin protesters in St. Petersburg and Moscow who were savagely beaten by police in spring 2007 were propped up by foreign governments and deliberately provoked the police (as most Russians also believe)? My own thoughts are that Russia should have honored Georgia's cease-fire request, occupied South Ossetia and Abkhazia and used them as a bargaining chip to make Georgia pay for being so stupid. Going beyond the borders and continuing airstrikes in and around Tbilisi is not winning Moscow many friends, but then invading Iraq did not win the US many friends either. Anyway, the situation seems to be changing by the hour, so it is hard to say how things will turn out in the end. I for one, being something of a Sovietologist, try to give Russia the benefit of the doubt if only to provide some perspective in a society that is overwhelmingly suspicious of everything Russia does. Some of you may also be aware of the fact that I will be in Moscow for nine months starting in September. I have spoken to a friend who shall remain nameless because of the nature of his/her government employer. While he/she was not exactly able to divulge any information as to the nature of US/Russian relations at the moment, he/she did not believe that I would be in any great danger. I do not think I will be either, but it is always worth hearing from someone familiar with the organ-grinder. I have not heard an official statement from American Councils, the organization sending me there, but I have inquired (as I'm sure everyone else has) and they should get back to me soon. The fact that they have not said anything yet leads me to believe that everything is still OK for Americans living in Russia. Just don't take any trips to Tbilisi...which I had no desire to do anyway.

Time to chime in, I suppose.

2008-08-11T17:12:15Z

Time to chime in, I suppose.

2008-08-11T17:12:15Z

The Legacy of Eisenstein

2008-07-09T21:20:37Z

Last night I started watching the epic and pseudo-historical film Alexander Nevsky directed by Sergei Eisenstein and photographed by his longtime collaborator Edouard Tisse. I'm hoping that this will be the first in a long line of films made by directors I've studied over the past several months that I will see between now and my departure for Moscow in late August. Eisenstein is a giant in the history of cinema and his magnum opus, The Battleship Potemkin, is regarded by critics at the British Film Institute as one of the ten best films ever made. Not a bad praise for only his second major film. There is one particular sequence that stands out from that film, a scene known as "The Odessa Steps," in which a crowd sympathizing with a group of mutinous sailors is brutally attacked by Cossack soldiers. "The Odessa Steps" is the premier example of how Eisenstein splices together sequences of film to create a visually stunning and emotionally poignant aesthetic. The climactic sequence of the scene is the depiction of a baby carriage careening down the long steps across dying bodies with its now-orphaned passenger screaming in terror. The scene may have looked familiar to some of you. This is likely because Brian De Palma pays homage to Eisenstein's groundbreaking sequence in his 1987 film The Untouchables. In one of the film's best, if incredibly violent scenes, Elliot Ness and Al Capone's henchmen have a gunfight in the middle of Chicago's historic Union Station. (as an aside, notice the clock above the doors shows 12 o'clock. In the film it is midnight, but the scene also has the drama of a "high noon" showdown common in Westerns...and beware of a swear at the end of the gunfight.) The tension in the scene is heightened by interspersing the scene with shots of a baby carriage careening down the stairs of the station. However, although we hear the sound of guns, glass, and footsteps on the marble floor, we don't hear the screams of the mother as in Potemkin. The symbolism in De Palma's film is the reverse of Eisenstein's. Ness, like the Cossack soldiers, represents the power and authority of the State and is positioned at the top of the stairs. Unlike in Potemkin, the authority figure descends the stairs not to destroy life, but to save it (Ness hesitates, wary of giving up a more advantageous position, before chasing the carriage). While the Cossacks' descent highlights their amorality and depravity, Ness' reiterates his values and his integrity in sacrificing his own life to realize them. In essence, De Palma is using the same scene to give the reverse message. For Eisenstein, the State is powerful, brutal, and bent on subduing the will of the People, a message that meshes well with Eisenstein's revolutionary views. De Palma, on the other hand, reiterates the good of the State. Even in the face of overwhelming odds (Ness must initially face 6 men on his own), the State is virtuous, protective of the innocent, and has the integrity to do what is right even in the most dire circumstances. In spite of this De Palma, shooting his film sixty years after Eisenstein, constructs the scene in a way that shows clear respect for his predecessor and is a visual testament to the influence that Eisenstein has on film directors even today. And then....there's this. I guess not all homage pieces are good ones.

Can You Believe It?

2008-07-01T19:29:45Z

Who would have thought that Tampa Bay - Tampa Freaking Bay - would be in first place in the AL East. The league is upside-down I tell ya!

The Oddities of Graduate Research in the post-Soviet era.

2008-06-18T21:42:45Z

After taking a lengthy, and may I say well-deserved, break from thesis work, I have returned to the library (in the midst of some of the best weather of the summer) to patch the varied and many leaky holes in my rather hastily drafted thesis. I have to say that it is nice to be able to research with nothing else on my mind. Researching while doing coursework was a real bother, but I think that with little else to do, I can focus my intellectual energies into the narrative of this story I'm trying to write. The problem lies in the fact that I am a post-Soviet scholar. It's a bit odd to be saying this over 15 years after the collapse of communism in Russia, but circumstances require that I think about this phenomenon considerably. Essentially, my problem is that, apart from the archival documents I've read, I have had to rely on sources (in English) written by British and American historians from the 70s and 80s. These historians, while doing the best they could with what was at hand, were at a considerable disadvantage as far as sources available to them. Often they had to work with limited materials and only one woman had access to the archives, and even that was limited. I, on the other hand, have total access to the organization's files and to a number of journals that others have not had. Essentially, it boils down to the fact that, at the tender age of 25, I am one of the world's leading experts on the Association of Workers of Revolutionary Cinematography (ARK/ARRK). You'd think that such a realization was invigorating and it kind of is (as much as I don't want to toot my own kazoo, so to speak). There is another side to it, however. Studying this organization inevitably provokes questions that need answering. I have tried to answer some of these questions to the best of my ability, but inevitably some are simply out of reach either due to time or resource constraints. This being the case, I have fallen back on some of the conclusions of these Soviet-era historians. Well, in the last few days I have returned to the library and read through some of these journals. It seems that every day I come across some new piece of information that severely undercuts some of the conclusions that I rely on. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or resources to fill these gaps and to answer the new questions that keep popping up satisfactorily. So as I spackle one hole in the drywall, I make another. It's frustrating. So essentially my dilemma is this: I know more about this film organization than almost anyone else in the world (I don't know if there's an even more eminent authority in Russia). Unfortunately, even I know very little. Since I can't, in the words of Sir Isaac Newton, stand on the shoulders of giants, I have to rely on my own humble intellectual prowess. So it looks like, for the sake of prosperity, the blind are leading the blind here. It's like each new day brings frustrations that didn't exist the day before. Sometimes I just want to pull my hair out. But, I have to admit, it's a pretty exhilarating experience.

Turning a pastime into a brain-wracking exercise

2008-05-20T19:02:00Z

Last week I went to a lecture by a guy named Robert Pippin. He's a professor here at the university and he teaches philosophy. Anyway, he was giving a three-part lecture series on political psychology, violence, and order in American Westerns. At the lecture I attended, Pippin broke down John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, arguing that it is Ford's attempt to show the dilemma of myth-making as a necessary foundation of political units. In this particular case, Jimmy Stewart's character, a lawyer, wants to bring order to a town run by the maniacally savage Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). Ironically, in order for the law to be established, Stewart must kill Marvin, an act totally outside the law. Initially, Stewart's character is haunted by the reality of what he had done (even to the point of refusing to be appointed the town's political delagate). When John Wayne's character reveals to him that it was in fact he who shot Valance, Stewart, without any hesitation, changes his mind and goes into politics free of the guilt of murder (though also immune to guilt for a number of other reasons). Stewart is willing to live on the myth that it was he who did the killing because it means that his goal, political unity, is realized. That was an overly concise summary of the film, but it serves to illustrate one of Pippen's theories: that the great philosophical and political debates of American society are dealt with not in great tracts of authors whom everyone has read, but on the silver screen, especially in Westerns, the most quintessential of American genres. This got me thinking about what other Westerns could be trying to say and it led me to watch (for about the 100th or so time), Howard Hawks' tour-de-force... Yes, my friends, Rio Bravo. I tried watching it again to see if I could find out what Hawks was saying underneath that great story of good vs. evil, the personal struggle over sobriety, and a completely parasitic love story that contributes absolutely nothing to the main plot. I have no definitive answers, but some thoughts come to mind. 1.) A long time ago, I noticed that "talking" is a big theme in Rio Bravo. Feathers goes on at length about how she talks and Chance doesn't with phrases like, "From now on, I'll do the talking for both of us." At another point Carlos, trying to explain to Chance why he has a black eye, pleads with him not to talk. "It is better if I tell you, senor." Pat Wheeler is chastized by Chance for talking to much and to the wrong people. Ordering the mariachi band in the saloon to play the "De Guello" day-and-night is Nathan Burdett's way of talking. It's too common a theme to be simply coincidental. It seems pretty intentional to me. Why, I don't know. 2.) Tied up in the "talking" theme is the idea of communication. This is all over the place too, especially in some of the conversations that Chance and Carlos have ("Did you tell her she is a fool?" "I didn't say I was!"). Stumpy nearly shoots Dude because he thinks it was someone else. Conseula punches Carlos because she doesn't know why he is carrying Feathers out to the stagecoach. There are other examples, but I'm too antsy to think of them right now. 3.) Other tid-bits: the Mexicans all live in a slum outside of town (except for Carlos). One of the driving sub-plots is Dude's battle with alcoholism. Meanwhile everyone else is knocking back hard liquor left and right (we see Chance with a bottle of beer, but he never drinks from it). I think this is also one of the few Westerns where the show-down actually brings people out into the streets. The role of the viewing public plays a crucial role in how characters behave (especially when Burdett and his men come into town). I dunno, that's just what's bouncing around in my head. I just thought the whole idea about Westerns as the uniquely American method of dealing with our particular philosophical dilemmas.

The procrastinatory joys of youtube.

2008-05-18T20:28:40Z

Now that my thesis is done and one of my classes finished for the quarter, I feel like I have oodles of time. Granted, most of this time is now taken up my book reports and, shortly, essays. But still at least I was able to go for my first bike ride yesterday and it was fabulous. I'm looking forward to three or four good long rides a week this year. On the other hand, I'm also less disciplined with my study time (since, hey, I don't have any more typing to do and way less reading), so I end up searching the ever so deep archives of you tube. I found a couple decent clips today. Most people associate Andy Kaufman with either Taxi or, less fortunately, wrestling. My dad used to tell me about seeing him doing stand-up back in the pre-Taxi days and had said he was an incredible percussionist. So I found this clip from some variety show. I also happened to look over some Steve Martin stuff and came across this rare interview he did with Johnny Cash. Unfortunately, Steve seems to think he's a sportscaster. Cash doesn't seem to mind too much though. There's a bunch of stuff after it, but you can just ignore it. It's only Kris Kristofferson. And speaking of Cash, never let it be said that he didn't have a sense of humor himself. This is an old, old clip (like, before-he-had-a-drummer old). I'm pretty sure he was high as a kite on pills at the time, but hey, I still laughed.

Check this out.

2008-05-10T05:29:43Z

Two of my favorite things, Russians and Sandwiches are combined in an amazing BBC article. Make sure to get a good look at the photo. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7391893.stm

This is the UEFA Cup final I wanted!!!

2008-05-02T04:18:26Z

FK Zenit St. Petersburg vs. Glasgow Rangers. I have no idea of what quality the match will be, but I'd be happy with either side winning. Above is the third goal that Zenit hammered home against Bayern Munich at Petrovsky Stadion this afternoon. I think this is the most impressive to watch. The others are fine, but not as glamorous...which says a bit about the goals in general. Note that the names on Zenit's shirts are in the Latin alphabet. Every other Zenit match I've seen, they've used Cyrillic. Above is the whole penalty shootout. Apologies for it being in Russian, but they are less stringent about censoring youtube. A happy May Day to you all (especially immigrants and socialists, i guess?...and flower lovers).

Champion, pet!

2008-04-23T22:45:33Z

A wee Geordie mouse on being British! Crackin', mate!

The Weight On Your Shoulders is Breakin' Your Back

2008-04-18T02:23:21Z

Oh, Lawdy Lawdy, has it ever been awhile. I just finished a first-draft of my MA thesis, which is due tomorrow afternoon. It's nice to be able to say, "I'm revising a draft of my thesis," as opposed to, "I'm writing my thesis." I don't have much to say about the draft itself except that it has an intro, a conclusion, and a bunch of stuff in the middle that seems to make some sort of vague sense. More interesting stuff has been happening that I should probably make you aware of. As the picture above indicates, I've been going to some baseball games in recent weeks. I hit up Wrigley for Cubs vs. 'Stros on 04/04 and Twins vs. Sox at Comiskey (I refuse to call it the Cell) on the 9th. I was impressed with Comiskey...for the most part. Problem #1: if you buy tickets for the upper deck (as I did), you're not allowed to wander the concourse on the lower levels, which means you can't walk around and view the stadium from, say, the outfield. Problem #2: Sightlines are ok, but not ideal. From where we were sitting, you couldn't see the right field corner. Problem #3: Because the upper concourse is so open, the wind is free to go where it pleases. This means that on nights that are windy and cold, as the night I was there was like, are miserable. Otherwise good times are had...oh, the pretzels are stale. I guess that's Problem #4. Some minor things that I'm too tired to elaborate on, but want to point out: - I saw the film Once last weekend and thought it was fantastic. - I went to an open mic last night and played in front of people for the first time in two years. Three country songs. I don't think the audience really knew what to do. - Ryan introduced me to Yehuda Moon & The Kickstand Cyclery. I think it really only speaks to people who are really into cycling, but I think its hilarious. OK, that's it. Time to continue relaxing.

Everybody get to the back of the bus!

2008-03-21T20:32:28Z

I'm stuck at the back of a bus with the smell of bathroom-style air fresheners bombarding my senses. This bus isn't moving. It's in a parking lot near Rockford, Illinois, waiting for someone to come along and change the flat tire. This bus was supposed to get me to Minneapolis by 7, but with this flat tire on top of the increasingly foul weather, I'm not expecting to arrive any time before 10. This is more or less what happened when I tried to fly to the Cities for Christmas. Expected arrival time, 7 pm. Actual arrival time, 12 am. Ugh. I should have taken the train. You are probably also wondering how I'm able to write a blog entry while sitting on a bus. Glad you asked! By some amazing stroke of fortune, I am picking up a strong wireless signal from somewhere that doesn't require a password or money. So, since I have nothing else to do (this'll teach me to not bring books on my trips), I figured I'd write a little ditty in here.... ...um, I guess there's not that much to say. I've been so busy over the last few weeks with exams and final papers that I really haven't had the time to do much else. Well, that's false. I did participate in two fantasy baseball drafts and I did celebrate a friend's birthday last Monday, but otherwise life feels pretty monotonous. I'm actually pretty amazed that I'm not sick. My diet has been atrocious over the last few weeks. I'm looking forward to eating real food this weekend, you know, with vegetables and such. Anyway, I think this has staved off roughly 20 minutes of boredom. Who knows how much more there is ahead of me. Yeesh. Stupid buses.