Saty-Rai-con

I’m trying to shake the winter doldrums by looking at photos from Rai, which takes it back. Waaaay back. Pagan, naked, super-camp — humankind hasn’t partied this degenerately since 99 AD.


Fellini couldn’t make this shit up. Drenched with sexual juices, rolling in glitter, Rai is a terrifying glimpse into the ancient depravity that exists in each and every one of us, if we can just get past face control.


Somewhere between heaven and hell, this Rai, although last weekend’s inclusion of Boy George tipped the scales towards the latter. Who better to take part in the pre-Christian orgiastic fury than a man recently charged with false imprisonment of a male hustler. If Rai could get R. Kelly up in there, it would be quite an interesting afternoon.

Doesn’t promoter Andreas look like a fun-size Caligula? Doesn’t he just?

Close the window! Go back to from whence you came! Once you realize there’s a place on earth you can indulge every perverse fantasy, including bug-eye sunglasses, you can never feel pleasure again!


Enough. I’m nauseous of boobs and lasers.

Photos: geometria.ru

I Less Than Three DJ Anton Ms

In the tradition of MDBIT half-heartedly stalking bizarrely coiffed fashion queens, let me introduce DJ Anton M, who is certainly no Danila, but turns up on this website so often I am proud to finally get an ID on him.


Lurking in the background of every high-fashion event, Anton M stands out for his aggressively asymmetric bangs, ambiguous sexuality and little Asian dudeness.

Laying down the beats at Solyanka

Laying down the beats at a children’s furniture exhibit opening

This is a man who has spun everywhere from East Moscow to Ukraine, from the opening of TopShop in Yevropeisky Mall to some party at Respublica bookstore. Named Harper Bazaar Russia’s “Most Fashionable DJ in Moscow,” still Anton maintains, “I’m not a DJ, I just play music my friends like.”

Photos: anton.m.pdj.ru, geometria

Suck an Egg! MDBIT in MT

Some at the Moscow Times are, like me, fascinated by the dizzying highs of Moscow at play. The holiday season brings in a special wave of short bus-riding elitny ridiculousness: corporate parties. Since it's already mid-December, people have left for the holidays and no one is paying attention to what's going in the paper anyway, I was able to make my debut as an authoritative nightlife anthropologist correspondent.

Na, kartoshka:

"Companies skimp on health benefits, toilet paper and coffee creamer for an entire year for the ultimate holiday blow-out," nightlife blogger Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears, or MDBIT, said in an e-mail interview. She declined to give her real name because she said a corporation owns her and could easily withhold her lunchtime blogging privileges.

Companies are also willing to pay top dollar to bring a famous face to a party. "They don't do much more besides smile confusedly and pose for photo ops," the nightlife blogger, MDBIT, said in e-mailed comments.

"Remember Gwyneth Paltrow? Academy Award-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow? Martini paid to have her in a cage at one of its parties" MDBIT wrote. "If Moscow history has taught us anything, it's that anyone can be bought."

"The presence of a celebrity validates the affair under the principle that if you throw enough money at something, it becomes truth," MDBIT wrote. "Also, it's a middle finger to the rest of civilization: 'We OWN you, bitches!'"

For the record, it was a Facebook, not email, interview, but the AP style guide doesn’t yet accommodate that medium.

The big news of this season is that Oleg Deripaska rented Rihanna for a Russian Aluminum party, and invited fellow brazillionaire Roman Abramovich. Actually, Tvoi Den put it better: “Deripaska Gives Black Woman as Present to Abramovich for $500,000.” Ah, oligarch love.

All for you, Roma: Rihanna performs at Club XIII

Back on earth, corporate parties are less about human trafficking, more about scamming halyava (free shit), especially alcohol. I am told it is the case with corporate parties the world over, but for reals, everyone at my corporate party was dry-hump-the-secretary, put-on-an-afro-and-pull-a-nylon-over-your-head-“Look-I’m-black”-dance drunk.

Here are some poor Russian’s corporate party photos, because I didn't take any of my own. But it looked pretty much the same, down to Igor filming it all for Monday morning retribution.

Photos: Tden.ru, picasaweb.google.com/Filimonenkow

Fashism

Youth brigade Nashi held a fashion show by Red Square to drum up interest in the Putin 4-Eva movement. After all, nothing says slavish devotion like stripping down to your panties in sub-zero weather.

Vova, my crotch is with you. The dark gas elf is too short to lead!

Thanks to Scraps of Moscow for the tip-sky.

Photos: goblin-gaga.livejournal.com, yagoda-kalina.livejournal.com

Mittens Are for Estonians

Rasha is effin’ cold. Plus, there are plenty of other things to worry about (maintaining nation’s birthrate, getting a table at Rai, not being eaten by bears.) For these reasons, little sway is given to the concerns of Western animal rights activists.


The annual “Fire & Ice” fashion event shows “what’s up” in the world of fur and leather. I’m posting photos from last year’s event because they’re much more fantastische. Also because I remembered seeing them back then and feeling a peculiar swell of emotion then ultimately resulted in the creation of this blog.

Nothing comes between me and my mink flapper dress.

Screw You, PETA.

Of course, you have to come to “Ice & Fire” swinging your biggest fur accessories.


But if you really want to know what captured my heart, and sent me down the path to Moscow nightlife anthropology blogging, it was the fellow above. He had me at jewel-encrusted eye-patch.

Photos: elite.ru

Burnt by the Sun and City

I’m scabbing my own strike. If there’s one person out there who wants to know about Moscow’s fabulously retarded nightlife, then I guess that’s enough. Especially since I found a crop of party photos that need to be released into the wild: “Sun and City” at club Opera.


Just when you start posting things like “Moscow is becoming cool” and new oligarch club The MOST uses its “no skanks” policy as a selling point, something happens to make you realize it was all smoke and mirrors. Moscow is still Mars, Moscow is still Hell, Moscow still wears sunglasses at night.

Opera, fashioned as elitny hip hop megaclub, is in itself inherently ridiculous, but coupled with “Sun and City,” it provided a lens of uniquely fabulous retardedness through which to view the city. Sun and City is a poplar solarium. Hell, I’ve been there. Tanning is something dangerous for your health you have to do in Moscow to fit in, like driving without a seatbelt and having unprotected sex.


But indoor sunglasses? Let me just jump in my spaceship.


Note use of blackface and black people as promo for a solarium.

That’s really tan!

The remainder of the photo series is just called, "When You Were Leaving The House Tonight, Girl, Someone Lied to You.”

Girl.

Someone.

Lied.

To YOU!

Opera, 6 Trekhgorny Val., Metro: Barrikadnaya, Tel. 205-9822

Photos: mainpeople.ru

A-Rai-yan Nation

Something in the water at Rai? It's starting to resemble "Village of the Damned," or perhaps Hitler's grooviest vision of the future. These photos are from last weekend's Bob Sinclair concert, where your corny endormorphic girlfriend and her friend were playing Olsen Twins.


In other news, I'm going on strike until people start posting more comments. I have a Statcounter; I know I'm not just writing this for myself. Russia, United Arab Emirates, Korea, Davis — you take and you take and you take of the MDBIT and you gives nothing back. But, no one rides for free. Look, I don't make any money off this thing. All I want is attention. And expensive panties.

For My Sisterz

On November 23, the hallowed Altai marble halls of Ritz Carlton were tarnished by the ass-ugly spring/summer 2008 collection by Via delle Perle, an Italian fashion house. Allegedly an Italian fashion house, as I have a very, very hard time swallowing that this clothing did not originate from somewhere in the post-Soviet bloc. Cut-off tops circa 1991, leopard print bodysuits and neon baseball caps — at very least VDP vacationed in Sochi for inspiration.

(MDBIT Fun Fact: The singer's name is Anesthezia.)

Even the MC looks like he stepped out of Color Me Bad video. However, this is all at odds with dominant critical theory on Russian fashion. Fellow social anthropologist and RUSSIA! magazine contributor Julia Ioffe recently told Gawker:

“They've only had about 16 years to catch up to us, so they went through all these phases really fast. Like, two years of disco, two years of cokehead 80's ... they're just starting to get the appeal of subtlety.”

According to her estimations, Moscow’s now at 1999. Wrong! Girlfriend, we are still in the roaring “I’m NOT a Common Girl” attitude baby tee early '90s.


Russian girls. Ah, Russian girls. They are the stare that hangs on too long, the cup of tea with too much sugar. But to be fair, its hard to stand out, so you kinda have to dress like a peacock. By some cruel hiccup of fate, there are 8 of these:























For every one of these:

In the kingdom of the blind, the lumpy, pasty dude is king.

Ritz-Carlton Moscow, 3 Tverskaya Ul., Metro: Okhotny Ryad, Tel. 225 8888

Photos: Elite.ru, adensya.ru