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