Wet Hot Russian Summer

You could say that summer culture festival Afisha Picnic, hosted by hipster semimonthly Afisha last weekend at Kolomenskoe Park, is like Woodstock, minus the booze, counterculture, drugs, public sex acts, rock & roll, social harmony, hope or fun. That is, it's muddy and tickets are free. Though in the spirit of not wanting to poop on everything that Moscow does, you could also say that Afisha Picnic turned out nicely for some people, like the American guy who made 11,000 rubles selling his retired club clothing (vintage!). But go back to that first point to understand why it was a doomed from the get-go: no booze. Alcohol was forsaken, spurned, cast by the wayside.

Fields of Pills: You lie, Afisha!

But maybe sun could have saved it. Had it been like Victory Day or City Day, the Picnic could have been a lot more fun. There was a lot of promise: lawn games, an old Soviet arcade, cardboard village, food stands, live musical acts, a special little pit for the Nu Ravers, take a blanket and spread out on the lawn with the kids and a refreshing non-alcoholic beverage. But the Air Force wasn't seeding any clouds for a bunch of hippies. The result — 30,000 soggy, sober, shifty people.


Or drugs. There weren't any, despite the flier promising rolling fields of pills. This guy had the right idea, he brought his own stash, then took off into his own world to the envy of all around. Once, candy-flipping, I grasped for a second how trance music, shamanism, string theory, singular consciousness, lucid dreaming and the objective experience of DMT where everyone sees aliens who tell them to save the planet, are all interrelated. Then I lost it.

Happiness is a Wet Hill.

Idle Conversation groupie shirts: "I Want to be Intimate with (promoter) Dima Loginov" "Be Sweet to Me Danila Polyakov," etc.

Nu Ravers confined to their own ecstatic little pit. The way it should be!

Photos: 44110.com, lookatme.ru

Firecrotch Spit Paralyze

MDBIT has truly arrived! We were put in the Guardian's inaugural Top Ten Travel blogs, which is a weekly ranking, by the paper's official Travel blogger, of other blogs. Kind of masturbatory of the whole blogosphere. Here's what he said:

In a world of spies, diplomatic wrangles and general pseudo-cold war skulduggery, it's nice to find something to do with Russia that's a bit of fun. MDBIT is a quite sexy-looking guide to nightlife and cool stuff in Moscow.

If you find a deep spiritual malaise sexy, be my guest. Note: it's listed after the jump, and quite hard to find, which may be why the Guard only accounted for 5% of MDBIT hits last week. No the largest share (44.3%) were poor souls who stumbled in from Google searching for something else, usually whores.

Top Ten Google Searches of July 22-28 (That Did Not Involve Whores)

1. Moscow is Not Swayed By Tears. Nice try! You had this vague idea in your head that the city hates crying, and it paid off.
2. How to Get Drunk on the Relative Cheap without Drinking Antifreeze. Hey that's my line! I wrote that a month ago. Luke Harding? Say it ain't so.
   
3. How to Cut Costs Running a Nightclub in Moscow. House it in a fort?
   
4. Black Star Timati's Girlfriend. I wouldn't say we're dating yet.
5. Moscow Best Bars on Wednesday. It's kind of a black hole.
6. Osen Moscou Face Control. Too late, my French or possibly Catalan friend. Osen has been closed for a couple years now.
7. Raccoon Spit Paralyze. Why am I No. 2 on the search for this? I mean, only No. 2.
8. Music From Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears. i feel bad for all the first year Russian students looking for stuff about the Soviet classic and instead coming face to face with Danila Polyakov's firecrotch.
   
9. Danila Polyakov Firecrotch. Sir, you're a freak.
10. Skinny Jeans with Codpiece. I am definitely not in the first handful of pages for this one, which meant that someone rifled through a lot of codpieces.