This is Truth.

Novy Arbat, 5pm and 5am

The only place in the city where I could find any televised American sports in the city was at the carefully named “SPORT LAND” on Novy Arbat, though unless you're like most Americans and you consider poker a sport, you would probably consider "SPORT LAND" a casino, omitting the poorly-crafted life-sized clay-molded statue of an anonymous circa-1992 New York Giant standing lonely and pathetically at the door worthy enough to characterize an entire venue. I do not.



I think of the goon at the door with the metal detector, the poorly hidden security doors on either side of the metal detectors, and the typically face-could-melt-glaciers-in-February welcome of the ladies behind the reception desk to be rather indicative of a casino. That and the slots. And one half of the place was blackjack tables patroned by a dozen Elitny Russian Mafia types.

Anyway, I visited the place earlier to ask if they had the game, as suggested in a local newspaper. The first woman didn’t speak any English and immediately found someone who did, who showed me the schedule of games. I was sincerely hoping to get a rebroadcasting, and that this was a true expat-catering locale. If you can watch test cricket at several locations around Boston, you should be able to watch the first football game of the year in a comfortable setting, I reasoned. This is not Boston.

Opening night of the greatest sport on Earth was to be broadcast once, at 5am.

5am. What is Moscow like at 5am? Deserted. And a fine place to sally a tank battalion.

I wish I had the opportunity to experience Leninsky Praspekt in the old days, when no one had cars and the city’s stupendously wide avenues were this barren all the time. You can almost see the convoys rallying to Red Square for a parade. Victory day is going to be phenomenal. (Celebration for Russia's defeat of Germany in WWII, or, as it is known here, The Great Patriotic War (Re: Stalin) were famous for their parades of military hardware and goose stepping doughboys, and were reintroduced last year by President Putin, to the discomfort of President Bush, who as we all know can see his soul.)

Novy Arbat, (New Arbat) is the replacement for the Arbat, which was the major western route into the city. When the Napolean and the invading Frogs (together with the Austrians, Prussian, German allies, Hungarians, and everyone else who hated the Russians in Europe, which was nearly everyone) forced the Russkies to retreat through Moscow in 1812, they had to squeeze the Tsar’s entire army down a 35-foot wide street towards the Kremlin. Stalin, not wanting to repeat that clusterfuck, decided to plow over a dozen old neighborhoods to build the 100-foot-wide Novy Arbat.



So what was once the grand palisade to the Hero City of Utopian Socialism is now entirely lined on the southern side with tacky casinos in the lower floors of rusty old identical and anonymous Soviet apartment complexes. When I came by to case the place on Thursday afternoon, there was a marching band on the opposite side of the street playing classic Russian marches to throngs of listeners for some reason. Meanwhile, on the casino side, the venues were pumping out a cacophony of Sher-like Euro-pop vomit, in total indifference to the quality live performance across the way. The unrelenting wierdness of this place, I fear, may be all thats keeping me from passionately hating it.

Luckily, as noted, the wierdness is unrelenting. As I type, I’ve had the TV on in the background, and I am just now noticing that channel 3 (which I had believed to be the official state channel) is currently playing some movie from the 60s, in Russian, which is also subtitled (unnecessarily) in Russian. Try to decode this one, Holmes. Some standard bearded and suspendered Russian fellows are interacting with some Native American rain-dancer guy who is wearing something resembling an animal hide sports bra, as well as well as some Mongol looking guys who are also dressed like American Indians, and everyone speaks perfect Russian, and now the sports-bra guy is putting on a ridiculous ivory-tooth looking thing adorned hat, and now the Indians are floating a lamb out into a river on a log raft, and now the rain dancer guy is contorting, and now they’re playing some sweet drum ‘n bass music overlain with psycadelic syncopatic female screaming. And now the rainman is spinning around on the ground, and now the lamb appears to be spinning in the water in unison with him. And now the Russian guys have fired a hand gun, frightening the savages. And now it appears that the mountain on which this has been taking place is actually a volcano, even though this at first appeared to be Siberia, and everyone is melting. Fade out. Fade in. Now the rainman is approaching a naked savage girl menacingly, and now he’s touching her skin and seemingly pretending to grab parts of it off of her in an awkward and abrupt manner, and altogether asexually. Now he’s collecting dirt. Cue psychedelic drum ‘n bass now featuring laughable high pitched flutes. Girl is just standing there. Switch to Russians playing folk music and whistling. Switch back to the girl, who seems to be fine, and is now serving soup to the Russians. Savages sneaking up on sleeping Russians. Russkies get captured and tied. Though the savages leave one of the Russkies' knives lying on a rock right next to them, so they escape easily. Cue drum ‘n base for chase scene. No, the Russkies are recaptured. Rainman about to execute the Russkies, but one of the Mongol looking savages appears to have arrowed Rainman from behind. Russkie-Mongol banter. Cue poorly recorded classical music, Siberian montage. Russkies say their goodbyes, leader gets the savage girl, whom, gladly, he won’t even have to teach Russian.

Shit. Its not over. Another savage shoots the most pathetic of the Russian guys in the back, then runs off, is confronted by one of the Russians, who shoots him with a pistol, after the savage begs for his life. Alright, now the three living Russians appear to be on a mountain higher than any in Russia, it appears to be Himalayan. One of them abruptly slips into a crevasse. Second dies of exposure. Now the third appears to be walking across the North Pole, on a completely flat tundra. Is about to die of exposure, lying on the ground. Shoots two wolves who are about to eat him, even though he can’t walk. Should have used those on himself. Better than freezing to death, or being eaten alive. No wait, shots heard by passing Inuits, who wheel their reindeer sleigh around and rescue him. Fade out. The end.

I’m failing to realize the allegorical meaning of all this. My real question is why Brezhnev’s unitbots in the Ministry of Propaganda thought this was in anyway forwarding the cause of National Bolshevism. I don’t know what the point was in general. I don’t feel like defending the Motherland from the fascist-capitalist pigs at all. The Mongols introduced gunpowder which they brought from China to the Russians in the 14th fricking century.

So, the wierdness continues, unrelenting.

Anyway I walked out to Leninsky and hailed a gypsy, the ride took about 10 minutes, about 40 minutes less than usual, getting me there seriously early. I figured this wouldn’t be all bad, as it would guarantee me a better seat, which is probably what the other 11 people thought who were already there and nearest the big screen, who would turn out to be the only other people for the entire game.

The broadcast was a feed from Britain-based SkyTV, which must own the rights to at least 2 NFL games per week for Britain and whoever else in Europe wants to buy in on the feed. This is how I was delegated to watching the NFL in London, and the same scrawny white British bloke was the SkyTV in-studio analyst. “Tom Brady made some capital deliveries in that half, coming out on short legs without the strong horse in the stable, he was top shelf on this night.” Brilliant.

Otherwise, the waitresses were a bit too-attentive, visiting every few minutes to say something I didn’t understand. And, it was pricy – entry was 300RR (about $10.80) which bought you chips which you could exchange for food, drinks and gambling. When a bottle of water is $3, that flies. This also would mean that I’m not going to get to see much of the Pats, besides the fact that their start times are often midnight-5am, they will only be the feed into SPORT LAND if the Limeys choose them for their ‘game of the week.’ Happily, the Brits know little more about American football than the fact that the Pats have been the best team, and that New York probably has a team, maybe two. Thus, three of the Pats first five games are already purchased by Sky.

Around all of those Patriots and Giants games was a bunch of inexplicable garbage games. Teams from cities where the majority of the population have never left the country should be banned from international broadcast. That means no Tampa Bay v. Carolina games. And absolutely nothing from Texas. Whilst I was sitting there trying to stretch my dinner rolls through the entire first quarter, I noticed that the other screens (Sky2, I believe) were featuring WBNA semifinal playoff action. No, no one watches it here, either.

Casinos depress me. Strip clubs do too, though I've never been to one, I just know that they would. Its not the vice, its the high incidence of pointless despiration of the staff and clientel. Its goons are dressed up in three-pieces to cover for the fact that they are goons, and no one ever wants them around for any reason. At about 6:25 am the obligatory Babushka army emerged from the catacombs in their maroon aprons and vaccum cleaners. Theres no immigrant labor army here, only old ladies who can't live on their cashed-out Soviet retirement pensions. I've never seen anyone honestly having fun at a casino. It makes me think that there are many people who believe there is nothing better in life. That is depressing. Especially in the owner/casino manager and his religous amorality. Everyone knows that all of the figures are in his favor, and no one cares. Short of all the laws of mathematics, if anyone plays, he gets paid. Its fatalistic. And no one there cares.

I was also surprised at the total lack of football fans out to watch the first game of the season. I don't understand why - who doesn’t want to go to a casino in their work clothes at 5am to watch a video feed of a football game and then leave midway through the 4th quarter to walk to the train station, switch lines twice, be dropped 3 km from your house and then run with your briefcase and dress shoes down 7 blocks to get in before the first bell? Me. Ever again.

posted by Майлз Г. Смит @ 12:25 AM