There are 1300 bands in town, and you will be listening to some live music. Too broke to buy badges? Not going to 6th street? Oh, that’s all right. We’ll just wait for you at the place where you get your morning coffee. That neighborhood bar? Already there. Not planning to leave your house? That’s just fine, you naïve motherfucker. You haven’t sound-proofed your windows, and we’ll get you one way or another.

And if you don’t like the three-chord repertoire of the whiny alternative band playing down the street, you best go and get yourself on a guest list at a place that has a more discriminating taste in music. All your ears are belong to us. Resistance is futile. You will find a show you like or bleed out your ears while trying.

Sincerely,
South By

Q. You’re gonna love this: Sciencedaily.com has an article stating, “Worker bees, wasps, and ants are often considered neuter. But in many species they are females with ovaries, who although unable to mate, can lay unfertilized eggs which turn into males if reared. For some species, such as bumble bees, this is the source of many of the males in the species. But in others, like the honeybee, workers “police” each other — killing eggs laid by workers or confronting egg-laying workers.” You have opened a Pandora’s box. Although what just occurred to me is that this article, or even just that paragraph, could have been the genesis for a very interesting movie about bees.
Raymond Ogilvie, Philadelphia

A. What I have learned from this whole “Bee Movie” discussion is that bees have very confused and sad sex lives, and are much in need of intelligent design.

From Русский Журнал [RU] in a review of a Russian bookfare, my translation:

That [novel] which is now called a mystery is usually a mix of thriller, social commentary drama and elements of fantasy. Moreover, readers expect exactly this from a mystery. The famed “Menippean satire,” a type of dramedy that thirty years ago existed only in Master and Margarita and Altoist Danilov, seems to be becoming hegemonic.

In general, an average contemporary anthology would resemble some Afghan souvenir–a traditional rug, on which, along with ethnic motiffs, are weaved the conditionally-realistic automatic rifles and helicopters with humanitarian aid.

Over at Post Road, Brock Clark had written a review that had compelled me to get my butt over to the nearest bookstore without stopping for coffee or passing go.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a great, great novel, the kind of novel you wish you’d written, the kind of novel that makes other superficially similar novels seem bloated, lumbering, and besides the point…. Briefly (and it is a brief novel: 137 pages), it is about Miss Jean Brodie…who constantly talks about being in her “prime,” who says the girls are (or could be) the “crème de la crème,” who reminds them there “needs must be a leaven in the lump,” and, finally, is reduced to repeatedly asking the girls (as adults) which one them of them “betrayed” her…

And I haven’t even talked about the prose yet, which is hilarious, biting, lovely, usually at the same time. How can you not love a character like Sandy who, when an aged Miss Jean Brodie moans, “I am past my prime,” reassures her that, “It was a good prime”? How could you not love abook in which “The evening paper rattle-snaked its way through the letter boxand there was suddenly a six-o’clock feeling in the house”? How could you not love a novelist who gives her characters only a handful of ways to talk about the world, and have that be more than enough? How could anyone not love such a book? It’s enough to make you hate the people you don’t, enough to make a man forget, momentarily, his broken pinky.

Lastly, but not leastly, the comics over at the Perry Bible Fellowship are delicious. Think Far Side.

In any case, it made me miss the days of business cards to call my own. You know, lunch giveaway lotteries at the corner deli. That seemingly charming habit that I’d never acquired of writing something funny on the back. Handing over a card instead of having to spend ten minutes spelling my name. I’ve since tried saying “Anastasia, spelled like the Russian princess,” but for some incredible reason, I get stares.

Well, I’m now the proud orderer of calling cards. I’ll let you know how the quality works out, but in the meantime, here’s a calling card for one person who was in no need of any:

Yuriy Vladimirovich Andropov

General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Chairman of the Presidium of Chief Soviet of the USSR

No contact info specified. I guess back then everyone knew how to find the Kremlin.

Part of the Samantha Smith Collection at the Maine Library.

Someone somewhere ought to design some cards for persons in no need of introductions, whether their titles be real or aspirational.

Tangent: chances of finding a stylish design decrease with the addition of the term “classy” to google image search.

“Needless to say, dreams and reality are different things,” Project Director Svetlana Krechetova says. “But this distinct ‘joie de vivre’ group, which has a different array of value priorities (focusing on family values and shared joy)², is an unmistakable indication that life is changing for the better³, that society is becoming more open. Although from a sociologist’s perspective, no revolutionary changes have occurred in the Russian hinterland. I would put it this way: The past few years have been marked by a further stabilization of stability.⁴“

1 Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of Moscow News’ political affiliation.

2 Note the violation of a cardinal rule of writing dialogue in fiction: no one ever speaks in parentheses. Unless this interview was being carried out over email, I really doubt this is the unedited version of Krechetova’s quote.

3 “Life is getting better, life is getting merrier.” Oh, how we love thee, old slogan of Stalinism!
Thank you, Comrade Putin, for our happy childhood… (more…)