Sunday, October 25, 2009

Running, Part II

While sometimes I engage myself in half-baked Lovecraftian plotlines involving a discolored brick while running, I do submit to the endless temptation of MTV Russia.

Which usually involves a lot of old Britney Spears and Beyonce videos, for some reason. Really; just from running after work outs, I think I can reproduce the “Oops I Did it Again” dance.

Ok, maybe not yet. But I’ve been practicing.

Every so often my favorite treadmill, Number Three from the Left (or Nutella for short), is occupied. Then I am a sad panda, and use a different machine. From this machine I can not see Beyonce or Britney or the Ancient One from one of the Deep Places.

Instead, I see the news. [this must be pronounced out of one corner of the mouth, like the sound of distaste ‘ew,’ just sandwiched between an ‘n’ and ‘s’]

Once I saw the n- ewwww – s of some French protests going on in Paris. I’m trying very hard to self-censor any inappropriate comment about socialism and France and the amount of official holidays and short work weeks, but such is hard. Instead of getting myself into trouble, let me skip the exposition and delve straight into description: riot police stand in a vague ring in the corners of a huge room or courtyard, it’s hard to tell. A bonfire flares in the cameraman’s face, and one of the Parisians throws paraphernalia into it. Others, all around him, laugh hysterically, or wave at the camera.

laugh hysterically, or wave at the camera.

Wait. What? Where is the angry mob? I was told there would be an angry mob!

I think that rioting has become so commonplace in Paris that it’s essentially subverted their equivalent of what, in America, is a personal day. [In Soviet Russia job work YOU.] Pierre Lepieux has a headache, can’t concentrate, so he walks away from his desk. Sofie and Jean-Paul notice, misinterpret (or perhaps interpret correctly?) and follow suit. Then the whole company’s left. And then the bonfire’s lit.

I wonder what the person next to me thought, watching such news. Probably, with the bonfire lit, they said: “Yes, this is bonfire, good, yes. And where is guitarist to play Vysotsky?”

No comments: