The gravestones look like the typical bad taste of the nouveau riche.

I kinda liked the first one, where the sculptor tried to show the wind blowing his tie aside, revealing his little pot belly more. Those buttons on his belly are stretched tight.

I kinda liked the first one, where the sculptor tried to show the wind blowing his tie aside, revealing his little pot belly more.

Russians tend to have an artistic flair, even the gangsters.

That is why Americans play on July 4th Russian music (commemorating 1812 victory over Napoleon)

Here is "The Sacred War" song - victorious war against 3rd Reich

They don't live to be very old, it seems.

The first ones to emerge after the USSR died weren't very smart. They were all former Party "apparatchiks" that owned their position to family connections,not ability or shrewdness. That was enough under the old Soviet police state system were EVERYBODY was afraid to even question authority,never mind take a few of the shitheads down,but the second wave were a lot more sophisticated as well as brutal.

I ended up chasing one of these asshats down the street in Moscow on my first trip there. SOB ran a redlight and almost ran over me and the woman I was walking with,not to mention some other women and children. Not having ever been a Soviet subject that knew to show the proper respect to anyone in a Mercedes,I kicked his car as he went by. SOB stopped right in the intersection and bailed out of his car to come after me. Imagine his surprise when he looked up and I was coming after him. He panicked and ran right past his car while making his getaway,leaving it parked right there in the intersection with the door open.

Never did catch him.

By the time all these goobers were killed off and the actual criminals took over,they were a lot more experienced and a lot more dangerous. Street crime around the Red Square area of Moscow practically disappeared. You just didn't see any of the roaming gangs of gypsy children playing "distraction snatch and run" games with tourists because they KNEW that if the Mafiya caught them they would be killed. The second wave Mafiya pretty much took over and ran all the restaurants and bars,as well as all the prostitution,drugs,and every other scam related to tourist areas,they they took crime against foreign tourists VERY seriously. As long as you remained on Ararat or one of the other main streets around Red Square,you were golden. Get a couple of blocks away make the mistake of going into a locals bar for some "local atmosphere",and you were in deep doo-doo.

Truth to tell,I really liked almost every Russian I ever met on my two trips there. VERY friendly and helpful people who were curious about life in the west and helpful in any way they could be. What used to crack me up more than anything else was EVERY Russian I met told me "You can't trust Russians! Be very careful!" I guess this comes from growing up in the bad old days of the USSR where two or even three families lived in the same apartment and shared the 1 kitchen and 1 bathroom,and everybody wanted to inform on everyone else for the rewards of a better job,or maybe even their own apartment.

Make no mistake about it,there is no such critter as a communist government that doesn't create a police state,complete with secret police as well as secret trials.

Hell,the first time I went there they were still using old Soviet "floor clerks" that sat at a desk at the elevator and stairs on each floor,and wrote down who went to each room,what time they got there,and what time they left. Most of the priests were KBG agents,and there were people who kept lists of who went to church and how often. These always seemed to be old women,and they knew they couldn't stop and ask the tourists anything,but if it looked like you were wearing Russian clothing or they heard you speak Russian,they would be demanding your documents and asking you who you were visiting. These women were no where in sight the next time I went there.

One friend of mine was a Professor at a college in a medium-sized town that I visited on my second trip,and he told me his father had been a Major in the KBG,and had tapped his own telephone at home so he could monitor who his children were talking with and what they were talking about. That's how he got into electronics. Smuggled in magazines from Germany taught him how to build his own radio so he could hear Radio Free Europe and rock and roll. He himself later became a Signal Corps Lt in East Germany. He was also a major gun nut. He had a hardback book that was probably the Russian version of "Guns of the World",and he knew it so well when he would ask me what guns I owned and I would tell him,he would say "Oh,yes! That is on page xxx!" and flip right to it. I kept trying to get him and his wife (they were both college professors and had summers off) to come to America and visit with me so I could take him to gun ranges so could shoot all the guns he had just dreamed of shooting. He died a few years ago.Probably from drinking the vodka he made in his bathtub and sold to others.

BTW,I took several copies of The Shotgun News to Russia with me on both trips,and made sure to visit Russian gun shops and drop them off. In case you don't know,Russia and the United States are the only two nations in the world that have Constitutions guaranteeing citizens the right to keep and own guns.

Russian shaman lady "Blessing of Nature":

Considering what Poland suffered at the hands of Russia over the centuries, it's rare for a Pole to like Russian culture and Russian politics as much as you do.

What he loves is communism,so Russia to him is like Vatican City is to Catholics.

It is striking.

Considering what Poland suffered at the hands of Russia over the centuries, it's rare for a Pole to like Russian culture and Russian politics as much as you do.

I like German culture too and others as well.

Life is too short for resentments.

He never talks about Polish culture and Polish politics with the same enthusiasm as he does with Russia.

I love Witkiewicz, Gombrowicz, Galczynski and several others. They speak to my heart, especially the first one. Unfortunately they are hard to translate and not very relevant to you.

There are Polish songs I like, for example these two, but you might not. Tell me what you think:

Maria Peszek - Dog People, "we will eat sadness with large spoons" "we will go to steal peace from human hearts"

This is a political song by Jacek Kaczmarski

"Mury was the anthem of the Polish trade union Solidarno[ (Solidarity), which was instrumental in bringing about the fall of communism in Poland in the 1980s. Ironically, the last couple stanzas were rarely broadcast for being too pessimistic, though they offer a profound and ominous warning"

Where's your Chopin? Are you even Polish?

I am Polish with some admixtures (but no Russian blood).

I respect Chopin greatly, but does he not move me, I am not sure why. Bach or Wagner on other hand do move me. I know, they are German, is it treacherous according to you?

Which American composers do you like or recommend?

Which American composers do you like or recommend?

None really. I don't even consider the Gershwins to be serious composers.

Classical music is simply not native to America. We have many other kinds of music but we do not do classical well other than some decent repertory performances and an occasional star solo performer.

song starts in the second half.

I don't even consider the Gershwins to be serious composers.

Classical music is simply not native to America.

Hmm, there must be some. Perhaps some religious music?

Either way, did you look at Polish songs I posted? Peszek (pron. Peshek) makes very interesting ones, I like them a lot, but probably they are too opaque for the Western Europeans and Americans. Slavs will get her all right.

I translated lyrics specially for you.

Lick me, I'm Polish,
or if you prefer,
you can salt me,
or crumple.

Lick me, I'm Polish,
or if you prefer,
you can salt me,
or crumple.

I don't know, I'm looking
at various doors I knock.
Knock knock, fuck fuck
fuck you, how do you do?

I am walking around 
knock and huff,
huff and fuck

(the whole repeated)

Here it comes:

It's boring. You should have saved your keystrokes.

How do you explain million plus YT views in a much smaller country? You just don't understand music, cultural context and nuances. You wanted Polish stuff and now you are whining. Russian music is more universal and more forceful, easier to get at least a part of it for you, maybe 20% max I guess.

You said: "Classical music is simply not native to America." Really, how is it possible?

BTW, translating such text is a hard work, it is not just keystrokes.

You said: "Classical music is simply not native to America." Really, how is it possible?

I was correct too. American composers simply do not have the intellectual heft of the old European masters. They lack their own voice and they always have.

America has plenty of music styles but almost nothing in the classical genre.

You're entirely off-topic on your own thread. Did you just want some meandering chit-chat thread for you to spew your usual anti-Western bile?

You didn't ever have anything to say about the graves of Russian mafia dons to begin with, it seems.

Knock knock, fuck fuck
fuck you Mr Tooconservative, how do you do?

Knock knock, fuck fuck
fuck you Mr Tooconservative, how do you do?

Boring derivative music lifted from bad club music in the Nineties, infantile lyrics whose only appeal is vulgarity, and an ugly chick with a very limited voice.

Grovel over it all you want. We all have your measure now.

You didn't ever have anything to say about the graves of Russian mafia dons to begin with, it seems.

You really seem to be flatfooted and tone deaf. Do you want me to explain the esthetics of those gravestones?

OK, here you have old traditional American gravestone to compare:

You see, I appreciate Puritan austere simplicity of it. But indeed in such severe soil classic music might have problems with sprouting. Or fairy tales.

an ugly chick with a very limited voice.

You must be very pretty with voice like Pavarotti.

Peszek has millions of fans, classic music people including.