The Ballast

The Ballast is a bad-ass website. I'm blogging for it now. Twice a month. My column is called David Knows What's Up. Truth in advertising.

Russians

The neighborhood where I grew up was full of Russian immigrants. Our neighbors were Russian. They were okay. They paid me twenty bucks to cut their lawn once. Their twenty-something daughter used to sunbathe in the backyard.

The Russian kids in elementary school were nice enough. I can't say I paid much attention to them. But there were two things: They were wizzes at math. I wasn't. So there was a resentment/inferiority thing going on. Also, there was a Russian kid named Abraham who liked to show his pecker. In grade four, a retarded child, who I think was Russian, pissed on me and my friends when we playing poker for pennies in the bathroom at lunchtime. I got scolded for calling him a 'retard.' And I remember a Russian girl telling me a joke that involved people doing it doggy style. I didn't know what that meant. I don't think she did either. I guess that's four things.

High school was where the real issues with Russians began. Russian kids had a terrible social reputation. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the tight skirts and heavy makeup on the girls and black leather jackets and warm-up pants on the guys. And the Russian kids that dressed normally were still really good at math. I used to have to cheat the fuck out of tests just to get a C. My best cheat was when I got to school early to put a cheat sheet in the recycling bin of the math room -- knowing the janitors cleaned those bins out only at the end of the day. When it was test time that afternoon, I asked the teacher if I could get a piece of scrap paper to write on. He, a middle-aged Korean man with the unfortunate name of Dick Poon, said sure. Bingo bango. My cheat sheet was still in the bin. I don't think Kiril and Vlad Russianovsky had to resort to shit like that.

"You're such a Russian" was a common insult at my school. Admitting to Russian heritage was also a no-no. Was the animosity due to lingering cold war vibes? The gaudy, flashy materialism? The ugliness of the language? (French and Italian aren't staying up late worrying about the lyrical qualities of all that szjooszhy baboozhy.)

I once beat a Russian kid at one-on-one basketball and he kicked me in the stomach.

I heard some pretty wild stories about Russian kids at my school. Most of them were told to me by this one Russian kid two grades above me. He had the best stories. He told me that a Russian gang had staged a fatal car accident at the corner of Finch and Bathurst. He told me about banging girls in motels. He explained to me that it was a seriously bad news for a Russian dude to admit to munching on the muffin*. It was a sign of weakness or something -- and an offense punishable by a stab in the ass. That's not a metaphor. If Russian guys knew that one of their own didn't mind tongue-flipping furburgers*, he put himself at risk of being stabbed in the butt, which strikes me only now as somewhat homoerotic.

Also, the woman my biological father re-married is Russian and I'm not much of a fan. Can someone explain to me the fashion sense of certain Russian women? Why is it desirable to look like an extra from a direct-to-video Miami Vice rip-off? And fur? Come on.

I like the short stories of Nikolai Gogol and both of Gary Shteyngart's novels.

I think my great-grandparents on my mother's side came from Russia, but I haven't really looked into it. I don't think I will.

[* These are terms I distinctly remember him using.]

Dog Years

My dog Rosie died about a month ago. Today is the first of a weekly series of posts inspired by that event. I promise they won't be sappy. Shit will feature in at least a few of them.

Below is a picture of the dog, so I don't have to waste time describing what she looked like.

In Which I Struggle with a Simple Task, Then Engage in Low-Level Deceit

For some reason or another, I have a hard time figuring out how to work my office's postage machine. Even though there are step-by-step instructions taped to the wall, I always mess up. Most of the time, I end up asking the office manager for help. She prints out stamps no problem. Without complaining or calling me stupid, she is kind enough to assist me in making this simple piece of machinery function properly. It's embarrassing.

This afternoon, I went to get some postage for a small envelope I had to mail. The office manager was sitting nearby. I told her I was determined to not have to ask her for help. I made sure to read the instructions very carefully. I punched in all the right codes. The machine started to whir. "Printing postage" read the display screen. Success! "Aren't you proud of me?" I said to the office manager. "It turns out I'm not an idiot!"

I accidentally printed out a stamp for $10.35. The office manager doesn't know.

Mind-thoughts of a Manatee

Hellz yeah, bro. Water's warm, mangrove leaves are tasty, lady sea cows are looking fi---aaah! [Motor boat zooms by, its propeller cuts the manatee's back] Holy mortar forker that hurt! Son of a bitch! Not cool, boat bro. Not effing cool! If this gets infected I am going to be P effing O'd. MAN!

Rock Myths

Did you ever get the sense that beneath all you believe, deep down inside of what you think you know, there's a crevice, a crack, a lie? If so, you might like this package about rock myths that I helped out with! Check it out! Weehoo!


Aleister Crowley Pictures

Metallica

I saw them play last night for the first time. The show was at Madison Square Garden. There were lots of fireballs and lasers. The friend who I was with said that Metallica was a case where the best and most popular were the same thing. I.e., Metallica is the best metal band; they are also the most popular metal band. It would be nice if things always worked out that way.

Some other thoughts and observations from the show:

1. The guy sitting beside me told me he was working on a documentary about Lemmy from Motorhead. It's called "Lemmy." Also, he estimated that Lemmy has slept with upwards of 1000 women. He said that if you consider Lemmy's age, 63, and occupation, rock star, that total wasn't particularly impressive. Perhaps not -- if Wilt Chamberlain is the standard.

2. Kirk Hammett is balding humorously.

3. At the end of the show, the band's roadies threw a dozen or so black balloons into the crowd. Within five minutes, the balloons had been taken and deflated by audience members who wanted them as a souvenir. The lesson, I think, is that balloons, even when painted black, are not metal. And people are cheap.

4. The kids from Long Island who sat behind me asked me both if I had weed and if I could buy them beers.

5. People from Long Island like Metallica.

6. There are lots of parts of lots of Metallica songs that are sort of pussy. Those are often my favorite parts.

7. It almost doesn't matter what band it is -- when 20, 000 people are all in the same room, singing the same song, it feels great.

8. For the encore, the band played the Misfits' "Last Caress."

9. Then they played "Trapped Under Ice." That's a song about being trapped under ice. My friend had some interesting questions: Why is the protagonist under ice? How did he get there? Is no one around to help him?

10. Metallica kicks ass.

Montreal

Right now I'm in the middle of reading Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, which is set, for the most part, in Montreal.

The book is jurgling my nurgles. It makes me want to visit the city. I was only there once, for about four hours in 1994. My sixth grade class was taking a Greyhound trip from Toronto to Quebec City and we stopped in Montreal for dinner at a place called Le Biftheque. That restaurant was one of a chain of low-end Quebecois steakhouses. I remember enjoying the bread.

That whole trip blew. I hadn't even wanted to go in the first place. I was the only one out of 50 or so students who'd opted out. But then the French teacher and my homeroom teacher and the principal had this big intervention. They took me aside and tried to figure out what the problem was. God forbid I would rather stay home for a couple days and play Street Fighter 2 than be forced to share a bunk with a kid who I won't embarrass by naming -- maybe he's changed, but back then he picked his scabs and played with himself constantly. (Later in the year, I was part of a gang that beat him up as retaliation for kicking our asthmatic friend in the stomach. I didn't do much beating. I held him in a headlock for a minute while other kids got in body shots.)

Anyhoo, my gristly hour at Le Biftheque didn't give me much of a feel for Montreal. From other people, I've heard that the city has a lot of strip clubs and bars. I know for a fact that the bagels there are skinnier and sweeter than in other places.

Maybe I'll just stick to the book.