Propoganda

I call her Cabbage. Sometimes Cabby for short. Her real name is Alexandra Kapustina. Kapustina translates into cabbage. In truth, she is anything but. Cabbage is a bright, lovely lawyer who works upstairs. But I can't help but feel at least partly responsible for her daily dose of misery. As the person responsible for managing the music clearances needed for the movie, Cabby/Cabbage/Alexandra/Sasha has the bad luck of having to chase me down for updates on the revolving door of music being used. I can almost always identity the clonk-clonk-clonk of Sasha's heels pounding across the office outside until finally her lawerly glower chills my room.

I don't enjoy breaking anyone's heart, least of all pretty girls. But when I have to tell Sasha that, yes, we have changed the music in the Lada scene, well, it's tough. It's tough.

In spite of my abuses of Shasha's good nature and robust humor, Cabbage saw fit to invite me out with her and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend's name is -- well, I'll give you a hint. It's Pasha. Actually, it's Pavel. Which, essentially, is Paul. But since everything gets a diminutive around here it's Pasha. Pasha is an actor. But he has ambitions to direct. He starred as the Jack character in the Russian version of Three's Company. Pair that with the Russian version of Married With Children and you've got a one-two punch of American cultural import.


Cabbage and I left work and descended into the Metro at 1604 Goda, object; a place which name I can't remember on a street I didn't know. However, apparently this joint is Apartment 44's progeny, being owned and operated by the same outfit. Pasha/Pavel would meet us there. And there was a rumor that the wily, ever-elusive Julia Klimenko may show up as well. But that's not something to put a lot of faith in to. Better to just wait until you actually see Yulkin's two blue eyes walking through the door before believing.


These people are sitting at our table. Actually, it's someone else's table. But we were destined to be six. And the previous reservation was for four and so they had us a smaller table. But Sasha and Pasha cajoled the hostess until we were able to take over the larger piece of real estate.

Cabbage and Pavel have a house guest.


Michael? Is that it? Am I right? Is it Michael? Anyhoo, (Michael) is from Long Island. He runs a charity that finds Russian children in need of heart operations and arranges for their treatment either here or in the U.S. I edit comedy movies.


The true inspiration for this evening was Cabbage's declaration of political principle that involved a disavowal of Vlad P. and his management of the new Russia. Being as the overwhelming majority of Russians seem to support United Russia and Vlad's policies I wanted to understand what Cabby's objections were -- she being an uncommonly bright person. I won't go into the specifics here but her chief objection is to the monolithic nature of Russia's energy-based economy. Oil and gas. Oil and gas. Oil and gas. But nothing else. Nothing.

Rarely sighted outside her native habitats of either her office or at the University, the Julia Klimenko found our table and sat. I had also realized that never, not once in the nearly four months I have been here, have I seen Julia...well... eat. So it was a fairly arresting sight to see the Klimenko tucking into an eggplant. So. She's a human woman, after all.


In the adjoining room, a jazz combo played jazz standards. Damn near Dixieland, in fact.

At a certain point the idea was hatched to go dancing at a place called Propoganda. There was some fear that winding up the Julia Dancing Doll may be unstoppable, like a perpetual motion machine. But imprudence prevailed and we headed over.


But dancing at Propoganda turned out to be mere propoganda. You see, here in Russia they call Thursday a "little Friday." So anything one can do on Friday you can surely do on Thursday. But when we walked in the floor space usually alive with shaking and shimmying was covered instead with docile tables and cluttered chairs.


So, unable to groove, we retired to a coffee shop and discussed all the myriad diminutives possible from the name Julia. More, much more, on that later.