The Shaking Knee

Puzhalsta

I have no idea what I was expecting from Russia. Frankly, I'm not sure I thought all that much about it. I had every intention of bringing myself up to date on the history and current climate of the former center of the Soviet Union, but time just got away from me, and before I knew it, I was touching down at Sheremetyevo airport, 12 kilometers and 2 hours from the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski. Besides, how important could the history of the nation that co-dominated the geopolitical landscape for the better part of the last century be?

 

Hotel Baltschug Kempinski on a cold, cloudy day.

The truth is, Moscow is mind-blowing, even if you don't know all the historical details. It's both progressive and backwards. It's European, Asian, and Middle Eastern. It's fashionable and pedestrian. I suppose then it's not surprising that I was a bit disoriented the whole time I was there. I mean, what do you expect? After decades of images on American television and ominous footage of tanks and missiles on parade in Red Square, what was I to think as I strolled casually inside the walls of the dreaded Kremlin? Or looked dumbly at the Cyrillic lettering spelling out L-E-N-I-N on the country's most famous mausoleum?

 

Lenin's totally creepy tomb.

This is weird. That's what I was supposed to think. Normally I hate that word. Too vague. But sometimes it just hits the mark. It was nothing if not weird.

I spent most of my time in Moscow interviewing Muscovites about how they perceived the U.S. during the cold war, what life was like before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and what were the first things they did after Communism failed (some picked up once-forbidden British invasion rock records). We had dinner in some throwback, 1950's era place across from the old KGB headquarters with an old jazz band and an aging lounge singer (again, weird).

But perhaps the most interesting bit from my stay in Moscow was the sense that this is a country still very much in search of its identity. After nearly a century of being told what to do, where to work, and how to think, it's bound to take a country some time to recover. And the Russians are trying on everything, from fashion to ethics. They're desperately looking to find something that fits. No one is sure what is cool, or what is acceptable, and what is not. And they are most assuredly unclear about what it means to be Russian.

St. Basil's Cathedral, the future home of Disney Russia.

   Ican only tell you what I think it means. It means you smoke too many cigarettes and wear your hair like a 1980's hockey player. Other than that, the jury is still out.

Compulsive Disclosure Disorder

Just wanted to get a placeholder in here. I've been using a term for the past few years to describe my bizarre need to blab about anything and everything to anyone who will listen. I tell people not to tell me secrets. I tell my wife she'll never have to worry about me keeping an affair from her. I tell people things. I can't help it. Does that make me a bad person?

Anyway, I call it Compulsive Disclosure Disorder, and I was sure I wasn't the first person to use the term. But a quick google search turned up nothing. So I'm calling myself the inventor of this disorder, and one of its many victims. And I believe that in this, the era of blogs and Facebook pages (okay, Web 2.0 if you must), I think it will become increasingly common. Because it's never been easier to tell more people your inner monologue, no matter how mundane.

So there it is.

And here's my latest post on the GIO blog, named, appropriately, Compulsive Disclosure Disorder.

Something New, Something Old

Here's a look at my latest for MSN.com, a piece on how the recent advances in stem cell research are being treated in the presidential race...

The political debate over stem cell research has always been complicated. Esoteric twists and turns of science, ethics, and law have conspired to make it one of the most intellectually challenging issues of our time. But with a series of rapid-fire technological advances in the field hitting the headlines over the past six months, the average voter now practically needs an advanced degree in cell biology just to keep up.

Click here to read more....

Bottom line is that the Bush continues to favor religion over science (or even politics for that matter.) And that really pisses me off.

Stupid Human Tricks

A quick gem that me and the missus dreamed up the other day. Michelle just scored a book deal with McGraw Hill. It's still top secret, but I can tell you that it's all about empowering women to start their own businesses. They already have a title worked out, but I proposed this one: Women are the New Men.

In other news, the world is starting to finally catch on to my theory that autistics are the next step in human evolution. Autism reduces the importance of socialization in the brain, while ratcheting up certain specific capabilities (some of which are extremely useful in today's digital world, like math, music, and computer science.) It's specialization, an important survival mechanism in the global economy. And like any sudden advancement, these next-generation humans are treated as if something were wrong with them. I've never been a comic book guy, but doesn't it seem a little like the saga of the X-Men? It's not a defect. It's evolution. (I swear I thought of this on my own, but it turns out I'm not the only one.)

Also, you know how humans do lots of stupid things only to look back in ten or twenty years and say "What were we thinking?" For example, bloodletting. Or burning witches. Or smoking while pregnant. Or  sub-prime loans. They are all things that, in retrospect, seem so obviously stupid, it makes you wonder what we're all doing RIGHT NOW that will be looked back upon by future generations as absurdly idiotic. Well, wonder no more. We're going to start the What Are We Thinking list.

And the list starts with this: Botox. Does anyone find it hard to believe that in 10 years, when people's faces begin sliding off their skulls, we will look back and say, "Hmmmm, maybe injecting Botulism, a known paralytic toxin (Botox literally standing for Botulism Toxin), into our faces wasn't such a good idea after all." What are we thinking indeed.

Stay tuned for more What Are We Thinking as they come to me.

In the meantime, remember. Women Are the New Men. Autism is Evolution. And purposely paralyzing parts of your body is a bad idea.

Je suis desole

I've had some time to cool off now, and I'm slowly edging my way back toward francophilia. Sure, Parisians are rude, ostentatious, and consumed with appearances. But that's also what makes them great (the appearances part, not the rude and ostentatious part.) So I'm sorry.

For example, our dinner at Le Chiberta was perhaps the best meal I've ever had. It was right up there with Jean Georges, or Per Se. The wine (to start we had Saint Aubin Cru en Remilly 2004, Chateau de Puligny-Montrachet) was an education for me. The meal (red tuna carpaccio, tuna tartar, tomato sorbet and caramel of celery, sauteed filet of red mullet with preserved fennel and safran risotto, foie gras, roasted peaches and artichokes) was exquisitely presented. Oh, and it tasted good too. It was so good, even the insufferable Parisian we shared the meal with couldn't ruin it. (see The Insufferable Ones.)

The missus and I (click on picture to enlarge) hung out all over the city with our friends Will and Blair. We drank heavily, ate heavilier, and pounded the pavement all over the Marais, St. Germain de Pres, and the Latin Quartier. But if I had to do it all over again, I would have taken Migga to Lisbon instead of Paris. The Portuguese are the most welcoming, unassuming, proud, caring, fun-loving people I've met so far in all my travels. And Lisbon was magical. We stayed at Pestana Palace, a national monument that has been restored to pristine condition. It was a fascinating blend of 19th century charm and modern amenities. It was the best hotel I've ever stayed at. I would go back in a heartbeat. We went to dinner at two seafood specialty places south of the city, just past Cascais. One was on the beach and they served their signature dish: salt-baked fish. They encase an entire fish in a caking of salt, and bake the sucker just like that. Delicious.

To catch you up on other events: Went to Atlanta and stayed at the Four Seasons, dined at a great restaurant in Buckhead but can't remember the name. Then to Rehoboth for a week with the family where Sam learned to ride a bike (with training wheels.)

Now we're back at home for the whole month of August, trying to catch up on some freelance pieces for Inc., MSN, The Economist, and Martha Stewart Living. Some good stuff coming out in Ridgefield and Bedford Magazines soon. More on that later.

The Insufferable Ones

How to Hate the French, in Five Easy Steps:

Day 1 in Paris: Yee Haw! Away with the Missus for 6 days in France, no kids! Bring on the Bordeaux.
Day 2 in Paris: Man, this city really knows how to live. The food, the shops, and museums. Beautiful. Just wish they didn't smoke so much.
Day 3 in Paris: My feet are tired, and I think I've seen most of the city. Still beautiful. Getting a little tired of being bullied by Parisian service providers. I know they speak English, so why make me struggle with French. They're enjoying this.
Day 4 in Paris: What's wrong with these people? What did I do to piss them off? I've been nothing but kind and demure. And then I have to sit through this dinner with this condescending, detestable Parisian and his philosophical rants about the "nose of the wine" and "presentation of the food" and how those are somehow French concepts that are completely foreign to Americans.
Day 5 in Paris: The only problem with France is the French.

Michael Moore and Me

Last night I got a chance to talk to my old friend Michael Moore again. For those who don't know, I appeared in Michael Moore's last film, Fahrenheit 9/11. In filming those scenes, I went to New York and conducted a long interview with Mike's archivist, Carl Deal, as we waited for Mike to show up. He never did. But a few weeks before 9/11 came out, I came back to New York to record some voice overs. I sat for hours with Mike in the recording studio and watched clips of the movie.

People ask me all the time what he's like. In my limited experience, I would have to say that he is a very genuine, honest, unassuming guy. He's funny and likes to laugh. And he's no phony. But the real brilliance of Michael Moore is the very simple way he approaches an issue. There is no ambiguity, no complexity. War is bad. Universal health care is good. I really like the guy. 

There is a scene in his upcoming film, "Sicko," that we talked about last night that sums up Mike's clear-headed logic. He interviews a doctor in the U.K., which has a universal health care system (derogatorily known in this country as "socialized medicine,"....oh the horror!) He asks the doctor how he gets compensated, and the doctor tells him that he gets bonuses based on how healthy his patients are each year. If he gets someone to lower their cholesterol, or quit smoking, he gets paid more. It's that simple. Moore doesn't complicate the matter by asking "Well, what if..." or saying "Yeah, but...". Say what you want about him, he's no cynic.

Here's the Q&A I did with him for MSN.com.

What freaked me out about the U.K. doctor's pay was how foreign that concept was to me. We're so warped in this country that the concept of paying doctors for doing their job better never occurred to us. That's just wrong.

Sicko is a great film. Far more mature than Moore's previous efforts. The argument is tight. The logic is clear. And the narrative arc is very elegant. Even the humor is more sophisticated: it's funnier. It's classic Moore in that it combines laughter with pathos to make a devastating point: a country as great as this deserves to have better health care.

The only issue I take with the film is that it opens with this well-worn clip:

Opening up with a gratuitous Bush-bashing clip does create a seamless transition from Moore's last film, but it also sets the whole thing up as a political debate. And as Moore told me explicitly, this should not be a political film, or even a political issue. But I think it was the only flaw in a mostly non-partisan dissection of America's health care woes.

One last thing Mike told me before we parted ways. And this really struck me. He said "I don't ever want to hear that we (America) don't have enough money to do something. If this war in Iraq proved anything, it's that when we want to do something, there's money."

The war has cost us nearly half a trillion dollars. Go to this site to see how that compares to other things we could have spent that money on. Imagine.

Bird Man

New musical obsession appears to be imminent: Andrew Bird. A big-brained violinist and prolific whistler (I'll take him anywhere, anytime). The guy is smart, funny, and crazy musical. Check these lyrics from Masterfade, a track from Mysterious Production of Eggs.

To me the song is about the increasingly digital world we live in, how everything can be reduced to ones and zeros (binary code) and the solace one gets from having the final say of whether one lives or dies (having your finger resting on the masterfade, which is the main volume dial on a mixing board, is a metaphor for having the ability to end it whenever you want. Great stuff. And wrapping the song up with "I mean Christ, who knows?" is nothing short of hilarious.

I hear a lot of different stuff in Bird: There is a Sebadoh sound, a lyrical likeness to the erudite Shins, some Radiohead dissonance punctuated by short bursts of melody, and a Beck-like sense of humor. Good stuff. Highly recommended.

Dakar

After the safari, we headed all the way across the continent of Africa to Dakar, Senegal. It's a former French colony, right on the Atlantic Ocean, and while it has its charms (mainly being on the beach) it is not unlike every other African city. That is to say it is poorly run, overcrowded, and still stuck in a time warp. There are half-built building everywhere, many of which look like they were bombed out. It looks like the Beirut of West Africa (Beirut, of course, being the Paris of the Middle East.)

But if you keep your head facing due West, looking out over the ocean, you might just be able to convince yourself that you're in a tropical paradise.

The flight on South African Airways was outstanding. Great service. Lie flat business class seats. The only problem is the lung-searing bug killer they spray before takeoff. My guess is that they are under strict orders not to deliver any malarial mosquitoes back to the states, so passenger respiration is of secondary concern.

Upon returning I found this great column by my old editor at Red Herring, Jason Pontin. He's a fantastic writer and he hits the nail on the head with this piece. It's complex, Africa. And there is no single answer for how to spur its economic development (though many will tell you there is.) Apparently Jason was in Tanzania the same time I was in Kenya. And we witnessed many of the same things.

In other news, the Mets are KILLING me. They're like a different team since I left for Africa. Someone please make me feel better about this.

Safari Time

Can’t really remember where I left off last time. But here are the basics. After another deep dive on Thursday in Nairobi, during which I get an education on the “informal economy” of Africa (unregistered, untaxed businesses which make up between 40 percent to 90 percent of the GDP in many countries) and the damage that non-governmental organizations and charitable donations are doing to Africa (creating dependencies, we went to Carnivore. Pretty sure I mentioned this last entry.

Then I played golf at the Windsor Country Club early Friday morning. The course was not in good shape. The greens had course sand all over them, which made putting extremely slow and difficult. And the rough was disastrously thick and unplayable, a one stroke penalty at least. With rented clubs and no spikes, my game was predictably unpredictable. The best part was the monkeys, however. They roam the course freely, run over to look at your ball, and gather around the tee boxes looking for handouts. Amazing creatures, really. My playing partner almost took one out with a low-liner drive.

We then returned to the hotel, packed up, and headed to the local airport to go on our safari (Swahili for “journey”). We boarded a 14-seat prop plane and headed 45 minutes west to the Masai Mara game park. As the plane was landing, a Topi (some kind of goat-like plains creature) stood square in the middle of the pebble-bed runway. Our plane landed and nearly had to pull up again to avoid a collision. That was our first animal sighting.

 

Two 9-passenger open-top Range Rovers picked us up at the airport and took us on Safari straightaway. Not a quarter mile from the air strip we found some elephants. There were lots of zebras, topi, antelopes, gazelles, water buffaloes, hyenas, giraffes, and others. But the best part was the Cheetahs. We tracked three of them that were slowly stalking some prey. Magnificent animals. Beautiful in every way. The only drawback was that there were at least a dozen other safari trucks jockeying for position, trying to get close to the cheetahs. Makes you feel like just another tourist, which we were.

After night fell and the rain started to come down, we headed to our camp. That Masai Mare Sorova camp was nothing short of spectacular. Surrounded in its entirety by an electric fence, it is an oasis in the middle of the bush. Ebony bridges, swimming pool, huge buffet, and personal tents that include queen beds, electricity, hot and cold water, and front porches. It was very luxurious, almost too much so. But I would later be glad of it.

I cut out of the nighttime festivities early, due to overwhelming exhaustion, and went over the bridge and through the bush to my tent. I awoke at 1:53 AM with a fire in my belly, and spent the next five hours going to the bathroom every 20 minutes, humbled by my delicate constitution yet again. I had to skip the morning game drive, and finally started returning to normal by about noon. Hard to say what gave me the dreaded TD, but whatever it was, it came and went quickly.

We lounged around the camp until about 1:30 PM, when we left to go see a real Masai village. Now, I can’t vouch for the authenticity of the village we visited. I mean, we paid twenty bucks each for the privilege of walking around the cow-dung huts and interacting with the villagers. But, I’m convinced that even if we walked willingly into a tourist trap, there was a strong dose of reality to the village. The villagers did a traditional Masai warrior dance for us, celebrating the kill of a lion. The singing involves a lot of huffing and puffing, which makes up the rhythm. And a soloist runs around shouting out celebratory stuff. Then all the men demonstrate their jumping prowess (an attempt to impress the ladies, and, presumably, NBA scouts.)

Then they showed us their huts. Tiny, dark, smelly hovels that gave me the willies to be honest. I try to be adventurous, to understand different cultures, to embrace the diversity of life on this planet, but after seeing how these people live, it makes me want to shout, “God Bless America,” and get back to my three bedroom colonial in leafy Connecticut.

We flew back to Nairobi that night, and I’m right now on the flight to Dakar, Senegal. Unlike Kenya (a former British colony in which more-or-less everyone speaks English,) Senegal is a former French colony, so I’ll be communicating with the locals a lot less, which is a pity. The Kenyans are a wonderful people, incredibly welcoming, kind, and funny. They may not move as fast as Americans, but life has a pleasant pace down here, and most are eager to laugh, given the opportunity. I expect nothing different from the Senegalese.

In the mean time, I’m very eager to get home. I miss the wife and kids something fierce and haven’t made contact with the missus in several days.

Some pics: 

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