я дикий мужчина (Ya Dikiy Muzhchina, I Am a Wild Man)

Today, Jeff, Max, and I decided we had been pretty lazy all week, so we went and walked around town a little bit. Of course, it was typical St. Petersburg summer weather: rainy. I thought you'd enjoy a picture of me enjoying this summer wind and rain. You'll notice in the back an advertising board featuring Matthew McConnaughey. This ad is everywhere! It's a little disconcerting seeing the Redneck Buddha on every street corner in St. Petersburg.

I was hanging out with Max the other day and he was going through my iTunes and brought to my attention a Russian band called Leningrad that was on there. To me, they were this cool band that was on the Everything Is Illuminated soundtrack that sang in Russian. It turns out they are one of the most obscene bands in Russia today. Their concerts have been banned in Moscow, in fact. They are banned because they use a way of speaking called "mat," ("mat" means "mother") which is similar to something like cockney rhyming slang; it's a jargon that distinguishes those who are within a certain milieu from those that aren't. In this case the jargon is obscenities. Take the most foul-mouthed person you know, multiply by 5, add a lot of linguistic creativity, a few double entedres, and that is about what "mat" looks like. Russians are the most imaginative and creative cursers in the world; I'd love love to provide some examples but I'd have to clean my keyboard and take a shower after doing so. It's that dirty. So, here I am enjoying this song because it has a cool Russian folk song vibe, and it turns out it's by the dirtiest band in all of Russia (which is saying something). Fortunately, the song, "Ya Dikiy Muzhchina," is one of their milder ones.