Planes, Trains, and Ladas

My grand project of this last week was to create a Wes Anderson soundtrack. I thought I'd share it with y'all. In place of Mark Mothersbaugh instrumentals, I followed Anderson's lead and replaced them with some local flavor (for Anderson it was India in Darjeeling Limited; for me it was Soviet folk-pop, hence, the title Planes, Trains, and Ladas).

1. "Straight to Hell" - The Clash

2. "Bumazhny Soldat" - Bulat Okudzhava

3. "Ballrooms of Mars" - T.Rex

4. "Six O'Clock" - Ringo Starr

5. "Nu vot, Ischezla drozh' v Rukakh" - Vladimir Vysotsky

6. "Cry Baby Cry" - The Beatles

7. "I Am the Cosmos" - Chris Bell

8. "Who Loves the Sun" - Velvet Underground

9. "Akh, Nadya, Nadenka" - Bulat Okudzhava

10. "Solitude" - Billie Holiday

11. "So Long, Marianne" - Leonard Cohen

12. "Moonlight Mile" - The Rolling Stones

13. "Sidonie" - Brigitte Bardot

14. "Open House" - Lou Reed & John Cale

15. "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" - The Ramones

16. "Polnochny Trolleybus" - Bulat Okudzhava

17. "A Long Way from Home" - The Kinks

18. "Moskva-Odessa" - Vladimir Vysotsky

19. "4th Time Around" - Bob Dylan

20. "Don't Let Me Wait Too Long" - George Harrison

21. "If I'm on the Late Side" - The Faces

There you go, you have the music, so now you (or Wes Anderson) provide the storyline.

My feet are now fast and pointed away from the past.

I just booked my tickets to head back to St. Petersburg. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm flying Swiss Air (a subsidiary of Lufthansa) and I even got a pretty decent deal on it. If you're curious,  flights to St. Petersburg from California (roundtrip) usually run about $1,500. So, August 20th will see me leave for Russia and July 1st, 2010 will see me return to the US.

I've been enjoying my time off. I got really in to Wimbledon this year. I got a chance to play a little the other day; my overhand serve isn't all that dangerous, but I did manage to keep it in a few times, which was a small victory. I've also been able to play on an indoor soccer team on Friday nights and play some pickup over at the soccer park on Wednesday nights. Continuing on in my athletic endeavors, my poolball (basketball played in the pool) game has probably received the most attention this summer, considering the fact that Redding is hotter than the gates of Hell. Poolball is a little more akin to Greco-Roman wrestling than basketball, now that I think about it.