Sunday and Monday I worked 14 hs a day and am so tired that I didnt go to a meeting in Rishon. Tired or fainting, tonight I am going to a Russian marriage fiesta. Russians have the maldita costumbre of celebrating their marriage any number of times: these distant relatives of my wife celebrate their 50th anniversary. There will be a monster bottle of Absolut on every table.
6 comments:
Something about that picture rubs me the wrong way. Non-Jewish Russians are nice to party with but I have no warm feelings for them.
Absolut tastes like rubbing alcohol. A triumph of marketing over taste. Even in marketing terms, it is passe now.
K
K, you are up with the times, I was not. It was not Absolut but Russiyya Standard, a brand I have never heard of.
The pic is definitely not topical. The place was an Uzbeg restaurant, the food, boiled mutton; the dancers - rather Asiatic girls in veils. The music - mostly modern Russian rock. The oligarchs danced anything.
Russian Standard is one of the new brands that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union - they emphasize their Russianness in their marketing - water from Lake Ladoga, Russian grain, etc. They make an issue of the fact that the bottling plant for Stolichnaya is in Latvia, so Stoli is not totally "Russian". However, the vodka itself is apparently pretty good, although I've not had it myself.
Personally I find this sort of petty nationalism to be idiotic. My uncle used to tell the story of how he was rejected from joining up with the Free Polish forces when he was in exile in Russia during the war because he was a Jew. My uncle mounted a horse to show his horsemanship (he was very comfortable around horses, kept a horse for fun even in America - the only one of my uncles to do so) and a Pole declaimed, "get off that horse, that's a POLISH horse", as if horses could have nationality (or putting vodka in a bottle outside of Mother Russia would change the taste).
K
Russian Standard used to be awesome. Then the original owners sold it, and the new owners figured it had enough of a brand name that they could let standards slip a bit, and now it's merely OK. Still better than Stoli and Absolut, but not as good as it used to be.
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