the eXile - [sic]

Issue #05/86, March 18 - 30, 2000

TORAH! TORAH! TORAH!

G’day editors,

I am searching for any information I can find on the only Jewish orphanage in Moscow. I believe it was founded by an American woman, possibly an expat. Any information(web address, names) you could provide would be greatly appreciated. I am going to Moscow later this year and would like to be of help. There have been many reports on the telly here as to the sad conditions of these orphans. Also, if you have the names of any other needy orphanages, we will be bringing many extra supplies with us.

Thank you.

Maggie Davis

Brisbane

Queensland

Dear Ms. Davis,

A Jewish orphanage in Moscow? The only one we can think of off the top of our heads is a place called "The Kremlin". Very sad conditions, lots of needy children running around with no supervision, reports of horrific abuse. You’ll need to steel yourself. Although on the bright side, their former superintendent is said to have sacrificed everything to paint the walls, buy a few pieces of furniture, and help make the children’s lives just a little bit brighter. It’s stories like these that warm our hearts.

GOOD TIMES, BAD TIMES

Sic folk,

Why are you being so kind to the Moscow Times these days? We miss the merciless dissection of the paper since Winestock left, and it still does dumb stuff I am surprised you let them get away with. Like WHY THE FUCK readers of MT need a caption under a photo of Yeltsin wearing glasses that says "Boris Yeltsin wearing his glasses". How about something more informative like Boris wearing his glasses and what appears to be a tanktop but definitely no tie. But then I suppose you’d need a bigger photo then, wouldn’t you. I guess I have a lot to learn about the newspaper business.

Why don’t you do your own "Whatever happened to..." with the magnifying glass like in the Weekend section. If nothing else, you could rerun some of your old jokes. Start with Geoff Winestock’s pen, or how about Mark Ames’ inability to get it up. And what about those old skanks Cherry VD and mistress Suka Blyad or whatever they were called.

We demand satisfaction, damn you.

Concerned

Dear Concerned,

How do you pick on an earnest, cautiously outspoken center-left newspaper? Pipe bombs and fuse-tipped vats full of flammable jellies, sure, but annoying practical jokes? It just doesn’t sound fair. Nevertheless, for outdoing us on the spot-the-victim hunt, you’ve just won yourself a free eXile T-shirt. Call the office and arrange your pickup!

MALIA UNDER DOLAN BILE

Dear Dr. Dolan,

I check out Amazon.com and your excellent review of Martin Malia’s "Russia Under Western Eyes" is not provided under "editorial reviews." If you say OK, I will submit the exile review, with the appropriate attribution, as a reader review. Amazon provides not other method to make Amazon aware of their oversight.

Mike Wills

Freeville, New York

Dear Mike,

Looks like Malia’s got friends in high places at amazon.com. We submitted Dr. Dolan’s review weeks ago, but it was never posted; ever since you re-submitted it, it still hasn’t been posted. But the really interesting issue vis-a-vis amazon.com isn’t Malia, but rather when you, Mike Wills, are going to buy our book, "The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia" via amazon.com. Come on, don’t be shy-just flip it into that cute little cyber-shopping cart, and voila! Not that we’re greedy--it’s just that our book is now ranked 46,272, and we’re looking over our shoulder at the steady, huffing gait of Malia’s book, breathing his stale Robert Mondavi-scented faculty club breath down our necks at 47,346. So do your part in tweaking Malia, and buy our book, so that we can brag every issue henceforth about how we’re kicking his sorry ass on amazon.com

BURN PRATT BURN!

Dear Exile,

I was wondering why you guys employ a hack like Stuart Pratt for your Bar Review column, or even any type of writing in the Exile. I’ve never really cared one way or the other about him before--I’ve never visited Moscow, so I don’t really give damn about the column. But when I saw his "Thoughts and Reflections’ piece in the last issue, I suddenly understood why he spends half his time writing stiff-necked defenses in your letter-ed. page. At least the Americans I meet everyday in California can be somewhat excused for their dumb bullshit--if I spent eight to twelve hours a day somewhere I didn’t want to be I’d likewise sound like a zombie. Americans don’t even really believe in other countries. But Pratt espousing his affirmations of the United Democracies of the world teaching the tyrants a lesson makes me want to vomit. And his condescending attitude towards sex-hunting ‘frat-boys’ is ridiculous--as if noisy, smoky overly expensive bars had any other reason to be in business. I like the eXile, because you have a twisted integrity and you tell the truth. I think you guys say some ugly, juvenile things, but at least you’re not hacks. If there is a hell for justice, crude remarks about cunts and fucking won’t put you there. But I hope the hacks get burned. Fire Pratt.

Dave Carroll

Dear Mr. Carroll,

Your wish is our command: Pratt has been fired. But it doesn’t stop there. Pratt was dumped by his meta-menopausal girlfriend, who now dates her BMW-totin boss, leaving Pratt semi-homeless, unemployed and in debt. We hear he’s been reduced to giving hand jobs at the Kazansky Vokzal just to cover rent at his one-room in Mytino. And all because you, Dave Carroll, requested it. Folks, we’re just trying out this new Reader-Friendly [sic] response format. Our goal from now on will be to charm, please, and engage the letter-writer. The customer is always right. This way, we hope to improve our letters section by transforming into an earnest public forum for opinion and criticism. We hope you like it--please let us know whatcha think!

THE [sic] CLUB

I’m not going to challenge you for the title of the biggest bitch on the block, just have something to say to your dyslexic film critic. I mean,Kevin, yours was one wiseass review(the Murdoch financed FC deal-remember?)but it would have been even wiser if you hadn’t contradicted yourself. First you go like this: "self-destructive urge should be championed whatever form it takes". Then you write:"FC’s legacy is to discredit the distructive urge towards chaos". Being a good boy I checked the dictionary which says that "discredit" in its 4th meaning is" to destroy..blah-blah". So that leaves us with the distruction of distruction (Not fallen asleep yet-i no i’m a prig). And shouldn’t you love FC just for that? A nice postmodern burger, huh? Not strong stomached enough, are you? And what’s that-"i realize i’m just about the only person who feels that way"-a little high on yourself? Remember,"YOU R NOT A UNIQUE AND BEAUTIFUL SNOWFLAKE"...noone is. Except, of course, Helena, the flick’s only attraction you totally ignored.

P.S. Nah, just kiddin’ ya .YOU R VERY INTELLECTUALLY ADVENTUROUS AND HIP still (took me exactly 2 hrs and 46 minutes to think up the title last night).

Gratefull reader Harry Cain, forever bent on hedonistic self-destruction thanks to people like you.

Dear Mr. Cain,

Do people really still play with suffixes and prefixes and call it "post-modern" because they think that it’s daring? Just one more reason to support a radical INCREASE in global warming and random nuclear terrorism. We’d spend the next two sentences mocking your boot-licking reversal at the end in your PS, but the fact is, we actually kind of liked it. Warmed our hearts. Besides, our new [sic] policy forbids us from outing you as an impotent nerd content to live vicariously through a stylized Hollywood film rather than following the noble example of the Wall Street bomber. Nope. Instead, we just want to say that your right, you caught a contradiction. Just for that, you don’t get a T-shirt.

THE GORKI-9VILLE HORROR HOUSE

Dear Exile,

[Concerning the Yeltsin Ghoul Pool announced in sic]

Put me down for 3 years ago.

Matthew Ward

Dear Mr. Ward,

That’s some ballsy bettin’ there. We assumed that Yeltsin kicked it thirteen months ago, when he first hosted Madeleine Albright and had to see her face in the flesh. Our sources tell us that Yeltsin’s system "couldn’t handle the shock", especially after he saw then-Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov’s bullfrog double-chin slap into Madeleine’s equally revolting sac of chin fat, melding into one gyrating jellyfish of neck fat. Anyway, our white-smocked research analysts are taking tissue samples of Yeltsin, who, as you know, is spending his time writing, reading documents, baking out and going to the Pink Floyd show at the Gorki-9 Laserium.

PRATTKISTANI BASHES INDIAN

Dear Sirs:

I think it may be a bit premature to celebrate the demise of the good Mr. Pratt. Your new entertainment guru on the Moscow club scene, the venereal ‘Maheshwari,’ seems to lack the proper Slavic ‘face-control credentials’ partially necessary to get past the front door of most establishments in this elitist city. Half of his article, "Tears of Krishna," raves about the parking lot and nice cars at the Circus, while the other half describes his pathetic one-sided conversation with a stoic doorman. I got news for Vijay and ‘The Shah,’ they got a better chance of interviewing John the Baptist eating a quarte-pounder in a McDonald’s during Lent than successfully infiltrating the dark hinterland of the Moscow clubbing scene. You’ll spend most of your time kicking puddles and waiting for leftover Tanya’s till 4 in the morning, and then ask the bitch after you have dribbled in her to describe the couches of the club just so you can write something believable the next day!!! And even if you are more successful than I believe you to be, do we really need another snake-charming, good-looking guy, teaching our devooshki’s about kuma-sutra’s and tongue gymnastics and all that sort of stuff. He will just spoil everything! I say ÔBring back the monogamous Prattman; Moscow was a far safer place!!! In Nirvana, Swami "The Bridge" Bagadavita

Dear Mr. Swami Sir,

Back off, pal, ‘cuz Vijay’s taking Moscow by storm, and when the dust settles, there won’t be a single unviolated dyev left standing in this fair city of 12 million. The Madras Madman has just begun to show his stuff. But if you really miss Pratt, you can always loiter around Kazansky Vokzal. Just bring some moisturizing lotion and a couple hundred rubles.

INANE LITTLE UPRISING

Editors,

Americans criticizing America in the American way. So what?

Vehbi Inan

Dear Mr. Inan,

You have a really stupid-sounding foreign name. We don’t know which depressing, shanty-packed, cholera-infested dump for a nation you come from, but we can be pretty sure that it’s either a de facto colony of America’s, or it’s desperately trying to make itself attractive enough to be colonized. Your countries exist to provide more paid spectators to the main event: America. And that, Vaginahbi, is why it matters to you when Americans criticize America, or for that matter, when Americans sneeze and wipe their noses.

LIKE A DORK OVER BRIDGWATER

While reading your recent piece on Vladimir Putin’s choice of underwear, I was disturbed to see you refer to the lint that collected in Yeltsin’s boxer-clad ass crack as "Dingleberries". Dingleberries are in fact small pieces of crap, turdlets if you prefer, that are left behind by inadeqate wiping. While Boris may well have had Dingleberries, they would be caused by his lack of personal hygiene rather than his choice of flannel boxers.

Yours respectfully,

Ben Bridgwater

Dear Mr. Bridgwater,

We’re the ones manufacturing the jokes here. You should stick to shameless praise and plugs for our book. Do that, and you might even win a T-shirt.

JOAN D’YKE

Dear Sirs:

As a proud and self-deceiving eXhole who finds Moscow exciting because he comes from nowhere important, I would implore you to market your book not in my hometown, but in the two sleepy-college-regions where I was raised and, to put it broadly, educated. Both are reputed to be capitals of lesbian culture. I am referring of course to the "five-college region" of Western Massachusetts (Northampton, Amherst, South Hadley) and the Main Line of Philadelphia (Bryn Mawr, Rosemont, Haverford, you get the idea). These places are full of bookstores that sell coffee to women who wear their hair like they were just released from concentration camp. If being socially inappropriate is your thing, these are the places for you.

Sincerely,

Name Held Upon Request

Dear Mr. Request,

An excellent idea. When we sat down to map the eXile book strategy and our target reader, we decided that we really wanted to exploit the untapped BUG (Bisexual Until Graduation) market, who secretly yearn for a private intellectual reading experience, a flight into the imagination piloted by two hairy, sweaty authors. Don’t believe us? Then check out this next letter…

CONFUSED MUFF DIVER

Dear Mr. Ames,

Concerning "Dyev-Dumping", I know the worlds getting a bit tired of all the PC crap but what I don’t understand is don’t you have anything better to write about or did I just look up a frat boy publication??

Kathy Vissar

Dear Mr. Vissar,

Nope, we don’t have anything better to write about. And yep, you just looked up a frat boy publication. Sorry about the misunderstanding. We tried to warn you away, but you had your face buried so deeply between the legs of some Weegan bull-dyke that you just couldn’t hear us calling.

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