#47 | September 10 - 24, 1998  

There's something about this crisis that has brought out the inner-glutton hidden within the folds of the Moscow Times' star spinster columnist Jean MacKenzie. Just consider the closing sentences from three of her last four post-devaluation columns: "As for me, I'm drinking wine, chattering up a storm, and praying for a miracle" (9/8/98); "As for me, I'm stocking up on matches and toilet paper, and getting ready for a winter of Bush legs and kapusta" (9/1/98); "Does anyone know the price of champagne?" (8/18/98).

Why the abject obsession with food? Is she worried that she might go hungry? Perhaps, as a self-confessed Russophile, she's suffering in-advance for the Russian masses who may face starvation this winter?

Nope, not Jean. Her obsession with food is rooted, well, in her obsession with food. And as we've learned over the last month, for Jean, this crisis is all about celebrating the cheap-O bargains and dreading the narrow consumer options.

The whole food thing began with MacKenzie's column on August 18th, "A Slide Down Ruble Lane," a day after Russia's dramatic currency and banking collapse. In that piece, she sang the joys of bargain-hunting in devalued Russia, and followed up with the B-side single a week later, "Crisis? 'Life is More Fun!'" In that column, MacKenzie wryly noted that the devaluation meant nothing to the thick-brained local savages. "It's not as if [the authorities] have done anything really serious, like taken 'Santa Barbara' off the air," she mused with menopausal irony.

You have to ask yourself: is MacKenzie trying to get herself necklaced by a starving Russian mob, or is she just a plain idiot? Making light of Russian stupidity and passivity in the face of starvation today would be like poking fun at Russians for not rising up against Stalin during the height of The Purges. Imagine a MacKenzie column in 1938 quipping, "It's not as if Stalin's done anything really serious, like taken 'Volga-Volga' out of the cinemas." Amazingly enough, as eXile researchers have discovered, MacKenzie's great aunt, a celibate Georgian lesbian named Evgenia Mkindze, penned that very line while acting as the Moscow correspondent for the "The Lonely Gourmand". But more on the MacKenzie jean-eology later.

Let's go back to her first post-devaluation column, a piece so unselfconsciously ugly that it takes you right to the bland heart of everything mean and selfish in middle-class America.

Last month, just a day after Russia's entire economy imploded, MacKenzie wistfully reminisced about the days of yore when the Soviet ruble first collapsed in 1990, providing her with mouthwatering bargains before the sunken eyes of tens of millions of newly-impoverished Soviet citizens.

"Ruble devaluation made me rich," she greedily noted. And that's the point of her column.

From there, MacKenzie's piece degenerated into a barely-disguised celebration of today's ruble devaluation based on the blissful opportunities the previous devaluation had provided for Number One.

But not before trying to hog some of the national tragedy for herself: "It's certainly not the first such crisis I've weathered [!], and I've been trying to figure out just how bad things can get."

How bad can they get?

In 1990, "overnight I had 10 times more money than I had had the day before."

That 10-fold windfall was an epic event in MacKenzie's life. It was as if she'd died and gone to Price Club heaven. Want proof? The next four paragraphs offer a Rabelasian feast of carnivalesque memories. "For the better part of a year a bottle of bubbly cost the ruble equivalent of $1"; "The black market rate slipped constantly, going from 14 to 25 to the dollar"; "At 5 kopeks a pop, you could ride [the metro] roughly 400 times for a dollar"; "The same battered greenback would buy 50 liters of gas."

Q: Who the hell would remember, 8 years later, how much a liter of gas once cost in a foreign country?

A: The answer would require a terrifying glimpse into the sum of MacKenzie's life experiences-like drinking the Water of Life in Dune-and frankly, we don't have the courage to go there.

Like everyone else in 1990, MacKenzie needed to eat. But unlike 99% of the Soviet population, Jean not only ate, but by her own admission she may have disrupted the entire food supply network.

"We 'rich' Westerners shopped at farmer's markets where meat, cheese, fruit and bread were on offer, all relatively inexpensive with our swollen dollars. For exotic items, such as orange juice or peanut butter, we went to the two or three dollar stores around. Snickers candy bars were a rare treat."

H'm. Let's take out our calorie-calculators and add it up: meat, cheese, peanut butter, Snickers... We're talking kcals in the five-figures, folks, a good 55% of that in saturated fats. If our numbers are right, a single MacKenzie-an spree at the farmer's market could have fed the entire Chitinskaya Oblast during the famine scare there.

As if dimly aware that her Russophile credentials might be compromised, MacKenzie mentioned in passing that she was "not very sensitive to the hardships suffered by our Russian friends."

What caused her insensitivity? Was it existential exhaustion? Camus-ian indifference in the face of an absurd fate? Was the budding journalist emotionally overwhelmed by the political nihilism and social suffering witnessed in collapsing Russia?

Not exactly. Jean was, in her own words, "too busy calculating just how cheap the metro was."

What really bothered Jean's memory about the late Soviet days had nothing to do with the almost unparalleled economic misery suffered by its 300 million citizens; rather, the problem was a lack of choice in the bargain bin. "The downside to all this, of course, was that there was absolutely nothing to buy." That is, she couldn't load up on baggy-assed Ellen Tracy clothing for the price of a 5-kopek metro ride. And we'd be willing to bet a few battered greenbacks that with all the cheap-O cheese and meat and peanut butter packed into her fridge, a new set of muy grande elastic waistband Ellen Tracy skirts would have come in muy handy.

The discount-happy spinster abruptly wrapped up her stroll through gluttony lane with these hopeful words: "But with the ruble [today] on a downward slide, talk of banks closing, and panicked lines forming for dollars, it's starting to feel like old times again. Does anyone know the price of champagne?" Ah yes, pop open another $1 bottle, Jean: happy days are here again!

Initially, the eXile staff was at a loss on how to explain MacKenzie's column, except as a kind of suicide note.

Then we uncovered some startling evidence.

It turns out that the Jean MacKenzie family network has a distinguished history of atrocious spinster columnists spanning the globe. Even though not a single female MacKenzie has ever married, let alone been asked out on a second date, their numbers seem to be growing. Our team of researchers uncovered a vast library of MacKenzian belles lettres published during various catastrophic events of our time. Among the columns we found were "Confessions of a Khmerophile: 'A Stroll Down Killing Fields Lane'" by Zhian Maakn-Zee, February 8th, 1979; and "Confessions of an Ethiopophile: 'Take A Walk on the Hungry Side'" by Djeen Mkgenzi, November 23rd, 1987.

Below is a choice sample from the MacKenzie family ouvre. It comes from an old column by Jean's fifth cousin twice removed, Jana Makencziew, a provincial Polish journalist who died alone in her Kielce home, whose ownership was under dispute at the time of her death (it was alleged to belong to the estate of a certain Seweryn Kahane, victim of the infamous Kielce pogrom of 1946). While no one is sure how the 78-year-old Makencziew died, an autopsy report noted that the world's largest-ever recorded partially-digested submarine sandwich was removed from her small intestine. That sandwich is now on display in the Kielce city historical museum.

A Smokey Slide Down Holocaust Lane

No one ever got rich predicting Poland's political future. Certainly not this poor scribbler, who just spent the weekend predicting that Poland, home of Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka death camps, will become the "Israel of the North" once again. In the article I stated unequivocally that World Jewry would abandon the ill-fated Zionist dream of a homeland in Palestine and give the Poles one more shot, while Poles of all stripes were as eager as beavers to make up to their old friends the Jews. It's for a West German Air Force base newspaper, so by the time this article hits the community in Kielce, news of yesterday's "pogrom", in which 43 Jews were shot or beaten to death in our charming town center on Planty Street, will be the top story.

Well, I'm in good company. Last Friday, Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin declared that Poland's Communist Worker's Party will "never allow attacks on Jews." Gee, I guess that all-powerful dictators can just pretty much say what they want these days.

But back to Kielce's pogrom conundrum. It's certainly not the first such crisis I've weathered, and I've been trying to figure out just how bad things can get.

Exterminating Jews made me rich, in a very modest way. It happened in the spring of 1942, when Jews in our town suddenly realized that they'd have to sell the gold teeth in their mouths just to get a head of cabbage, since food in the ghetto was hard to come by. So overnight, I went from a mere shopkeeper's daughter to proud owner of 28 golden molars-albeit, bloody molars.

As time went by, you could get even more from the Jews. By autumn of 1942, the rate for Jews' teeth dropped to three gold molars to a head of cabbage. Then the Einsatzgruppen started to confiscate property and move the Jews somewhere else. I remember buying an antique chest and table from the Snideman family for a mere 3 zloty. I later sold those pieces for gold marks worth 5,800 zloty. Other townsmen I know were able to buy up the confiscated estates of Jews for about 1/30th of the price. A divorced, middle-aged German friend of mine, Frau Buechler, was able to buy some of the most wonderful porcelain and china from the Gruenberg's estate for about 45 zloty, even though they were worth probably 50,000.

I'm afraid that we were not very sensitive to the hardships suffered by the Jews in the extermination camps back thenÑwe were too busy calculating how much it would cost to buy one of those fluffy new pillows made from Jews' hair that were all the rage.

The downside to all this, of course, was that there were only so many Jews in Kielce, meaning that if you didn't act quick, you'd be left without a bargain. Once all the Jews were cleared out of the ghettos, the bargains went with them.

After the battle of Stalingrad, my golden marks started to decline in value. It was a tough time. Sometimes the Kommandant from the Einsatzgruppen would bring us toilet paper and chocolates from abroad. I especially liked the chocolates.

I know there's nothing more boring than the reminiscences of an old-timer like myself.

Nowadays you young'uns can confiscate anyone's property, what with communism taking over Poland. But with yesterday's pogrom, and more pogroms rumored to be spreading around Poland, it's starting to feel like old times again. Does anyone know the price of gold teeth?

How obsessed with food has Jean MacKenzie's become since the Russian economy collapsed? We asked a leading technical stock analyst, Aaron Kowitz of Feinberg Roth, to chart the number of times the gluttonous Russophile mentioned food and beverage words in her columns before the August 17th collapse, and after. Kowitz charted her "45-day Moving Average of Food Words" in order to give a technical reading on where MacKenzie is heading in the future.

"As you can see, Jean's food obsession started off pretty slow, and then there was a real breakthrough in activity that first began August 11th, the week before the economy collapsed. That tells me that Jean's stomach was one step ahead of the game. While Jean's mind was telling her that there'd be no financial crisis, her stomach had a kind of eerie sixth sense. After the meltdown, the food index shot way up to an overvalued state, and was due for a correction. Right now her food index is just trying to find its new support levels. Clearly, she's in a primary bull market when it comes to food obsession. However, the near-term looks pretty shaky with the break below five on September 8th. I'd think about taking a few profits-you know, raiding the fridge a bit more if I were her-but in the medium term, I think we can expect to read in the area of eight to ten food words per MacKenzie column. That's being conservative." The eXile would like to thank Aaron Kowitz and Feinberg Roth for contributing this analysis.