Issue #01/56, January 14 - 27, 1999  

It finally happened. The British woman who heads the Human Resources Dept. of my Big Five firm called me in for a meeting first thing Monday morning. "This is very difficult to say," she told me, with false concern. "But the crisis is forcing us to downsize considerably, and we're going to have to cut your position."

Aw, wasn't that sweet! The dried up old hag couldn't just tell me that I'd been fired--that would hurt too much.

So this is it, folks. In three weeks, my bald yellow ass is history. Cuz you see, this night job of mine at the eXile couldn't pay for more than a couple of Jack's pizzas a month. Without the Big Five salary, I'm worth little more than a death porn story about a "homeless pizdaglaz who froze to death on Ulitsa Pravdy while trying to secure a new job."

I first joined the eXile staff as their "experiment" with nerddom all the way back in the spring of 1997. It feels like ten lifetimes ago, and yet, it all happened so quickly. It'll probably take me another five years just to digest how a two-bit EECS nerd from Ontario, CA rose to legendary proportions of decadence in the capital of the greatest country on earth. I know that I've made a lot of enemies in the expat and Russian communities here. I regret it if I pissed off Russian readers too much for coming across as a modern-day Mongol--which I always sort of aspired to be--but as for my fellow countrymen and cuntrywomyn, I have no regrets, because they're going to get some major revenge on me the minute I touch down at LAX.

The sadness hasn't sunk in quite yet, but the bitterness is definitely there. I guess I should just skip the sappy part and go straight onto what I was originally hired to do: tell you about clubs.

The first club is one of those places that's going to make leaving Moscow really hurt. It's called DK MAI, a bitchin' provincial Moscow raver club that puts Dvorets Molodyozh to shame. First, it's massive; secondly, it's got so many rooms I can't even count 'em; thirdly, the music isn't obnoxiously quasi-hip techno, but rather, just meat 'n potatoes techno, of the hardcore and speed garage variety in one room, and the drum 'n bass and house variety in the other, smaller room. None of this would matter, of course, if there weren't so many squirrely teenie-dyevs to make the whole thing worth it. And no wonder. DK MAI is the Dom Kultury for the Aviation Institute, which, as you can imagine, is packed with scads of 2nd-tier dyevs. And they're looking to trade up, or at the very least, party down. Enter me, Johnny Chen. And uh, let me then enter you, baby. Huh-huh.

The ground floor of DK MAI is massive, sporting a bar area, billiards, and the small(er) dance hall with the rotating rotisserie dancefloor, cooking up a healthy portion of dyevs. Upstairs, there's a massive raver hall where all the robotic raver kids listlessly dance, staring at the stage, which sports a giant vid screen with these cheesy lights surrounding it. If you've got wheels or greens, I'd highly recommend making the trip out here--and tripping hard while you're at it. It's what the kids do, and it's what I did last Saturday, sucking serotonin from my neck like a bat outta hell.

Another club of note, which may be about as new as DK MAI (which is to say, probably not all that new), is called "Park." Park is located--where else?--in Gorky Park, and it's so damn eksklusivny that no one even knows where the fuck it is, and not only that, they probably don't even want you to know where it is. Which may explain why the split-level, Caesar-hairdo-happy club was so incredibly un-full when I popped in last weekend. People say it's a great place--frankly, they may be right. I was completely gone when we went there. I don't remember much--it seemed as though Gorky Park was about as deep as the Black Forest that night-it took us forever to find "Park" the club. When we found it, I caught this very uncomfortable vibe. The dyev factor was low, and what dyevs there were didn't seem to be enjoying themselves too much. I snagglepussed outta there before I could develop a strong impression. You might want to try it yourself, but do it at your own risk.

That's it for me this issue. As you can tell, I'm not in the mood for hamming it up. I'm just trying to give you the fact straight, folks. I've been made redundant, yet another expat victim of the crisis, and my chances of landing another job are next to nil, meaning Hi-dee-ho Ontario!