Issue #24/79, December 12 - 26, 1999  

If you thought our last issue just sucked, you were wrong. That issue was special. A lot went into it. Actually, it was our designer, Ilya Shangin, who put more into it than anyone into it. What he had to go through to pick up his miserable paycheck last week was an experience that we think U, the reader, can learn a lot from.

Early on Thursday morning two weeks ago--at about 3:15 a.m., exactly--the staff of the eXile exited its basement office and filed onto the street. We'd just finished the paper after thirty-six hours on the job and were ostensibly going to head home. But we had a long way to go.

The paper actually should have been finished and sent off to the film processors about seven hours earlier. But it was our publisher's birthday that night and Shangin had gotten awesomely drunk at our office party in the space of about forty minutes. Usually he drinks the night before production night, while the editorial staff rides out its speed highs and fucks up the pages, but tonight was different. By eight o'clock that evening he was cursing us all out and passing out with his fingers depressed on the command keys. With him in this condition, pages 11 and 20 each took over three hours to lay out. We finished only after Ilya insisted on being allowed to perform some kind of weird preternatural Tai-Chi dance in front of sales manager Sveta Negrustuyeva, who bravely gritted her teeth and sat it out.

Before you read any further, take a look at the photograph above. That's Ilya. Imagine that face belligerent and grumbling and insisting that it's in perfect condition to drive, and you get the idea of where this story is going.

We went outside. Editors Taibbi and Ames offered to put Ilya in a cab. He declined. The two Americans then swiped his car keys from his pocket, instigating a fight. "Give me my keys, blyad!" Ilya shouted. A scuffle ensued. Taibbi caught a thumb in the eye; Ames tumbled to the ground and struggled with Shangin on the snow. And when Taibbi fled the scene in the hope of hiding the keys somewhere back in the office, the cops came and the real fun began. They didn't do anything at first--just checked our documents and told us to go about our business. But once they'd gotten into their car, the whole problem began again, as Ames and Taibbi steadfastly refused to give Shangin his keys. Enraged, the designer took to kicking the editors in their asses from behind as they walked toward Leningradsky Prospekt. "Give me my keys, you bastards!" he shouted. Finally, after enough of this, the two Americans turned around and crudely shoved him to the snow, smashing his glasses in the process. The cops chose this moment to return to the scene, pulling up in their patrol car while Shangin, squinting and blinded, searched for his lenses on the sidewalk. Ames and Taibbi at this point heartlessly gave up their colleague to the cops, asking them to take him away. Shangin, too, demanded to be taken away, only he was under the mistaken impression that the cops would at least take the Americans away to jail, too. No such luck; the cops let Ames and Taibbi go, and shoved Shangin into the back of the squad car.

Within minutes, he was giving a statement at the local jail. Cunning to the last, Shangin explained that he had attacked his co-workers when they took his keys with the aim of taking his car for a joy ride. At this, the cops declined to press charges and threw him in a cell, telling him to sleep it off.

There were two types of cells in the jail--a temporary holding cell with cage-style bars (which was where Shangin was) and a more permanent cell block behind a windowless steel door. Shangin had been told he was only there temporarily, but there were no guarantees. One of his cell-mates explained that the rules in the jail were flexible and that, for instance, there was a Vietnamese in the permanent cell who'd been held there without a charge for something like two years already.

Shangin didn't believe him, but an hour later, two cops actually opened the steel door to the permanent cell, went in, and came out a few minutes later dragging a wraithlike Vietnamese with translucent skin. The Vietnamese apparently couldn't walk on his own power and was being taken for his nightly trip to the bathroom. He disappeared around a corner and in a few minutes was taken back to his cell, not to reappear. As far as we know, he's still there. After sitting there for two hours, Ilya banged the cell door with his feet and shouted for the guard. The guard rushed to the cage. "What are you banging for, blyad?"

"It's time to let me out," he said. "They said they would let me out in two hours."

The guard took a minute and thought. "Okay," he said, finally. "Let's go." Looking back, we now realize: that guard might have made a different call at that moment. If the vibe had been slightly different, our designer would still be missing, doing time with a zombifying Vietnamese. Bad things can happen that easily in this city.

And here's the real funny part. In the end, the cops let Shangin out of jail and back behind the wheel while he was still roaring drunk. No problem: our designer got back into his car and passed an uneventful drive home. The next day, he was back at work.

The moral of the story: let your friends drive drunk. In this city anyway, their chances of making it home safe are better.