April Fools' Day and Anti-NATO Rally Day in Odesa 

It is with significant disappointment that I report to you the death of the "Odessan Sense of Humor".

Natives of the FSU will certainly remember the great number of comedians to come out of this city. Those who've visited the city or lived here often have stories of funny or witty bits of conversation. What was it like? It's hard enough to convey personal anecdotes, let alone second-hand ones, so I'm limited to my own experience. Unfortunately, I've only got one from our three months here.

A couple of older women are walking along, engaged in a deep conversation about a colleague. There was a lot of nodding and stern looks.

"...and you know," one said, "she's not spiteful. She doesn't do it out of spite."

"No, no, she's not spiteful, no..." said the other, and there was a moment of silence.

"But what about me?" 

If this does not convey the sense of humor, my apologies, I arrived too late to do it justice, it seems. It may be that occasional jokes still get floated around, but is simply drowned in the stream of profanity that begins a minute and a half from our door and flows along until a minute or so before we get wherever we're going.

April 1

It was with a sense of relief, if not a huge amount of hope, that we went to watch the April 1 celebration. Given Odesa's historic reputation for humor, April 1 is a big day here: an official city holiday this year. We could expect some of the prize humor to be at the show, wherever it is the rest of the year. Zhvanetsky, one of those famous Odesan comics, was slated to come.

When Zhvanetsky changed his mind and withdrew from the lineup, it was a warning sign.

Aside from Maski Show, a local clown act, and the cast of Derevnya Durokov, a television clown act, there wasn't anyone there who was ever funny, let alone who said something funny that day. By the time we finished dinner and headed down to the stage for the last three hours of the celebration, both groups were long gone. Without them, in fact, the only funny parts were the one's that weren't supposed to be funny.

Click pic to enlarge. Next to Precious is a girl from the Moscow circus in a leotard hanging in a hula hoop. The organizers apparently didn't think Eruption  was explosive enough on its own.Take Eruption, one of the two headline bands. Never heard of them? That's because it's a British R&B group that had a few hits in Germany and Europe in the 70s and 80s, then disappeared. Their second female lead singer, named Precious Wilson took the name when the rest of the group broke up, gathered together a couple girlfriends and created an all-female caberet act that's still singing Eruption's "hits" thirty years later. It's an uncomfortable mixture of funny and sad to watch Precious, now 51 years old, trying and failing to get a bunch of Ukrainian kids to sing the lyrics to Eruption's 1978 hit "One Way Ticket". When the MC called for an encore, she tried, and failed, again.

Wait, wouldn't that make it a two-way ticket?

After her was a strong man act with a guy in studded leather and his similarly-clad girlfriend. He lifted weights, and then lifted his girlfriend---almost as amazing as a trip to the gym or a football cheerleading squad practice. Then he blew up a hot-water bottle. For his big climax scene he (at this point you're going to think I'm kidding but I'm not) hammered a nail up his nose.

After him came a "zany" singing troupe that looked like it was made up of volunteers from my high school PTA. Did the PTA chaperones dance at your high school dances, too? Now you've got a mental picture of what I'm talking about.

Man in leather blowing up a hot water bottle All of which brings up a very important question: Why, God, why? Why couldn't they have gotten any decent Ukrainian music? There's plenty of Ukrainian bands with senses of humor. Why did they have a couple unfunny over-the-hill and pudgy Russian MCs and no actual comedians? Why did Zhvanetsky think the show was going to be a farce, not a good kind of farce, and cancel?

Two days later, I think I got my answer.

April 3 

Notwithstanding the fact that the Russian government, using Germany and France as proxies, has already vetoed giving Ukraine and Georgia NATO action plans for at least a year (actually, maybe I'm wrong about this, December may be the new goalpost, and Europe may not have barred Ukraine as strongly as I'd thought, see the comments here), there was an anti-NATO rally on April 3.

Some schoolkids march in for the rally, others ride the американские горки (roller coaster)It was held in the same plaza as the April 1 celebration, almost immediately after they'd taken down the props from that event. In fact, they didn't even take down the stage scaffolding, they just replaced the "Humarine 2008" banners with "Nato - Nyet" banners. Where the beer and cupie doll carnival games had been were new little kiosks giving away Party of Regions and Moscow Patriarchy Orthodox newspapers, or gathering signatures to make Russian another official national language.

The composition of the rally was the usual for PoR: older pensioners waving Soviet flags next to PoR flags (or new half-Soviet-red half-PoR-light-blue flags). The rest were kids that were given a day off from school along with plastic PoR ponchos and flags. They looked like they were at a boring assembly.

Keeping the purpose of their rally in mind, what would you expect the music lineup to be?

The April Fools'/anti-NATO stage, in the foreground a man with the Russian flag and a sign reading "Beating a Turk is not Playing a Schoolboy for a Fool". Anyone know what in the world that means?Let's see how well you guessed:

Queen - I Want to Break Free
Jamiroquai - Something, Not Canned Heat
Metallica - Enter Sandman
...a couple more of the same, couldn't remember their names as I'm not very up on my American culture

Then they brought in their live acts, which I thought would mean no more watching pensioners attempt to hold up under a barrage of American pop. Instead, their first singer sang only one Russian song before launching into Simply the Best by Tina Turner. Wait, don't click on that last link, this YouTube video of Dutch pop idols trying to cover the song will give you a much better idea of what it was like.

We waited through the end of that song act, and the arrival of some more of the attendees. I read the PoR news-pamphlet we picked up, but there was no actual fact-based argument against NATO in it. Never did find one. If anyone has seen a coherent argument against NATO, please let me know. I'd love to know what the objection is.

I'm afraid we didn't make it to the actual speeches, if there were any. We had to leave when the next twenty-year old boy on stage sang (in English):

Nasty, nasty, nasty girl

Every night I see,
you and me

Nasty, nasty nasty girl

Every night I see,
you and me

I wonder,
where are you now.

All of this is the best answer I have to what happened to the Odesan sense of humor: the reflexive anti-Ukrainianism in Odesa has overshadowed the city's famous indifference to politicians and their posturing. Since Odesa has been dragged down into the leaden stupidity of politics, the citizens can't muster the light wittiness that made the city so unique.

It's like a cruel joke.