Going to Russia?

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It is brutal navigating Mother Russia. Anyone going should contact my old and good friend Ruslan who has created a concierge company called Moscow City Experts. I never would have survived my two years in southern Russia without Ruslan and he's the hippest and coolest Tatar I know!

Alice, Off the Page

Something good to read.

Hard African Sunday...

This is a crushing story about a former child soldier from Sierra Leone that is in the NYT magazine today. I noticed it after watching The Last King of Scotland so its been one of those afternoons. Whitaker as Amin is very intense and, as one review put it, this is a horror movie. I am shaken. The closing clip's reminder of the estimated 300,000 dead during Amin's rule seems more unsettlingly understandable reading about Ishmael Beah's story of killing and cocaine from the age of 12-15.

I appreciated the end of David Denby's review in the New Yorker...

after this movie and “The Constant Gardener,” one would like to whisper ever so gently into the ears of all Western filmmakers that Africa, in its tragic condition, is perhaps not the most appropriate place to stage the moral redemption of dopey Europeans.

Banya, please!

Funny story on banya's in New York. Birch branches have amazingly calming properties. How cool is it that instead of just getting boring flowers, one can get the Banya Basket! Um, yes, that is a bottle of vodka in the basket.