Whale & Wasp

Calling a hotel in Moscow the "Volga Hotel" is like calling an Indian restaurant the "Prince of India" (or the "The Taj" or the "Taj of India"). It's a bit obvious. Here in the Volga Hotel, I am listening to the Jar of Flies EP from 1994, early 1994, I think. I have a vague memory of a shadow of a wisp from that time of being in my red pickup truck and listening to something off this on my radio. That truck actually belonged to my brother-in-law but he gave it to me for free. It was totally beat up and a piece of crap from 1985. It was a Toyota, though. It had nothing inside except what bore only the faintest resemblance to a radio. Radio in western Massachusetts at that time was an obvious blend of post-grunge lite mixed in with some heavier guitar fare. I didn't like much of it but I did listen to a lot of it because I had no other options. Remember those bands? Blind Melon, Hole, Local H, Stone Temple Pilots, the Offspring, and so on. Mostly horrible bland stuff. But there's something about hearing a song on the radio, that precise moment when the song comes on, and you are about to switch stations but then you don't, 'cause you know, it's too much trouble, and there's no one around to judge you anyway. So why not listen to that new song?

Alice in Chains, I think, was better than that. They had some good ideas. They seemed to have cornered that halcyon genre of navel-gazing nihilism wrapped in commercial-sounding metal. I liked them, even though (or especially because, perhaps) they were a bit of a downer. Shove my nose in shit, indeed.

I had an eventful day today. Big day in Moscow. But if you don't tell anybody about it, did the events actually happen?

I feel like this right now, though: