I Miss Gogol Bordello!

Eugene Hütz has become somewhat of a sex symbol in his own right and rightfully so.

It was 2007, I was living in the East Village finishing up my miserable BA in Cinema Studies. My good friend Erin was always down to meet me at the local watering hole slash only place we ever met for drinks, the now closed Cooper 35 in Cooper Square  near the Bowery, and one of these nights we were talking music. I mentioned this band called Gogol Bordello which everyone in New York between 19 and 25 seemed to be in fervent love with. After about 5 or 6 whiskey sours, we decided we were going to walk, yes walk to the Lower East Side to this bar we'd always heard of but not yet had the balls to visit called Mehanata. The story was that it was a Bulgarian bar in existence for over 20 years and was basically the hub in which Gogol Bordello was born. 

Gogol Bordello, a band that fused authentic Eastern European gypsy folk songs with American punk rock. It's a good thing.

I made eyes with the door guy and he let us all in for free. We walked into a dim smokey bar playing Easter European fusion punk gypsy music. The air was illuminated with red tinted christmas lights and revealed a few strange New York City types sitting around, speaking Russian to each other with a bottle of Vodka at each table. We made our way to the bar and the bartender insisted that we drink Rakia, a kind of Bulgarian moonshine not even available in the states unless you bought it on the black market which they always did. It was delicious, and we got wasted in a matter of minutes. Then we went downstairs. 

Downstairs was a whole different animal. It felt like a seedy club. There was a DJ booth, and a few crystal balls from 1972. Strobe lights were the only source of light down there, and myself and Erin soon learned that we didn't have to walk all the way through people and up the stairs to the outside to chain smoke; our favorite activity. You could apparently do it on the back stairs whilst a drunk girl leans up against your knee and tells you you're beautiful. 

Eventually it started getting crowded and around 1am Erin and I decided that we needed fresh air to have a cigarette in (oh the fucking irony) and we shimmied our way through dancers and goosestepped our way over drunks until we were at the entrance. We lit up and talked about god knows what for a few minutes. All of a sudden, I see her eyes get extremely wide and her speech getting instantly slow. She seemed to be looking at something directly over my shoulder, and I was horrified at the thought that there might be a really tall ghost breathing just on the back of my neck. After a few seconds of drunken hesitation I turn around only to be shoved slightly into her direction (she was in front of me) and I felt bangles hit the small of my back. Before I had a chance to look and see what was behind me, a pair of large hands steadied me from behind and a soft voice spoke 'scuze me doorling', and I knew exactly who it was. 

Don't get too excited, I don't like Madonna, here's a still from her film Filth and Wisdom (2007) with Eugene Hutz who basically plays himself, and Gogol Bordello appears in the film as his character's band.

It was urban legend that Eugene Hütz, the charismatic, enigmatic and eccentric lead singer of Gogol Bordello still showed up to DJ at the bar that had made him famous, and all of a sudden, there he was, decked out in striped skinny jeans, a spangled gypsy scarf wrapped around his waste and that unmistakable handlebar mustache, bumping into me. I was stunned. It was up to par with a normal person bumping into I dont know...Brad Pitt. He was even more amazing in person. Around 6'3, with the most commanding presence, we immediately followed him in and basked in his presence at the bar, trying to non-chalantly stare at him. Neither of us had the nuts to talk to him, but we did end up dancing our asses off, and were at Mehanata every Saturday hence forth until I moved to to the Upper West Side when I began my Master's at Columbia (humblebrag!) and it was just too far to travel. I listened to them all day and all night for a good year after that experience until they stopped coming out with new music, and I'm just wondering two things, well three things; 1. Why have they not recorded a new album? 2. When can I come back to New York and go straight to Mehanata from JFK? 3. Miss Erin Kenealy, will you still come with me when I go? 

Here are some videos and clips, get into them, they're awesome! 

The first one is a video for their most famous song 'Start Wearing Purple' which was actually filmed right in Mehanata when the band was starting out and had no money, having to shoot at wherever they were welcome. 

Below is a trailer for a film that Zhenya (that's a casual way to refer to someone named Eugene in Russian btdubs) called 'Everything is Illuminated' (2005) and turns out he's a bloody good actor too. 

Below the trailer for 'Filth and Wisdom' (2008), where Hutz basically plays himself. 

Madonna Can't Do Anything

Madonna's direction: Ok now kiss her but be really uncomfortable about it, and try way too hard...perfect.

I know I'm a little late on this sentiment, but here we go. What CAN Madonna do? Well she can sip tea, pretend she's Jewish and generally annoy us on any given day but that's about it. I don't care about her music, lets talk about her 'directing'. I finally sat down to watch W/E (2011) today because I've been on a masochistic streak of late and it was on Netflix Instant. I quite like Andrea Riseborough who plays the man trap Wallis Simpson who causes the biggest crisis in the British Monarchy before Princess Di and Prince Charles divorced. Now, rich white people problems are always fascinating, especially when they're in love. There's almost always a problem in the bedroom, whether someone's too kinky or not kinky enough, or someone is having an affair with a hat check girl or worse...someone who's nouveau riche. 

Either way, Madonna is always digging like a pig for truffles for that tiny glimmer of romance amongst an otherwise dull and drab story. Here's what basically happened. Edward VIII was a milquetoast do-nothing prince and heir to the British throne, terribly busy with throwing lavish dinner parties for society friends. Wallis Simpson was twice divorced poor white trash who eventually merited an invitation to meet the dilettante. After that they fell in love, the royal family hated her (of course, since when do they like people?) and forced Edward to abdicate his thrown, hence shit like The King's Speech (2011) was able to be made about his even less interesting brother.

Wallis and Edward on their wedding day.

The entire time I was watching it, I was thinking; 'If I see one more shot out of focus come into focus I'm going to seriously blow chunks' that's basically don't of Film School 101, and what the fuck is up with all the grainy handhelds? Like this is some gritty indie drama about junkies and prostitutes. Aesthetically this movie is such a fail, even though it desperately tries to convince us that Edward and Wallis were actually way more attractive than they actually were.

The story is all told through a young lady named Wally Wintrhop (Abbie Cornish) and we all know how much I love her. She's the only one really really trying in this film to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but it's to no avail. She plays a woman who like worked at Sotheby's at one point and now is disappointed in her marriage to a rich successful and handsome doctor (I mean, who wouldn't be?) so she frequents her old gallery where they just happen to be auctioning off the entire W/E collection. And then there's a subplot about her fucking a handsome Russian security guard for absolutely no reason at all, but that's to be expected when the screenplay is absolutely for shit.

If I glance through the view finder then it will appear as if I'm a real director.

Don't get me wrong, there is romance in this story, the actual story, all of which the film misses. There is nothing erotic, refined, or sensual the whole way through, it's so redundant and banal I ACTUALLY fell asleep...And then I woke up nauseous because there was another dreaded out-of-focus handheld I was waking up to, and The Sex Pistols' 'Pretty Vacant' was playing in a scene set in 1935. F to the AIL.

...Aaaaaand trailer.