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The things I learn
Feb. 10th, 2005 03:32 pmMy parents are full of interesting revelations*.
Here are two things that I learned about their Soviet Youth while they were visiting me here in Ecuador:
Dad's Story
Apparently in 1970 my dad was making some extra cash, working at the exhibit in honor of the 100-year anniversary of Lenin's birth. He said that the day before the exhibit opened the "appropriate authorities" sent censors to do a final once-over. Among the items vetoed by the censors was a photograph in the Fishing/Forestry sector, a good old socially-realist photograph of a fisherman catching a huge hundred-year old pike. Understandably, the photograph was entitled "The Hundred-Year Pike." The poor photographer, on the verge of losing his mind, could not understand what he did wrong, and why his photograph was being censored. The Authorities provided an explanation: "What is this exhibit honoring? Lenin's hundred-year anniversary. What is your photograph called? The hundred-year pike. What exactly are you trying to imply?" Dad said that the photographer went insane soon thereafter, and the Pike photograph was replaced by a print by a photographer from Our Friend Cuba. Dad said the print was a gorgeous shot of a gibbon engaged in an act of onanism.
Mom's Story
Turns out mom had dinner with either Watson or Crick. She couldn't remember which, but she remembered that it was whichever one died recently. So I surmise it was Crick.
Okay, I have to go meet an informant (damn, that sounds weird in the context of Soviet Stories).
* Like the one about my siblings, I mean me having them.
Here are two things that I learned about their Soviet Youth while they were visiting me here in Ecuador:
Dad's Story
Apparently in 1970 my dad was making some extra cash, working at the exhibit in honor of the 100-year anniversary of Lenin's birth. He said that the day before the exhibit opened the "appropriate authorities" sent censors to do a final once-over. Among the items vetoed by the censors was a photograph in the Fishing/Forestry sector, a good old socially-realist photograph of a fisherman catching a huge hundred-year old pike. Understandably, the photograph was entitled "The Hundred-Year Pike." The poor photographer, on the verge of losing his mind, could not understand what he did wrong, and why his photograph was being censored. The Authorities provided an explanation: "What is this exhibit honoring? Lenin's hundred-year anniversary. What is your photograph called? The hundred-year pike. What exactly are you trying to imply?" Dad said that the photographer went insane soon thereafter, and the Pike photograph was replaced by a print by a photographer from Our Friend Cuba. Dad said the print was a gorgeous shot of a gibbon engaged in an act of onanism.
Mom's Story
Turns out mom had dinner with either Watson or Crick. She couldn't remember which, but she remembered that it was whichever one died recently. So I surmise it was Crick.
Okay, I have to go meet an informant (damn, that sounds weird in the context of Soviet Stories).
* Like the one about my siblings, I mean me having them.
