Exercise Face Control! (part 2)

Perhaps now is the time to explain the title of this post.
When I first arrived I was handed a small guide book printed by the IUM for its incoming students every semester. Among its many gems was an exclamation in the warnings section:
Exercise Face Control!
When I first read it, I tried to think of what it could mean. I'd never head the term before, and like any pure bred white boy, I was raised in far too politically correct of an environment to leap to the obvious conclusion. But it means exactly what it says: discriminate based on appearances. Of course you could never get away with saying something like that in the US, but there's such a homogeneous culture in Russia that if you lived here you'd never even think of the possible racist connotations.
From a purely linguistic sense I think these syllables constitute some of the the most precious (s)tones in the english language. It is a very common phrase, but as far as I can tell, only for speakers of English as a second language in Russia. It must be a direct translation, but my favorite part is that nobody seems to realize it's a colloquialism, and will drop it in front of a native english speaker without hesitation. It's like a delicious treat every time I hear it.
Although, it occurs to me that maybe everyone's using it in the US too and I'm just not cool enough (or maybe too cool?) to have heard it - so if I just made a huge ass of myself my bad.

The point is, on Friday night, my face got controlled, hardcore style. But that's getting ahead of myself.
After a long day of touring and a tasty but terribly confusing dinner, a few of us were looking to get our part-ay on. And just our luck! A poster on the hostel wall - just a few blocks away lay a club (dance style, not Grog-club-dinosaur-Grog-eat-dinosaur-Grog-sleep-now style). After drinking a few 1 liter cans of Baltika we were ready to groove, so we outed through the door and moseyed down the ulitsa. The club was in a corner basement with absolutely no signs indicating its presence. At this point it was around 11 o'clock, so we went in, and were promptly stopped by the doormen. They had a list, and anybody who wasn't on the list would have to wait till 12. Seemed reasonable. Seemed like a good time to level up in drunk, especially because you can drink on the street without getting hassled here. So we stopped by a local mart and purchased ourselves a few more Baltikas. Unfortunately though these were of the glass bottled variety, and when we went to imbibe we were confronted with the great challenge that has spurred all of mankind's great invention - removing liquid from a hard shell without a bottle opener. In a Grog-club-dinosaur-Grog-club-beer kindof move we opted for the "open on the sidewalk" technique. It met with a success ratio of 1/3, mine and Shane's beers constituting the acceptable losses. Or, were they losses? After all, no glass had fallen in, and well, I'm not THAT drunk, I can drink a beer without it touching my lips. (I had only hit the ground once that night - I'd only barely gotten my stumble rolling). Those of you who know me at all already can tell where this is going - no, I can't perform any act of agility; roll 2d6 - you need a thirteen. So I cut my lip and bled for an hour, while Dirk and Shane kindly kept me company.
Finally though with the bleeding staunched and only some bloody snow left behind to evidence it ever occurred, we were ready to make our second pass at the club. After standing in a short line, we met the doormen, and were again refused. I *think* it was mainly because we couldn't speak a damned word of Russian, or at least I flatter myself that I wasn't so terribly unstylish as to be denied solely on those grounds. Our pride was hurt a little, but the night was still young (or so we thought!), and we went out in search of another club.
However, we, having left our astrolabe at home, found ourselves after three large circles to be entirely in need of a competent navigator. We were set on the Sphinx, a joint we'd spied coming off the train, but the Nile wound a labyrinthine course. So we wandered the desert, until after many minutes the way was revealed to us; we'd been there all along, and only needed to clap our shoes thrice and walk down two blocks! Unfortunately the place was about as empty as a bad analogy. Despair almost took us then, but we spied some hip looking Russians walking down the way, and Dirk bravely dared his tongue to formulate the mystic's foreign words that would spell them as our guides. It worked! They agreed to lead us to a club, only 100 rubles entry, the party of the night! At last our long journey was begun!
Unfortunately it was the same club we'd been to earlier. This time though, Dirk managed to slip in with the crowd of Russians. Shane and I were not so lucky; we had no 100 ruble notes and so were forced to ask change for a 1000, whereupon they lighted on the fact that we were still Americans, and Americans who had already been asked to hit the road!

Downtrodden, we walked away for good, got some beer at a cafe, and went with heavy hearts to slumber.

(To be continued)