Mister Black Star aka Timati (and DJ Dlee)

I'd seen the concert advertised for a couple of weeks. I saw the ads, though "oh, that's interesting" and thought no more about it. Sunday morning we were eating breakfast (yay blini!) and Raisa goes "So there's a concert by this guy called Timati on Tuesday. Why don't you call up Vika and see about going." Since I had nothing planned on Tuesday I was like "Okay," So I called up Vika, and we made arrangements, bought tickets, and last night we went to see Timati. Vika was pretty excited about it, and so her excitment was contagious even though I'd only heard one song by Timati on the music video channel. (Just as an aside, have I ever mentioned that one of my favorite things about this country is that they have not one, not two, but three channels that show music videos?)

The concert was at the Circus so I met Vika at the tsentralnye theater (our usual meeting spot) and we walked to the circus. We were being silly the whole time. I don't even remember what about. Mostly just stupid teenage girl stuff. It was fun. We arrived at the plaza outside the circus at about twenty til seven. (The concert was supposed to start at seven) We met up with some of Vika's classmates and stood around with them until almost seven. Then we went inside.

Once inside we left our coats at the customary coat drop off. I'm going to miss those when I go back to America as they are so convenient. We milled around for a bit and then headed to find our seats. Vika and I had good seats. That was a good thing since I didn't pay 1,200 roubles to sit and look at the back of some famous Russian's head. We weren't right in the middle or anything, but our seats were really good. The concert was interesting. Timati seems to be a typical tatoo covered, bling wearing, ACDC t-shirt sporting rapper. Except that he's Russian.


He's got this whole "Mister Black Star" thing going on and I looked at Vika and asked "Why is he called Mr. Black Star...He's not black." Seriously. He's really not. His skin is slightly darker than the average Russian's but personally I think he looks more hispanic than black. Vika said something (I think) about him being arab by decent. Anyway she said that since his skin is a little darker, and most rappers (except eminem) are black, he calls himself "Mr. Black Star" I was like Oh okay. Secretly thinking to myself that that was...interesting. The concert was filled with shrieking teenagers which gave me great entertainment because sometimes they would cheer for Timati at the oddest times. Напремер (For example), Timati was singing this rap about a guy who catches his girlfriend in bed with another guy. So he shoots the guy. He was kind of acting this little story out, and so there was a gunshot sound effect. Naturally in songs like this, the killer gets caught, this was evidenced by the sound of a police siren. And since this is a rap we have to condone suicide so Timati pretended to shot himself (accompanied by another gunshot effect) and he sprawled out on the floor. Right after he did that there was a cheer from the teenage girls in the audience (Because they loved the song) but I just laughed, because it was almost like they were happy he was dead. It gave me great amusement.


The concert ended sometime after nine, but I don't really know because we were there for maybe another 45 minutes because Vika wanted autographs. It was something I hadn't even thought of. So we waited in line and while I was there I had both Timati and Dj Dlee (A famous DJ he's touring with) sign my ticket. It makes a cool souvenir anyway. Wait til I go home and show everyone. I can just hear the conversation in my head:

"And look while I was at this concert thing, I got Timati's Autograph. Isn't that awesome?"
"You got who's autograph?" *Person wanders away*

yup, I can hardly wait. hee hee.

Speaking of conversations I've found some more mistakes that I've made while speaking. I realized the other day that I'd gotten the words for "never" and "Not allowed" mixed up so when I had a conversation with one girl about boys it was something like:
Girl: "Do you have a boyfriend?"
Me:"Nope, I'm not allowed"

She probably thinks I'm nuts. Oh well, just about everyone does. I'm okay with that too. Here's a conversation I had with Vika:

Me:"Yeah I want to get together with Lilia next week and make American Liver"
Vika:"Liver? uh...okay?"
Me:"yeah! you know (in english) cookies!"
Vika:Ah! Okay, because you just said you wanted to make liver
Me:(slightly embarrassed)HA HA HA!

In other news someone told me that last winter the temperature here didn't hit negative 50. I was like "really?" and inside I was secretly thrilled. She went "Yeah, it was only negative 48" and I was like "You're kidding" in a rather disappointed tone. She then went on to explain that there's a big difference in temperature between negative fifty and negative forty eight, and after living here for a month and a half, I believe her.

The District governor is coming on Friday. I'm doing events all day. That's cool with me as I get to skip school.

There was something else...what was it?
Ah! I remember.
How many of you have heard the song "Sexy Back" by Justin Timberlake. Go on Raise your hands.
Good.
Now how many of you can say you've heard this song in Yakutian?
That's what I thought.
I have heard this song in yakutian. I didn't understand a word of it. But it was pretty sweet anyway.

We were singing it in English. Okay, actually the teacher was out of the room and I was helping people with their stuff and I started signing a little of a song by a Russian artist, Pavel Bolya. All of a sudden Aita, one of my classmates, goes "I'm bringing sexy back" And so naturally I'm like "Yeah!" the bell rings and I'm walking with some girls, singing sexy back, and Galia goes "I have it on my phone!" So she turns it on and we're heading to the first floor and I'm singing along and then Kirill, one of the boys in my class goes "hey Abigail, want to hear it in Yakutian?" So he turns it on, and I listen to part of it and I'm like "Sweet!"

Then they all had to go to gym and I had to go to Rotary so the moment was over, but it was cool while it lasted. And that's my story for the day. Now I must finish my little speech about jazz for History tomorrow.