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Judith Light and The Muslim BejayJun 21 '01 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line I give a tremendous thumbs up for the local customs of these original Caucasians. Well, I recently returned from my semi-annual sojourn in the lovely, if gangrenous, nation of Azerbaijan. My family owns a vineyard, a boysenberry bog, and a Hummel figurines mail order franchise there, so business takes us to this sometimes dusty, sometimes semiarid steppe a little more than we would like. Unfortunately, like so many other locales that could formerly be called "exotic" and "the far corners of the earth," Azerbaijan has suffered a recent surge in popularity so that every third person you run into is either a writer for Fodor's, Michelin, Lonely Planet or Let's Go, or a member of the Clinton administration on a fact-finding mission (they never got the telegram informing them the Clinton administration is over, and the Bush State Department is, how you say in the Lone Star State, "more backlogged than a Texarkana hooker with a two-by-four up her one-by-five.") Every fourth traveller is someone trying to establish himself as a "serious" travel or current events writer, i.e. someone whose ramblings are actually published under his own byline, such as Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Mark Salzman, or Sebastian Junger. You can usually spot these interlopers a kilometer away by their $140 Patagonia shorts and Vuarnet sunglasses. Since I look very much like a native, I immediately ingratiate myself with them and offer up my "native" lore, mythology, wisdom and old wives' tales. They gobble it up like a Texarkana hooker scarfing down a chalupa. You'll be able to read all about it in their forthcoming books in which they tell you all about their quirky selves under the guise of educating you on the local culture. Stats 60% of Azerbaijanis live below the poverty line. As you no doubt will guess, this means that they consume an awful lot of Cheetos and lotto tickets. Yet surprisingly 97% of the population over age 15 is literate and the lotto is almost always won by members of the cabinet or National Assembly. 98% of Azerbaijanis can identify George W. Bush in a lineup. George W. Bush can identify Azerbaijan as "a location, place, or country" only 2% of the time. National Icons Much like the Gallic reverence for Jerry Lewis, the Teutonic appreciation of McGeorge Bundy and Shirley Temple Black, and America's long love affair with Dolly Parton and Tipper Gore, the Azerbaijanis enjoy their own obsessions: Judith Light, for one. All the episodes of Who's the Boss have been dubbed in Azeri and run continuously on one of the two national television stations and many Azerbaijani women wear their tresses in her circa 1985 bushy, feathered style. They do a bang-up job of translating, as with these lines from a 1984 episode: Original version: Tony: I am a former second baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals. I am a widower with a young daughter, Samantha. Angela: Welcome, Tony. Actually, I am looking for a domestic servant to run my household, but have reservations about hiring a man to do a woman's job. Besides which, you are so good looking! Tony: (blushing) Ha ha, I get that all the time. But Mrs. Bower, your house is a mess, and your young effeminate son Jonathan has no positive male role models. Please, let me insert myself into your lives and take up residence in this big Connecticut center-hall colonial. Azeri version: Tony: I am St. of the cardinals of Louis as baseman old. I am a widower with a girl, Samantha. Angela: Welcome, Tony. I who seeks a national civil servant, to make function my budget, but hold reserves regarding the attitude of a man to really have, to regulate the work with a woman. Who you is thus good for looking at! Tony: (Face like radish) Ha ha, I receive that whole time. But Mrs. Bower, its carcass is a confusion, and your young person effeminate Jonathan does not have the paper of masculines of the models of the positive. Please be made use me in your lust for life, and the residence in this great colonial hall Connecticut middle to make examination. I think you can see why the show is so relentlessly popular! (The astute Azerbaijani populace, incidentally, acknowledged Jonathan's (Danny Pintauro) homosexuality much more quickly than American audiences, who refused to make the distinction between a slightly built, prissy little blond mama's boy who just happened to have the wrist movements of Nathan Lane, and a full-fledged (if juvenile) queen.) The main airport in Baku has only two runways, but three Judith Light gift shops, where the discriminating shopper can pick amongst Judith Light mugs, mousepads, blank books, satiny shoulderpads, hair combs, pantyhose, crystal deodorant. (I am having a feminine hygiene flashback, which so often happens after I read one of jkkelley's reviews, in which I remember reading somewhere that a Japanese company manufactures a tampon named after Anne Frank. There is something wistful about this -- the girl, after all, was just barely on the threshold of puberty -- as well as ironic -- an Axis power honoring (desecrating, some might say) a Holocaust Jew. Maybe someone can refresh me on this.) Also popular is NBC blow-up doll Stone Phillips, who came to Azerbaijan for six hours to shoot some backgrounds for Dateline in 1992. Though the Azerbaijanis are not an abnormally superstitious people, there was a bit of an outcry when 9,400 epileptics, quadriplegics, and diehard lesbians were instantaneously cured of all disease and the prison doors thrown open the moment his feet touched the Baku tarmac. Still, he has not attained the stature of Judith Light. The Muslim Bejay A lot has been said and written about The Christian Bejay, by Epinions members, circus midgets, QVC hosts, Geoffrey Chaucer and St. Thomas Aquinas. Far less has been written about a far more widely practiced form of oral gratification. I speak of course of the Muslim Bejay. Azerbaijanis are 97% Muslim, and rather secular at that. (They will suck on pork, but not swallow it.) This means that their enjoyment of the bejay is both joyful and restrained. Sometimes while experiencing the bejay they have in their eyes the faraway look of an unrepentant Jeff Gillooly, at other times the sad pained look of a tortoise whose neck is slowly being twisted counter-clockwise. The dental habits of adult female Azerbaijanis are not quite on a par with the rest of the Caucasus, which has both positive and negative consequences for bejay enjoyers. On the plus side, and I know I don't have to explain this to residents of Arkansas or Wisconsin, missing front teeth facilitate any sort of oral-genital tectonics. On the minus side, you have a lot of oral bacteria coming to the picnic along with the other diners. Much has been made of the need to inspect the fleshy member for blood vessels. Personally I feel this is a little vampirish, but to each his or her own. Artificial sources of light for inspection purposes are somewhat scarce in many regions of Azerbaijan, and flashlights are no longer available for civilian purchase as they are all needed for the nighttime skirmishes with neighboring Armenia. The association of candlelight and romance is a purely Western notion anyway. In most countries, candles just mean you're poor. ---------------- Sadly, I feel I've just scratched the surface of this parched little nation. I can only hope that Disney will soon produce an animated feature that takes place here, to enable you to get more of a feel for its folklore and customs, its expensively digitized people, and its precious and/or jaunty woodland creatures.  |
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