Caught in the Net: Ruski Business

Russia’s answer to Bruce Springsteen – it must have been a very rude question! – Oleg Gazmanov has received death threats after performing ‘Born In The USSR’, an apparently sincere Boss reworking that proclaims: “The Ukraine and the Crimea, Belarus and Moldova/ This is my country!/ Sakhalin and Kamchatka and the Ural Mountains/ This is my country!/ Kazakhstan and the Caucasus, and the Baltics too/ I was born in the Soviet Union!/ Made in the USSR.”

This has gone down like a lead balloon in the aforementioned former satellites where tens of millions died under Stalin and Lenin, and weren’t exactly mollycoddled by their successors.

Gazmanov, who’s known for being a Putin lickspittle, has been told by the Lithuanian government that he’s an “unwelcome person” in their country.

The row had been simmering away for a few years, but exploded before Christmas when Gazmanov gave the song an airing at the Russian Federation’s 20th birthday celebrations.

A boycott of his December 29 visit to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, proved successful with only a handful of fans crossing the picket line.

tiny.cc/d1ieax has all the contentious details.

Getting a resounding Sundance Film Festival ‘thumbs-up’ last week was My Prairie Home, Chelsea McMullan’s tender and moving account of how transgender alt-folkie Rae Spoon survived prejudice from both his Pentecostal parents, and also the one moose Canadian town he grew up in.

Despite the ‘content cannot be viewed in your country’ message that pops up, the trailer can be viewed here

Is it just us or is Rae a ‘ringer for Proclaimers twins, Charlie and Craig Reid? Indeed, come to think of it, we’ve never seen the three of them on the same stage...

Caught In The Net is loving the Photoshop in real-time video from Hungarian songstress Boggie – thanks Maeve Heslin for the spot – and Ronaldinho guest rhyming on ‘Vai Na Fé’ with Edcity, a Brazilian who’s as dextrous with his wordplay as the bucktoothed footie legend is with a ball. Both can be seen, natch, on YouTube.

Which just leaves time for quick visits to fotozup.com/fakesigns-in-london-underground (guerrilla artist confuses London commuters); tinyurl.com/kog9yfv (homemade sex doll fails to give bang for buck) and clubdeportivomoron.com.ar(our new favourite football club).