Speaking Russian At The Bada Bing

So it goes a little something like this...Man needs money to live. Man takes job to make money. Money good.

Being in need of a serious cash infusion I decided to take a job offer to work on a show for 8 days out at Silvercup Studios in Queens. Laying cable, eating, crimping BNC connectors, eating some more, the usual day at the office. Mostly just wiring up what will turn out to be a human rat cage. The gig? The Russian version of Big Brother. It's called Golod and it means hunger in Russian. The premise? Similar to it's American counterpart, Hunger puts a group of contestants in living quarters for 100 days with all the beautiful amenities of the modern world except, you guessed it, food. Seems that it's controversial and has gotten some attention in Germany. The experiment includes putting contestants out on the street to go make some money so they can eat. I smell contestant meltdown.

That's all very nice but you know how difficult it is to communicate with a Russian crew when you don't speak a word of Russian? Is this how Clint felt on The Good, The Bad and the Ugly? Seems that we worked it out though and everyone is cool. During a break I took a look around. Silvercup is where The Sopranos gets, uh, shot. So I got a look at Tony's back office of the Bada Bing. Almost surreal to see it in this dull flat light not the dark, soft shadowy world that we see on the show. It was cool though.

I'll try to due my best to report on what's going on with the show but I will probably be wiped out so...until tomorrow. I need to go brush up on my Russian...