This week, while surfing the `net looking for a job and contemplating a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I decided to take a bit of a break and search through my favorite news source, Yahoo! News, and I happened to catch a glimpse of an article mentioning the fact that an underage, Russian, lesbian, pop duo was having their music video banned from television stations across Europe.  Now if you, like me, are a shiftless, twenty-something male, then of course two thoughts should come into your head when hearing that phrase: 'Why the hell didn't I think of that first?!  I'd be friggin' loaded!'

And 'Daaaamn.  What's their website?'

After chastising myself for not being so innovative as to come up with such a genius idea which would assure my permanent, future, financial well-being -- and then reminding myself of my miserable job search -- I had to go find their website, which, for those of you interested, is http://www.tatugirls.com, and discover the answers to all the important things there are to know about t.A.T.u.  The answers being: yes, they are hot.

Well, besides that they're hot, t.A.T.u. is another manufactured pop group; the man who's getting loaded from all of this is a gentleman named Ivan Shapovalov, who claims to have thought of the idea for the group while browsing Internet porn sites.  The duo's odd name allegedly stands for "Ta Lyubit Tu" which roughly translates to "She Loves Her".  Further, the girls are aged 17 and 18.  Finally, they're supposedly lesbians, though this is all in doubt, as they claim to be "just good friends" at times.  This all becomes very important, as I previously mentioned their music video was banned across stations in Europe.  Getting banned in Europe is much like being kicked out of Australia for offensive behavior: really damn hard.  This is, after all, the continent that tolerates Amsterdam, and which tolerates soft porn on television.  We'll get to the music video later.

How does one even begin to recruit underage girls for a lesbian pop group?  In my job search I found an opening for a varsity volleyball coach at a local private school for girls.  I don't know about the girls on the volleyball team at your high school, but the volleyball players at my high school were all smokin' hot, though I tend to think this is an across the board thing.  "Private school for girls" means that their parents are all very rich and the girls have to wear cute uniforms including very short plaid skirts.  Using the blessing and curse that is my common sense, I decided that a private girls' school is definitely not the place for a twenty-something male to be working.

Armed with this information, I naturally had to tell my friends, who somehow, as occurs with disturbing frequency, were aware of said hot, lesbian, pop duo before me.  I'm not that far behind the curve though, because while we're on the topic of Russians, I have a Russian friend who just discovered the All Your Base Are Belong To Us, phenomenon last month.  As a public service announcement for the rest of you who missed it, go to the link and be amazed, while all your friends scoff at you and tell you, 'That was soooo February 2001.'

Though they, like me, all secretly wish there was an All Your Base revival.

Now I've been rather hard-pressed coming up for an article for Chaser, as the idea well has been dry as of late, but then my friends suggested I actually listen to t.A.T.u.  As it goes, this is an entirely new evolution in the line of male thought: we can enjoy the eye candy that is Britney Spears, but how many of us have actually listened to any of her albums in its entirety?  Well, maybe it's not so much a new line of thought, as a cruel dare.

On to the review:

200 Km/H in the Wrong Lane is surprisingly listenable, considering the standard fare we've been accustomed to hearing from manufactured teen idols as of late.  The album is predominantly English, but that hardly matters as the vacant lyrics serve only to lend to the dubious status of the duo's sexuality or simply descend into hilarity, and presumably the Russian is the same. Singers Lena Katina and Julia Volkova chirp their songs in a manner eerily reminiscent of Christmas with the Chipmunks while accompanied by a harmless, discofied synth pop ripped straight out of the eighties: think Alphaville, think Soft Cell, and think Pet Shop Boys; in short, this is Kraftwerk gone trance.  None of this is surprising given that the producer, Trevor Horn, is not only known as being a member of the Buggles (famed for being the artists with the first video ever shown on MTV), and prog rock band Yes, but also produced the Pet Shop Boys and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.  Several tracks are of interest, a cover of the Smiths' classic "How Soon is Now?", the silly tune "Clowns (Can You See Me Now?) " which brings up thoughts of Madonna's "Die Another Day", and "Stars" which seems to feature Kenny G on sax and a sample of one of the girls rapping in Russian.

200Km/H turns out being 124.2742 miles per hour by the way.

Why you will or won't buy it:

More than likely, you won't end up with this album unless: you buy everything you have a penchant for both new wave and trance, like the obscure German dance artist Blümchen; tend to buy everything you see on Total Request Live, or just want the last track on the enhanced CD which is the music video for "All the Things She Said" featuring the two girls in schoolgirl outfits, in the rain, making out.  Yes, you did read that correctly: wet schoolgirls making out.

That an album like this becomes popular in Russia makes me wonder about the current economic and cultural state of Russia.  I asked my friend Liam, whose opinions have been seen in my column before, if he would go along with the simplistic theory that communism stunted the former Soviet Union to the extent that only now are they emerging from the eighties, to which he responded, "Countries that aren't America or Britian or France have a hard time staying current with fashion and trends...  I remember meeting a bunch of Germans in the mid-nineties for whom zubaz pants were the rage..."  Interpret that as you will, but that leads to a bit of a paradox in that an anachronistic Russian export should become popular in such paragons of culture and fashion as the United States and Britain.

I see it going the way of Europop export Eiffel 65's "Blue (Da Ba Dee)".  I do hope that song is stuck in your head now, maybe now you'll realize what I went through, as you're the ones who forced me to listen to it by requesting it on the radio.

Related:

One of my last articles was concerning the issue of age and sex, which included a rule to evaluate if a girl is too young for you to acceptably date.  For example: given my age, 22, I can only acceptably date one of the girls in t.A.T.u since she's 18.

One important thing I forgot to mention earlier is that t.A.T.u. also does concerts basically in really tight underwear with kneepads as an accessory.  This site has an enormous galleries of photos.

If you want more analysis on t.A.T.u. focusing on the context of their underage lesbianism, and the exploitation of children, read this.

Read about a naughty teacher at the Smoking Gun.

For the same price as 200 Km/H in the Wrong Lane on Amazon, you can get a poster of girls making out.