Last week, everyone was abuzz about 14 semi-naked Russian air cadets in their underwear.  The situation began when cadets at the Ulyanovsk Institute of Civil Aviation made a video to the song “Satisfaction” by Benny Benassi.  Apparently the original video of the 2002 Italian dance hit featured scantily clad women doing construction work.  Back in 2013, British Army officers made a parody video of song.  But in this new Russian version, the scantily clad Soviets strut through the halls, engage in some twerking, and suggestively devour fruit.  In short order, an official condemnation was released.  “Frivolous dances in underwear in the institute’s uniform cap on the territory of the aviation university are unacceptable” – which I bet sounded a whole lot better in the original Russian.  The head of the campus said, “I honestly do not want to comment on this disgusting behavior of cadets.  To be honest, I must sit and digest what I’ve seen.”  It should be noted that a good source of potassium is bananas. 

Within hours, the video disappeared from the Web and the lads were threatened with expulsion – which I thought was Phase Two of the Clinique regime!  And then the craziest thing happened – thousands of people came to their defense and started posting their own videos.  This quickly became known as the Satisfaction Challenge, and much of the support came from within Russia itself.  A group of “chic grannies” did a version.  So did a group of Ukrainian swimmers.  We even saw one made from a group of welders from the Urals – which sounds far more titillating than it actually is.  With hundreds of thousands of hits, the Russians realized maybe a little attention to their aviation program wasn’t such a bad thing.  But where, oh where, can you find the video that started this craze?  At BillyMasters.com, naturally.

For a country against “gay propaganda”, Russia seems to be front and center this week.  From stripping cadets, we go to a report that a loophole in Russian bureaucracy has led to a gay marriage being legally recognized!  A gay couple from Moscow got married while on vacation in Denmark.  When they returned home, they went to get the marital status on their passports updated.  They brought the paperwork from Denmark, and the official stamped their passports as married “without any questions”.  Despite posting a copy of the passport online, the Russians claim that this is “fake news”.  In case you didn’t see the connection between the US and Russia.