A: I did a movie in Russia and didn’t realize how Russian I look, even more specifically, how Ukrainian I look until I was over there. Even though I’m mostly Irish, I do have some Ukrainian or Russian heritage. I don’t know if it was a reference to that. It’s also an inside joke with one of the AMC executives, Vlad Wolynetz, who’s Ukrainian. And I think it’s just a hilarious go-to pick-up line.
Jack is on the phone with Maureen Dowd when Tracy shows up asks him for $100,000. Jack tells him that this is not possible, but says that he has a better idea: use his celebrity image to endorse a product. After Tracy agrees, he comes up with "The Tracy Jordan Meat Machine". Armed with an "endorsement" from Dr. Spaceman (Chris Parnell) and hook-ups from Jack, the product is finally ready for sale. Soon after, a series of product defects prompts Tracy to tell Jack that he does not wish to endorse the product any longer. Jack finds a way to make it work: by rebranding it as a Whoopi Goldberg-endorsed product targeted for Ukraine.
I couldn’t understand Whoopi reading the phonetically correct cue cards, so I had to run this by Taras who confirmed that she was speaking Russian. But at least the sign is in Ukrainian. Points lost for ‘the Ukraine’ though, shame on you Alec Baldwin we are the Irish of the West!
The journey for Vasyl Popadiuk from Ukraine to Toronto has been one of musical adventure, starting at Kiev’s Lysenko school for gifted children at the tender age of 7, and continuing at Ukraine’s national Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Music from age 18. Vasyl Popadiuk’s father, himself a renowned composer and pan flute player, dreamt of his son following in his footsteps as a flutist but at the age of four Vasyl Jr chose to play the piano. By age six he had discovered and fallen in love with the violin – an outcome predicted by a stranger before his birth – that love has remained steadfast through the years.
PBS Frontline (a documentary show) this week is re-airing their 2006 show on the sex trade in Europe. Part of the show is dedicated to showing young girls taken from Ukraine and funneled through Turkey to the rest of Europe as sex workers:
Sex Slaves takes us to "ground zero"; of the sex trade – Moldova and Ukraine – where traffickers effortlessly find vulnerable women desperate to go abroad and earn some money.
The film focuses on the remarkable story of Viorel, a Ukrainian man on a mission to find his pregnant, trafficked wife in Turkey. Our hidden cameras follow Viorel as he travels to Turkey; his only lead the telephone number of the pimp who, he believes, has Katia in his possession. To secure his wife’s release, after days of desperate efforts, Viorel poses as a trafficker and sets out to buy his wife back. We follow Viorel to his meeting with Katia’s captor and from there into the world of trafficked women.
Interwoven with Viorel’s story, we meet other victims, traffickers and the families that have been torn apart by the trade in human flesh. Sex Slaves is the first film to have a convicted trafficker talk openly about how trafficking works, and how women are coerced into sexual slavery. With hidden cameras, we watch as traffickers move people across borders with impunity and expose how easy it is to purchase a modern day sex slave.
Q: What’s up with Paul and Ukrainian food?
Famous Ukrainian violinist 
PBS Frontline
