Soda Craze

You were so, so warned.

1. The Actual Rasputin

The Actual Rasputin was a Russian Orthodox monk with unmonklike tendencies towards licentiousness, petty theft, and putting the whammy on the royal family. He was murdered after a series of unfortunate events at the age of 47 at the behest of Tsar Nicholas’ loyalist kinsmen, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Prince Felix Youssoupov. Apparently his 13-inch dongle was exhibited for a while at some Russian museum (it parted ways from his torso in one of those unfortunate events just preceding his death), but I’ve heard tell that it was a not-very-clever hoax and what everybody was really venerating was an ugly, pickled, phallic sea-cucumber.

2. The Hellboy Rasputin

This Rasputin died in 1944, which would have pegged him at 75 in the movie. He doesn’t look it, but then I suppose wading hip-deep in the mystic arts for fifty years preserves youth better than most things. In a crucial plot point, we see that he hasn’t even lost his hair but shaves his head. I’m not sure why he’s working for the Nazis (who appear to have made him wax his chest at some point during the war) but it makes about as much sense as anything else in the movie, including that bit at the end where it turns out an evil tentacled ancient god a thousand feet tall was living in his body.

3. The Boney M Rasputin

The Boney M Rasputin was a sexy saint who could dance and could preach the Bible, none of which were true about Rasputins 1 and 2. Plus, this one died of shooting rather than (as history tells us) drowning in the Neva River - but I guess you can only fit so many methods of death into one disco song. I had a personal experience with this Rasputin while in junior high, but I shall refrain from describing it; many of you were there, and suffered alongside me, and many others have heard the terrible story. Not only does there seem to be no good reason to spend seven social studies classes on him, there seems to be no good reason to write a song about him and I can’t find any disco references to other historical figures, though the possibilities are obviously endless:

‘Mix It Up With Magellan’

‘The Bastiat Boogie-Woogie’

“Khan We Dance, Genghis Baby’

‘Get Down With Ben Franklin’