Meet Mark Ames: Hater of Adam Levine And Sufferer Of "Johnny Depp Complex"

Today's New York Observer introduces us to our new crush, Mark Ames, the editor of Moscow-based magazine eXile, who wrote the story that was circulating around the Internet last week in which Adam Levine of Maroon Five ("our generation's Police") was quoted as saying that tennis star Maria Sharparova was like a "dead frog" in bed. When the Observer reporter confronts Ames with a denial from Levine's publicist, Ames reacts awesomely, telling him that he wrote the piece "in five minutes from a hotel room in California", and:

Americans are the most gullible fucking morons on Planet Earth.

Ames is one of our faaaaavorite types of dudes, part of a subset of men who suffer from what we'll call Johnny Depp Complex. We all know men like this. They studied abroad in college, or did some Eurorailing, or spent some time somewhere — Thailand, Prague, Argentina, probably — freelancing or doing work for a film production company or just reading and drinking copious amounts of booze. The JDC man considers himself a Citizen of the World. He might have joined the Peace Corps, except, well, he couldn't make the two-year commitment.

While the JDC man might sleep with an American woman occasionally, he is much more likely to be attracted to foreign women, because he finds their accents and their habits — from the way they dress and make coffee to their educations — mysterious and alluring. He is given to making pronouncements like this: "People in France know how to live! In America they've forgotten all about it...the American culture is a disaster. I am charmed by the French way of life. It is more civilized and sophisticated." If ever the JDC man gets married, it will be at least in part to get an EU passport.

Ames's case is acute. According to Wikipedia, he grew up in San Francisco, where he went to private school. After that, he moved to Eastern Europe, where he lived "in poverty and spitefulness." He lived with a Czech girlfriend in a nursing home for a minute. He was in a punk band. At one point, he got scabies, "possibly contracted through a sexual encounter in Russia."

As much as we are revolted by the JDC men of the world, we're also kind of attracted to them, because a) they're usually hot (see photo) in a dirty, roll-your-own-cigarettes way, and b) because they're interested in sleeping with the hot Czech bartender instead of us, and this means they treat us like any other dude. Also, we agree that Americans are kind of morons although we would never say it because we think Americans sound even more moronic when they say it out loud. Especially when they're the type who write fake gossip items about the guy from Maroon Five.

Did Maroon 5 Frontman Shag Sharapova? [NY Observer]
Mark Ames [Wikipedia]
Earlier: Adam Levine Sounds Like He's Really Great in the Sack