Hockey as a martial art

[igenlode]

Sometimes it seems that everyone else is watching/reading Heated Rivalry.
Meanwhile YouTube presents me with Soviet Russia doing this:

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[paserbyp]

https://youtu.be/mj_jwF-m8J4?si=bnyuZP-9ikhXWIFs

[igenlode]

That was... not at all what I was expecting :-O
(Not least because I was subconsciously mistranslating the name as 'Trousers-Fall-Down', and since the previous video featured circus performers I was envisioning clowns...)

I assume Василёк is a slang term with which I'm unfamiliar; I do know 'blue' in general as a term for 'homosexual', thanks to awkward disclaimers at the start of slash fics. But this sort of thing is way outside my comfort zone. (According to Wikipedia, it's a parody of a Madonna number!)

It does occur to me in consequence that quite possibly the reason why I apparently enjoy the genre of Soviet light entertainment is the same as the reason why I'm drawn to pre-war English films/novels; it's the product of a highly socially conservative society with strong censorship, which means first of all that the level of sexual attraction, for example, is covert enough to be appealing rather than offputting, and secondly that it requires rather more subtlety and ingenuity to work within externally-imposed limits, especially when you *can't* simply go for the lowest common denominator in order to grab audiences. (Hollywood lost me in its attempts to out-compete the TV networks in the 1970s by showing ever more and more gore, grime, and meaningless grind.)

I'd already realised that musically the product was about twenty or thirty years behind British pop charts at the time, which meant that from my point of view it was still much closer to the genre of music that I had actually enjoyed. But I suspect also that the fact that there were a lot of things that you *couldn't* show overtly in terms of drama or plot may have meant that the themes that were focused on and the treatment of those themes were more along the lines of the ones from the era that appealed to me...

[paserbyp]

https://youtu.be/6pSzKFKE5lE?si=b6SeSVtWvM-gYWCK

https://youtu.be/U4CKQKqrm2I?si=O-_dX15JoSFKUzt-

https://youtu.be/PJeWSacXrnw?si=2nZVSSXaBGLveu4T

[igenlode]

Yes, exactly :-)

Oooh, I *know* about Engibarov -- I looked him up after he came up in chapter 11 of "When I Was Athos"... https://www.smekhov.narod.ru/Athos/deviation.html
And you really can see the Buster Keaton influence in this clip.

And I know Popov: he was Mr Bear in "Mama"!
(Which proves I am actually acquiring useful cultural knowledge via this somewhat idiosyncratic route ;-)
Juggling with two apples *and a core* is seriously impressive; there is nothing worse than multiple uneven objects, let alone one that keeps changing in weight and shape...

I enjoyed this clip, although I had to run it again with the subtitles to get the gist of the industrial/propaganda jargon (Red Riding Hood is more within my vocabulary range): https://youtu.be/7eAgLQ3kfCo

(Арбуз I don't really get, I'm afraid, although I think it's about the effects of watermelon on the digestive system...)

[paserbyp]

You're completely right about watermelon(арбуз), but personally I don't like this kind of humor due to fact it's very low level of sophistication.

Much better: https://youtu.be/Hg86GC2e7NU?si=_0UFhPlWZCnBX1n7

or

https://youtu.be/A5eAGtPgAg0?si=IB5YwT15NlEpsHVW

[igenlode]

Oh, I'm not averse to a bit of schoolboy humour; I enjoy the "Carry On" films, after all... (Deliberate naughtiness, but within very 'safe' limits -- things are implied but never said outright, nudity is considered hilarious but never beyond a certain level, and there are lashings and lashings of puns, which as a lover of words I adore.)

Much better: https://youtu.be/Hg86GC2e7NU?si=_0UFhPlWZCnBX1n7

or

https://youtu.be/A5eAGtPgAg0?si=IB5YwT15NlEpsHVW

My command of the language isn't up to those, I'm afraid... or else the outward form doesn't grab me enough for me to sit down and put in the necessary work to find out what's going on.

This is about as far as my grasp of Russian wordplay goes (Есть ещё один куплет...): https://youtu.be/JYq4qOXV82U

But this one (Gorbachov-era satire) entertained me enough musically and visually and from what I could grasp of the lyrics for me to go to the lengths of taking a dictionary to it. Though I still don't get the relevance of the periodic table :-D https://youtu.be/vACtdNXEwm0

And obviously I enjoyed this one...
https://igenlode.dreamwidth.org/453882.html

[paserbyp]

Though I still don't get the relevance of the periodic table

It’s about environmental pollution by government…

[igenlode]

Ahhh, now I see how it works ;-)

(It's a bit scary just how much comprehension is dependent on context -- and how much in foreign languages I tend to depend on assumed context rather than grammar! But even in English it's possible to get by extrapolating from the key words of a fragmentary conversation shouted above engine noise or similar... until one of the vital words is lost, or mis-heard, and then it becomes apparent just what a low proportion of it you were actually understanding in the first place...)

[paserbyp]

Indeed…