Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Kamyshin and Chapayev

Artemiy Lebedev, Norvezhskiy Lesnoy et al. are continuing on their journey down Volga river. I skipped a bunch of videos because they weren't that interesting to those "not in the parsha", so to speak (i.e., those who don't speak Russian, known anything about Russia, are not interested in Lebedev's adventures, etc.). But this one was somewhat interesting, so I am posting it.

In this adventure, Lebedev and Lesnoy find a house with a structure that looks like public toilet in the yard. Then one of the denizens shows up and explains that because central sewage is broken both inside the house and for the outhouse, the sewage gets expelled right to the yard. So, basically, people live on a central street of one of the Russian cities in conditions of Medieval France. (Not just socio-economically, but also politically. At least they don't live in medieval Russia anymore.)

Next, Lebedev finds a sign that states that one is not allowed to enter a park after dark. He says: "I have seen such things before only in America."

Afterwards, Lebedev and Norvezhsky discuss whether the city is a [censored] or a nice place (except for that one house), Lebedev is asked to help with the correction of a bus schedule, and Lesnoy finds a leaf of marijuana. As usual, Lebedev notes old buildings in Russian cities that are gradually being destroyed and replaced with modern monstrosities. (Whenever possible, on such trips, Lebedev unscrews old Soviet and imperial signs to take to his studio. Because Russian authorities will just destroy the signs, while he will preserve them.) Now that you have my libretto, you can understand what's going on:



In this video, Lebedev and Lesnoy (wearing European shorts) visit Chapayev's house and look at a unique-looking cigarette kiosk:

1 comment:

May_K said...

One could also say Lesnoy (wearing European shorts) and Lebedev (wearing Russian T-shirt (in the first video)) ;))