Thread: Russian humor

JB, thanks for the list.

Originally Posted by JB

My all time favorite British sitcom = Faulty Towers

Yep, this one's great. You know, when John Cleese was staying in Germany, someone shouted at him across the road - "Mr Cleese, don't mention the war!"

Originally Posted by JB

Can't afford dish, cable and plane tickets too . So I have a very limited number of TV shows available.

Actually, a satellite dish doesn't have to cost a fortune. Mine set me back less than a good VCR, believe it or not. But you must know what hardware to choose...

In America we can usually get the dish and installation free if we sign a contract that we will guarantee payment for a year of service. But the basic channel package has a poor selection and when you start upgrading to the good channels it can cost anywhere from $50-$200 a month. I tried that once and found that you have to pay even if there are problems with the company's transmission signal. I fought with them for 6 months trying to get good reception and finally canceled my service. But I still had to pay for the last 6 months even though I was disconnected!! How does this work in Moscow?

Originally Posted by VendingMachine

Originally Posted by JB

My all time favorite British sitcom = Faulty Towers

Yep, this one's great. You know, when John Cleese was staying in Germany, someone shouted at him across the road - "Mr Cleese, don't mention the war!"

Don't you find that one too repetitive... and extorted? The second part (following his breakup with Booth) is boring -- you can tell what a scene is going to end up with well in advance, and you can almost predict what they are going to say. It is also too brutal, the farther it goes the more so it gets. And you expect "Farty Towels" since the second episode. Speaking about subtlety here.

Originally Posted by bad manners

Originally Posted by VendingMachine

Originally Posted by JB

My all time favorite British sitcom = Faulty Towers

Yep, this one's great. You know, when John Cleese was staying in Germany, someone shouted at him across the road - "Mr Cleese, don't mention the war!"

Don't you find that one too repetitive... and extorted? The second part (following his breakup with Booth) is boring -- you can tell what a scene is going to end up with well in advance, and you can almost predict what they are going to say. It is also too brutal, the farther it goes the more so it gets. And you expect "Farty Towels" since the second episode. Speaking about subtlety here.

Well, actually, I happen to like Fawlty Towers not on account of the great Mr Cleese who can hardly move his swollen fingers making a Waldorf salad and whose boots we are not worthy to kiss, but on account of the Major and the talking moose.

Originally Posted by JB

In America we can usually get the dish and installation free if we sign a contract that we will guarantee payment for a year of service. But the basic channel package has a poor selection and when you start upgrading to the good channels it can cost anywhere from $50-$200 a month. I tried that once and found that you have to pay even if there are problems with the company's transmission signal. I fought with them for 6 months trying to get good reception and finally canceled my service. But I still had to pay for the last 6 months even though I was disconnected!! How does this work in Moscow?

It works the same way as in St Petersburg... And here's how it works. There's NTV+, a Russian sat tv provider some folks subscribe to and it costs something like between $10 - $20 a month. But the repertoire is shite. Luckily enough much better solutions are available. These days I'm watching Viasat, a Scandinavian digital package from 5 East, plus the odd bits and bobs (among which some nice British programming in the shape of BBC Prime) from 13 East and two years ago also from 19 East (most of the Dutch and Spanish stuff). Most interesting channels are encrypted but you can use a pirate smartcard - it's perfectly legal as long as there is no official subscription in your country. One drawback of pirate cards is that sometimes the provider changes the hardware and the encryption system and then the fun is over for you, but the good thing is that there's still something left in other packages and/or at other satellites to choose from and anyway sooner or later new hacks become available... Besides, there is now a technology which allows one to watch any channel you wish no matter what encoding they are using simply by logging the traffic between a sat receiver and a decoder with official subscription and then sharing this traffic accross peer-to-peer networks with the receivers of other "subscribers" who don't want to part with their money... would be a real pain in the @ss for those sat tv providers, but fortunately it is highly unlikely to ever become a mass thing because in order to use it you need to be a bit of a computer geek, so chances are they will never crack down on it. But anyway, the good old multimac and goldwafer not to mention them funcards and suchlike still do the trick for most people, and those who have those nifty SkyStar PC cards simply run simulators on their PCs. And then, of course, there's the ubiquitos DreamBox, the sat hacker's swiss-army-knife-to-be - runs on Linux, unsinkable - will survive any software attack from the provider, scalable, you name it. The only bad thing about this toy is that it's quite expensive and that you really need to know what you're doing.
Anyway, my system set me back not more than $200 (I suspect I may well have got it for less than that but I remember I was choosy at the time) and I've been uprading it over the years, though it wasn't really that necessary, it's just that I'm a bit of a satellite bum. Though I must admit I knew where to look for good bargains (been to all them car boot sales, net forums, also some businesses sell second hand stuff so it makes sense to have a sniff around). But since there's no subscription (unless you're watching the cr@ppy NTV+) it's almost a give-away.

I dont have the dish, like I said I convinced my cousin to record somestuff and mail it to me from California. I figure getting one might cost less than having to "convince" my family with a few green backs. Hahaha theres no way I could compete with that whiz kid Jasper, saying I am competition is like saying a door knob could outsmart Einstien
But hey I got excited tonight, I was flipping through the channels on Tv, and I just happened to stop on NYPD blue. I caught the tail end of it, but this guy was telling some one on the phone to call something off in russian. If anyone saw that, I'd like to know what exactly happened in the first part of the show

Still, Tambakis, I'm very curious, how could you tell if the Russian version of the sitcom wasn't funny Not meaning to be rude, but...

Actually, Tambakis only said that the jokes didn't come through. Which means s/he didn't understand them.

Anyways, I was just getting peed off because of the Jaspertje. It sounds incredibly patronising in Dutch, not in any way endearing like in Russian. But you weren't to know. And it's pronounced 'Yuss purr'. Or you can just say 'Jassr purr', as in English.

[quote=Jasper May]Actually, Tambakis only said that the jokes didn't come through. Which means s/he didn't understand them.
Lol, yeah, that must be it, ha-ha.

Originally Posted by "Jasper May":sdhg3wcl

Anyways, I was just getting peed off because of the Jaspertje. It sounds incredibly patronising in Dutch, not in any way endearing like in Russian. But you weren't to know. And it's pronounced 'Yuss purr'. Or you can just say 'Jassr purr', as in English.

[/quote:sdhg3wcl]
As a matter of fact I knew that Jaspertje sounded patronising, and no, it doesn't sound endearing in Russian - it sounds bloody patronising too, at least that's how I perceive it. Actually, I was writing you a pm when your post came through so I decided to do this openly. Jasper, lad, I'd like to apologise to you - I have gone a bit over the edge speaking to you in this semi-friendly semi-patronising tone, I'm sorry dude. I need someone to keep me in check, I fly off the handle easily.

Ah, ничего, ничего. Now I must apologise as well of course, on account of my touchyness concerning my level of Russian. I always get irritated when I'm compared unfavourably to anyone. It's stupid, I know. Mustn't take things personally and such.

Beim Weg, how come you're so interested in British comedy? It's nice to see not all 'foreigners', if I may call you that, are brainwashed by American shite. Not to say that everything American is shite (the Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants are fantastic, for example), but most is.

[EDIT:] Why can you write s*hite and I can't? I'm being discriminated against, that's it.

Originally Posted by Jasper May

[EDIT:] Why can you write s*hite and I can't? I'm being discriminated against, that's it.

These shitty conspiracy theories of full of shite, really. We are all equal here.

Originally Posted by Jasper May

Beim Weg, how come you're so interested in British comedy?

Dunno really, just happen to find it funny. Seems to be my type of humour.

Originally Posted by Jasper May

Why can you write s*hite and I can't? I'm being discriminated against, that's it. )

I bribed the administrator... Well, actually I didn't. What you do is mix in some self-cancelling tags and Roberto is your parent's relative.

Betrayer!

Originally Posted by bad manners

Betrayer!

He would've figured it out sooner or later... at least by quoting us...

Well, and how about typing Russian letters?

shite
сrap
fuсk
(sorry, I didn't mean to)

Haha

That scene from The Blues Brothers where Jake and Elwood go to visit the Mother Superior just popped into my head for some reason

Proof that even 'generally-hostile-to-American-rubbish' Brits like me can appreciate US humour when it's actually funny, though I'd still take Blackadder/ Porridge/ Yes Minister/ Only Fools And Horses/ Faulty Towers etc over any US TV sitcom, any day of the week.

Not to mention Monty Python, 'Allo 'Allo (even though it is incredibly corny ) and such quizzes as Never mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News For You and QI.
PS: Wait a minute, here: fuck shit cunt crap! Whaaahahahahahhahaha!!!

... Trigger Happy TV, The Office, Alan Partridge, Chewing The Fat...

Never heard of Chewing the Fat or Trigger Happy TV (presumably they're on ITV, Channel 4 or such crap channel BBCThree), but let's not forget

...Dead Ringers, the Fast Show (really fantastic), Dad's Army, Goodness Gracious Me, The Goon Show...

And foo to

Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, the Alan Clark Diaries, Absolute Power (even though it does star Stephen Fry), Little Britain

Originally Posted by VendingMachine

Originally Posted by bad manners

Betrayer!

He would've figured it out sooner or later... at least by quoting us...

But then it would've been black wizardry, the wondrous arcane rites of the initiated.

And you... you... you made it mundane trivia!