Drinking. It’s a Gas.
SWP daughter #1 alerted me to this hilarious video of the Gazprom Song.* Seriously:
“Let’s drink to you, let’s drink to us, let’s drink to Russian gas.” Nah. that doesn’t validate any stereotypes. By my count, the word “drink” appears 12 times in the song. Quite the way to project the image of an efficient, business-like company. Or a safety-conscious one.
This seems so Soviet. No doubt kolkhozes and Machine Tractor Stations had their own songs. Probably with fewer drinking references, though.
*A Google search revealed that this came out in 2009, and there was a flurry of stories about it in late-2009 and early-2010. How did I miss it?
It’s not quite so blatant in the Russian – the word ‘drink’ is never actually spoken. “Davai za nas” leaves out a few words but means “let’s toast ourselves” and so forth.
Comment by pennifer — January 13, 2012 @ 12:02 am
Darn-I wish I wasn’t at work and it wasn’t so early.
Comment by pahoben — January 13, 2012 @ 9:05 am
@pennifer–I know that it doesn’t say “давай выпьем”. I was going to suggest that “toast” was probably more precise than “drink”, but the implication is clear, and the translation captures that.
It comes from the same genre as “Pust’ vsegda budet Mama, pust’ vsegda budet Ya”.
My question is this: what regional accent is that singer signing in? It’s not Muscovite or Peterburg Russian.
Comment by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick — January 17, 2012 @ 10:44 pm