On one of the sports networks, maybe CNN or ESPN something, they’ve been airing some commercials in which obscure foreign sports are shown. The point is to show, by contrast, that their own network only shows you good, familiar, American sports.
But these foreign films look like actual films of real and bizarre sporting events. The first one wasn’t bad – Russians having a slap-off. However, now they’re showing one in which an Asian guy is trying to catch a giant falling log, and apparently being crushed beneath it. Another is some guy in possibly Armenia cliff-diving onto bare dirt as an audience applauds. Both of these last two films look absolutely real. Are they? If so, the Asian guy and the Armenian guy must certainly have been killed, and we have been countenancing snuff films. What’s the story?
Fox Sports Net is doing those ads. The ads are for their regional sports news shows. They might be real sports but it is hard to tell. I would bet they are fake.
Funny you bring this up actually, i was considering a post at one time asking if anyone knew more information on the Russian slapping game. Near as i can tell, they are holding vodka in thier mouths and slapping one another, trying to get thier opponent to spit it out. Wierd…
I think the commercial footage is fake, but I have seen footage of a real event (not actually a sport) in some Asian country (Japan I think) where guys ride giant logs down a muddy hill and many do get injured and killed. It was on either Ripley’s Believe It or Not or the Discovery channel last spring.
This is part of a village festival somewhere in Derbyshire and is rather silly.
You might think that this is a fairly tame, risk-free sport - think again.
A large cheeses are rolled down the side of a hill, or rather sloping cliff face and local yokels who have been drinking all day to prepare for this are then set off in pursuit.
The upshot of all this is that the local hospital casualy units are kept very busy setting bones and sewing heads.
Even watching this sport can be dangerous as a significant number of spectators have been injured by high speed descending cheeses.
If you watch the log falling one very carefully you can see that the “tree catcher” disappears from the screen just before the tree falls to the ground. It is pretty obvious when you tape the commercial and watch it frame by frame.
Never slowed down the cliff diving one though, but I can’t imagine that it is real.
casdave: What is the “goal” of the cheese-rolling event? Reaching the bottom of the hill before your cheese? Reaching the bottom of the hill with no major injuries? Reaching the bottom of the hill?
Ahh… behold the power of cheese… Oops! Wrong commercial.
Actually, I’ve never seen the Derbyshire cheese chase, but I’ve seen one in Germany or Austria (can’t remember which). The point of that one was to try and get to the bottom of the hill before the cheese… ummm… without getting yourself dead in the process, of course.
I thought Konkers was the sport of kings down in Derbyshire-way?
i can assure you that they are fake. but i just have to mention the part that had me laughing out loud at a commercial, which doesn’t really happen too often:
if you watch the Russian slapping match closely, the best part is the fact that after each slap, the contestants tap the chess clock sitting on the table.
i know it’s not funny here, but if you check out the commercial sometime, i’m sure you’ll understand.
JoeyBlades and everyone: Thanks for setting me straight. When you look at it logically, of course they can’t be real, but the director made them look so frickin’ realistic that they had me floored. Kudos to him/her for that talent.
Buuuuuut . . . I betcha now people from the countries represented in these commercials are going to be annoyed. After all, these images imply that Asians and Middle Easterns and Russians aren’t all that swift.
The Onbashira festival. Happens every six years - the logs are used to refurbish a shrine. And yes, it is the tradition for the young men to ride the logs down the hill, which is extremely dangerous:
> You should try watching cheese-rolling in the UK.
>
> This is part of a village festival somewhere in
> Derbyshire and is rather silly.
>
> You might think that this is a fairly tame, risk-free
> sport - think again.
>
> A large cheeses are rolled down the side of a hill, or
> rather sloping cliff face and local yokels who have been
> drinking all day to prepare for this are then set off in
> pursuit.
> The upshot of all this is that the local hospital casualy
> units are kept very busy setting bones and sewing heads.
>
> Even watching this sport can be dangerous as a
> significant number of spectators have been injured by
> high speed descending cheeses.
I don’t know if there’s also a cheese-rolling race in Derbyshire, but I know that there’s one in Gloucestershire. I know this because from 1987 to 1990 I lived perhaps a mile from where it was held. I could see the hill from my house. The race went down the side of Cooper’s Hill. If you’ve got a good map of the U.K., I was living in Brockworth, a suburb of Gloucester. (Some of the websites I just looked at give Brockworth as the nearest town to Cooper’s Hill; others say Randwick; others say Birdlip.
Put the word “cheese-rolling” into a search engine and you’ll get a bunch of news stories about the Cooper’s Hill cheese-rolling race, including some with video clips of the race.
pugluvr asks:
> casdave: What is the “goal” of the cheese-rolling event
> Reaching the bottom of the hill before your cheese?
> Reaching the bottom of the hill with no major injuries?
> Reaching the bottom of the hill?
Dozens of people would line up at the top on the hill and a Double Gloucester cheese would be rolled down the hill. (Actually, it’s put in a wooden case just large enough to hold it.) Everybody would chase down the hill after the cheese. The winner would be the person who caught the cheese and held on to it down to the bottom of the hill. The winner got to keep the cheese. Both participants and spectators have been hurt in the race; indeed, some people have been killed. Some of these injuries were from rolling down the hill too fast and hitting something, while others were from being hit by the cheese or by the participants.
The bizarre thing is that people would risk their life for nothing but the right to keep a piece of cheese. A friend of mine used to joke that the winner of the race got to keep a cheese that had just been rolled down a hill, while the prize for the person who got second-place in the race was two cheeses that had been rolled down a hill.
