Friday, April 6
April 6, 2007 — 5:58 pm
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Men from small towns are dumb
No, no…that’s the title of a pop song by Vaiko Eplik that’s taking Estonia by storm. In fact, he has a whole album about it.
Seems Estonia is having a bit of a redneck problem. Or, as they have it, a rullnokk problem (it doesn’t literally mean redneck, it’s a reference to the baseball caps they wear). They also pimp out their BMW’s, eat hamburgers, drink vodka, use vile language and cruise around looking for “hairies” to beat up.
Vaiko had a little trouble with them after his performance in the Eurovision competition. “I had a few incidents with rullnokks after Eurovision. I got punched a couple of times by these types of people after I didn’t do so well in the competition,” Eplik says.
“This subculture was born when I was in school. When I was 14 I almost became one of them. I thought it was pretty cool to go around drinking gin out of a plastic bottle, wearing these kinds of clothes. But thankfully my dad told me to get my ass back into line and go to singing lessons.”
Singing lessons. Hm. Yes. Watson, I may have deduced the reason rednecks beat this young man to a howling pulp.
You can hear Vaiko’s music (not sung by him) here. I haven’t made up my mind whether its funny bad or just bad. I know badness is part of the experience.
Which brings us to a short film about the rullnokk that’s become a viral hit. It’s called Tulnukas (Alien). It’s about an Estonian dude who gets smacked on the head with a shovel and wakes up with amnesia. His homeys try to re-explain The Life to him.
This one is almost funny enough to connect outside Estonia. I don’t know if you’ll think it’s worth twenty minutes of your life, but you can watch it in three parts (with English subtitles) here, here, and here. Extremely not safe for work, if your boss is Estonian. At the very least, if you listen closely, you can learn some wicked vile language in a foreign tongue. Which — who knows? — might come in handy some day.
Did “Tulnukas” hit its target? Would a rullnokk change his ways after watching the film? Probably not, muses Merivoo [the filmmaker], because the humor goes over their heads. “They don’t understand that they are watching themselves when they watch my movie. The laugh at the jokes and the things the characters do, but they don’t realize that it is about what’s wrong with them.”
Or maybe they do and they simply don’t care if some camera-waving artard looks down on their entertainments. Dudes! That’s us! Pass me a hamburger and some gin…
— 5:19 pm
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