Kazakhstani women’s hockey and the Ships and Dip tropical cruise with the Barenaked Ladies & Guster
This morning I found this upcoming cruise event with the Barenaked Ladies:
So many bands are doing these cruise ship promotions now. I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t want to be on one of them with very many bands, but going with the Barenaked Ladies would probably be one of the only ways I could bear waiting in a buffet line in the enclosed space of a stomach-virus-haven cruising vessel. Forget their music if you hate it. You will still have a good time with them, and you won’t feel any body image problems with them walking around making fun of their own (see their Ships and Dip countdown clock at their website). As far out as it may seem, this concert event reminds me of Kazakhstani women’s hockey.
The sound of bands like the Barenaked Ladies has never been the first genre of music that I turn to in iTunes, and to be frank I didn’t know much about the Barenaked Ladies until about five years ago. I learned about them with my friend Margie at the Winter Olympics; we had just returned from living for over two years in Kazakhstan.
While in Utah we decided that we were going to be the Kazakhstani fan club at their women’s hockey events (they had no men’s team because all the players were playing for the Russians). We went all out with blue and yellow clothes, streamers, and headdress. We even passed out signs to school kids to help us cheer them on. The crowd went from the underdog cheering of "Go Blue Team!" to singing "Menin Kazakstanym" or "My Kazakhstan," the Kazakhstani national anthem (which is pronounced like "Maine in Kazakhstan, hmm?" — another strange stretch of a Rapidsea connection?). Here’s our official recording from the hockey game with added slide show:
If you start the YouTube video up there, you’ll notice the blue and yellow flag. The headdress I mentioned above was made up of the shapes from those eagle wings and that sun. During the first game we made such a crazy scene that the Kazakhstani team invited us over to their side of the arena and showered us with t-shirts and pins — even though they were completely skeptical of what we were doing and how we had signs in Kazakh (real Kazakh, not Borat Kazakh). By the end of the first (losing) game, the venue manager came over and invited us to the medals ceremony and Barenaked Ladies concert, but only after asking us a ton of questions to make sure that we weren’t just making fun of the team.
We thought for sure that the concert seats were going to be all the way back in section XX-1964. But they kept ushering us closer and closer to the stage until we were standing right in front of the band and athletes. It was the night that Swiss Harry Potter got his gold medal. It ended up being one of the most fun days I have ever had, and I’ve been a BNL fan ever since, even when I occasionally find one of their songs completely annoying.
The next day I was out skiing and a British guy named Niles skied over my skies, trapping my leg in place while my other one went forward. If you have never been transported mummy style down a mountain, it’s a must do while you’re alive. So, the next hockey game we went to I was on crutches. Fortunately for us, they pulled up chairs for us next to the glass. And you can bet that we had blue and yellow streamers attached to those crutches, cheering the newfound fans on.
Of course, they still lost all their games. But at least they scored one goal! We think we took some part in that.
Maybe I’ll grow a beard and show up on the fourth Ships and Dip cruise. I’ll be the guy in the Kazakhstan t-shirt.
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