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"Holy" Crap
posted Sunday, 5 June 2005
It's a long-standing joke among *some* members of my family that I watch "weird" stuff on television.
It started when I was a kid with old British comedies on PBS (my parents' fault), and from there I graduated to news commentaries, foreign films and obscure documentaries. And as the cable system in my hometown expanded (125 channels before I moved overseas in 2002), there was a whole host of artsy and unusual stuff to choose from...especially on networks like Bravo and A&E.
Now I live in Sweden and have been reduced to about 33 channels to surf, so the pickings are much slimmer, especially if I limit my viewing to programs broadcast in English. But I still manage to find programs that help perpetuate the joke...and this morning I came across a classic.
Now I'd like to call this small Asian woman a "televangelist", except that both the venue (it looked like the interior of a storage facility) and the quality of the camera used to record her made it appear as though being on television was something of an accident. Her accent was British in the manner of Scary Spice, and she shared a small stage with another Asian woman who was trying to translate everything she said into Chinese for the live audience...most of whom looked as though they were having a really hard time following along.
Then, to make things even more confusing, there was *another* interpreter in a sound booth somewhere translating her message about divine prophecy into German for TV viewers. (Of which there were probably 7...including me.)
To be fair, this woman was probably a pretty decent speaker in other circumstances...she was certainly articulate in a loud kind of way. But because she had to wait on the Chinese interpreter on the stage with her, there was an odd rhythm to her speech which was not helped by my having to listen to German over the top of all of it. It was hysterical and completely mesmerizing.
My family would be so proud!
It started when I was a kid with old British comedies on PBS (my parents' fault), and from there I graduated to news commentaries, foreign films and obscure documentaries. And as the cable system in my hometown expanded (125 channels before I moved overseas in 2002), there was a whole host of artsy and unusual stuff to choose from...especially on networks like Bravo and A&E.
Now I live in Sweden and have been reduced to about 33 channels to surf, so the pickings are much slimmer, especially if I limit my viewing to programs broadcast in English. But I still manage to find programs that help perpetuate the joke...and this morning I came across a classic.
Now I'd like to call this small Asian woman a "televangelist", except that both the venue (it looked like the interior of a storage facility) and the quality of the camera used to record her made it appear as though being on television was something of an accident. Her accent was British in the manner of Scary Spice, and she shared a small stage with another Asian woman who was trying to translate everything she said into Chinese for the live audience...most of whom looked as though they were having a really hard time following along.
Then, to make things even more confusing, there was *another* interpreter in a sound booth somewhere translating her message about divine prophecy into German for TV viewers. (Of which there were probably 7...including me.)
To be fair, this woman was probably a pretty decent speaker in other circumstances...she was certainly articulate in a loud kind of way. But because she had to wait on the Chinese interpreter on the stage with her, there was an odd rhythm to her speech which was not helped by my having to listen to German over the top of all of it. It was hysterical and completely mesmerizing.
My family would be so proud!
