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Actual Books
Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics,
Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™
“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”
-- Boston Globe
"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."
-- New York Observer
“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING.”
-- John Hodgman,
author, The Areas of My Expertise and correspondent for The Daily Show
"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"
-- The Wall Street Journal
"A surprisingly touching memoir"
-- Entertainment Weekly
"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."
-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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The satellite dish here at Casa del Pudu suddenly includes channels
from Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, and the
Dominican Republic.
Whoa.
My Spanish es muy bruto anyway, and so half of the initial viewing
experience is attempting (and largely failing) to parse the various
different accents, so for the moment, the whole deal is about 90%
visual. (The Chilean news anchor, for example, sounds almost like the
guys on TVE from Madrid -- but is that a Chile thing, or just similar
to the way folks on PBS often sound vaguely British, with whatever
implied prestige that might bring? I've never been to South America. I have no idea.)
But I'm often struck by the extent to which the conventions of TV we
see here -- news shows, for example, with two anchors at a desk (why?
really, it's not necessary); weather done by petite women erotically
fondling their nation's midsections; public affairs shows done in
squarish seating arrangements under stark lighting -- have propagated
elsewhere.
This is hardly a big deal, but still, I wonder if this is a function of
trying to gain credibility by emulating programming in richer nations,
or if it's the same lack of imagination we run into 24/7, or what.
Maybe it's a budget thing, and the conventions of 1950s U.S. TV are
adopted elsewhere because they're simply the least expensive. But once
you get past the language, it's frankly just bizarre to me how much
television is television the same way that McDonald's is McDonald's,
almost everywhere.
Almost. TV5 in France has a morning show called Telematin (airing here at 2 am on channel 255 -- I have no life whatsoever, you do
realize that) hosted by a guy who looks like Noam Chomsky given a Queer
Eye makeover. Every morning, le Noam chats with auto repair guys and
green grocers while the director seems to try to re-enact Un Chien Andalou
-- no sliced eyeballs, exactly, but suddenly the guy holding an
asparagus is shown in extreme close-up; the host's lips purse in grainy
black-and-white; we see the weathergirl's hand, gesturing, in mirrors;
finally an Edith Piaf manqu
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