Mad, Nomad

After a long hiatus, I am on the road again. In this episode of the "Around the world in eighty channels (give or take a few)", we explore being stuck on a cold, hazy winter night in a hotel in... Beijing.

If you don't already know, most foreign channels are not available for the common man in China, typically only so in hotels etc. Just as well. because we would not want 1+ billion  Chinese people a) incessantly flipping channels and destroying the world economy by goofing off and, b) inevitably and eventually losing their minds because of the drivel that passes for TV. Here is a sampler:

• All news channels: the earthquake in New Zealand. Not drivel, but do we really need a dozen feeds of the same scene? How many ways can you have your news? It is news.
• HBO: Some movie called "Beyond Borders" starring that despicable female called Angelina Jolie. It just shows that even the most discerning men can be fooled by pretentious sultry looks (anyone can narrow their eyes and pout, though most cannot afford that much collagen). The opening scene featured wretched children in some poor part of the world, and we have all seen that movie in Jolie's real life, so we moved on to...
• Star Movies: Slumdog Millionaire, the sorriest and crappiest "Bollywood Crossover" movie possibly ever released, complete with feel-good ending and distinguished only by starring a rather skinny female lead. I read recently that Latina women in NYC get cosmetic surgery to put meat (or perhaps silicon) *in* their butt, rather than get it sucked out. Indians are like that, traditionally fond of curvy women. After all, we invented trigonometry before anyone else, and I am sure bosoms and bottoms inspired the sine and the cosine. Feeling my blood pressure peaking, I flipped channels to
• AXN: At various points, this staple of a channel was showing things like "So you think I can dance". Since I can't, I swiftly moved on to
• Star World: Glee. As a friend recently commented: "I don't get it". I really don't. What is the premise of this show and why do people like it? And how is it correlated to a declining culture with poor math and science scores where half the population is overweight? Not wanting to ponder these questions, I decided to try the Asian offerings.
• KBS: This Korean channel at the very moment was featuring a young man splattered with blood taking what seemed an interminably long time to die. There were one (or maybe two) doe-eyed maidens looking at him with pathos. Flashbacks... flashed in the background. If this is how painfully slowly Koreans die in real life, I am afraid "Li'l Kim" Jong Il will be around for way much longer than we'd want him around. With this depressing thought, I came to some domestic offering.
• CCTV: If you don't already know this, there are a dozen or two CCTV channels in China. I don't know the difference and don't want to know. "Why?" you ask inquisitively. I was really in no mood to see the documentary about the Chinese village where women were raving about their shoes made of straw. It depressingly reminded me that there are people in Haiti eating  mud. This called for a lightening of the mood, immediately achieved by...
• TV5 Monde: Ah, the French. It had a young girl in a nightdress cheerfully turning down her lad's wedding proposal and telling her neighbors, also cheerfully, that she just had. Nevertheless, Frenchwomen speaking French. This was good enough.

I stayed put for a bit. Then I switched back to AXN, where they were showing "Lost", which is precisely how every single person who has every watched this serial has ever felt, but is too ashamed to admit. I believe this story was written by twelve lost monkeys, no relation to the pretty good movie "Twelve Monkeys".

I have an early morning, so good night.