A Case of Double Reverse Discrimination
HBO broadcasts their boxing matches in Spanish on their Spanish-language station, HBO Latino. They actually have Spanish speaking announcers so they can broadcast the match in Spanish simultaneously. I have no problem with this.
My problem is, if I want to watch the HBO Latino boxing program, Boxeo de Oro, it's either Spanish or nothing. There's no English version, there's no closed captioning, there's just punching. I can follow along with the grunts and the groans, and when one guy smiles and cheers at the end, and maybe holds up a belt while other guys hoist him into the air and parade him around the ring, I can usually deduce approximately how the judges scored it.
This is how all the Spanish-language stations in the US seem to work. Their programs are made solely for a Spanish audience. Well, and also for the occasional channel surfer who's just checking out the chicks dancing around in bikinis, and really doesn't give a damn about the words coming out of their mouths.
Think about the logic of this. We live in a country which has chosen English as its national language. Somebody apparently thought that when everyone in a country can communicate with one another, shit tends to go a bit more smoothly. As a courtesy to immigrants, some TV stations choose to offer a Spanish version of their programs. That's fine, too. But shouldn't it be a given that every show in the US is also available in English?
I know. Ultimately, it's a business decision. If HBO, for some idiotic reason, thinks that their proven boxing fans won't watch one more show if only they added an English voice-over track, that's their decision. It just seems a little odd that companies go out of their way to translate their shows into Spanish, but the Spanish stations don't do the same thing. They must think their programming is so terrible that it will only appeal to one group of people.
To make matters worse, I noticed another instance of discrimination. On HBO Latino's Boxeo de Oro, you actually get to see the ring card girls! Between rounds, the producers squeeze in a few seconds of each boxer in his corner, but not before the ring card girls perform the crucial task of reminding you of the round number that resides almost constantly on the bottom of your TV screen. Granted, the women are not of the quality (I can only assume) that you'd get in the English-language matches in Vegas, but shit, they're better than nothing. Regular HBO rarely shows these girls.
Somebody in HBO management clearly decided that HBO Latino would not break with the Spanish-language TV tradition of showing chicks in bikinis on every single program. Again, if the immigrants get this kind of treatment, how about showing a little sympathy to us bastards who happened to be born here?
Looks
The advantage of not being especially good looking is that it's easier to weed out the superficial women.
I don't particularly like the way I look in glasses. I think I look better blurry.
Seeing Carlin Tonight
I'm looking forward to seeing George Carlin tonight. It's his warm-up performance of "Life is Worth Losing" at the Beacon Theater for Saturday's live HBO broadcast.
I have decided that when people say someone "pushes the envelope", they can no longer say it about Carlin. However far an envelope can go, he's already pushed it there.
The interesting thing is that you can find someone funny despite his philosophy. Some guy who jokes about cutting off people's heads might actually do it in his spare time. But still, his jokes about it are so gosh darn funny!
Pushing the Envelope
Since I'm using the phrase, it makes sense to find out what the hell it actually means. According to wordorigins.org:
"This is an aviation term. It means pushing the aircraft to its limits, especially in the context of flight testing. Envelope has several secondary definitions referring to a collection of curves (mathematical and engineering jargon). So in the world of aeronautical engineering the envelope is the collection of curves that describe the maximum performance of an aircraft. To push the envelope is to take the aircraft to the edge of what it was designed to do and try and take it beyond."
Here's another one: "Ku-Klux is a variation on the Greek kuklos meaning circle... The name dates to 1867 and was chosen by the group's founders. Their exact reasons for the choice are unknown, but a circle implies a secret circle or society..."
I could waste a lot of time on this site.
