On Russian TV

Okay, I don't often hear myself speaking any language other than English. I don't hear much Russian because I haven't been around an american friend who's studied the language for a good year and a half. That means that the only Russian I hear is good Russian.

I'm watching some cop drama with my host brother and this episode features an ill-treated American. Yes there are plenty of things to be said about how ... "great" the acting is or the ridiculous Cold War motif, but mostly I'm all self conscious about how I must sound when I speak now. This guy sounds like a doof. I don't want to sound like a doof. This is the international, patriotic or something version of hearing your own voice in a tape recorder and saying "Why do I *sound* fat? Can someone *sound* fat? I sound husky."

On another TV note, I watch a lot of RuTV, Moscow's answer to MTV, as we've got a 12 year old teenager in the house. Some of the family hits include "The Greater the Love, the Lower the Kiss," interpreted as some kind of tantric Victoria's Secret ad in a Gothic cathedral, or the one with the girl riding a gigantic flying washing machine in the desert as a computer animated house with chicken legs parades around in the background. Where's the wholesome Christina Aguilera drrrty video when you need it?

There's this show that I watch on the Russian gov't channel, forgot the name, but it's essentially the grand epic sportsman battle of the millennium, at least as far as it's billed. Except it's mostly a show designed to demonstrate Russia's team of former olympians and various performing artists' athletic prowess against a broad sampling of international competitors. That means the USA, China, and ... Kazakhstan. Yep.

The events, treated with all the seriousness of the Boston Marathon plus a baptism or Freemasons initiation rite, include dressing up like a sumo wrestler and throwing beach balls into a hula hoop while an angry bull tries to gore you, dressing up like a mouse and running through a spinning obstacle course, and dressing up like a hillbilly and running on a conveyer belt, catching bread in a basket from a fishing pole. After such an epic competition, I will never watch the olympics again.

When the Americans started losing I started rooting for the Kazakhs, as there were a few cute women and a nice guy on the team and I had to find at least one reason to keep watching despite the number of sumo wrestlers I watched get gored by a stressed out bull in a godforsaken arena somewhere in France. (Yes, the show is recorded in Paris. The neutral ground venue adds a certain World Cup/No Man's Land je ne sais quoi touch to the whole affair). My host family told me I wasn't being patriotic enough. I'm sorry. When we can get our act together and learn to catch a freaking loaf of bread from a fishing pole while wearing a straw hat and black tooth wax, I'll be the first to take off my hat and sing You're a Grand Ol' Flag. Plus, rooting for the home team felt like somehow sanctioning the whole experience, elevating it from "guilty pleasure" to "hallowed feat of brain and brawn"

...And then I remembered that we televise bowling.