The River Green

Website, Work, School. Three ends of an impossibly long candle, all burning at the exact same time.

I’ve been working for most of the past week on my Chinese History website to ready it for display as part of the vanity portion of my professional portfolio. Ridding it of redundant links, fixing broken ones, etc. The splash page has been redesigned, which almost always seems to happen, despite having the simplest of goals, none of which having anything to do with the splash page. Since starting school, there has been so little time, if any at all, for it and I felt so neglectful when the Year of the Rabbit started without so much as a mention.

The last term of school hasn’t yet been archived and I’m so far behind in getting that information gathered, let alone the new term. The books for my classes arrived Monday evening with a bang, when the UPS guy decided to knock on the glass storm door, which caused all sorts of racket.

Since my work is contract based, and I’m kept on retainer, actual work is sporadic at best. That said, how do these people always know when I’m swamped with either school work or professional development activities? They only ask me to do something when it is the least convenient for me to do them. Also, there is a sixth sense about them because most of their requests come on the very first day of classes, while only silence is heard in the week long break between classes.

Now that my busy, busy calendar has been laid to bare, I suppose I should get started with it, rather than going on about it, no?

Labels: school , web projects , work

An Idiot Abroad began on the Science Channel about seven weeks ago. The premise is a fish out of water. In the case of this show, Karl Pilkington is the fish, the water is a cozy home in a safe, urban environment. The brainchild of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, colleagues of Pilkington, it thrusts an ‘idiot’ into the uncomfortable world of travel abroad without the benefit of desire for the traveler to go forth on the journeys. Pilkington is sent to the seven wonders of the ancient world: The Great Wall, Taj Mahal, Petra, Chichen Itza, Great Pyramids, Christ the Redeemer and Machu Picchu. Gervais and Merchant then immerse Pilkington into the local culture by sending him to local celebrations, religious ceremonies, carnival celebrations, wilderness outings, etc.

I’ve never been a fan of Gervais, so when he laughs at Pilkington’s first impressions, I am immediately annoyed and instinctually find the opposing view, which is, stop laughing at him. It makes Gervais appear petty.

Perhaps that’s too harsh an interpretation. Perhaps it’s that I feel a kind of comradery with Pilkington since he says the things that I sometimes feel in similarly unfamiliar, uncomfortable situations.

Pilkington grows on you as a loveable deadpan artist, whose observations are honest naïveté about almost everything he experiences. His desire to find a common communication and common threads in humanity is admirable. He has a single talent for finding the slightest familiar aspect in the people whose cultures he is experiencing and building a relationship based on that.

I’m not convinced that Gervais should have even been on camera. Certainly his ideas for comedic antics could have come from off screen. His laugh is irritating. In fact, I almost didn’t watch the show in the beginning because of Gervais’ involvement.

The best part of this show is Pilkington’s reaction to the seven wonders. He is almost unimpressed. And it’s funny.

Labels: tv