The Smarmy Carny

There was another bit of Spanish in this week's episode of My Name Is Earl, Frank's Girl. Throughout the episode, Joy and Catalina get into a war over . . . pooing themselves, of all things.

After Joy exacts her revenge on Catalina and takes a picture of the result, Catalina pops her head outside of the women's bathroom door and shouts:

Esperamos que no te daba asco este cuento, nosotros pensabamos que era chistoso!

The "unilingual" viewer assumes that Catalina is yelling at Joy and is possibly promising her own revenge. What Catalina is actually yelling at Joy, however, is:

We hope that this tale doesn't disgust you. We thought it was funny.

At least the writers of Earl know when they may be close to crossing the line on their humor.

My Name Is Earl has done it again. Previously, we have seen several Spanish-language jokes that break the fourth wall, and now they're expanding their efforts to Japanese.

In this week's episode, The Frank Factor, we see the origins of the various characters before they all end up together. As Catalina has freshly landed in the United States, she is walking along the side of the road just as Darnell (a.k.a. Crab Man, f.k.a Harry Monroe) is dropped off by FBI agents. She walks up to him and starts speaking Spanish to him in a concerned tone. She says:

¿Disculpe, disculpe — señor? Mira, yo sé que ésto no tiene sentido con este programa porque como hemos visto yo vine después de "Y2K", pero en realidad quién quién pone atención a esos tipos de cosas?

The viewer is left to believe that the new arrival is concerned about finding a place to live, to eat, or may just be concerned with what to do now that she has finally reached the United States. What Catalina has actually said is this:

Excuse me, excuse me — sir? Look, I know that this doesn't make any sense with this show because we have seen that I came after [in the episode] "Y2K", but in reality who — who pays attention to those types of things?

Catalina is talking about the fact that in the Y2K episode, she is seen starting her journey to the United States while Earl and the gang are meeting Darnell at the Crab Shack for the first time. In this episode, the timeline/canon is broken because Darnell has just been dropped off by the FBI van and certainly has not started working yet, however Catalina has already arrived in Camden County. The writers have skewed the show's timeline to have the origin stories line up better for this episode, and they wanted us to know that they are aware that we viewers notice these sorts of things. My wife also translated the phrase as "I2K", and I have to assume this is a mispronunciation of the Y2K flashback episode. Another blog has also verified this mispronunciation.

The episode also has two Japanese lines spoken by Patty's Japanese "client". He speaks only Japanese in the scene, and none of the characters are aware of what he is saying. Randy keeps cracking up about him speaking "gibberish".

Update: I was finally able to get a partial translation of the Japanese. After Patty introduces Yoshi to Earl and Randy, the Yoshi character says a phrase in Japanese, and right before they exit the scene, he speaks again. Here are the two lines in Japanese:

tenkeiteki na nihonjin no yaru ga kirai da. demo agent ga kore wa yaru no hou ga ii to itta

kare wa dokyun ga kare wa zenbu nandemo shite wo wakan nai no. ikou!

Though this seems to be poor grammar according to the people translating, the two lines are roughly translated as:

I really hate doing Japanese stereotypes, but my agent said I should do it.

He's a dumba**. He has no idea what he's doing. I'm going!

I'll keep posting updates as I get them.

The blog Spanengrish Ramblings posted the following translation, which varies a bit from what I got:

I really hate doing Japanese stereotypes, but my agent said I should probably do it.

Where is he? He's always doing this to me. Let's go.

Let's hope that My Name Is Earl keeps up the great work and inside jokes to multilingual viewers!

On the second episode of NBC's new series Chuck, there was a rare cross-network reference.

The basic plot of the show is that Chuck accidentally "downloaded" all of the United States government's secrets into his brain via a government program designed for exactly this purpose. When Chuck sees a seemingly harmless picture from this program, a government secret is brought to the forefront of his mind.

In this second episode, a doctor tests Chuck by showing him images that trigger these secrets. As the images fly by, Chuck begins spewing out government secrets. The audience hears only half-secrets, so we don't know the full details, but we are aware that the secrets are out there. After mentioning something about a presidential assassination attempt, the next fragment of a secret we hear is:

Oceanic flight 815 was shot down by –
.

Of course, this is a reference to the airline and flight that crashed in the series Lost. We obviously don't hear the rest of the secret, but hearing that in the list was certainly fun.

What's amazing is that NBC allowed an ABC reference on one of its shows. Clearly, the writers of Chuck are aware that many of their viewers are also Lost fans, and this is why they slipped the reference in. Can it be that the NBC staff responsible for viewing the program let this one slide, or did they simply not recognize the reference to the ABC show?

It's Talk Like a Pirate Day, matey!

I've always been more of a ninja guy myself, but today is the day to let loose and talk like a pirate!

If you need help talking like a pirate, read the how to or just use the English-to-Pirate Translator

Eccentric Holidays

International Talk Like a Pirate Day be th' most popular bizarre holiday in existence. Fer more bizarre holidays, check ou' th' Eccentric Holidays calendar. Jus' click th' calendar button here and ye be set!

Feeling young and sprightly? If you do and you're well out of college, you may want to review Beloit's annual College Mindset List. Recently released was the Class of 2011 mindset list. It puts into perspective how the world is different for young adults today.

I appreciate this list because it doesn't simply list what happened the year that this group of college freshmen were born. Anyone who has read a "year you were born" list knows that they are essentially useless because you don't remember anything that happened when you were 0 years old. This list shows you what kids may not be aware of and even how they might view things differently than older generations. For instance, what do you think of when you hear "Tiananmen Square"? Most college freshmen think of it only as an upcoming Olympic venue.

Here are 15 selections from this year's 2011 Mindset List. In all, there are 70 items, so check out Beloit's annual College Mindset List for the complete list.

Class of 2011:

• What Berlin wall?
• Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
• They have grown up with bottled water.
• Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
• No one has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
• Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
• Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.
• Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
• High definition television has always been available.
• Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
• MTV has never featured music videos.
• Jerry Springer has always been lowering the level of discourse on TV.
• They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.
• The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.
• Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.

Here are 15 additional entries for the Class of 2010, in case you're wondering about the current sophomores:

Class of 2010:

• The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
• They have known only two presidents.
• There has always been only one Germany.
• A stained blue dress is as famous to their generation as a third-rate burglary was to their parents'.
• "Google" has always been a verb.
• Milli Vanilli has never had anything to say.
• There has never been a "skyhook" in the NBA.
• Carbon copies are oddities found in their grandparents' attics.
• Reality shows have always been on television.
• They have no idea why we needed to ask "…can we all get along?"
• They have always known that "In the criminal justice system the people have been represented by two separate yet equally important groups."
• They have always been able to watch wars and revolutions live on television.
• They are not aware that "flock of seagulls hair" has nothing to do with birds flying into it.
• Disneyland has always been in Europe and Asia.
• Television stations have never concluded the broadcast day with the national anthem.

Craving more? Read about the Class of 2009 Mindset List and a summary of the Mindset Lists for the Classes of 2002 through 2008.

Here are some movies that are the third of three in its series:

• Back to the Future Part III: C+ A decent film, but not nearly as good as the first two. Though the plot picks up right from the end of BTTF2, it seems like a completely disconnected storyline.
• Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult: A- Leslie Neilsen could keep pumping this stuff out until he is 110 at the same quality.
• Look Who's Talking Now: D The two original movies were different from all those stupid talking animal movies because it featured talking babies After running out of material for that gag through two movies, they apparently decided to fall back on the standard talking animals.
• The Matrix Revolutions: B- The original Matrix was a truly great movie and left us wanting more. Sometimes it's best if that's the end of the story. The plot did get to play its One/Jesus analogy out in this final film, but after this one, we weren't wanting more.
• The NeverEnding Story III: B- There's a little more leniency with children's movies. (After all, they've made twelve The Land Before Time videos!) You could probably keep telling stories from this fantasy universe for decades to come . . . but just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why?

Here are some movies that are the third of three in its series:

• Godfather Part III: D- This is the classic "ruining a classic series by making one too many". The Godfather Part II was a great sequel and even won six Oscars . . . and then they had to go and make this.
• Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves: F Execs knew this was a lousy idea, I think, so that's probably why it went straight to video. They did shrinking, then they did enlargening. And now we're back to shrinking again? Been there, done that.
• Major League: Back to the Minors: C+ This one isn't up there with the original, but it really wasn't that bad a movie for its genre. The only real problem is the oxy moron between the title and the subtitle.
• Naqoyqatsi: A- If you enjoyed Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi, this one lives up to the same standards.
• Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over: C- This one really played like a direct-to-video film. It lacked the luster of the first two Spy Kids movies.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why?