An Aside: Television in Honduras

There seemed to be soccer on many of our channels on our tiny television. There were English Premier League games; there were La Liga (Spain) games; there were games that were like the European Champions League (the top pro teams from different countries) for the South American leagues; there were Mexican League games; I think I even saw a game on with Juventas, the top pro Italian team; and there were more talk shows about futbol than there were games.

There were some dubbed-into-Spanish American shows as well; Futurama and the Simpsons, which I watched a few minutes of each. The voices are strange. And wrong.

I also wanted to mention in this post about a handful of dubbed things that would come on where I'd say "Who? What? I've never heard of this!?" At times it seemed like we were exporting the shittiest films imaginable.

The first one didn't seem that bad: it had a fat Sean Penn, James Gandolfini, Jude Law...turns out it was a remake of All the King's Men.

At a different point I tried turning on the tube before a siesta and saw Courtney Cox wearing a white lab coat. Then there was a tornado of a guy in a suit, that was how he traveled around. I shook my head in amazement...was Courtney Cox that hard up for cash that she would do something this bad? Before I turned it off, the tornado guy took off his helmet and it was fucking Tim Allen! Two minutes later, after staring at this mess and listening to the fast patter of Spanish Chevy Chase makes an appearance. It was about here that I wrote down the offending names and weird plot points I could gather in three minutes, and turned it off. (Shudder)

It turns out it was called Zoom. Look it up at your own risk.

Later on in the trip I became reluctant to turn on the box. Usually confident I could find a game (with no commercials--thanks soccer), problems like Zoom do come up occasionally. This next atrocity started with what looked like...a sword fight between a floating sword and a blurry masked figure. The masked figure was Noah Wyle, from ER. Before quickly turning it off, we looked at each other and said, "Noah Wyle? Really?" Then, as I was heading to the bathroom, Corrie called out, "Oh my god, it also has Bob Newhart."

It was true. What the hell was going on? Noah Wyle, Bob Newhart, invisible sword fighters? Turns out it is a made-for-TBS series of TV movies called, no joke, The Librarian.

I don't...I'm not...things like these two bad films make being connected seem drastically overrated.