A whole lot of impressions, of course, from coming face to face with the underside of television. Here are a couple: after sitting in on the "sound edit," I can’t watch a single TV show normally anymore. I notice every single "cut." It’s incredibly annoying. Just yesterday I was watching School for Scandal (a Russian talk show): my wife was sitting there laughing away at Bozhena Rynska (or whatever her name is), and I’d have liked to laugh too, but all I could think was, "there’s a cut here, and here’s another one, and another one here." Hope it passes. we’ve already started a little war. Anyone who was at the last Fight Club knows we had sound problems. Because of that, we started a full 40 minutes late. Naturally, we tore the sound guys a new one: You losers, your hands are growing out of the wrong place! And the sound guys said to us: You’re the losers — it was your audience that crushed the cables! Make them sit behind the barrier! And we said to them: You assholes, leave the audience alone, let them do what they want! And the sound guys said to us: Well then, screw you! And we said to our bosses: The sound guys are getting cocky! And our bosses said to the sound guys: Have you completely lost your minds?! This is the channel’s main political talk show! And the sound guys said to our bosses: We’ve got our own bosses, thanks! And our bosses said to the sound guys’ bosses: Get your idiots under control over there, or we’ll rip their arms off! And the sound department’s bosses said to ours: Don’t throw your weight around — we’re big shots here too! And we said: Then we’ll write an official memo to GRPTSKMLBH (an abbreviated name for the main technical service), and you’ll all get officially reamed out! And the sound guys said: We get reamed out by everyone already, we don’t care! Well, in the end, of course, we won. And now there’s an official TV Center (TVC, a Russian TV channel) order saying that any member of the Fight Club production crew has the right to give any sound guy three whacks a day. And the chief editor gets five. So next time there won’t be any sound problems — come along.
People