Jessica Alfieri

writes everything you see here.

• Mythbusters Message Mangling

  May 30, 2008 tagged as Discovery, Mythbusters, voiceover

  As long as we’re talking about things Discovery is getting wrong today, how about a classic Mythbusters bungle? Not an indignant-fan-on-the-message-boards type mistake, but total producer sloppiness.

  Their voiceover guy is fine, could even be great. His voice adds an ok tone to the show, but his wild mispronunciations do not. Eric and I have been noticing this for years, but lately started jotting down his jilty mistakes.

  Here are some examples:

  Chicken Gun
  When Jaime and Adam are connecting the long barrel, he says:
  “Jaime and Adam [sold-her] on…” in lieu of solder (links to pronunciation)

  Shooting Fish in a Barrel/Hot Chili Cures
  18:00
  “A not-so-secret sauce of pure [hal-a-peen-ohs]” instead of jalapeños
  20:00
  “Kari’s deadly new paste of much hotter [ha-been-ear-oh] pepers” rather than habenero

  Confederate Steam Cannon
  0:04
  “[dis-PAIR-eight] accounts” where it should be disparate

  Earthquake Machine
  0:03
  “..after a trip to the [pay-tent] office” for patent office

  It’s plausible that the guy is just British doing American, which would explain things like pay-tent for patent. Still, it doesn’t explain sold-her for solder, not even with a bad “soldier on” joke. I have nothing against the announcer, but the organizer in me really wants the producers to pay some attention. How can they get it so consistently wrong?

  
  

• Good Timing for Discovery

  May 30, 2008 tagged as Discovery, Greensburg, Planet Green

  Greensburg and the new Planet Green sub-network arrives just as Discovery standbys falter. Dirty Jobs is becoming increasingly boring and uncomfortable (in equal measure with Mike Rowe’s new disdain for his job), Mythbusters continues to idle in a long off-season, and Deadliest Catch episodes are about to run out.

  When an EF5 tornado two miles wide hit Greensburg in May 2007, somebody saw an opportunity. Actually, it was Craig Piligian, a veteran producer of Survivor, Dirty Jobs, and American Chopper, and he’d been looking for his opportunity since Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, but the project in New Orleans was just too big to take on.

  Some Greensburg residents think theirs was, too. Nevertheless, the conveniently named town will be rebuilt “100% green” with Discovery’s assistance.

  [...] Devin Bundy, who lost his house in the tornado, said he wasn’t impressed.

  “I think it sounds like another distraction to the rebuilding of this town[.]“

  The City Administrator remains in favor, now that he’s convinced he won’t get caught up in a tawdry reality tv drama. (It sounds like somebody’s made this his number one talking point after some indignant complaints raised in a town hall meeting.)

  [...] Steve Hewitt said that once he was satisfied that the producers weren’t interested in making a negative, controversial reality show, he was on board.

  “Some of the things we want to do cost money and time,” he said. “And if we can use the Discovery Channel to speed up the recovery efforts as well as help financially, we should look into that.”

  If it works, it works, and more power to them. Still, it’s a little absurd to contrast this town’s tragedy with a will-he-or-won’t-he discussion of whether or not Leonardo DiCaprio will show up on set.

  DiCaprio, the co-executive producer, wants to visit Greensburg, said Annie Howell, Planet Green’s public affairs director, who also attended the meeting. But he’ll have to see if he can squeeze it in with the three movies he’s working on.

  “We’ll just have to see.”