Yesterday Keith and I came across How It's Made on Discovery. It's the greatest stoner telly I've ever seen, and I wasn't even stoned. Each programme is half an hour long, during which time they tell you how four things are made. Yesterday we learned how honey, fibre optic cabling, pasta, and pills are made. If we'd kept watching, we would have found out how to make classical guitars, glass eyes, flat screen televisions and plasters (or something like that).
The fact that it's incredibly cheaply made only adds to its appeal. The production of the object is presented in clear, no nonsense Playschool style steps which lulls you into thinking that making fibre optic cables is no more complicated than making honey. Of course, on mature reflection, making honey might involve getting stung now and again, but making fibre optic cables appears to involve working with highly volatile acids at incredibly high temperatures and then stretching the resulting goo out over a large area and probably being poisoned by fumes. I know which I'd rather.
There is no presenter, so your channel can provide the voiceover in the language of your choice. We were watching the Nice English version. The script says things like "pasta is one of the world's most popular foods, but do you know how it's made?" and "everyone has adhesive bandages on hand for the small accidents of life. But do you know how they're made?" It must be a nightmare to write these little intros for each segment when all you really want to do is say "plasters! They're great!" and get on with it.
The music is great too. It reminded Keith of the videos he had to watch while doing dive training, and it does have the air about it of music that was inserted to cover up the hiss of cheap recording facilities, or to give bored corporate trainees something to laugh about. At least in Playschool they usually had the real sounds of the factory playing. I think. Didn't they?
HEALTH WARNING: Trish and Keith, who are not health experts, recommend this programme as SAFE to watch while stoned. However, we deem it UNSAFE for viewing under the influence of anything particularly heavy or hallucinogenic. You never know when you might settle down to watch some big sheets of pasta dry, and the next thing you're looking at someone painting blood vessels on a glass eye and you can't look at your spaghetti the same way again.
Original comments:
This is my idea of perfect, brain dead, TV. Barbara doesn't mind it either, unlike nearly everything else on the Hilter channel.
Posted by Caelen on Apr. 20 2005, at 10:12 AM
How it's made ROCKS! The only thing better than 'How it's Made' is the reality show 'The Ultimate Fighter'.
Posted by FatStevieB on May. 07 2005, at 3:48 PM
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