A new TV talent show has been launched in which singing, dancing, music and women are banned. These four things are deeply evil, say the producers of Buraidah's Got Talent. How perceptive. Instead, the Saudi Arabian show features male contestants reciting poems and delivering religious chants - thrilling the judges, who will no doubt exclaim: "Abdul, you nailed it, I was totally almost tapping my feet there."
Hardest job in the world: selling the show to overseas TV channels. "Buy this, and your whole country will come to a standstill as excited citizens wait to see if the winner is this chanting bearded guy, or that chanting bearded guy."
Still, having acted as judge at several Asian talent shows, chanting bearded guys aren't the worst thing out there. That title is reserved for parents who think their nine-year- olds are the next Lady Gaga, and dress them in the appropriate - or inappropriate - costumes.
Yet, one has to admire the way the Buraidah folk localized the show and hope others are inspired to follow.
Beijing's Got Talent: entrants, all bespectacled men aged 80 to 200, each have to silence an elderly dissident within a set time.
Burma's Got Talent: entrants, all military generals, have to lose elections and lock up the winners.
Moscow's Got Talent: the only entrant allowed, Mr Putin, has to find believable excuses to take his shirt off at international summits. *** More than 100 coffins found in Bulgaria contain skeletons pierced with stakes to stop them leaving their graves and terrorizing living people, archaeologists reported last week. Vampires? Telemarketing salesmen? You decide. *** The Nobel Prize was last week slashed from US$1.4 million (HK$10.92 million) to US$1.1 million. I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. Who's even going to get out of bed for that? *** My European friends were boasting about their sexual sophistication.
While leaders in Asia and the Americas must have high moral standards, the guy just elected to run France is associated with two women, but is married to neither.
He lives with one, while the other is mother to his four children. It did sound rather sophisticated.
Until last week. Paris newspapers revealed the two women are at war with each other, and the man between them can't manage his own family - let alone a country *** They say Kanye West is getting ready to propose to Kim Kardashian. Better dust off the trophy for "World's Most Annoying Family."
Suddenly, I find myself in favor of forced sterilization. Let's hope they move to China.
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