Lost in translation

So you make it home after a long day at the luge track, crash on the clunky sofa bed and turn on the TV, hoping to kick back and unwind.

Not a chance. Not with Italian TV.

We have an ancient 13-inch TV set with 13 channels. Twelve of them broadcast Italian shows exclusively. Only one of them is multilingual — MTV.

I never knew how much I missed closed captioning.

Then again closed captioning might have made it worse.

Channel 8 showed more than 100 people dancing in a conga line to an Italian rendition of “Roll out the barrel.”?

Channel 3 featured a moderator (referee?) trying to keep order as four men debated (yelled?) about some poll results.

I then switched to Channel 1. Did you ever wonder what happened to Channel 1 on your TV set? Don’t worry — it’s alive and well on Italian TV. Actually it’s not so well based on what was on last night.

Channel 1 had a Roberto Benigni-lookalike hosting an awful amateur talent/Gong Show debacle. The “performances”? were bad enough. Then the camera panned to one of the judges. Brace yourself.

Liberace is alive. Either that or it was his long-lost brother festooned in a pink suit, pink tie, pink-tinted sunglasses, pink pants, pink platform shoes, and a tiny Chow in a pink sweater.

The weight-loss infomercials on Channel 7 never looked so good.