Things That Annoy Me, But Shouldn't

The second from last, second from last, I tell you! Her bottom lip is CLEARLY lower than all the others!

That's ACTING, dammit!

 

I cure and smoke my own bacon.

You decide if that's a euphemism or not.

 

Article 15 and catch-all rules like it.

 

Article 134?

 

What is Article 15? I Googled and it seems there are several meanings.

 

It's "non-judicial punishment," somewhere between your platoon sergeant ordering you to do a million pushups and jail time. Your company commander serves as judge and jury, and you're your own defense attorney. Don't remember exactly, but the punishment tops out somewhere near loss of a stripe, half a month's pay, and restriction to quarters for a month maybe. You'll always lose the case, so if you're really convinced you're innocent you can demand a court martial, but that can result in higher penalties like actual brig time. The one that I was witness to (as a witness to the proceedings, not the accused) was for a Marine who got caught with a beer in their barracks room before it was made okay. The Marine was of age, so it was just disobeying a lawful order, IIRC they lost two weeks pay and got restricted for two weeks (basically grounded and lost their allowance).

 

"Scope-creep"

By that, I mean when I go onsite to repair one thing they called for on a microscope, and then when I'm about to leave site, ten other "issues" keep popping up that they fail to mention until the end. Gets old very fast, and patience wears thin after about the second iteration of this in a day.

 

I prefer smoking tobacco.

 

Yeah, but state law can't touch you if you fire up a big roll of pork belly in a bar, restaurant, or even a nursery school.

Some things are legal just because it never occurred to them that someone would do it, and I like to be that someone.

 

As I understood it back in the day, 134 was used for court-martial offenses that weren't specifically enumerated in the UCMJ. 15 was used most often when a unit had a shitbird the commander wanted to punish in some way, but his offenses didn't rise to court-martial level. The unfairness of it came in when guilt or innocence was determined solely by the same commander who wanted to punish the guy in the first place. There's no civilian analog I'm aware of.

 

True. To be fair though, people light up almost everywhere in Japan. One of the last places in the world where you can still smoke in restaurants (even if you're shunted away into a smoking booth).

 

Yep. Saw this one most often. Usually for those who weren't paying their auto loans on those fifty thousand dollars trucks they couldn't afford (go figure), or for failure to keep up grooming standards, as in literally not taking showers. Some people are just straight up ignorant.

 

Forgetting to take the various pills we of a certain age inevitably end up on. Why is it so fucking hard to remember to do something you've been doing on a (supposedly) daily basis for the last six years?!

 

In my state, there are three pleas available to receipt of a moving violation traffic ticket:

Guilty
Not Guilty
Guilty with Explanation

The third is exactly the same as the first, since nobody involved gives a flying shit about your explanation.

 

German dubbing of movies and TV shows. It's ubiquitous, inescapable, I grew up with it. They do a very good job, try to make the experience smooth, and mostly succeed.

Yet I get increasingly annoyed with it. One thing that bugs me is that there are (naturally) less dubbing voices as there are international actors, so you hear the same voice in multiple shows and movies on various visible actors. Just today I watched a re-run. I had seen and heard it before, but now I noticed that one of that characters has that particular voice. I couldn't follow the show anymore because I was trying to figure out where this guy has spoken, too.

For a while I couldn't watch the German version of "Elementary", which is one of the best dubbing works you can get (within the limits a network TV shows gives by sheer volume of material and time constraints), because I spent each episode wondering where else I had heard the guy doing Sherlock. I finally figured it out, and then it bugged me knowing that this guy ist not only the voice of Sherlock, but also of this guy, that guy, and those guys over there, too...

 

OMFG!

I have often watched "'Allo 'Allo!" back in the day on Netherlands television, in English with Dutch subtitles (I learned to read Dutch that way! Thanks!)

I also know the guy who speaks René here. He's one of those annoying voices that are all over the place! He's not bad, professionally, mind you – I just hear him. IN. EVERY. DUBBED. SHOW. I. WATCH. Gets on your nerves after a while. I mean, watch crime procedurals, and he usually pops up as the voice of Suspect #2.

 

The voice artists actually sound a lot like the original actors here.

 

Again, not what annoys me. In fact, I have a lot of respect for the voice artists. They do a terrific job for comparatively little money, and under tight schedules.

What currently annoys me that I hear the same voices over and over and over, and cannot turn off that nag inside of me saying "You know this is also the voice of [insert dozens of people]?"

It's actually quite refreshing to see Michael Douglas in German. He's dubbed by a guy named Volker Brandt, and dubbing-wise, that's all Volker Brandt does – he's mostly a stage actor. You only hear him doing Michael Douglas, nowadays. The last time he dubbed someone else was over ten years ago, and even then he was rare. (Vice versa, Michael Douglas was almost always dubbed by him, which is rare. Even stars with their fixed "German Voice" get frequently dubbed by others, thanks to the tight schedules of the business.)

There was also a guy named Thomas Danneberg (he's retired due to health reasons, and I hope it's nothing too serious). He's quite a legend. He can change his voice a lot. He was able to dub both Stallone and Schwarzenegger in "The Expendables", and even for me who knows all these voices it was not annoying to hear.

Alas, the vast majority of voice talents are not able to do it that extensively. Plus, there are people who rack up enormous number of credits. There's an online database where you can look them up. Danneberg has ~1.500 dubs in this (which is already a lot). Lutz Schnell (who did René in "'Allo 'Allo!") has nearly 2.000 – but is 20 years younger, and almost always sounds the same. Volker Brandt, 30 years older than Schnell, has a measly 200 (again, not his primary job.)

I'm glad for them that they have a stable regular job, but it's still annoying to hear them all over the place.

 

I can't get my head around this. In the UK the cast is supposedly English-speaking French civilians plotting against German occupation. But what's what here? German-speaking French civilians plotting against German occupation??

 

In Japan, many of the bigger-name Western stars have dedicated dubbers. Basically, every time you hear someone like Brad Pitt in a Japanese dub, it'll be the same voice, which is nice for the locals who don't feel like reading subtitles.

In contrast, if you watch Jackie Chan movies in the US, especially the early ones, you never know who the heck is going to be speaking. In the newer ones he does his own dub (or works in English), but there's one of the older ones that was set in the 1920s-30s where everyone is dubbed into some bad Dick Tracy/Jimmy Cagny English. I actually had to turn that one off.

 

Well, in the original, they're ALL speaking English with a variety of silly accents to distinguish between the British, Germans, French and Italians. I assume it's the same in the German dub except... in German.

 

Welcome to German dubbing of WWII fiction! As German TV legend Robert Lembke (no, you do not have to know him, but older Germans do) once said: "Dubbing is the Germans' revenge upon the Allies."

Remember "Where Eagles Dare"? Late 1960s, Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood? Englishmen speak English, Germans speak German... except for this one scene, where Burton and Eastwood are doing smalltalk while passing a German guard – in ENGLISH! (The idea is that they're supposed to speak German perfectly, but, I assume, neither Burton nor Eastwood would be anywhere near perfect, so that they just didn't do it.)

That's the original English version. In the German version, everything English is now German... and everything German remains German...

In the French version, English is now French, the original German is still German, and the above mentioned scene where Burton and Eastwood should talk German is now... German! Taken from the German dub. Never mind that the voices are completely different...

 

In German, they try to do that, too. But it frequently does not work out.

First, as a non-German actor getting the status of a "German voice" is somewhat hit or miss. Depends on the career path. There are many actors who get a different voice every time they appear. Then they have some breakthrough project (for Germany), and, bang, this will be their German voice from now on! (Hugh Laurie did appear in many movies, and was dubbed by many people. Then came "House, MD". Now, all dubs of Laurie's are made by this guy. Another thing I'm annoyed about but shouldn't. I think the guy is a good casting for House, but does not have the range of Laurie in general.)

Second, there's so much dubbing to be done (and it seems a lot more than 30 years ago) that there are frequent scheduling conflicts. Bruce Willis couldn't get his standard voice in "Die Hard With a Vengeance" because the guy was extremely busy that year. Funny thing is, most people didn't even realize he had a different voice in that movie. (Replacement voice was Thomas Danneberg, whom I already talked about. This guy simply was that good. "Was" because he's retired – he's still alive.)

Then there are voice talents dying (Tom Hanks' standard voice died in 2016. I'm still grieving – he just had a cool voice. He also did Jeff Goldblum and Bill Murray, among others. Even when he was still alive, there were, since 2000 or so, two different voices for Hanks. He was doing so many projects that one voice alone couldn't get it done), and special requests. Wolfgang Petersen did push through a different voice for Brad Pitt in "Troy".

One big problem is that dubbing and casting of voice talents is done by the German distributors who do not care about artistic integrity or consistency. For most of them, it's just a matter of filling a checkmark (some German version ready at due date) and cost.

Schwarzenegger and Stallone had the same voice – the already mentioned Danneberg. Then they both appeared in movies together. It was agreed – by all accounts, with Arnie's and Sly's blessing – that Danneberg should be doing both of them all the time. And "The Expendables" showed that he could do it, and it worked. But the distributors of "Escape Plan" (according to Danneberg, just one lady there) decided, "Nah, we book a different voice for Arnie". I think it was a cost issue. Danneberg for three days (that's all it takes to record one starring part for one movie) plus another guy for a bit less (Arnie's part was smaller) is just cheaper than Danneberg alone (being a dubbing star) for five or six days.