Wow, this new CNN Anthony Bourdain show Parts Unknown promised to take us on a tour of the most obscure and mysterious locales on the globe, and they're starting it with a bang by traveling all the way to the mythical kingdom of Koreatown! Yes, that's right: they're sparing no expense to go all the way to the ends of the, uh, streets across town from where I am sitting right at this very moment? Yes, it's the fabled Koreatown, spoken of only in whispers in the most obscure corners of the Earth! I thought it only a legendary place like Shangri-La or the lost continent of Atlantis! No man has ever gone there and returned to tell the tale, except, like, um, maybe me, and everyone else I know who lives in L.A.
Look, I'm not trying to denigrate Koreatown or anything; it's cool and stuff, but it's not exactly "parts unknown". You can't avoid driving through it if you happen to be going to certain places in Hollywood, so it's not exactly hard to find. Maybe it's exotic to other Americans, but it seems a bit like false advertising for this new CNN show to run ads for months of Anthony Bourdain riding a donkey up a mountain path in Indochina, etc., and then have the actual show shot not only in America, but in fact, right down the street from where I am right now. Maybe next he'll visit Chinatown in New York City, Japantown in San Francisco, Germantown in suburban Philadelphia, Little Italy in New York City, Little Armenia in East Hollywood, Epcot World Showcase mini foreign countries at Disneyworld, etc? I thought the whole point of this new CNN show was to actually leave the United States and show us what other obscure places and cultures around the world are like. But we do have great diversity and large, wonderful immigrant communities throughout the United States, bringing their culture here to us. And someone could make a great show about that. But they shouldn't advertise it as being shot in foreign countries if it's shot here.
(Now, obviously they've gone to places all around the world for this show, which can be quite interesting. But this Koreatown episode was the first one I saw listed on CNN, so it seemed like they had been exaggerating a bit with their ads at first.)
