Monthly Archives: August 2004

TAR5: Hobble Like An Egyptian

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Man, what a week – Miss Alli’s recap for last week’s TAR episode went up a couple of days ago : Television Without Pity » The Amazing Race » Recaps & Extras » Season 5 Episode 5

And then there was tonight’s leg! Holy crap, another great, exciting, funny, sharply edited episode. Plus, the shots in Egypt at Karnak and the Great Pyramid and the other temple were really beautiful, especially the early morning sunrise shots.

So many satisfying little moments watched, so many snarky cackles to make. Also, a few bombshells: after weeks of listening to Mirna’s Desperanto (which is mostly Italian and French, supplemented by making “choo-choo” noises last week) suddenly she busts out with the Arabic and calls all their taxi drivers “habibi” (“Honey”). Plus, she utters a nasty sounding phrase and does a classic hawk-spit after a taxi-gate confrontation with Colin. The funny part is that if either of them had actually driven away in the disputed cab, they would have been going to the wrong terminal; they were already at the right departure hall for their chartered flight.

I’ll just add that once again there was a little too much spoon-fed transportation – the cabs all appeared to be marked with the little yellow-and-red flags that hang from the mirrors, denoting them “TAR friendly” or some damn thing. Also, the charter flight left at 11:30am from Cairo to Luxor (actually, it was delayed until 1:45pm, thus saving the moms, who pulled in at 11:35am). Colin and Christie got to the airport at just after 715am… and were told there were no domestic flights; there was one at 7:30 that was “closed.” Huh? It took them 90 minutes to complete a kind of scary task – climbing 350 feet down a sloping shaft in the Great Pyramid and get to the old Cairo (domestic) airport. Hmm.

And yeah, the moms have the worst taxidriver and airport karma ever – once again they get taken to the wrong airport. However, they survived….

… and the bad-tempered, grumbly, miserable, unappreciative, rude, mean, assy brothers are out. Okay, Marshall was in agony, and his brother Lance carried both packs and was very, very supportive and patient (there was no “come on Marshall! Come on Marshall!” from him). But, he also threw a goat in the boat, so I deduct style and niceness points for that, mister.

However, gutting it out all day (reserved and sympathetic kudos for Marshall) only to give up on the Roadblock and refuse to complete it, in the name of sparing an injured brother the walk to the taxi and to the pit stop to be eliminated (Laaaance!)? Well, to me it just looked like Cartman saying “screw you guys, I’m going home.”

In a typically dramatic just-before-commercial statement, Marshall said “That’s it, we’re done. Game over.” Yes, he’d been digging a while, and he was fed up. Yes, he’d counted up the number of “archeological digs” that had obviously been worked and completed, and concluded correctly that they were the last team. So, in the interests of sparing his brother further pain, he quit. Big whammy music cue! Brother sits in borrowed wicker chair and looks miserable! Commercial.

So they come back from commercial, and there’s no digging going on. There’s a strange tension in the air – something about the inactivity just looks so wrong, and the lights make it look like a body dump site (new this fall! CSI: Luxor 1250 B.C!).

Mostly the editors take a frustrated comment from a competitor and turn it into a dramatic “I quit! Again! ([b]tm Flo[/b], season 3)” moment, and it comes back on and they continue to compete (though there may still be whining and complaining).

Not this time. I was totally shocked when Phil walked into the “dig” area (it was fully dark by then, and lit by harsh floodlights) and talked to them. He seemed to me to be a little stern with them; perhaps he was hoping they would suck it up and continue, but he did say that they were physically unable to make it to the pit stop, so maybe it was the right thing to do. Or, maybe it was a graceful way of letting Lance be the supportive brother, and not the quitter brother.

Then he eliminated them. It was very weird to see this happen away from the pit stop mat, which is always placed in the most photogenic spot of the location. It’s always in a sweet zone where all the camera angles look good and it’s always at a natural focal point. To see this iconic moment of the show placed in this incongruous and unphotogenic backdrop was just weird. Also, it was partly filmed from above, using the “scarab cam.” So even the camera angles were weird and unsettling. Lance and Marshall seemed to take it in pretty good spirits. They knew they were done, and they looked a little relieved that it was over. Actually, Marshall looked a lot relieved. They both said nice things about their relationship as brothers afterwards. However, as a redemption arc, there wasn’t much “there” there. Not enough time to really build sympathy from the audience… in the third season, it took at least 3 legs for Ian’s redemption arc to raise his stock with the hard-core fans. He was still an ass at the end, but everyone had a grudging respect for him, and for his and Teri’s perseverance. He didn’t seem such an ass in Vietnam, and he started to mellow a bit in front of our shocked and disbelieving eyes. There wasn’t time for this kind of transformation for Lance (Marshall’s not so bad, it was Lance that hollered “BITCH!” at Mirna from the car in Patagonia).

I don’t know. It’s possible that in future gatherings of fans and former Racers, people will buy consolation drinks for Lance and Marshall, but somehow I think they’ll be one of those “not a bang, but a whimper” teams that just disappear from view afterwards.

It’s funny about first and last impressions: when I first saw and heard this team, I thought they’d be likeable and funny. It seemed like other teams and Phil thought they were likeable and funny (with the exception of Mirna, but then she thinks everyone is disgusting and apparently says so in Arabic). However, their every moment on camera, their every comment during the race and in voiceover interviews after each leg showed them to be unpleasant and negative people who got little to no enjoyment out of being on the show.

And so now I don’t like them very much at all. Maybe they’ll redeem themselves post-reality the way the Guidos did, who are now beloved by fans for behaving graciously and with good humor afterwards, even though they knew they weren’t popular. But I don’t think redemption is in the cards for the Brothers Grummp.

There’s a lot more from this episode… a lot more. I bet it was a lot of fun to edit, with all those yummy shots of ruins, and funny leaping goats and cantering asses (also, there were donkeys being ridden by at least one of the asses).

Finally, there’s another exclusion in the TAR Cameramen’s insurance policy – there will be no medical coverage or equipment repair coverage for:

  • Getting whacked in the head by a goat’s hindparts and naughty bits

Therefore care must be taken with CBS equipment around all ruminants.

Salon Runs Abu Ghraib Rape Story

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Salon.com has a story on the Abu Ghraib rape allegations… you know, the one that’s been kicking around since the beginning, with the quote from the same witness as before. They blame civilian contractors in a story titled: “Contract to torture.”

The story says “sponsored by the New York Times” at the top. This may be repackaged content from before, but the more major news orgs carrying this story, the less likely it is to remain buried for much longer.

More Weekend, Please

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Weekend? What weekend? This one went by faster than most, and next weekend promises to go by even faster.

Friday I didn’t get away from the office until after 6pm. My team leader was out again, and although I wasn’t schedule to stay until closing time, things were hairy enough in the afternoon that I decided to stick around for immoral support. Also, one agent had some sort of personal ticket he wanted issued, but it turned out we couldn’t issue it as an electronic ticket, and he couldn’t use paper tickets. They were for family members to come up from Mexico, and there wasn’t time to get the tickets to them via express services. Kind of not his fault that we I couldn’t issue the e-ticket, because it’s hard to tell sometimes. Kind of his fault for leaving it so incredibly late. This was brought to me in the middle of some hairiness to do with hotel groups, and so I was really short with him, but really, what could I do that late in the game? I advised him to go to O’Hare the next day and purchase pre-paid tickets; we used to do prepaids, but by the time this solution was the only one left to choose from, it was after 6pm. It could have been done if it hadn’t been dumped on me at the last minute. But first, I would have had to find the PTA documents, and the validator, and the airline plates. It’s been that long since we’ve done one, and frankly I don’t know if we still do them at all.

Anyway, I got home and was mooching about – David was off at Joe’s place doing some advanced geekery and was about half an hour to the north. The phone rang; it was David, the geekery was accomplished, and we decided to meet at Nobu’s, “our” sushi restaurant. Hey, there’s my hubby, sitting at our regular table! He had beaten me there, of course.

It was kind of like a quickie date.

We decided not to do as much damage sushi-wise and didn’t order as many different kinds as usual – wise choice. Then, dinner over, we drove home in our separate cars, and again with the being beaten. What is this, street racing? Sheesh.

Yesterday, David had another geeky outing planned; he was meeting Steve and Steve’s nephew Benjy and some other SF/tech acquaintances for a trip to Frye’s Electronics for the last day of the big grand opening sales. David bought some stuff, and Steve and Benjy played Dance, Dance Revolution apparently, so that today Steve was complaining he was sore. No word from Benjy; probably feeling fine. Ah, youth – it’s wasted on the young.
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New Flailing Project

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Elise made me think I could do it; Moveable Blog’s “Asides” template may point me to a solution to a niggling little problem in a flailing project that’s almost ready for the main stage.

If I get it to work, there will be a short sideblog of quick links on the left column; this will tend to get the quick choppy link-only posts out of the way of the content. Also, it’ll be quicker to jump in and out with a new link for those time when I gotta blog from work. I’ll have to cut down on workaday blogging real soon now with all the changes, and this might be a solution for those “gotta” news items.

Love That Smirking Chimp

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In res Pontifex Maximus et Chimpulus Bushii:

This unctuous moralizing about family life and sexuality is pretty rich coming from a gang that has presided over the most widespread, elaborately concealed child abuse scandal in the history of religion. But then, rank hypocrisy has never been a bar to militant self-righteousness. Witness John Paul’s fellow public scold in Washington. Not content with the pope’s merely rhetorical flourishes, Bush takes a more pre-emptive approach to inconvenient women — condemning thousands of them to gruesome, entirely preventable deaths with a simple stroke of his pen.

Now that is a mighty thundering from the left. It’s a beautiful thing to read. Well done, Chris Floyd of the Moscow Times.

Well done.

Kook Or Consequences?

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A California lawyer has filed a potential class action lawsuit against the internet search company Yahoo.

Stephen Galton says he was subject to a “barrage of harassing, defamatory and abusive messages” from anonymous users on a Yahoo message board.

Let’s see – is this guy nuts for attempting to take on trolls and actually sue them, rather than threatening to do so as so many have done before? Being threatened with cartooneys is one of the Internet’s oldest jokes; next oldest is claiming to be one. In this case, it happens to be true. Or is he crazy like a fox? Because if so, it could potentially threaten Internet discourse as we know it, which may be why it’s big news.

If he succeeds in getting his case declared a class action suit, everybody that ever got smacked around on Usenet or message boards or mailing lists or in blog comments in the last 4 years may decide to climb aboard the train. I don’t think this would actually happen, but I can imagine the chaos that would result if everybody in every ongoing discussion decided to hash out the pros and cons of this issue. Because it’s been done to death, frankly, and it pops up every time someone gets offended or hurt. Potentially: a lot more dead ponies being enthusiastically thrashed to death again. Meanwhile, this suit seems to me to be a very real threat to the concepts of free speech, freedom of thought, and anonymity on the Internet.

Slashdot notes that all the message boards posts relating to the story have supposedly been deleted, but it’s hard to tell based on the link given. The follow-on thread is pretty amusing reading – posts with a higher score for insightfulness or humor are highlighted.

The “abuse” cited by attorney Galton is probably typical Internet/Usenet interpersonal flaming; not particularly unusual or original. However irritating or frightening it is to be flamed in this way, most Netizens learn to deal with it, because 90-99% of the time, it’s just diarrhea of the keyboard. It will never be translated into actual physical contact or financial harm; in fact most online flame jockeys are emboldened by the anonymity of the Net, and fade away quickly if exposed to the light of reality.

Here’s the real problem I have with someone going to court and attempting to sue an ISP over this issue in order to go after people by name:

Anonymity protects a lot of people all over the world; going after a few abusive jerks with class action suits is a non-productive and dangerous idea. First, it may tend to infringe on everyone’s right to free speech (and in some countries, the Internet is the only place where this right can be exercised). Second, it puts anonymity at risk; ISPs are only too willing to roll over and cough up personal information as it is. And again, anonymity ought to be a right, since it protects people in certain countries (such as China or Iran) from harm or government sanction for expressing “wrong” opinions and having “wrong” thoughts.

I hope this case gets thrown out. In the meantime, the Slashdot folks are having a good time documenting posts on the Yahoo board in question that they think will be deleted by the Yahoo admins for being too inflammatory or prejudicial.

If You’re Not Reading Ginmar

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…you should be. See A View from A Broad for a look into the life of a US soldier in Iraq with a point of view that’s as sharp as Captain Comic Book’s knives.

Read it from as early as you can – at least go back to April and read between the lines.

This blog/journal needs to be collated and published in book form. It’s that good.