Miscellaneous rambling, and bragging about my kids.

isn't the web amazing ???
i downloaded scrubs 6th season this week and i watch it and i also liked the song in the end (when i feel that…) and I had no clue about so I googled my way here..and I am probably closer to the BF in Iraq than to the rest of you…so it's an amazing world..hope the guy from Iraq will return home safely soon

I was hoping that after the Blue team eliminated captain Jerry last week, Bob would tear them a new one.  I guess that's not part of the game, though, as it's never mentioned again.  Oh well. 

This week opens with a temptation…for the trainers.  That's a neat idea, as the three trainers stand in front of a tray of cupcakes in a possible chance to win a bonus for their team during the next challenge.  It turns out to be nothing more than a motivational trick, however, as each team says, "My trainer wouldn't want me to eat it, so I wouldn't wish the same on her."  Bob is the funniest, saying that he remembers when he had a cupcake – "half of one."  And then he's scoping out the whole tray, picking out his favorite.  But at the end, nobody picks any cupcakes, we don't get to watch the trainers pig out.

The challenge is a simple race to the flag and back, with two catches.  First, the teams have to bid each other down in a dare to see who can run it the fastest.  And second, the trainer runs with the team.  That was pretty neat, especially watching Jillian carry the flag (which was double her size) by herself, leading the team back up the hill.  Long story short, the black team fails to make their time, the red team succeeds, and the blue team never even got to go because they played the betting in order to dare the red team into taking the challenge.    This does not sit well with Bob, who feels that his team chickened out of even attempting the race, something that he would have gotten to participate in.  Needless to say, Bob beats on them pretty ruthlessly. 

Blatant plug in the middle for Subway, supposedly because they have a healthy menu and it was an example of how you can eat in the real world and still eat healthy.  But more obviously, it was paid product placement.

Worst of all for Bob, the winning red team gets immunity at the weigh in, so it's either going to be black or blue.  And Jillian's team pulls down substantial, double-digit numbers.  Someone from blue is going home again.  The team then totally disappoints as they say "We can't decide who to send home, so we're going to deliberately make it a tie and let the house decide."  To which Bob says, deservedly, "Oh hell no, I forbid that."

So at the end of it all Patty goes home – she's the one who pigged out unnecessarily last week during the challenge and probably should have gone last week.  We leave on a cliffhanger, as Allison tells us that next week the campus is closed.  I assume that means that they are going to have to spend a week in the real world, getting themselves to the gym and eating on their own, which would be pretty cool, but no idea how they would film it.  These shows thrive on the interaction between the players.  We shall see.

I have to admit, Dancing with the Stars is losing steam for me a little bit. I didn't even realize that it was on last night, we watched the Patriots game instead.  So we were happy enough with the recap.  We get it, the Cheetah girl and the race car driver are way out in front.  We actually tried watching Cavemen (blah) and Carpoolers (I liked, Kerry didn't) before Dancing, so that we could buffer it up and Tivo our way through it.

The encore dance goes to the race car driver, whose partner is Julianne, the champion.  I think that most of his points are coming from the crazy choreography she puts together.  She did that last season too, with Apolo.  Remember the whole dance around the chair?  And the blindfolded one?  She's good, I like her.

Queen Latifah is the guest star.  I wonder what it really says about your career when you basically put out an album of "standards"?  Instead of seeing the dancers we know this week, we see some champions.  They are good, sure, but who cares about them?  Part of the appeal of the show is in having your favorites, and wanting to see them.  When there's no one on stage you know, you reduce your audience down to just the people who watch for the ballroom, and that's not as many as you might think.

An actual funny bit with Jimmy Kimmel (I know, can you believe it?) when they go behind the scenes to look at how the votes are counted, and they discover that they're being counted by…well, The Count.  From Sesame Street.  They then completely kill the joke by having him counting votes for "Mel B" and "Scary Spice" independently, and when Jimmy says "You know those are the same person, right?"  the Count just says, "Are you serious?  Now I have to start over!" and they leave him picking up the phones again.  Haha?  I don't get it.

Albert the young model with the crotch action goes home this week.  I don't care about him one way or the other, had no idea who he was and I assume that fanbase did him in.  The other guy, Cameron, fills in the "hot guy" category apparently.  What bums me out is that his partner was Anna, the peppy little red head who only just came back this season.  I'd liked her in earlier seasons and was hoping to see more of her.  I have to see more of Cheryl Smith and Wayne Newton, but the one I like goes home.  Feh.

George W. Bush to meet with the Dalai Lama

Ok, now this is interesting.  In an apparent first, a US president is going to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama where he will be presented with the Congressional Gold Medal (His Holiness, not Bush).  This is sure to piss off China, who basically runs around the world behind the Dalai Lama saying "No more toys with lead paint for you if you invite him to tea.  We don't like him."  Bonus points for the spokeswoman who said that such a move "hurts the feelings of the Chinese people."  I wonder if in a statement like that she's counting the Tibetans as Chinese people?  Because I'd be willing to bet they're very happy when their leader (both politically and spiritually) gets a little respect.

Perhaps they can talk about Burma while they're at it?

Seriously, if Bush manages to have a respectful meeting with the man, if it's more than just a photo opportunity, and Bush manages not to say anything stupid, I will be very pleased.

What a great tap quote! I may have to include that on my site as I often like to collect and post dance-related posts. Thanks for sharing it!

No big surprises, and no need to waste a lot of time like the show does. Josie, the model who had the brutally low score, goes home. I feel worse for her partner, Alec, who actually won the first season, and now two seasons in a row has gone home the first week. Get him a better partner next time!

The rest of the show is standard fare. Dolly Parton comes out to do the typical two-fer, first a classic (9-to-5) for the audience to get into and the pros to dance to, and then something from her new album that no one cares about.

They do the usual audience reactions (who cares? the producers will just ask a bunch of people who they like and dislike, and then only show the ones they want), and the comedy bit is now Kenny Mayne instead of Jimmy Kimmel. We get it. You need a plug for your other ABC shows. A caveman makes an appearance, but no one cares.

In a new segment called "Stars of Dance", Savion Glover does some stomping around in green boots. It's quite good. The segment is sponsored by Macy's, which makes me wonder how long the show would be if you took out all the segments that are only there to plug something (let's see, the Kenny Mayne / Caveman segment, Dolly Parton's second song, the Macy's segment….)

Sabrina the cheetah girl is the best of the bunch right now, which I think is a total cheat because isn't she, you know, a professional dancer? I mean, sure, we've had boyband guys on before, but none of them were still in it, they all had a few years behind them. As far as I know, the cheetah girl thing is a current phenomenon. So when she's done practicing with Dancing with the Stars, she goes and practices with them. It'll be interesting to see how she does in the long haul, especially for the slow and graceful numbers. She can't just wiggle her hips for every single song.

Ok, so apparently the Shakespeare reference by Jared last week (he bought a copy of Henry V from the store) is going to be a regular feature.

This week after discovering how warm a chicken egg is immediately after its hatched, the book tells them that you don't need to keep all your chickens for eggs, you can have some for dinner. This creates quite a controversy among the kids (and I'm sure among the viewers) about whether to kill them at all, and then who will do the killing. The bigger kid, Greg is it?, miraculously has animal butchering experience so he'll be able to do it quick and easy. They agree that as long as they don't have to do the killing, they'll help with the eating.

One girl whose name I forget (come on, there are 40 kids to remember) is so upset by this idea that she and a few others lock themselves up in the chicken coop. Neat idea that they should have keep up with – what would they eventually eat and drink? But instead the situation is diffused in a few minutes. End result, a couple of chickens get killed nice and clean, right there on tv, much to the freakout of the children. Who said that 2 chickens would feed 40 kids?? Jared is loaded with the one liners during this whole process, ranging from the geeky "As Shakespeare would say, To kill or not to kill" to the funnier "We just shortened the natural cycle of life and death for these guys."

The challenge is something about piping water from one place to another, and again the green team comes in last. That's actually one of the most frustrating parts of the show, as the characters on the green team are trying much harder than the spoiled little brats on the yellow team. This week yellow didn't even do their cooking chores, so how long is it before the producers step in with a rule about "If the council decides you didn't do the work, you don't get paid" or something?

Anyway, green loses again, which stinks for them. Remember that they've got the ten cents a day job of cleaning the outhouses. There's a nice moment when the other teams actually console them on their loss rather than being upset that they do not win the prize, but then it turns manipulative again as the host shows them the water pumps that they would have gotten, had green come through. Personally, if the show was really about being a feel good experience for the kids, I say don't even show the reward. If you don't get it, just leave it closed and don't torture the kids with "Look what you lost out on."

Nobody leaves this week, despite that one girl's objection that she would leave if they killed a chicken. I'm not sure if it was made clear whether she actually ate the dinner that night.

Last night, Savion Glover was a guest on Dancing With The Stars. He's now introduced as the World's Greatest Tap Dancer, and since Gregory Hines died, that is probably accurate. He did a very weird number wearing these funky green boots, so it sound a lot more stompy than tappy, but it was still a good show, and he's obviously so amazingly comfortable in what he does that the smile never left his face. He never looked like it was anything more than warm up.

My kids, 3 and 5, are in dance class and both know about tap. So I asked them through the magic of Tivo if they wanted to see what the world's greatest tap dancer looked like. They were both very impressed.

I explained that he was also the guy who "taught the penguin how to dance in Happy Feet." I then had to explain why he didn't teach them *all* how to dance ("They could all dance a little," I explained, "But Mumble was really really good at it.")

And then my 5yr old came out with the quote of the morning:

"Tap dancing is like sign language for your feet."

I agree, a lot of the season 6 episodes are really funny but then plot-wise kinda weak, with random stuff thrown in. And this episode followed "My night to remember", which was just horrible. Luckily the next few episodes are great.

Having lost two weeks in a row, Kim is in a surprisingly good mood.

The temptation is a weird setup, where they put you in a room with as much junk food as you want, and the deal is that whoever eats the most gets a 3lb pass to the weigh in. In other words, if you think you can eat the most, you win, but if you don't think you can eat the most, you're screwed and better not eating anything. So the blue team comes up with a plan to have the one big guy, Neil, pig out and win the pass. The only problem is that when he comes back into the room he is shaking his head, so Patty sees this as a sign that he did not accomplish his task, and seizes the opportunity to pig out herself. She ends up winning, and Neil is left to climb out from under the bus Patty drove over him.

The challenge is funny, as the contestants are put into a foot race against children (including a kindergartener). The contestants do not fare well.

The weigh in this week is low for everybody, pulling in 2 and 3 pound losses across the teams. But blue is the one going home. But who? They're such a well oiled machine. Bob is not thrilled. Even less so when the team says "Yeah, we took a vote and we think Jerry." Jerry would be the older guy, the team captain, who has already lost 41pounds. What's the team smoking?

I am very glad this show is on opposite Dancing with the Stars, which we watch live. So by the time I get to Loser, it is all done and on Tivo. What that means is that I can fast forward through all the crying. And don't get me started on all the "I voted for this person because they are a good person…" It's like on Jerry Springer when the girl is trying to keep up the shock value that they're about to bring out another girl.

In a stunning elimination, Jerry does indeed go home. It makes no sense, unless they are already strategizing about getting rid of the best player – which is a dumb move. I hope Bob reads them the riot act next week.
(In the "where are they now" segment at the end we see that Jerry has indeed gone on to lose over 80lbs. That's amazing!)