TV: Amazing Race 10 - Episode 2

Random luck (or lack thereof) played a major role this week. Transportation allowed the teams to bunch together and arrive in Outer Mongolia all even, and the team positions changed pretty frequently from there depending on whims of taxi drivers, automobiles, and animals. It's not clear that any team did anything to deserve the bad karma. It was the cardinal "no-no" of driving in the wrong direction that ultimately eliminated one team that I thought looked like a contender. That team probably would have had more adrenaline to actually complete the final task faster than some other teams if they had not fallen so far behind.

Driving the wrong way seems to kill one team in every race. I suppose keeping one's sense of direction is easier said than done when finding oneself jet-lagged, stressed, and in a completely foreign environment. Either that or future teams will have to make sure one at least one member spends as much time honing navigation skills as working out in the gym.

Other random thoughts:

I still find myself cheering for the coalminers. It was humorous how they admitted that this is the first time that they had met ... gay people ... and liked them.

David also described his wife as blunt and always correct - the two traits he loved about her. Peter and Rob will have to learn to see their respective teammates in the same way if they expect the relationship and participation in the race to last much longer. Sarah picked the better task for her team at a detour while Kimberly recognized when Rob had taken a wrong turn. One of my favorite quotes from White Men Can't Jump is, "Billy, I have four words for you: 'Listen to the woman.'" I guess for most of us guys, that is something that is easier said than done.

I don't know if it was Tom or Terry desperately trying to intimidate a horse.

I forgot to note who proved to be the Jerry Maguire expert, by pointing out it was dogs and bees that smelled fear rather than horses.

Getting thrown off a horse cannot feel good (ouch!), but I suppose one cannot expect to fly around the world without paying some sort of price for it along the way. Fortunately, the horses were pretty short and the ground was pretty soft, otherwise the next stop would have been a hospital.

There was a very brief scene of a many riding a plain old black bicycle outside the train to Mongolia. I forgot to mention it last week, but I saw a similar scene from a tour bus in Beijing but could not pull my camera out quickly enough to capture it. A man, who I figured was in his 60's or older was hauling a half-size refrigerator on a trailer attached to his bicycle on the shoulder of a highway, and pedaling up a slight grade. I saw others hauling large loads of coals with bikes similar to the one pictured here. I wondered how some of those riders would fare in Le Tour de France.

Sarah and Peter may become the sequel to Flo and Zach who one a previous race.

The male models appear to be the much reformed version of Eric and Jeremy.

I would have enjoyed doing the archery challenge. It was fun seeing those targets explode. But I imagine it was much easier said than done.

[Like how I employed one recurring them in this post? Yup, achieving that is much easier said than done -- for me anyway]

TV: Amazing Race 10 - Episode 1

This edition has started with much promise. The producers did a good job of bringing people from all around the country from different walks of life, but the teams were not radically different in makeup vs. past seasons. I found it amusing that all of the teams looked more like sibling than what they really were (except for the team that is actually brothers). Fortunately, so much about the couples were packed into a short time, that I quickly found redeeming qualities to like about most of the players. This is the first time I felt bad about seeing two of the teams go so early (oddly enough, it was the two teams that were most different from previous teams) vs. shrugging about the loss of a team that was just another anonymous face in the crowd. The shocked and saddened reaction from all remaining teams to the quick and surprising first elimination looked genuine and added to the emotional scene.

[I think it may have been more fun if they let the last team get a head start to the next clue, just to mess with the contestants minds. I figured the odds of an early elimination were high when the race started with 12 teams instead of the usual 11.]

I missed the first episode of Treasure Hunters, so I don't know how that contest began, but one initial area where the Amazing Race felt clearly superior to me was in how they edited the reading of the opening clue. Each team read a portion of it, as they got in their cars and raced off to SeaTac airport. That established the sense of urgency from the start vs. fully repeating the clue several times as if the producers thought we needed to have the clue drilled into our heads in order to play along. I suppose one advantage of doing this the 10th time vs. the first is that you get a chance to truly refine these little details that many viewers may subconsciously appreciate.

I've visited Seattle many times over the years (most recently, a month ago to take a cruise to Alaska), but I didn't recognize the hill where the race began. I had to guess it was north of downtown and west of I5. Thanks to Google Earth, I'm now positive it was the Sundial at Gas Works Park. I'll have to check it out on my next trip.

The home team from San Francisco (with one Cal grad) that I feel obligated to root for thankfully did not copy the BJ & Tyler Hippie look. They have more of a Silicon Valley vibe instead. Both have graduate degrees, but I have to wonder what they were thinking by pulling out squirt guns at the airport. They had another brain freeze at a challenge when they grabbed another team's bricks. While they looked like they have good upper body strength, they may not be built for endurance as they were beaten up the Great Wall of China by a pair of college cheerleaders. They will have to bear down quite a bit to win this thing.

I first and last visited Beijing in 1994, and it was an eye-opening experience. I expected to see everyone on bicycles wearing green uniforms. Instead I saw lots of people in designer outfits or sports apparel while several fancy European sports cars wove around the herds of bicyclers. New construction was going on everywhere. I imagine the city is even more bustling and cosmopolitan now. The Forbidden City was closed by the time I reached it, but I walked around Tiananmen Square just south of the Meridian Gate. I was awestruck at how large the square was and how it had just been a few years since students protested there. On one corner was a huge McDonald's but I opted for Peking Duck at an even bigger nearby restaurant (Quan Ju De?) where it people were arriving by the busload. The duck was delicious even given the large crowds being served.

Unfortunately, for one member of each team, the meal would be fish eyes instead of duck. I don't have a true HDTV (and the Amazing Race is not in HD either), but I suspect I would not have noticed the long thin strands of goo hanging off the eyeballs as they were swallowed on the analog broadcast. That sight made me shiver.

The coalminer wife handled the delicacy pretty well even though she acted as if she had never used a pair of chopsticks before. Later she had the quote that the episode was named after as she told a taxi driver, "Real fast! Quack! Quack!" I think I will root for them.

I opinion of the Triathletes bounced down and up. They showed no hesitation to use the Mirna and Shmirna sympathy card. But I imagine it's hard enough to climb a rope with two legs vs. one artificial one with a leaky hydraulic system. I wonder if it is more of a hassle for Sarah today to get around airports with a fluid ban enforced.

The biggest factors this week were navigation and noticing the brick pattern correctly.

I think I ended up visiting the same part of the Great Wall, which is still some distance from Beijing. Someday I might have to post the panoramic pictures I took there (assuming I can ever get around to finding and scanning them).

TV: Reality Roundup

The only reality show I care about, The Amazing Race, premieres with its 10th edition in less than 24 hours, but I still will take an occassional glance at the other game shows.

My random thoughts:

Treasure Hunters: NBC tried to capture the magic of The Amazing Race with this initially promising entry. It was touted as being created by one of the producers of The DaVinci Code. Interestingly, the series more closely resembled National Treasure by referencing American history for its mysteries. Okay, maybe it was a safer choice than using religious history (controversial) or world history (which may have been too challenging for the contestants - even the team calling itself The Geniuses). The result was a mostly uneventful weekly hour of fairly easy puzzles and blatant product placement, particularly for a brand of cell phones through which the host repeated himself too often. Only the Wild Hanlons stood out as characters to watch, but overall, there was nothing memorable. I guess it just proved that teams of three are not much more entertaining than teams of four. Two allows for the most relationship conflicts apparently. Having all the teams starting each "leg" at the same time did not turn out to be a big improvement over the sometimes annoying bunching that happens in the Amazing Race either.

Project Runway fascinates me sometimes. I think it's impressive how quickly the designers can come up with an idea for an outfit then construct it under some pretty difficult time constraints and conditions. Yes, I have little artistic ability myself, and I originally tuned in just to check out Heidi Klum. Unfortunately, she and the creativity of the contestants have not been enough to make up for a few too many moments of overdramatism. Since I do not have Bravo on my regular channel surfing rotation, I may accidentally miss the finale as well.

Big Brother: All Stars. I only watched this show for about 15 minutes, yawned, then switched channels. I don't even care who won.

Dancing with the Stars: I have to grudgingly admit that former Dallas Cowboys running back and NFL all-time rushing leader Emmitt Smith had a better debut than former 49'er Jerry Rice, who holds countless NFL receiving records. At least Emmitt's partner, Cheryl Burke, grew up in the Bay Area so I can live with that. It must be a law that at least one alumnus of Saved by the Bell make an unexpected appearance on television or in the movies just as I happily forget that this show existed. This time Mario Lopez appears to be the dancer to beat. If I do make any time to watch this (and I probably won't), I may root for Vivica A. Fox and Willa Ford. I don't think politics played a role in Tucker Carlson being the first to go. Fellow talk show host Jerry Springer will likely follow him off the show soon.

Celebrity Duets: Only watched a little bit of this show by accident. I guess some charity will get some money at the end of this. My only question: Didn't Lucy Lawless already sing in public before? [She also pre-dated Janet Jackson in the "wardrobe malfunction at a sporting event" department. Why I remember such trivia and constantly forget to take my badge to work, I will never know.] Maybe Lucy can win to make up for the fact that a dwarf planet is no longer named after a character she played.

Survivor: Cook Islands - There was some controversy over how the teams would be initially divided this season. Maybe it was unfair by excluding applicants of mixed heritage. I only watched the second half-hour of the first episode, and it did not seem like a big deal. For example, it was hard to get a sense of who's who with 20 people milling about the cameras. The teams themselves rarely crossed paths. CBS even avoided further trouble by carefully blurring one contestant's slightly exposed coin slot. While the cast may be racially diverse, an oddly large portion of them live in California (10 from the L.A. area, 1 from San Diego, 2 from the Bay Area, and 1 from Chico). As a practically native Californian, can I say Californians are all alike? Does that make me a geographist, and can I get credit for making up that new word? :-)

I'm sure there are other reality / game shows I've missed completely (e.g., The Contender), but there are only so many hours in the day, and I had a pretty busy summer and a full slate of fall shows to watch.

Web: 21st Century Schoolhouse Rock

... or maybe it's trance / house with a shade of David Byrne, but

Vitamins are Good for You

Wonder if there's a video for this.

TMI: PC Like It's 1995

One of the many things I did during my summer vacation (from blogging) was purchase a PC. A close connection helped me procure a fairly brand new high end desktop PC previously used only for game demos at the recent E3 convention at a great discount. It has a 3.0GHz dual core Pentium D, dual nVidia video cards, dual 150GB SATA disks in a RAID 1 configuration, and yada, yada, yada.

I also finally tossed out a very old PC that a colleague helped me cobble together in 1995. It had been gathering dust in the corner for many years after I bought a newer system in 2000. I found many of the now faded receipts for this system lying in the same corner. Just about every component was bought at a different place as I tried to get the best parts for the cheapest price. Not sure what this translates to in 2006 dollars but I definitely got much more in an assembled package for about the same price 11 years later.

Intel 486DX2-66MHz + 256K cache (and motherboard?) $232.56
16MB 70ns SIMM $619.00
Refurbished DEC 2000MB Internal SCSI Drive, 12.5ms seek time - $495.00
1.44" Floppy Drive $31.82
Diamond Stealth 64 Video Card $289.00
SoundBlaster Pro-16 Audio Card OEM $99.00
28.8 Kbaud internal modem $122.40
PC Keyboard $13.26
MS Mouse $30.00
Full tower case $105.00
Snickers Bar $0.45 - got hungry putting the pieces together.

NEC XE17" Monitor ??? (it was probably about $900.00 back then)

Only the monitor avoids the recycling bin as I prefer staring into a tube over even much larger, higher-resolution LCD screens in the same price range.

Some day I'll have to break the habit of buying high end PCs. Considering I mostly use these things to play solitaire or connect to work and catch up on e-mail, it basically means I've just purchased world's most expensive deck of cards with a workaholic option.

Okay, World of Warcraft is occasionally played on this thing as well ...

TMI: On the Blog Again

A few weeks ago, I had a rare opportunity to cross paths with the globe-trotting Tom Kyte. The meeting went down like this:

Me: Hi, Tom.
TK: Hello. brief pause Are you on strike from you blog? another brief pause... and at this point I get the sense he is accessing his L2 cache The last thing you wrote was about a Backyard Bellagio about two months ago.

He was, of course, absolutely correct. At this point, there was an awkward silence as thoughts raced through my head.

#1. Wow! Tom recognizes me; I didn't have to introduce myself. He pays attention to my blog. And remembers the details!

#2. I'll come back with a snappy remark, "Yes, I'm on strike until I get proof that Suri Cruise actually exists." No, wait! Maybe I should save that for a blog entry. But what's wrong with saying out loud first and then writing about it later? Um, it's a moot point now, idiot. You've been silent for too many microseconds for any sort of witty repartee. In comedy, timing is everything.

#3. Okay, Plan B. Say, "I haven't had enough time to post anything lately." Dude! Are you nuts? Tom's the guy who finds time to post via his cell phone while waiting to board a plane. You need a better excuse now, and make it quick, you're already losing what little attention you had in the first place.

#4: Why am I referring to myself in the second person?

Finally the pause ended with me making a sheepish grin and mumbling something lame. This is all I can remember almost a month later. Things get very fuzzy after that. Normally, I'd still be able to recall rest of the story in excruciating detail, but the exchange wasn't salvageable enough to be worth replaying 100 times in my head and over-analyzing how I could better handle another meeting like this in the future.

As best as I can recall, I said something about being too busy and Tom's reply was pretty much what I had anticipated in thought #3.

Interestingly, I also anticipated everything that would happen in that brief conversation during the last step I made towards Tom and before I said, Hello. It was the same "Spidey sense" that made me see Joe Carter hit a home run off Mitch Williams to win a World Series, and blurt out, "Game over." in a room full of people moments before the ball was actually pitched. It's not that I believe in ESP. It's more like recognizing the rare case where I can perceive all the variables that go into calculating the odds of something happening. Unfortunately, it's never far enough into the future for me to call a bookie and make any money out of it.

.. and while I don't know exactly why it has taken me months to write into my blog again, it is mere coincidence that it finally happened on the night after the first pictures of Suri Cruise were published.