Guilty Pleasure: Big Brother All-Stars

There are some things I’m not crazy about Big Brother this season – notably the fact that they are going to great lengths to ignore the fact that all these guys and girls know each other from their odd little reality TV community. Clearly, some alliances outside of the ones we know about exist, and I suspect one exists between Will and James.

But there’s no denying that this season has been fun already. For one, the recent veto competition was, in a word, balls-out. A few great things resulted from that – the fact that to proceed, contestants needed to forego their Veto rights for the next week is potentially huge. It showed that Jase and James know they are targets (and Jase obviously found that out after the veto competition as well) and that Kaysar either doesn’t, or is continuing his bad strategy. Kaysar agreed to do so, and that could be huge next week as it’s unlikely that S6 will continue their HoH streak. Kaysar then agreed to the next step, and shaved his head along with Chicken George (who did so to save his neck). With George, the dude had some seriously bad hair anyhow (though we did see him whispering in a failed first attempt at strategy), but Kaysar lost that hair that he plays with all day long. I think this would have killed Jase since he generally spends about an hour a day staring at himself in the mirror.

And while it initially bothered me that the veto would come down to a tie-breaker, the result that George will eat Slop for as long as he remains in the house is sort of a non-issue, as it seems apparent he’ll be kicked out soon enough. (Though why no one will even approach him to get him on their side seems based on ego and nothing else. It seemed to just start to dawn on Janelle and Marcellas that they might be able to use George and kick out Will instead, when this is a fairly obvious ploy. The idea that George could stay in without being a “real player” is, again, nothing but ego.)

What kills me is that Will has somehow managed to be considered a pawn, that he’s on the block with no real intent on evicting him. Say what you will about Jase – and one of those things is that he’s freakishly concerned with his looks, and acted like a complete child when he learned he’d be put on the block – but he doesn’t have any one firm ally. He’s a real threat, and if he goes on Thursday, that’s fine…but who are we kidding? Will is the single biggest threat to S6 and they seem paralyzed into doing nothing about it. I just don’t get it.

I geniunely hope it’s not because of some secret deals we aren’t seeing. If that’s the case, the whole season is a fraud. If it’s just because Will has deked them out (he stated that he’s put such a big target on his back that it’s now invisible) then props to the Evil Doctor.

Free Backrubs For Allies!

Seriously, what is he thinking? Without reading TOO much into this, it's simply not the actions of what I'd expect of the most powerful person in the world at a summit for the top eight leaders of the world. Unless they get a lot jiggier in the G8 than I've been led to believe.

Books I Read In 2006

Because I'm a dork, I keep track of what books I read each year, and when so inclined, comment on them.

Books marked with blue are ones I really enjoyed.

Those marked in orange are titles I didn't even finish, for one reason or another.

The rest...somewhere in between.

Also, and this note is mainly for me since I can't imagine anyone else reading this, the reason the date of this original post is mid-2006, yet this is a post about the entire year is NOT because I'm psychic, because this would be a pretty dumb way to leverage psychic powers. Instead, I updated this as an overall list for quite awhile,then changed it to a 2006 list for indexing. OK, done now.

Book Title	Author	Rating (out of 10.0)	Thoughts
Candy Girl: A Year In The Life of an Unlikely Stripper	Diablo Cody	6.0
The Final Solution	Michael Chabon	6.0
Honeymoon With My Brother	Franz Wisner	7.0
Blue Latitudes	Tony Horowitz	7.5
The History of Love	Nicole Krauss	8.5
Dance, Dance, Dance	Haruki Murakami	8.0
Touching The Void	Joe Simpson	6.5
The Know It All	AJ Jacobs	8.0
The Blind Side	Michael Lewis	9.0	Review
Ender's Game	Orson Scott Card	6.5
Battle Royale	Koushon Takami	7.5	Review
John Adams	David McCullough	8.5	Review
Florence of Arabia	Christopher Buckley	6.0
No Way To Treat A First Lady	Christopher Buckley	7.0
Never Let Me Go	Kazuo Ishiguro	9.0	Review
Shadow Of The Wind	Carlos Ruiz Zafon	8.5	Review
The Tipping Point	Malcolm Gladwell	8.0
Everything Changes	Jonathan Tropper	7.0
The Book of Joe	Jonathan Tropper	8.5	Review
You Look Nice Today	Stanley Bing	6.5
Never Mind The Pollacks	Neal Pollack	8.0
A Ship Made of Paper	Scott Spencer	7.5
A Wild Sheep Chase	Haruki Murakami	7.0
A Year In Provence	Peter Mayle	7.5
Norwegian Wood	Haruki Murakami	8.0
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised	Joe Trippi	8.0
Conviction	Richard North Patterson	6.5
Chasing The Dime	Michael Connolly	7.0
The Girls of Summer	Jere Longman	N/A	Did Not Finish
The Truth (with jokes)	Al Franken	8.0
The Defining Moment: FDR's First Hundred Days	Jonathan Alter	8.0
Prep	Curtis Sittenfeld	7.5
blink: Think Without Thinking	Malcolm Gladwell	8.5
How To Make Love Like A Porn Star	Jenna Jameson	7.0
Freakonomics	Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner	8.5
Lucky: A Memoir	Alice Sebold	N/A	Did Not Finish
Twelve	Nick McDonell	7.0
The Year of Magical Thinking	Joan Didion	7.5
Fantasyland	Sam Walker	8.5
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle	Haruki Murakami	8.5	Review
The Lincoln Lawyer	Michael Connolly	7.0
House of Bush, House of Saud	Craig Unger	8.0
Lost Lake	Phillip Margolin	5.0
Fraud: Essays	David Rakoff	N/A	Did Not Finish
Freedomland	Richard Price	7.0
Three Junes	Julia Glass	8.5
Crashing The Gate	Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong	7.0
The Dante Club	Matthew Pearl	8.0
The Fruit of Stone	Mark Spragg	8.0
Love Monkey	Kyle Smith	7.0
Lucky Girls	Nell Freudenberger	N/A	Did Not Finish
The Devil In The White City	Erik Larson	7.5
The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green	Josh Braff	6.5
What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal	Zoe Heller	N/A	Did Not Finish
Kafka On The Shore	Haruki Murakami	9.5	Review
Who’s Your Caddy?	Rick Reilly	7.5
The Los Angeles Diaries	James Brown	7.5
I Have Chosen To Stay and Fight	Margaret Cho	5.0
Look At Me	Jennifer Egan	8.0
Dreams From My Father	Barack Obama	8.0	Review
The Best American Sports Writing 2005	Mike Lupica (editor)	7.0	Review
Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live	Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller	6.0	Review
Triangle: The Fire That Changed America	David Von Drehle	5.0	Review
Fatherland	Robert Harris	7.0	Review
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close	Jonathan Safran Foer	9.0	Review
The Brooklyn Follies	Paul Auster	8.5	Review
Killing Yourself To Live	Chuck Klosterman	6.5	Review
The Patriots Club	Christopher Reich	5.5	Review
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell	Susana Clarke	8.5	Review
2006	2006	2006	2006

Guilty Pleasure: Big Brother 7, continued.

There is some sweet justice in seeing Alison be the first houseguest to be evicted on BB7. For one, her reputation as one of the game’s best players has to be seriously impinged, as even Julie Chenbot suggested in her exit interview. I do think it would have been amusing to keep her around for a few weeks, because there really was no way she could have won – however, she could have engineered the ouster of some players I genuinely like, so it’s all good.

Howie, on the other hand…I like the guy. He’s genuinely funny and I like that he obviously doesn’t take himself seriously at all -- though sometimes it’s hard to know what’s a joke and what isn’t. His Jedi stuff is amusing…and he’s somehow able to be lecherous to the women without it being rude. But, he does nobody any favors screaming and tackling Kaysar after the HOH win. The S6 alliance is obvious, but as James said, “Chill the fuck out.”

And Howie does the world no favors when he tells Alison how hot she is. She really just…isn’t. She’s attractive, sure, but I just walked out for lunch and saw three or four women significantly hotter than she is. (And for what it’s worth, why does Big Brother attract so many women who are good looking with awful noses? Janelle, Alison and Diane…I’m talking to you. I’ll leave that as an Open Question.)

And I think that there is no way to sum up BB7 except to say that in his HOH interview with Julie Chen, Jase was asked about his newfound maturity and what made him such a grownup. And this is a screenshot from that interview:

I mean, please folks…this stuff writes itself. I have to assume he thought he was dressed dorkily because that’s inexcusable any way you slice it.

I keep hearing about how Danica Patrick wants to be taken seriously as a racer, not as a spokesmodel or sex symbol. First of all, Danica…you ain’t that hot. Pretty, to be sure, but you’re getting all that work because you’re a rarity, a female car driver. But if you want to shift the focus (ah, I’m so clever with the puns), then there are two things you can do:

• Win a fucking race.


• Stop posing in photographs like this one.

Now, even though she’s not uber-hot, I’d rather those photos stay out there. And I’m not naïve enough to ignore how much extra cash she earns from that kind of self-promotion. But, to use another driving metaphor, pick a lane. It’s hard when in contrast to, say, Anna Kournikova, you look hypocritical. Sure, she wanted to be taken seriously as a tennis player but never complained about the sex appeal she was fostering. (Because…good god.) Presumably, if she had been a capable athlete, she could have had it both ways. Maria Sharapova seems to be toeing that line just fine. (Note: If and when Michelle Wie wins a tournament and also becomes of legal age, I’ll include her here – for now, I don’t know anything about her besides she seems like a nice young lady with quite a bit of talent.)

Gigantic Sunglasses People

As someone who grew up in the 1970s, I always laugh a little when I see pictures of myself as a pre-teen, walking around in orange and green plaid pants, with hair covering my ears and velour shirts on. Yes, I was fronting back then – but part of me wonders if anyone realized just how ridiculous everyone looked. I mean, it’s obvious in retrospect that there was some pretty bad fashion going on, but did anyone but old codgers recognize it?

This is how I feel when I look at the Gigantic Sunglasses People. Am I an old codger for thinking that, in not very long, people will be appalled that they looked like this. (Stupid small dog accessory not required.) I ride the bus every day, and every day attractive women get on with their face looking like Jeff Goldblum from The Fly. It took me years to realize how gorgeous Sophia Loren is and was, mainly because I kept seeing gigantic sunglasses every time they showed her face. Do the women wearing these shades do it for fashion, or do they genuinely think it looks good? Granted, some of them can pull it off – these tend to be the smaller glasses, of course, but the big deal about sunglasses is that not every style works for every face.

I know this, and I’m a guy.

So, what’s going on here? Granted, it’s probably not as pervasive a fashion debacle as The Big Pants People. That’s lasted much longer than I thought it ever would – and again, the bus provides a lot of insight to people wearing jeans that are approximately 15 waist sizes too big for their owners. I’m just not sure how they aren’t draped around their ankles at all times, but then I’ve never tried to put on jeans designed for a 400-lb person.

Add Tom Benson to the York's Christmas List

It shocked me to read in Michael Silver's article that Denise DeBartolo and John York were not the worst owners in the league. But then I saw who was - Tom Benson. Yes, the same Tom Benson who - had Commissioner Tags not stepped in - would have taken advantage of Hurricane Katrina to relocate the Saints to San Antonio. And, quite frankly, it would have been wrong for Benson to be anywhere but rock bottom.

On the other hand, I'm not sure Bill Bidwell (Cardinals) or Mike Brown (Bengals) truly deserve to rank lower than the Yorks. Sure, their teams have been laughing stocks...forever, but is it worse to keep a team in the cellar, or to take the Worlds Greatest Franchise(TM) and send it into the crapper?

Reality Thoughts

• I'm not crying about the fact that ABC just cancelled "How To Get The Guy," but I can't quite figure out the benefit in ending a show with just two episodes left, and showing reruns in its place. From a consumer perspective, doesn't letting people - even the presumably limited viewers of the show - finish things up with some resolution lead to more viewers in the long run than rehashing old episodes people already made a decision on whether to watch or not?



• Wow, that was a long sentence. In any case, that show is over.



• Rock Star: Supernova - I'm interested, to be sure, and I can't believe that I don't always cringe during the performances (as documented, I have a huge phobia of watching people sing - but this is really specific to situations where they shouldnt' be singing. For instance, Tony Danza launching into song on "Who's The Boss?" or a contestant on Survivor singing around the fire. That's intolerable.) I can't quite get my arms around the concept of auditioning for a band that doesn't exist yet - how can a viewer decide if the singer is appropriate or not? The first week featured songs that were chosen by the producers (and then fought over by the singers) that ranged from Coldplay's "Yellow" to The Police's "Roxanne" to Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." Um, this is a band comprised of former members of Motley Crue, Metallica and Guns n' Roses. What the hell is going on here?



• As noted below, I'm most optimistic about Big Brother 7, though I have concerns there as well. And while Last Comic Standing is wrapping up, I think Hell's Kitchen is still quite strong, Treasure Hunters is more than tolerable and - with great promise, Project Runway is starting up again.

Who said the summer was short on fodder for reality junkies?

Guilty Pleasure: Big Brother 7

In the pantheon of reality TV, I’m not quite sure where Big Brother ends up – but it’s got to be higher than I usually want to put it. At the top, the Big Daddy is Survivor, the mother of all reality TV, and I still hold a special place in my heart for The Amazing Race, despite it not really being as great as it used to be. But Big Brother – or, this season, BB7 – is probably next.

And this season looks pretty good. I’m generally averse to All-Star shows, first and foremost because it somewhat reinforces the notion that these people are stars in any way, shape or form. But also because for games that rely on strategy, such as Survivor and Big Brother, not knowing your fellow cast members that well is a major part of the game. Everybody here knows each other – they likely spend time doing idiotic Big Brother publicity stuff, and certainly they are all fans enough to watch each season.

Except, perhaps, Chicken George who seems as shocked as anyone that he’s there. Unfortunately, he seems so minor a threat that he’ll inevitably stick around far too long as a result.

One big benefit of an all-star show is that I have opinions on most of the contestants from the start – aside from Will, Mike Boogie and Chicken George, I’ve seen all these folks before. (And…I don’t think there’s too much mystery with those three guys, frankly.) Perhaps some of them are different – Jase may not be a different guy, but he does strike me as someone’s whose utter douchebaggery might be contained without a guy like Scott around. I don’t know if there is someone else there to push his buttons like that.

But the reason I’m optimistic is the results of the first show – Danielle and Alison, two of my least favorite BB contestants ever, started scheming way too early, showing their cards as manipulators as well as people who will take both sides. And the editing made it look like they might have convinced Jase to do the idiotic – put himself and Janelle up for eviction. But, either because he’s not quite as stupid as he looks, or (more likely) because Janelle, James, Kaysar and Howie aren’t that dumb, Jase and Janelle (love the dual Head of Household) put up Alison and Danielle. I suspect that if either wins Veto, they’d put Will up in their place, and that’s fine too. So, assuming one of those three is gone, that’s a great start to the season.