They fly fished, rode horses and played baseball. Some rode in helicopters or jumped on bungees. Many have been sent home. There are nine left.
They are:
Blakeley
Casey S
Courtney
Emily
Jamie
Kacie B (safe from the group date)
Lindzi
Nicki (safe from her date)
Rachel
The ladies all want to be Ben's choice and I can't for the life of me understand why. NO WAIT! I'm thinking the contenders are all warned by producers to always act as if the Bachelor(ette) is the greatest thing since microwave popcorn or go home now.
In the most recent episode as of this writing, Ben did two very strange things though one, I'd argue, was very scripted. Ben also showed up on The Chew on 1/31/12 and he is a most boring fellow.
Now about that skinny dipping scene...the one with model Courtney. Courtney is this year's collectively hated female in the ranks; they have one every season, one contender that everybody but the actual Bachelor(ette) sees is a despicable sort. This drums up collective drama so needed to keep the viewers in anguish over the televised scripted scenes that they should believe is real.
Some of it might be real, probably most of it is real on some smaller scale. But I do not believe for one second that Ben and Courtney had sex in their skinny dipping scene for one very obvious reason. THE CAMERA!
Come on, some one was filming that scene. This means there was a human being with a camera getting a video of those two naked people. Who goes skinny dipping in front of a camera to be televised across the fruited plains unless it's part of a script? And who on earth would have sex right after having the guy filming their naked romp, even if the camera was turned off? I'm talking normal people here.
I can hear it now...a producer comes up to Ben "Ben, we want you to do a skinny dipping scene with Courtney. We'll blur out the x rated body parts and all that but we want to accomplish two things here. We want to keep up the characterization of Courtney as the evil woman and we want the audience to be guessing if you two went all the way. It's just a little bit of acting, we have to do this to keep up viewer interest."
So that's one strange thing but it's understandable. The other strange thing makes no sense. For Ben had gone out on a one on one date with Jennifer just the prior week. He gave her a rose on the date, indicating he liked her and wanted to keep her around. On THIS episode, Ben does not give Jennifer a rose during the rose ceremony.
This makes no sense at all. He'd had very little interaction with her during that episode so it's not like Jennifer did anything that would offend Ben. If he liked her enough not to send her home on the one on one date, why did he wait until the rose ceremony to publicly humiliate her?
On another note, the next season's Bachelorette is Emily from Brad's season. What's intriguing about this choice is that Bachelorette's are normally chosen from the pool of the rejected as opposed as the woman chosen by the Bachelor then rejected HIM. Of course in the history of The Bachelor Brad Womack really was the biggest loser of them all. Emily is a strange choice but I'm thinking she was some kind of audience favorite. She did have really big boobs.
Ben showed up on The Chew recently and was so boring I can barely remember a word he said. He was teased a bit about his skinny dipping scene so there's some more publicity. Some lady who might not have yet tuned into The Bachelor series for whatever reason (and mostly females watch The Chew) might have thought the notion of a skinny dipping scene to be intriguing and will tune in to see more naughty goings-on.
The Bachelors and Bachelorettes do often try to go on to some kind of fame and fortune. Jake tried Dancing With the Stars. Ben could think of himself as a handsome dude with a happening hairstyle soon to be copied by all cool gents across the fruited plains. But you really have to have some sort of personality and as for Ben?….not happening.
I don't see Ben showing much preference for any particular contender except perhaps Courtney. But that might be part of the script as well.
Kacie B is a contender to watch out for but for now Ben's charisma fails to blind.
The Bachelor can be seen on ABC, Monday nights, at 8 pm.
The requisite six episodes of Guy Fieri's and Rachel Ray's Food Network Celebrity Challenge has been aired and one disparaging sign is the fact that the last two episodes were both aired on the same night. If a show is proving to be wildly successful networks will try to spread them out.
When all is said and done, also covered on this post, this series was the formulaic cooking contest type of show, the kind you see on MasterChef or Top Chef or Food Network's Next Food Network Star. Except, of course, that the contenders are "celebrities" D list types, the kind of celebrities seen on these celebrity type contender shows.
It's a concept that could work. There's a plethora of viewers out here across the fruited plains that like these type of food contest shows, including me. The notion of having celebrities competing in the cooking challenges is a concept that might not quite capture the interest of these same cooking show contest aficionados.
This series had some okay celebrity types. Cheech Marin was a good choice, as was Lou Diamond Phillips. Joey Fatone, well he's a celebrity type show regular. I didn't know Coolio or the other celebrity challengers.
Still and so, the celebrities don't have to be all that famous. The celebrities on Dancing With the Stars are often not all that well known. Trump's Celebrity Apprentice stars aren't world renown either.
It's just hard to get to know these famous folk as they cook up dishes to win money for their charity by winning the cooking challenges. On Celebrity Apprentice the celebrated contenders are doing all sorts of different things as they try to win challenges that might involve opening a store to performing on street corners. On Dancing With the Stars the celebrities dance, true, but there's the behind the scenes vignettes that shows the celebrities as they struggle with the tortuous practice. Their beloveds are often in the DWS audience and the viewers get to better know the stars struggling to win.
These cooking celebrities...well they...they cooked.
Nothing wrong with this but I don't see audiences across the fruited plains tuning in to see Chastity Bono cook a steak.
Thus the element of celebrity is lost on this series as I argue.
It becomes another MasterChef or Top Chef Nowhereburg is what I'm saying here.
I did think that Coolio was a really funny guy and his kind of cooking was just my speed. But I'd have felt that way even if he was not an alleged celebrity. The challenges were typical in many ways for these cooking shows. They had to make barbecue, prepare food from strange ingredients, run a food truck operation, up to running a restaurant for a day. A typical food contest spread up to the finale.
This series had Rachel Ray and Guy Fieri, himself a winner of Food Network's Next Food Network Star, as leaders of two teams. As it would turn out the teams managed to keep an even keel throughout the series. , even ending with a finale featuring a member of Guy's team and a member of Rachel's team. It would not do, wink, wink, to have either of the Food Network Celebrity loose all their assigned contenders to have one twiddling their thumbs at the finale.
I'd watch this series again should Food Network decide to go with it again. But then I'm a bit of a cooking show contest junkee.
I don't think they need the celebrities is what I'm saying here. After all, how many celebrated types can cook all that well?
So It's been a rollicking week just past on the political scene. So many lies; so little time.
Although to be fair Obamer gave the national tell-as-many-lies -in-a- little -over-an-hour-contest a real run for the money. Assuming there is such a contest and, if not, forget about it cause nobody will ever beat the State of the Union Speech of 2012. This lie that lasted an hour and fifteen minutes will be difficult to beat. Obama lied at the beginning of the SOTU speech, all through the middle, and ended it all with a lie. There's no lying on the planet greater than that, folks, it's as good as it gets.
But I must smile and ponder that wars are made in all sorts of manners, that peoples are conquered by more than the bullet. We can wage a war against a citizenry by the mere act of lying, of declaring, on penalty of mockery and derision, that the sky is a brilliant shade of yellow, that cats aren't superior beings, that up is, yes it is, actually down.
Say it enough and it becomes the truth. From then forward, say anything, pay a bunch of once-respected vehicles to say these new truths as well, and soon the war is won, the people believe anything as said by the ruling class and so they shall rule. Get a Newsweek, for example, never mind it's been sold for a dollar, oncit this periodical was well-respected, let's just keep up that lie. Same thing with Katie Couric . You want to get rid of a particularly dangerous person out there spouting a different truth than the ruling class, get some sort of fluffy newsmaker, make like he, or she in this case, is a deep-thinker able to roust the demons amongst us. Got lots of these, Dan Rather, once supposed impartial journalists who caused us to lose Vietnam with lies, no reason they can't win the war against the America that was. It will go down in fire to the smirks and grins of those who intend to ascend to positions of power as is their right for the mistreatment they received.
As for conquering the peoples going forward, as the old-timers and dangerous rebels are silenced by lies turned into truths, damn, just make everything they say and everything they feel...politically incorrect.
The simpletons who think a marriage should be between a man and a woman, they'll soon be rolling over, feet in the air, bellies exposed, as they beg for forgiveness for the error their ways and the stupidity of nature, indeed, GOD, Himself. Soon enough we shall be able to marry our pets as we all do love our dogs and soon, we will have many wives, or at least as the Koran should allow.
We will be looked at as if two-headed should we discuss such as work, balancing budgets, living within the norms of common sense. We will worship the single mother, hoping to rid the world of fathers all together as they only get in the way. A woman with a baby to care for, so much easier to control.
Have you no shame, disparaging of single motherhood, complaining that males somehow bring something to the equation save problems for those of us who want to rule? Ignore that man behind the curtain who controls the people in his oil-rich country via an oppressive religion. We shall shut up we who see this as it's not politically correct to mock someone's "religion". The fact that the word religion can be applied to most anything with no "true" definition of the word gets lost in the politically correct meaning given to the words by those in authority.
Obama's speech was in keeping with this grand plan for the lackluster to take over the planet, this method against the very survival of the fittest law of nature but hey, there's people busy in the business of turning lies to truths and Obamer did himself proud.
Pray that that SOTU speech of 2012 was his LAST SOTU speech we should have to endure. I'm old enough to remember that there really is such a thing as lies. Hell I'm old enough to remember when the so-called journalists of yore actually caught and reported on the lies, sigh.
Mitt Romney's plastic and philosophically vapid campaign secured an easy victory in Florida on Tuesday night. Sunshine state GOP voters swallowed his "electability" argument whole, according to the exit polls. It appears that country club Republicans have succeeded again in duping the GOP electorate into crowning a "centrist" Republican. Never mind that "centrist" Republicans rarely win the center. They usually lose the center while sapping the spirit of the party's conservative base. Out of Bob Dole's and John McCain's tattered Big Tent steps another "reformed" RINO, Mitt Romney, who will receive, should he win the nomination, a similar thumping from...
I haven't quite gotten the grasp of the notion that primaries should only be held in a couple of states out of fifty and that this is somehow okay. Of course the Media, those who help turn lies into truths, say that Mittens shall be the Republican nominee and us peons have nothing to say.
But politics does cost money, I was born at night, just not LAST night, so I know this. Mittens has the money and he can continue to buy the states as he did Florida should the sillies like Newt and Paul and Santorum continue their stupid challenge.
As for me, I'm a Newt supporter though, again, born at night, not LAST night, I know Newt has baggage. I also know Newt once captured congress for the GOP that hadn't been done till then for over fifty years. I know he took on Bill Clinton and won. The media will tell such as my granddaughter that the Republicans shut down the gubmint that year and the world went nuts. Heh. Only the media went nuts, as they were instructed to do. A few folks were disappointed that the Smithsonian was closed the day of their visit but beyond that no one much noticed the gubmint was closed. If they couldn't change the truth back in the day, for sure nothing's going to stop changing the historical detail of it, come on, that's a piece of cake for our current crop of plagiarizing historians of today. I know Newt scared the hell out of the libs in the day, that they launched a massive but absurd ethics attack against him, damn I'm surprised that the conservatives of today don't all look at Newt as someone the libs hated so much during his term as Speaker, and apply the law of averages....if the libs don't, or didn't , like him or her, they've got something to offer.
Mittens has NO record of ever doing any such monumental conservative action and by me, I'm going with the one with such a record, never mind that they've both acted like liberals themselves sometimes, or most times, of their lives.
Here's all I'm saying....do NOT count Newt out. Morning Joe Scarborough, whose hatred for Newt is visceral, able to be felt over the very broadcasting air waves, said it correctly, although not with the admiration that I will bestow....Newt Gingrich and cock roaches will be the only things that will survive a nuclear holocaust and will survive barely scratched.
Do not count Newt out. Lord the man's already had his entire campaign staff quit on him and let's not forget, not that the media will let your forget, that Newt's wife loves Tiffanys. Yet here he is, second on the run for GOP nominee, winner of a primary in the very conservative south, unofficial tea party nominee.
When Newt springs up again from the rubble of media ashes and the spit of the establishment GOP, I will link this column to the world and say, I TOLE YOU SO!
Funny Writings
Imagine that.
Your Gubmint in Action
Right?
Just Tell Me What That Thing Is on Hillary's Head
It looks like some kind of tea strainer
Making Liars Into Heroes
As part of the strategy of turning lies into truths, the liars must occasionally be rewarded for their lies. If they didn't do this, very ostentatiously, the people willing to lie with no prizes will dry up. The good liars will continue to lie so long as it advances their agenda. Sometimes to advance their agenda, those springing high on the lies have to others also lie for them. It's why the media lies for the liberals; most of the entertainers are liberal, the entertainers provide the shows that, eh, entertain, the entertainers give their monies to the liberal politicians so thus....tada....the liberal politicians run the media.
John Murtha was one of the most brazen liars on the planet and while I'll allow that the politicos lie, it's what they do, those being lied to will be the deceived if not smart enough to discern the lies, some lies, at least for now, are unforgiveable.
To accuse our soldiers of murder when every day they are out trying to tame a civilization, jumping out of exploded vehicles, teaching young ones to play soccer, protecting fledging foreign politicos and keeping the bombs and bullets out of the North American continent, that's just not right.
But the liars are to be given glory from time to time that a future liar will not back off from the required lie for fear of a future truth emerging even after our deaths.
Can't have that.
My apologies to the children of John Murtha, if it helps any, my father was also a liar. But my father never lied about brave soldiers cold-bloodedly killing innocent civilians as I think even my father wouldn't go that far. So I hate to besmirch the memory of your father but you had to know he was lying that our soldiers at Haditha murdered innocent Iraqis when the truth was that the innocent Iraqi family of question included the ones who'd set off the explosion that killed their buddy.
The Democrats were trying to downplay the importance of winning the Iraq war so Murtha, who made a career out of bringing home pork aplenty to his district, was requested, as payment for all that loot over the years perhaps, had to go on national TV and lie.
And now they want to name a ship after John Murtha? This is so more liars can be recruited for the future.
Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus plans to honor the late Congressman John Murtha by giving his name to the Navy's new LPD (Transport Dock Ship), to be launched in 2013.
In doing so, Sec. Mabus is breaking the Navy's tradition of naming its San Antonio-class amphibious transports after American cities. He is also honoring a man who:
•1) was one of the most corrupt members of the U.S. Congress, and
•2) called our Marines murderers who killed Iraqi women and children "in cold blood."
We believe that such a man does not deserve to be honored by the U.S. Navy. If you agree, please help us petition Secretary Mabus to reconsider this outrageous decision....
The problem with magic shows, as I ponder, is that one can only stand them for so long until the desire to figure out how the tricks are done so overwhelm the audience that a long magic show begins to bore. Or maybe it's just me.
Over my many years I've seen magicians make entire ships disappear. Disappearing humans and tigers is so yesterday nowadays it seems. Card tricks and rabbits in a hat are the stuff of parlor games.
So I watched David Blaine's "What Is Magic?" on the Discovery network with not a whole lot of enthusiasm. David Blaine's brand of magic is a bit simplistic with an added element of danger. Blaine does some really unusual "tricks" that amazed even my jaded self.
First, Blaine does a lot with a deck of cards. While that might sound simple and boring , Blaine did some really amazing things with that deck of cards. His main schtick was to have the recipient of the magic trick to somehow write their name on the card in question. He'd get a participant to sign, say, the Jack of Hearts. He'd put the signed jack of hearts back into a full deck than he'd begin a slow shuffle. Intriguingly the deck would begin to "shorten" as Blaine called it. It was easily viewable the sight of what was a thick deck of 52 was gradually getting thinner and thinner until it appeared to be only ten cards left in the deck. And sure enough the jack of heart, signed by the participant and you can't do such a thing in advance as the audience is expected to understand, could be found in the remaining few cards.
Well I was impressed.
Blaine performs these magic tricks in interesting places. Usually there's some sort of crowd around and the crowds are generally not attending a grand opera is what I'm saying here. He gets a group of yucksters, he does his magic trick, he impresses everyone so well that everyone begins high-fiving, jiving and laughing with the joy of the mystery.
Tricks with cards done on the street with most ordinary people as participants is one thing and has an allure. But Blaine adds another element to the show. He does dangerous stunts.
The night I watched Blaine actually caught a bullet inside of a little cup he'd place in his mouth. He also allowed a big boxer type of fellow punch him in the stomach as hard as he could. By me the punch in the stomach was more amazing than the bullet show, more on why in a bit.
The big boxer guy did punch Blaine's stomach with a force that the viewer could plainly see. Blaine endured the punch handily and even asked for another punch to eliminate any skeptics.
I imagine the man has figured out how to harden his abdominals muscles to a point where he effectively handles such a massive punch so long as he is prepared to receive it. Still, that sure takes some discipline and training I must imagine.
As for the bullet in the mouth cup trick, by me the greater "magic" in that trick is the guy actually shooting the gun! Getting a bullet to go from a loaded gun into a small cup which happens to be in someone's mouth seems to be a greater trick than being the guy with the cup in the mouth to receive the bullet. I understand that should the guy firing the gun make a mistake it would be the guy holding the cup in his mouth that would suffer the pain of losing an eyeball, maybe dying. But the greater talent, at least as my very non-magical self sees it, is the guy doing the aiming.
Here's a link to a short video of Blaine taking that bullet in his mouth.
I've frankly had enough of David Blaine's magic show as I'm really not into magic all that much save for once a while, when I'm at a big theme park that features a magic show or maybe preparing to do a review on a magic show. Fox instance.
But for zealous magic fans, David Blaine's show is the one to watch.
When I watched David Blaine's What is Magic? Show it was on the TLC channel, Thursday nights at 10 e.
Top Chef Texas is down to five contenders and, by me, not necessarily the best five. Be that as it may, the finalists are, as of this writing on 1/30/12:
Grayson Schmitz-NY,28,catering
Paul Qui-Austin,31,exec chef
Edward Lee-Louisville,39,exec chef
Sarah Gruenberg-Chicago, 30,exec chef
Lindsay Autry-29, Palm Beach,exec chef
Oddly, Healthy Choice is a major sponsor of this series. Consider, this is a show about food and the cooks that cook them. Some would say that such as healthy choices should not be on such a series.
Top Chef Texas does do an interesting take on getting their sponsor out there in front of the viewers, most of whom are probably checking in to learn how the masters cook delicious food, which in general is not a way to reduce calories.
On the episode aired 1/18/12, the guest was Cherize Theron. . Theron was hyping a new movie of hers titled "Snow White and the Huntsman" and the way the contenders oohed and aahed over Theron you'd have thought she was a cross between the Pope and Mother Theresa.
The contenders always, out of politeness and no doubt prompted by an off-screen producer, demonstrate great joy over either the guest celebrity chef and/or the guest currently hyping a project, be it a movie or a book. I don't think there's all that love out there for Cherize Theron in the culinary world but that's just me.
The challenge was to prepare what was called a "gothic" meal, a take on the hyped movie. The entrees, however, were interesting.
Sarah prepared a lamb heart, which the judges called delicious. Dear Lord, a lamb's heart? I wouldn't even take a bite out of such a thing. Chris used some weird nitrogen technique to make something he called poison apple and cherry pie.
Later, the elimination challenge had the contenders each taking the dish they'd prepared on the quickfire challenge and making a healthier version of the dish for what was called a "Healthy Choice Block Party". Interesting way to do this.
The heavier version of the dish was made and the contenders were charged with making a lighter but equally good-tasting version of the meal. Though Chris won the quickfire challenge along with his partner Grayson, Chris lost the elimination challenge and was sent home. No wonder, dear Lord he made chicken salad with tofu. I figure the minute you add tofu to anything you might as well go into my kitchen cabinet and get my makeup sponges to put into the dish.
The Healthy Choice people would probably disagree I must suppose. Paul won the elimination challenge and $15,000.
Paul looks like the guy to stop here so keep a close eye on him in upcoming episodes.
Meanwhile, tune in, Bravo network, Thursday nights, at 10 pm.
American Idol Begins 11th Season-Some Info, Snark, Gossip and Speculation
As of this writing on 1/25/12, we've had a couple of intro shows of American Idol. There's one big piece of gossip about this mostly fluff beginning of the American Idol count down to success, which will go till almost mid-May.
The biggest, and happiest, bit of news is that last season's winner-Scotty McCreery, released his debut album this past October and it's now gone platinum!
American Idol’s season ten winner, Scotty McCreery has just got a taste of what success feels like when his debut album, Clear As Day was certified platinum recently. Clear As Day has sold over one million copies, in just three months since it’s release, which also makes Scotty’s debut album one of the biggest selling American Idol debut albums. What does Scotty McCreery have to say about this? Scotty is elated, as he said: “It means the world to me. It’s one of the highest honors you can get with your album and it’s a huge testament to the loyalty of country music fans and how great they have been to me this year. 2011 was absolutely an incredible, life-changing year for me. I want to say a huge thanks to the fans for this.”
But that is not the only honor for Scotty McCreery – Clear As Day also raked in the highest sales of any country solo album released last year, and taking the number one spot with his debut, Scotty became the youngest male in history to open at the top of the Billboard 200 chart with a debut release. Scotty McCreery went on to gush: “Never in a million years did I dream that the album would go platinum. It’s wild! It’s going to take me a few months or years to really wrap my head around it.”
The snarkiest bit of news is who showed up for an audition THIS season. Caution, please, she didn't want to use her famous name. For she is the daughter of comedian JIM CARREY!
So okay, she sang okay. I doubt very seriously she'd go very far were it not for her father. She did protest that she didn't want to bank on her famous parentage but I have one response to this….WHY DID SHE EVEN MENTION IT?
I've got some eleven years experience now with American Idol. I love the show, watched it faithfully every year, consider it the mother of competitive reality shows. From the caliber of voice expected on this series, Jane Carrey's is not a winner, not the top 10, not even the top 20. She did get a ticket to Hollywood. All things being equal she'd be sent packing before the top 20 premiere. It will be interesting to follow young Carrey's progress.
By the way, for videos of auditions and performances, try this site.
Below, some information about the upcoming AI events:
Thursday, Feb. 9 (8:00-9:00 PM) ~ Hollywood Round, Part 1
Wednesday, Feb. 15 (8:00-10:00 PM) ~ Hollywood Round, Part 2
Thursday, Feb. 16 (8:00-9:00 PM) ~ Hollywood Round, Part 3
Wednesday, March 7 (8:00-10:00 PM) Finalists Perform
Thursday, March 8 (8:00-9:00 PM) Results Show; First Elimination (ET live/PT tape-delayed)
On to the more mundane I must ponder what all wannabe pundits are pondering. For in this 11th year run of this show there's a whole lot of other competitive reality shows than in the Kelly Clarkson season one. There's "America's Got Talent", ""The Voice", and the biggest challenge of all, hosted by none other than the original producer of American Idol-Simon Cowell, "X Factor".
Surely there is only so much singing talent in America, no?
American Idol's executive producer, Ken Warwick, didn't deny that viewer fatigue wasn't a concern of AI. However 29 million viewers tuned in for the 10th season's AI finale. To those who say most of the American Idol winners don't go on to super stardom, well who said that was part of the package anyway. For the record I just saw Kelly Clarkson, AI's first winner, in a commercial for a car. Carrie Underwood's a superstar on the country western circuit. I insert about Scotty McCreery's first album just going platinum. This guy's not going to die away. Jennifer Hudson, who wasn't even a first place winner, went on to star in a Broadway musical and is now a recognized spokesnoid for Weight Watchers.
Of course not every winner has gone on to fame and stardom, but plenty of them have. The argument that AI top tens go down to a poverty stricken anonymity is just a silly argument.
I tend to believe that these new competitive reality singing shows will find their niche. Already American Idol has contenders joining in during their young ages, evidently waiting until they reach the AI age of 16. Scotty McCreery, for example, knew since he was ten years old that he'd be entering AI just as soon as he came of age.
I've seen at least one American Idol contender show up on The Voice. I'm thinking this venue might be a second chance place for a lot of the AI contenders who didn't make the top rung. AI has the strictest standards for the rise to stardom and, as the rise and success of "The Voice" would indicate, on AI, it's NOT all about the voice.
As for X Factor, this competitive reality show has only been on the air for one season. My initial assessment is that the X Factor is more edgy, more likely to have singers that don't please the broad swath of middle America that AI seems to appeal to. Rap singing, for example, is not a genre likely to come in top place on AI. This genre and other fringe type of music will likely find a place on X Factor. X Factor also allows older singers and singing groups so there's definitely a slot for prize winning singing groups.
America's Got Talent does have singers as winners but this is a competitive reality show that features all sorts of entertainment types. I suspect as time goes on AGT will have less solo singer entries and that show will be the place for acts more about magic, comedy, dance than singing.
So we're keeping an eye on this year's American Idol. Drop in and see the snark and gossip and speculation that is my opinion and hey, everybody's got one.
American Idol is now showing on Fox, on Wednesday and Thursday nights at 8pm. A repeat show has been airing on Sunday nights but I don't know how long this will last. As the season moves along, the days and times of airing will also change.
I doubt seriously that this show would have an audience at all were it not premiering at the first of the year. People are more prone to revolutionizing their lives, losing weight, getting healthier….all that, after the holiday lights are dimmed, the New Year's horns are silenced, the days grow short and cold.
A whole hour of lecturing and hectoring gets really old, really quick. A whole week of such hours makes you go looking for your gun.
By the show's own web site:
The Revolution is an uplifting, inspiring, and groundbreaking new daily show about health and lifestyle transformations co-hosted by a stellar team of experts who will help viewers with complete transformations in all areas of their lives.
The Revolution is set to premiere Monday, January 16, 2012, at 2:00 P.M., ET on ABC Daytime. It focuses on improving your physical and emotional well-being, fashion, family, home design, personal finance, food, jobs and more. In addition to being a motivating and interactive resource for viewers at home, the show features a unique concept: each week one woman's five-month weight loss journey will unfold in just five days with daily results and a final transformation reveal on Friday. This show is your daily boost, whether you are looking for inspiration to accomplish little victories or you need a road map for a major change.
The Revolution replaced General Hospital in this time slot, weekdays, on ABC, from 2pm-3pm. This fact alone gave the show some hype at its premiere. General Hospital was the only major daytime soap opera still airing and it evidently still had a lot of fans.
First, there's the "experts" who will make you a better person.
I have some affection for Tim Gunn of course, being a Project Runway fan and everything. Tim's job is to help make over women in need of some fashion advice. So far this has an appeal to me.
Dr. Tiffanie Henry is a "relationship expert" and thus begins the lecturing. Okay, I understand that we all need some advice about our interactions with our boyfriends, spouses, mothers, etc. And were this a once a week show, it would not be overkill to constantly hear how we shouldn't throw the blame to those around us and we should assume some of the blame ourselves. By me, telling me this once a week is enough. I know it, even if I don't do it all the time.
Harley Pasternak is a "celebrity trainer" who has decided to take on us plebes out here in la-la land that don't have a clue how to eat or exercise without wiseacres like he to show us how.
Dr. Jennifer Ashton is a "women's health expert" who lectures us on our female health matters as if our own doctors don't do it enough.
And Ty Pennington! I have to fall over laughing. I must guffaw with the hilarity of this guy, once a handyman on HGTV, on to host of "Extreme Makeover, Home Edition", now on a woman's makeover show? Well hey, they had to give him some reward for that lying home makeover he did for that friend of the Obamas down the street from me.
If this panel even approached being a serious "personal makeover" show, the presence of Ty Pennington vaporizes it all.
Below is a short video of a Revolution expert preparing us a salad that yon reader get an idea of how this show goes.
This show features women who decide to undergo a personal revolution, usually involving a huge loss of weight. On a regular basis the women then embarking on a weight loss program will be on the show in short vignettes that show us their struggles, how they're getting along, the new foods they eat, the rigorous exercise they currently undergo.
It all makes me feel guilty as hell.
I did watch a couple of shows to better write this review. I have this show on repeat record but right after posting this review I hope to never watch it again.
One show was all about bras and think about how that cadre of experts could tell us about our bras and why we're doing it all wrong.
So okay, women notoriously wear the wrong bras. We wear them too loose (Dr. Ashton warns us about falling breasts if not held up properly), we have straps showing (Tim Gunn lectures us on this fashion faux pas), we wear them to make our chests thrust more (Dr. Henry lectures us on loving our minds and men be damned that we get uncomfortable to show them our big mams), we don't wear a sports bra during exercise to have our boobs flopping dangerously (Pasternak, the celebrity trainer, shows us proper brassieres for exercising, perhaps used by Beyonce, who knows?). Ty? He warns us not to hammer nails into our breasts as this is very dangerous.
I get tongue-in-cheek about Ty Pennington. He did spend some time on a treadmill during a recent Revolution all about sweat (including, I'm not making this up, how to get sweat stains out of blouses). Beyond silly actions on the show, Ty does build shelves and stuff for women to get organized so he's got a purpose of sorts.
It's not that this show, were it a one day a week thing, can't be informative and interesting.
At five hours a week it's just overkill, over lectures, entirely too much information. The eyes glaze on Monday. I then erase the episodes from Tuesday through Friday cause I can only take so much guilt and lecturing before I want to punch them all right between the eyeballs.
Harry had always been a creative guy, an inventor of sorts, one who looked beyond the details to see a bigger, more efficient picture. He was eco-smart way before eco-smart was cool, he was a multi-tasker when the concept was just so much gobbly-gook, his mind went beyond the boundaries of ordinary thought to greater heights than most humans even attempt.
He was mostly an ordinary guy, however, not one to show off his talent or become insufferable in his cleverness. He was a forklift truck driver for a local manufacturer and in that capacity he did manage to “invent” a lot of efficient methods of making and testing the product, up to and including sloppy paperwork that made the task more grueling than necessary. Through the years we had a strong extra income from his awards through the company’s suggestion system and I was so proud of my man.
Tomorrow I will be putting Harry in the ground and I have to write his eulogy. I, of course, am saddened by Harry’s death but it was by no means sudden. Our children will be at the funeral and are writing short memories of their own.
Only I, however, know about the time that one of Harry’s inventions solved a murder while another broke the denials of an abused woman and another caused my mother to win ten thousand dollars on the lottery.
Harry did not plan on any of those outcomes with his cockamamie invention of the emailing appliances and after the terror of it all was over, it really was quite funny. My beloved Harry never got any credit for the amazing results of his “inventions” and I figure he at least deserved it in his death. The local detectives, my newly freed and invigorated sister-in-law, not to mention my mother, will be quite surprised by it all and even if after he’s gone, they can thank him with a prayer that he rest in peace and maybe go to heaven real soon.
“Cheryl my sweet,” Harry said, “I been thinking.”
Oh how my skin prickled at those words. I’d heard them often throughout the 33 years of our marriage and they always preceded a long stint by Harry out in the garage as he sawed, hammered and planed a dog house out of an old shed. At other times he would get the hot glue gun and some empty soda bottles and before too long a bird-feeding station would be set up, sunflower seed filling various ports to accommodate all bird fellow types, all easily filled by one chute as designed by my Rube Goldberg husband. Indeed Harry did cut out a hole in the side of our house that emptied into a buried trash can at our curbside.
On trash days Harry just pushed the button and the big can came up from under the ground, filled with our trash that we disposed of via that hole and the underground route Harry designed to get it to the buried trash container. I don’t know Harry did this, all I knew is that I’d empty the kitchen’s trash once a day into that special place as instructed by Harry and…well that was the end of it. Same with the all the small trash cans located throughout the house. Don’t go thinking there was no recycling going on either. We just threw the plastic down the trash chute painted red, the glass down the chute painted yellow, cardboard down the container painted brown. This sort of rubbish didn’t go all the way out to the house’s curbside but instead was somehow collected in underground containers at the side of the house. Every once in a while Harry pushed a button and called up the filled containers and hauled them off to the recycle centers.
Harry had no fear of the computer either. Indeed it was the computer that occupied his brilliant mind in the later years of his life, that consumed him the final year before his heart, the organ of many years of fear, finally stopped its beat.
It was when the appliances began to send their emails to other addresses in our cyber-address book that things began to run amok.
While Harry might be the guy pictured under the words “computer illiterate”, with the help of our son and Harry’s complete fascination with this machine of his creative dreams, Harry made the computer stand on its head and talk if he wanted. Almost literally.
Allen, our youngest son, did apply for a patent for the game he and Harry jointly designed. For creating computer games was of no interest to Harry. He wanted the computer to make daily life easy, to take the pain out of life’s problems. Ah, but a 3-d computer game, THAT was something that caught Harry’s eye and held it.
“Every Day Warriors and Superheroes” is controlled by the computer but it is an actual board game. The game is loaded into the computer’s memory while the game board is set up on the table much like Monopoly. Allen and Harry spent many months perfecting this game and it is quite imaginative, utilizing the game board as a sort of theater backdrop for the various plays and options, creating weapons and strategies upon player request, setting up scenarios on the fly, designing costumes at the whim of the player.
Still and so with all of his talent, Harry never wanted fame or even sought admiration for his clever ideas. He did what he did and around our house it was just accepted that vacuum hoses could be pulled out of the wall within any room, the end attachment could be pulled out from a nearby built in cabinet, with the flick of a switch on the side of the hose the rug or floor could be cleaned, the sucked up dirt going somewhere, then the hose recoiled into its hidey-hole, the end attachment snapped into its assigned place and boom, no one would be the wiser.
The computer, of course, made it easier for Harry to set up control of all this devices from his desktop or even from his cell phone. Harry’s entire cell phone fit directly in his ear, don’t ask me how he did that. It was when Harry designed all of the household appliances, even the car, with the ability to send email that all hell broke loose.
“Just think, Cheryl,” he told me with a smile as he labored in the refrigerator installing I could not imagine what, or why. “We’ll get an email when the water filter needs replacement,” Harry told me. I noticed that Harry was then installing a new water filter but there was also some weird wires hanging down from behind the refrigerator’s ice filter that concerned me. Much less the concept of the refrigerator sending me emails but that would be an issue for a later time.
It wasn’t but a few days later that I got an email from Jeep@verizon.net that had me pondering what this is all about. At first I thought it was spam but before hitting the delete key I wondered if maybe my Jeep was really sending me email. You get like that after living with Harry for a while.
“Air filter” was the only text inside of the email from the Jeep. Now I didn’t expect the Jeep to be all that wordy. It was a great vehicle, always starting when I turned the key, never failing to give its best to get out of snow piles. But it was more the strong silent type than a talkative jabberer, as I envision my Jeep that would send me emails. Harry told me that what else do I need to know, the Jeep needs a new air filter. “It’s a SUV of little words,” Harry smirked as he called the local parts store to have them set aside an air filter for a 2006 Jeep Liberty.
Indeed I began to get all sorts of emails from the appliances around the house, even some of Harry’s inventions sent me warnings about dust filters and kinked hoses. Harry somehow programmed these things to send emails and Harry was not one to say more than needed saying.
Thus the refrigerator’s email text might be “water filter”, or the air conditioner might ask to “test compressor”, or the TV might warn of improper color settings. Harry was forever putzing around with the appliances. I’ve no idea how he got them to send emails except it had something to do with a processor and an Internet receiver. And the emails didn’t necessarily come to me. Harry and I had an email addy that we both used for purposes of receiving email that applied to us both. I got so I didn’t even open the email from the appliances, figuring Harry programmed them with what to say, when to say it, how to phrase it. All I know that there was seldom anything around our house that didn’t work at its most efficient and I couldn’t even guess when the last time something broke down around the place.
It was when the appliances began to send their emails to other addresses in our cyber-address book that things began to run amok.
“Cheryl, I could swear that I just got an email from your refrigerator?” my mother told me, asking this somewhat unusual question softly lest I laugh at such an absurd assertion. Indeed I did giggle a bit although part of my mind was racing in the pondering of just how my refrigerator got my mother’s email address.
“What did it say,” was all I could stupidly ask.
“It just had three numbers on it..’492’,” my mother answered, then said she was sure it was from MY refrigerator in that a)I’d told her about Harry’s programming of the emailing appliances and b)no one else’s refrigerator had ever emailed her and she was not sure anyone else refrigerator COULD even email her.
“What’s so weird is that these are the last three numbers of my SS#, not that your refrigerator should be emailing out such confidential information. You better tell Harry to check it out. Meanwhile, what the hell, I’m going to play those numbers on the lottery tonight.”
Later that day Harry explained that those numbers were the number of the ice filter mechanism as he needed to know this to try and obtain a part. It was only my mother calling me with a scream that she’d won $10,000 on the lottery that kept me from asking Harry that if I were to understand him he’d actually sent an email TO the refrigerator?
Harry promised to look into the problem of the appliances emailing others on our email list, murmuring something about how this problem just started right after he’d programmed the processors to actually receive email. Again, the excitement of my mother’s lottery win so occupied my mind that the concept of the appliances RECEIVING email went right over my head.
Two days later my sister-in-law got a visit from the local social services agency. Seems they got an email from our air conditioner. The email contained a picture of Emily with two black eyes and a severely swollen lip. As Harry explained how this happened my eyes began to glaze with the technical detail. What was most important was that someone, even if just an air conditioner, finally got Harry’s sister to take that first step to freedom from that abusive man she’d been living with for the past six months.
Harry and I, along with his other sister and his elderly mother, had spent many hours begging Emily to kick that man out of her house. Why on earth she even brought him there defied logic but Emily denied that the bruises and cuts she began to sport on a regular basis were caused by her new love. The picture that our air conditioner sent to the social service agency was actually a picture taken surreptitiously by Harry on one occasion when he had a chance to snap a pic with nothing more complicated or secretive than his cell phone.
We’d intended to go to the social services agency ourselves to somehow get help for Emily. But when Eve, Harry’s other sister, went downtown to get more information she was told there was nothing they could do unless Emily herself sought help.
“FREON!” Harry shouted in response to my accusations that he somehow programmed the air conditioner to send that picture to social services.
It would turn out that the chain of events wasn’t quite that simple. The air conditioner actually sent a picture of Emily’s abusive boyfriend to the social services with one word ‘FELON’. The social services sent the email on to the police department because they didn’t know what to do with it. Harry never was much of a speller or typist and he’d somehow programmed the air conditioner to notify us via email with the word ‘Freon’ so we would know when that chemical that helped chill the air needed replenishment.
It would turn out, to nobody’s surprise, that Emily’s fine boyfriend was, indeed, a felon, and a detective then involved with finding the guy suspected in the severe beating of a former girlfriend chanced to see the picture. Then began a frantic exchange between the police department and the social service agency and by connection of the email addresses of the original picture of Emily’s beaten face and the picture of her boyfriend sent by the air conditioner combined with the memory of a social worker who recalled the plea of Eve, well it all came together to the point where the social service department came knocking on Emily’s door and promised to keep her from harm if they’d help them catch the criminal she was living with and the rest, as they say, is history.
While we do live in a small town it still seemed like a strange set of coincidences and I confronted Harry with my suspicion that he somehow orchestrated that whole exercise via his emailing appliances.
“And I guess you figured I rigged your mother’s lottery win too,” Harry snorted then walked off shaking his head in a pose of humorous muse.
Everyone on our address book got an email from our security system less than a week after Harry's sister finally broke free from her abuser.
“I saw what you did last night,” the email said, a really strange sentiment although Harry laughed and said what the hell was so odd about a security system seeing what we did last night?
“I thought it was kind of a funny way for the security system to tell us it was working all right,” Harry laughed at the memory of his programming wit. “How the hell did I know it would send out email to all the people in our email address book like that? I really thought I’d manage to fix that code that was making the appliances send out emails to others in our address book,” Harry ended, scratching his head as he puzzled how he failed to stop our appliances from spamming everybody with cryptic and ominous sounding messages.
Only our family knew it was an email from yet another out of control appliance in our household and by this time everyone was kind of used to the strange emails emanating from our house. I can only imagine what our many other email friends thought about the weird message coming from security_camera@verizon.net but Harry and I had a good laugh about it.
Perhaps it was a coincidence that our neighbor reported his work buddy was the one who shot and killed a co-worker, leaving him for dead at a warehouse near us. This crime was all the sensation as we had very little crime in our neck of the woods. The weird thing was a bit of gossip our next door neighbor told us.
“He said he got a strange email saying the sender saw what he did last night and it was the last straw for Butch,” Glenda, our somewhat gossipy neighbor told me as my eyebrows raised. “Seems Butch and a couple other guys were trying to break into the “Wheel In” warehouse cause they heard the owner had a stash of weed in the back. Butch said his buddy got nervous and shot a guy just passing by with an itchy trigger finger. Said he’s tired of keeping this secret and that strange email was enough already.”
Harry just shrugged when I told him how yet another email from our appliance got insinuated into an ongoing crime investigation, this time solving it.
“Seems our appliances should be made deputies for the Marimot county police department,” Harry snorted, then assured me that he’d solved all email matters regarding our appliances and from now on the messages they will send would be clearer, he’d spell-checked his messages, he’d blocked them all from access to our email box.
As for me I raised my weary eyes to heaven that my life was never boring and nobody would believe my story even if I shared it.
Now Harry was gone, felled by the bad heart he’d had all his life that finally gave up trying to beat. The year of the appliances email was solidly behind us, our son was perfecting the 3-D computer game Harry and he had created. I sat and pondered my eulogy to my very creative husband and how much of my strange story I should reveal. A slight ding from my computer informed me that an email had arrived in my e-box.
It was from harrysheart@verizon.net. I couldn’t suppress my gasp. The email was evidently from Harry’s pacemaker. “Play the game with Allen” was all it said.
“Wow,” Allen said, “Dad really made some big changes to this thing,” Allen said as he moved his marker around the board. “Amazing how it gave you the right numbers to win the lottery,” Allen smiled and I tried to keep my face neutral.
So far Allen’s character had solved a couple of crimes as the detective he was during one round. My character had a close friend who’d been abused and via a series of electronic messages on the game’s equivalent of Twitter, necessary intervening help was obtained. As for the lottery, I was given a “gift” of choosing my favorite combination of three numbers, which I chose. The numbers I chose DID win me lots of money in the fictional role playing game. I supposed that Harry knew what three numbers I would choose and he’d programmed it to come up.
Allen vowed he would continue to finesse the program, that he’d gotten an email from an investor who was interested in helping to finance the project.
“Besides,” Allen said as he wrapped up the game with a wink, “I got an email from Dad’s pacemaker urging me to stick to developing the game, that there would be great rewards both in terms of money for our family and benefits to society that might come from the game.”
I was shocked and stunned by Allen’s casual comments.
“Dad could always dream big,” Allen said as he waved me good night. “But you know Mom, with a proper algorithm and some insight to a person’s thinking you could predict the chances of a lottery win. The air conditioner DID kind of nudge Grandma to a big win. As for solving crimes,” again Allen winked and beamed at me with Harry’s smile, “we’ll see”.
I didn’t mention anything about appliances that sent emails to win lotteries or solve crimes in my eulogy for Harry. I just described my wonderful, amazing and somewhat strange life with a most wonderful man.
Drivel: Snippets
I've been telling myself that I needed to Drivel. Life's moments have been passing by, unremarked and unshared. Little did I know that I *really* needed to Drivel. Now, the little things I haven't told you about have been overshadowed by something larger.
But why should you suffer? Old news is still news for those who haven't heard it, and if I save the big one for last, perhaps you'll get a sense of what life was like for me before yesterday. Right? Let's try it and see.
The first thing I kept meaning to write about was the aquarium. It's doing well right now. We've had two more hiccups in the path, but I think we're on the upside now.
After we set up the golf course, we let the aquarium sit fish-empty for awhile, like you're supposed to. About a week before I was set to put fish in it, I tested the water levels. Ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, all good. pH, not so good. Hardness, out of this world. Harry and I were puzzled. We'd used the machine - the water should be filtered and non-hard.
Disaster, if we didn't get it fixed, and quickly.
I borrowed a friend's son (and luckily he brought her SUV since the Tundra wasn't available) and the three of us drained the aquarium and refilled it with good water. You know, if you have a ten gallon tank, that's pretty easy to do. When you have a 125 gallon tank, it's a bit harder. We spent several hours just finding water jugs and filling them.
It took two trips to a Walmart, one trip to a Food-4-Less, and three trips to the local water-dispensing machine, with eight five-gallon jugs each time to do the deed, and we ended up emptying one of the machines. I didn't know that was possible.
The scramble paid off - within seven hours we had the tank emptied of bad water and refilled with good water. Once again, we let the aquarium sit fish-empty for a few days.
I put a few fish in it (eight, I think) and promptly lost one. Then another, and then a third. Water levels tested good, so after about five days we put in some more fish. A week went by with everything looking good.
Then one afternoon, I noticed the orange tetras (embers) were looking a bit odd. By the time I went to bed, they were all showing signs of fungus - white fuzzy patches on the body and some had opaque eyes.
By morning, all twenty embers were dead and the other species were showing the fuzzy stuff. I got fungus medicine and dosed the tank. Some fish still died, and the cure killed all five shrimp we'd bought, but most of the fish survived it.
Today, they're looking good and have for two or three weeks. They've visibly grown, and the species that change color with maturity, like the congo tetras, are starting to show signs of those colors. Next Tuesday, we add more fish. Keep your fingers crossed!
Then, I was going to write about being sick. Harry and I both caught that whatever it is that's going around. Cold? Flu? I'm never sure which. He got it about three days before I did, so I got to watch his symptoms to know what I would soon share. It was comedic to me that the fish were sick, Harry was sick, I was sick, and I could predict how I would be feeling in three days' time.
I still have a bit of the cough, but that's normal for me.
Then on Thursday I had a rain story. On the drive home from the other work office, it was raining pretty hard. Windy, too, and it looked a lot like tornado weather. My little Honda isn't the best for rain driving - it's too short, light, and reacts badly to rolling through puddles of any depth.
I had a tense drive home, an hour plus, in weather where the cars ahead of me threw up clouds of water droplets. Being passed by a big rig going the other way resulted in a deluge I couldn't see through.
There were two accidents I passed - one looked like half a car was blocking the other side of the freeway, where an overpass goes over it. Not sure what happened to the missing half of the car, and I prayed for the driver. (I thought *my* drive was bad.)
I noticed the car behind me looked odd. When I really gave it my attention (rather than just "car behind"), I realized it looked like the loser in a dogfight.
But that's not the story. The story here is about the crazy drivers. Bad weather seems to bring them out in droves and I don't think you have to worry about the weather so much as the idiots. One passed me on a double yellow line. (In the rain with bad visibility.) One passed me *and* another car, at a stop sign.
Seriously.
One was just scary. I noticed the car behind me looked odd. When I really gave it my attention (rather than just "car behind"), I realized it looked like the loser in a dogfight. The driver's side mirror was hanging down against the car door. One headlight was brighter than the other and pointed a bit sideways. One fender was a different color.
I was fascinated. Here I was, in really bad weather, driving a car not exactly geared for it, and I was being followed by a car that looked like a bulldog with a tattered ear. No way I wanted to tangle with that one! I hoped it would pass me, too, but it didn't. That car followed me for miles. I sighed in relief when I got off the freeway, as it kept going.
Good thing. I'm not sure what I would have done if it came off the freeway with me, but I am very certain I would not have let that "stray dog" follow me home.
So, I hope that was a happy journey for you. Mostly, I enjoyed it, too. The aquarium is a joy to behold, I love rain, and I survived the disease.
Ready? Here's the big news now, the work update.
I'm losing another boss.
In less than ten days, my current Supervisor will move to a different department and my whole team will shift reporting structure to a different Director. We'll have a new Supervisor, and while we've beengiven hints (like it's some tortured guessing game), we don't know who that is yet. The person has been offered the position, but until he or she accepts, everyone has to pretend that no one knows and we can't be told who it is.
I hope we find out before the ten days are up.
Stop laughing; it isn't a joke. When I was moved last July to this team, that was part of a major reorganizational shift. A *lot* of people were moved around. All that moving and it wasn't enough. Those of us who support the production teams were in limbo - not quite in the new structure and not quite outside it. Many things didn't mesh - like security reports. I was (and still am) Security Coordinator for my old area, pre-July. All of the employees in that old area look to me (and a few other folks) for various access needs. You need a new program on your computer? Yes, that would be me. But wait . . . I don't even report in that line of management anymore. Isn't there something wrong with having power over that for someone else's department?
When we brought it up, over and over again, we were told something was in the works. They're looking into it. They've got a proposal on the table. (It was a good one, too.) They're just waiting for the last decision. They'll know by October 14. They'll know by sometime in November. They'll know by year's end.
We’re still in limbo. Somehow, I can't get energized about my new nameless Supervisor.
Yet, at least. To be honest, that move in July was a good one for me. Perhaps this one will be, too.
It just doesn't feel like it right now.
I had lunch with a good friend on Thursday. She was a teammate back when I was on the IMPACT team. I spent a wonderful hour in the Thai restaurant with her, happily chatting about how great my team is and why I like the Supervisor I have. I had no clue betrayal was brewing.
All the uncertainties of that move in July are back, full force. Lying in bed tonight I kept hearing words. Finally they drove me out of bed and here, to the keyboard. Words like "I want to make sure you have what you need." Words like "Our people are our most important asset." Words like "We promise to tell you as soon as we know."
My head knows the words the company says are just words. They don't really mean anything. My heart keeps forgetting and eventually I get sucked into believing them.
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