The Ivory Tower

I just passed by a pair of colleagues deep in conversation. They weren’t discussing a dangerous and complex scientific experiment or a social research project that could change the face of welfare. Oh, heaven’s no! Their intense discussion amounted to one man trying to explain the concept of the TV show survivor to the other. This was all the more entertaining because neither one of them seemed to have the foggiest notion of what they were talking about. God bless academia!

While I’m on the topic of survivor…
I was deeply disappointed by the outcome of survivor 2. I mean, I wanted Tina to win, but I really didn’t find all of the shenanigans leading up to the big announcement compelling. Or even interesting.

Make a totem and throw it over a cliff as a gesture, as a way to give back to the land? They were right, they were giving back to the land. Littering is – technically – giving back to the land. But it’s still littering. Was I the only one deeply scarred by that Indian in the “Keep America Beautiful” commercials from the 70s? I didn’t expect a great environmental message from a show that allowed goofy Colby to pillage the Great Barrier Reef for coral souvenirs, but still….

And what was up with that walk past the torches where they remembered their fallen comrades in cheesy slow-mo video montages? It’s not like Mad Dog and company died or something – they just did Letterman and Good Morning America, for pete’s sake.

My big question is, if that final vote count was live, why was it dark as night in LA? According to my watch it was 6:40 p.m. and the sun has not set by then. Did this not strike anyone as odd?

Life During Wartime

I continue to be convinced that we’re going to wake up one morning and find ourselves at war with Iraq. I told Husband this on election day, he told me I’m paranoid. I lack the faith in our current Congress necessary to think this is preventable, I feel a sense of doom.

In much more important news, my Lord of the Rings obsessed co-workers are atwitter that Ian McKellan will be in Philadelphia tomorrow for PrideFest, so it’s time to go to lunch and listen to the endless debates about how to justify a roadtrip as a professional development project.

The return of the Peach Pit After Dark

No.No.No.No.No. Say it isn’t so. Please say it isn’t so. On the Sopranos, when moment that Chris “acquired” that nightclub a knot formed in my stomach. When he gave the club to Adrianna, I felt queasy.

Please, please, please don’t let the Sopranos fall into the 90210/Charmed “we’ve got a nightclub let’s have gratuitous guestshots from bands” trap. It’s already started. We didn’t even get through the first bar-ownership episode and there was already some lame band performing.

Does David Chase have that little faith in his fan base that he thinks they’ll start jumping ship mid-season? Why else would you resort to adding filler to your show? On the upside, since there are no commercial breaks during the Sopranos, a gratuitous band interlude gives you the opportunity to go to the bathroom, get a beer or just bang your head against the wall for a few minutes if you need to.

Perhaps next season on Survivor they can run a nightclub as a cooperative challenge. Every few days a guest band can be dropped into whatever “remote” location they film. The band can play and then the contestants can hunt them, slaughter them, and eat them.

It seems like the logical next step in reality TV to me.

we’ll see who’s laughing when we’ve all been eaten by giant snakes

Burmese pythons have been quietly advancing their quest for world domination since at least the early 1980s. I slept better when I was a kid, before my father’s herpetologist friend shared this with me soon after they caught an escaped burmese python named Julius Squeezer in our neighborhood. I wish the archives of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune were online, I remember the article being screamingly funny to my brother and I.

The herpetologist’s doom and gloom about nature being devoured by invasive species of snakes? Less funny.

an earlier version of this post stated that Squeezer went to live out his days at Jungle Gardens, but I’m fairly certain that is incorrect and he was returned to his owner, so I’ve removed that information. 

roast-o-matic

I just noticed that our microwave has a button on it that says “roast-o-matic.” I find that incredibly amusing. A friend of mine wanted to construct a device with that name for a local art event called Art-O-Matic, but I can’t remember now what we thought it should do.