Baltimore Diary

Stream O' Consciousness, or: Yeah, I'm a Sick Puppy

Here's the sort of thing that pops into my head when I have too much time on my hands.

I was reading an article about the TV show Lost. (Premiering September 21, by the way--I left that one out the other day). One of the things that they mentioned is that the character Sawyer is played by Josh Holloway.

Here's where my brain starts to spin outta control.

I'd just heard a story on the news about Natalee Holloway. She's the girl, you'll recall, who disappeared from Aruba several weeks ago. The story was about her mother finally giving up the search leaving Aruba. So she was kinda-sorta on my mind. Immediately I linked the two together, wondering if Josh Holloway was somehow related to Natalee Holloway. Because it's SUCH an uncommon name. (eye roll)

Now, remember this started because the ACTOR'S name is Holloway. So I recognize how screwed up this is.

The next mental leap was to wonder if perhaps Natalee's disappearance wasn't a gigantic publicity stunt on ABC's part, and that Natalee was going to appear, as herself, on a future episode of Lost, just wandering onto the beach with no recollection of how she got there. Last thing she remembers, she was in Aruba.

Then I realized how ridiculous that was, because Natalee is a real person, of course, and we oughtn't play with people's lives like that. But then again, I recently saw Wag the Dog and I understand that it isn't so ridiculous after all.

I'm not belittling the whole Natalee Holloway deal; I honest to god believe that a young girl has gone missing and may have suffered a fate that we'd rather not consider. But wouldn't that be all kinds of screwed-up if ABC were to pull exactly that sort of publicity stunt?

By the way, if ABC pulls exactly that sort of publicity stunt, I want them to send me a BOATLOAD of money. 'Cause you saw it here first.

Afterthought

And, for what it's worth, I think "Anachronistic Pubic Hair" would be a great name for a rock band. </Dave Barry>

Ahead of the Curves

for a change.

If you haven't seen it already, go check out HBO's new series, Rome. It's not for those who insist on a strict recreation of history, but the intrigues are interesting and after two episodes I'm sucked in. It's on Sundays at 9:00 Eastern with a repeat on Tuesday nights (but I forget what time).

Plus, you get to see women with anachronistic pubic hair. And how often do you get to use the phrase "anachronistic pubic hair"? You can watch it with your friends and say something like "Hey! That woman has anachronistic pubic hair!" Thank you.

Seriously: cool show. Go watch it. And remember that Survivor is coming back soon (Thursdays, dammit! I'll have to record it; I'll be in that Legal Issues class), along with The West Wing (moved to Sundays at 8:00). When does The Amazing Race return? And now you know my dirty little secrets.

Keepin' It Real

I don't bring it up very often, but I do like to watch some reality TV.

I've been a fan of Survivor since the first season. I even sat through the suck-ass Outback and (god help me) Africa seasons. But I'll get back to Survivor in a minute.

I also enjoy The Apprentice. Yeah, I'm Mark Burnett's bitch. For what it's worth, I think this season's final Boardroom is going to be a little tighter than it may look; it seems to me that Tana had a much more complicated task to deal with than Kendra. But one never knows. Kendra's young and malleable, and it's certainly easier to build a child than repair an adult. (I stole that from somewhere but I forget where.) Anyway, I'm not necessarily off the Tana Love Train yet, but I don't really think she'd honest-to-god be especially happy working for The Donald.

The last of my favorites is The Amazing Race. This, for me, is actually the best of the three. Packs of people working their way around the world (or, in this last season's case, halfway around and then doubling back) and getting picked off, team by team, as they come in last. I wasn't so thrilled with Rob & Amber being in the race at all, but I have to give them props for racing well. And he really does appear to be smitten with her. So that's nice.

So far we have two out of three shows done for this spring, with The Apprentice on the horizon. Survivor finished last night, and it was a pretty satisfying ending. Tom Westman took the million home, and deservedly so. I think that this is one of the few times where someone who actually deserved the money, got it. Given some of the weird-ass wins we've had in the past (Vecepia? JENNA?), Tom went in, stayed strong, got it done and when he didn't have immunity he made sure that someone else was on the block. And, of course, he's from Long Island, which makes him that much more worthy (not to mention helping to erase the memories of Kimmi "How am I going to masturbaaate?" Kappenberg). He would have beaten Amazon Rob (another LIer) anytime.

After all this? I may have to go out and get a life or something.

It's Snow Big Deal

We got the word a little while ago that Baltimore City Schools are closed for tomorrow. I guess because they still haven't gotten all of the roads completely cleared yet. I know a lot of sidewalks are still invisible, which means that kids would be walking in the streets to get to school. So despite our not getting more snow today (as was predicted), keeping school closed for a day isn't too crazy an idea.

Someone told me that a couple of years before I came here, it was very hard to get a snow day around here. New York City schools can be that way, but most of the kids in NYC are taking mass transit to school rather than yellow buses. And the streets are cleared quickly just because of sheer volume using them. But Baltimore has buses, and a lot of walkers. The mass transit kids are usually high schoolers. This policy (according to this person) changed when a couple of kids got hit by cars sliding on the ice. So BCPSS is a little more willing to let the snow day thing happen.

The other benefit is that my other school was scheduled to go through the self-monitoring thing tomorrow. Since it has to be scheduled weeks in advance, doing it at all during this quarter has become pretty much impossible. I look upon self-monitoring as a kind of necessary evil, but the thing is, I've been through it once, and whatever mistakes were made in School #1 are likely to crop up in School #2 also. I don't need to be beaten about the head with them again. Better to put School #2 through it at the end of third quarter and they'll see what a good school we are at that point, and re-do School #1 (as we've already been told will happen, but it has nothing to do with how we did last week) to demonstrate actual improvement. Hey, it could happen.

Elsewhere in the world, I bet that the death of Rose Mary Woods is totally overshadowed by that of Johnny Carson. It's a media conspiracy, I tells ya.

For those who don't know, Ms. Woods was Richard Nixon's secretary during Watergate. She was the one who might have erased the crucial 18-minute segment of tape that addressed what Nixon knew and when he knew about the breakin. They know for sure that she created a five-minute tape gap, but I'm pretty sure she was cleared of any malicious wrongdoing. You have to give her credit, though: from the day she left Nixon's employ until the day she died, she kept quiet about him. And here's a bit of heresy for you: Nixon wasn't that bad a president, really. He was fabulous with the foreign policy, not so great domestically and that hurt him. That, and his weird-ass paranoia that led to the whole Watergate thing.

Ack!

I just saw a promo on AMC. They're going to be showing Miracle on 34th Street all day on Christmas Eve. It's the colorized version.

Nnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

Oddly enough, the promo had the movie in color, and let me assure you that it is one of the worst colorization jobs ever. EVER. According to AMC's website, the "format" column has it in black and white. So maybe it's not so bad. It's not like I'll be around to see it; I'll be enroute to Florida. But I do worry about the youngsters. We don't want them to think that Natalie Wood is capable of changing skintone from shot to shot. Feh.

Tat's the Way, Uh-huh, Uh-huh, I Like It

Here's a guy who had some interesting body art done. He apparently went on the Late Show with David Letterman some time back. His misspellings are a little distracting, but it's people like this that make the Web fun and interesting.

A couple of other goofy links:

How to kill yourself like a man

Pen Island! Is it a joke or did someone have a D'oh! moment?

A keyboard for typing one-handed. You know, I bet handicapped people could use this too.

Sex toy that tries too hard. Not Safe For Work.

Fun drummer. The best part? "This is rock and roll." Stay with it.

LA to New York in Four Minutes. This is a mesmerizing bit of video.

Survivor Vanu-what-two?

GF will tell you that I totally called Chris to win it last week. I thought it would be a 4-3 vote, though.

With Chris in the Final Four, he was in pretty tight with all of the other three players. Plus the rivalry between Eliza and Twila left him off the radar screen for booting anyway. He won the immunity (not that he needed it) and Eliza got bumped. Now it's Scout, who had a total under-the-radar strategy going on (and which so rarely works); Twila, who's basically pissed everyone else off, especially about the whole swearing-on-her-son routine) (oh, and let's all get over that righteous anger, shall we?); and Chris. At this point, Scout looked strongest against Chris, because she hasn't bugged anyone and so the female alliance can remain in place at final Tribal Council. However (I figured), since the final Immunity Challenge is invariably an endurance challenge, and Scout has never performed well in physical challenges, it's going to be either Twila or Chris who gets immunity. Chris would have to decide whether it's him vs. the 60 year old woman or him vs. the woman who's managed to alienate a lot of people. Sucker bet, that. If Twila gets immunity, I figured she was pretty loyal to Chris and Scout would be gone again. Twila vs. Chris seemed like the most likely Final Two for me.

So I thought that the vote would go:

• Ami: Twila because of the female alliance
• Eliza: Chris because she hates Twila
• Julie: Chris because she's smitten
• Scout: Twila, also because of the alliance and because she would admire Twila's honesty vs. Chris' maneuvering
• Leann: Twila because of the alliance
• Chad: Chris largely because he didn't really know much about Twila except what he'd gotten at the TCs
• Sarge: This, for me, was the swing vote. I knew that he was pretty tight with Chris, but I also knew that he had an alliance with Twila. Whether or not he felt betrayed when he was voted off was in question.

So my guess was ultimately Chris, 4-3. Sarge and his "Psych" bit? Whatever. Leann was the only one that specifically surprised me.

Having said that, I did enjoy this season. Burnett's weird-ass twists, which never seem to have quite the desired effect, proved more or less ineffective yet again but that didn't make the intrigue any less interesting.

Next season (no premiere date announced?): Palau. And with 20 contestants. And still one more "twist that will change the way the survivors view the game." Yeah, okay. Perhaps it'll be all one big tribe to start with. That'd be something. I guess.