Sunday, November 16, 2008

Amazing Race update – In the land of Borat

The remaining five teams started out from India to make their way to Kazakhstan. There's a big pileup at the airport as everybody is jockeying for the best flights. Team Perky, Team Mom/Son, and Team Infidelity all make the first flight, Team Co-Dependency makes the next flight, but Team Bluto has to take a "much later" flight. No matter: everybody is bunched at the chicken factory where the next clue waits.

This is the Roadblock: one team member must search among thousands of chickens for one of seven golden eggs. But there's also a Fast Forward and Team Perky and Team Co-Dependency both decide to try to make it. The Fast Forward, which allows teams to skip other tasks, involves eating a (disgusting) local food. It's at this moment we find out that Terence is a vegetarian and now he has to eat a gut-stuffing plate of sheep mutton.

Back at the Roadblock, Toni finishes first and they travel by giant crane truck to find some Mongol warriors. This is the Detour: teams may either "Play like mad" or "Act like fools." Teams can learn Kazakh instruments and play a song for money, or dress up like a cow and march themselves to a meat market. I'm guessing that everybody's going to dress up like bovine since they'll be "cowed" against learning instruments. Meanwhile, at the Fast Forward, Team Co-dependency bails out on the sheep meat, leaving Nick & Starr to win the Fast Forward; they head for the Pit Stop at Old Square and another first-place finish. Terence & Sarah need to head back to do the Roadblock.

I think I understand why Ken & Tina have marital problems: in the words of Cool Hand Luke, they have a failure to communicate. Plus, they're incapable (mostly Tina) of reading a clue correctly. First they miss one part of the clue, double back, and then return their costume before going to the meat market. The butcher won't give them the clue so they have to put the costume on again, with time ticking away. Still, they finish as team #3 because Team Bluto and Team Co-dependency are so far back.

Speaking of Team Bluto, they also fail to read the clue which directs teams to travel "by foot" from the meat market to the Pit Stop. The exhausted Andrew & Dan take a cab and Phil tells them they're the "fourth team to arrive" and not "Team #4." They need to head back to the market and walk back to the mat before Terence & Sarah complete their task. On top of all this, they left their shoes back at where they picked up the cow costume so it's a slow walk back. Nevertheless, babe, Terence & Sarah, babe, can't make up the time deficit, babe, and they are eliminated.

Final standings:

1 – Team Perky – Nick & Starr
2 – Team Mom/Son – Toni & Dallas
3 – Team Infidelity – Ken & Tina
4 – Team Bluto – Andrew & Dan
5 – Team Co-dependency – Terence & Sarah – PHILIMINATED

Next week: The dominant Team Perky runs into taxi troubles.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Annoucment: Boston Conservative Forum


This message is to announce the formation of the Boston Conservative
Forum.

The Forum will hold its first symposium and meeting next year in the first
half January. A precise date and venue somewhere in the City of Boston
will be determined by the participants.

Anyone who is at all interested in participating in this project please
contact me: Edward W Wagner Jamaica Plain, MA
Edward59@VoiceofEdwardWagner.com 617-524-5352

My fellows on the right,
This election was lost primarily due to a failure of communication.
We were virtually shouted down: because of our timidity and because of the
overwhelming corruption of our institutions of information and education.
It suddenly occurred to me that even I was part of the problem when I
realized that I had only the nerve to wear my McCain/Palin button in my
own neighborhood on election day. We have been cowed, we have been bullied
and we have had the terms of argument twisted against us.

The result in these past years was that a decent if flawed President was
ignominiously defamed and slandered, a decent if flawed candidate was
mocked and dismissed in favor of an elegant cypher who conceals a radical
anti-American agenda.

Our institutions of learning have guaranteed that the rising generation of
voter are completely ignorant of what makes us unique and a uniquely
strong nation.

Some of you may remember the old Boston Conservatives Society.
For a decade, with almost no budget and when most conservatives in
Massachusetts were intellectually isolated, before talk-radio and before
the Internet, the BCS held monthly discussions and forums with speakers
who were important scholars and activists. Almost every important
Republican and many Democrat, Libertarian and other third party
politicians came to plead with us during election season. In its last
years I published the Boston Mercury which expanded the audience for the
forums tenfold or more.

The Boston Conservative Forum would be more ambitious. The Internet
would allow us to aspire to an audience in the thousands. Furthermore our
whole system of news and mass communication is in flux. The old corrupt
vehicles, such as as The Boston Globe, TV, -- even broadcast radio --
will continue to decline. They may not even be around come next election
cycle. This is the time to get in on the ground floor.

I really believe our liberty and our traditions will depend on our energy.
The worm will turn in history; opportunity will present itself but only
for those ready to grasp the opportunity. This is also the time to shape
what conservatism means in the 21st Century.

The success of the project will depend upon the daring and imaginativeness
of our ideas and the caliber of our speakers. Above all I need assistance
in convincing the right people to participate. Everything else is PR
spadework.

Edward W Wagner
Jamaica Plain
Boston, Massachusetts