|
|
|
|
Tuesday, December 02, 2003 |
|
I finally got a minute to look up the cast for Survivor All Star--listings at SurvivorFever and SurvivorNews--and it's highly disappointing. (SurvivorFever adds two probable alternates, and is far more useful, breaking them out by season--and with bigger pix.)
Here's the first clue of how lame some of the entries are: I wasn't sure who they were. This from a person who has seen every episode (thanks to a reader who sent me a tape of the one I missed in Chicago recently), written relentlessly about the show in Salon, TableTalk and this blog.
A few revolting characters like Jerri were expected. But wallflower characters? I don't get it. Amber from Australia was one of the all-time most pathetic Survivors, memorable only as Jerri's little acolyte. Is that the point? To give Jerri a chance by handing her a second vote again? Dumb reason.
Nearly as sad are Jenna from the first season (Colleen I could have understood--Jenna, too much), Rob Mariano (the fool who thought he was the Godfather--pathetic and annoying), and Jenna from The Amazon. (Though she won that, didn't she? One of those recent entries where two losers make it to the finals and one has to win.)
At least the pornstar apparently said no. (I've got nothing against pornstars, but that guy gave even that industry a sleazier name.)
Then there are a slew of nonpathetics, but still yuckos: Tom Buchanan, yuck; Lex Van Den Berghe, yuck, Rob Cesternino, barf, barf, barf!
That's eight people, nearly half the cast filled with second-rate goofballs who didn't deserve to be on the first time. Sad. That's the best they could do with an all-star lineup?
(There will be 18 this time, reportedly in three teams of six.)
Luckily there are some choices:
Season 1: Richard Hatch, Rudy Boesch, Sue Hawk. Perfect.
Season 2, Australia: Colby Donaldson, Alicia Calaway, Tina Wesson. Nice.
Season 3, Africa: Ethan Zohn. Of course.
Season 4, Marquesas: Kathy Vavrick-O'Brien. Loved her, after the initial annoyance wore off. And she definitely dserved to win.
Season 5, Thailand: Shii-Ann Huang and Ken Stafford as a probable alternate. Nice, unexpected choice on Shii-Ann. Loved her, and I bet she learned a lot and could be a real darkhorse this time.
Season 6, Amazon: No one worth a crap.
Season 7, Pearl Islands: I'm no Rupert lover, but he deserves to be there. And Sandra Diaz-Twine as a probable alternate. I'm no big fan of hers. She's OK, but far from an all-star. Unless of course she managed to win.
Interesting how the good people are so highly front-loaded. And all the early winners agreed to come, but most of the later ones apprarently refused.
Of course I'll watch it, and it may still prove riveting, but casting is everything, and this is a really disappointing cast.
|
|
11:53:53 PM
|
|
|
I loved the Real World this season. I know some people found it boring, but I find watching assholes boring. I don't find their drama interesting, I find it annoying.
Ace and Mallory were two of my all-time favorite characters this season, and it was kind of tragic watching them want so badly to connect and never quite make it until the last week. Nice to see the "Kiss and Tell" reunion show tonight to learn that they have been dating for the past couple months. I don't know if their worlds can come together or not, but they sure do deserve the chance. I adore both of them.
And CT cut his hair! Praise Jesus! I didn't even recognize him at first. Hot.
And he was appropriately apologetic about a lot of his behavior. I also loved watching him this year. One of the kindest souls ever on the show, but so much anger to work through in that boy. I do think he'll get there.
And that bitch from hell Leah also acknowledged what a bitch she had been and let go of some of her horrible affectations. And Adam generally kept his mouth shut.
Ace is a little darling, though. And Mallory--that girl has so many inhibitions to let go of. I think the most gut-wrenching moment I've ever seen on the show came early in the season with her confessing how hard it was to live up to her own false persona as The Good Girl. She never really took on that struggle, it's still mostly ahead of her, and she's got a lot of skin to shed. Good luck Ace. Just the guy to open that girl up up (heeheehee). I'm seriously, though.
|
|
11:04:59 PM
|
|
|
I'm still looking into the background on this, but Howard Dean may have just pulled off the most brilliant tactical move of the campaign so far.
Iowa is shaping up as the most important state in the race, and it has only one Democratic rep in Congress--Leonard Boswell--who has apparently been targetted by Karl Rove for defeat.
So today, Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi sent out a message to Dean supporters explaining this and asking for donations for Boswell. A few minutes ago, the Dean blog posted a gracious letter from Boswell saying, "This is one of the most exciting projects I have ever seen!" The entry also reported that the Boswell campaign has tracked over $30,000 in donations from Dean supporters today.
What a clever way to win the undying love of one of the most powerful Dem politicians in the critical state 47 days before the caucus?
And if it doesn't bring an endorsement, it might at least head off one for local boy Gephardt. And/or, it could impress a lot of diehard Iowan Dems (the kind who turn out to caucuses on icy January nights) who are nervous about losing their lone rep. It comes off as a really selfless act, a real show of concern for Iowans . . .
At the very least he's going to get a whole lot of crucial media coverage in Iowa, and probably a whole lot of good will. Sure seems like the kind of thing that will play well in Iowa, no?
They have been working ideas like this for awhile, actually. For months they have had teams of Dean volunteers on do-gooder projects just to earn the love and admiration of the locals. But this is taking it to a big new level.
Has this been tried before? Seems so obvious, why didn't someone think of this years ago? Or did they?
Wednesday Update: I emailed somebody a little closer to the campaign, inquiring about intentions. Here's the response:
Congressman Boswell has not endorsed Dean, and we didn't do this for his
endorsement. We did this as a demonstration of the fact that this campaign is not just about winning the White House, it is about taking our country back. Congressman Boswell is on a list of Dems to be targeted by the Republicans. I didn't realize we'd be doing anything like this this soon, but I knew it was coming. This won't be the last race that we target. Imagine this: we reach the goal Trippi has laid out of having 2 million Americans give $100 to Dean for America before the convention. And then let's just suppose that for the general election Bush and Dean (if we win) both take the public funding. In that scenario, there won't be any more fundraising after the convention. But we'll still have this huge list of supporters. What do we do then for them? We can give them a list of 10 races (or 20 or whatever) that they can impact. When Joe talks about that, I tear up, and I'm ready to walk through a wall for him and Howard Dean. We can make great change in this election, if we continue to believe.
Powerful vision. I have no doubt this is the long-term goal, which could prove to be slightly revolutionary--and knowing this guy, I don't doubt the tearing up part, which is a truly the mark of the true believers.
Of course Joe Trippi is smart enough to take it a step further. Hmmmm. Why not test it out now, when it can give us a boost when we need it badly in Iowa, too? And demonstrate the power of it early to a few thousand politicians around the country who could see themselves as beneficiaries--the very party insiders we're looking to line up to undermine the expected post-New Hampshire Stop Dean Movement from the old guard.
We've been hearing for months that local pols around the county were salivating over the prospect of getting access to Dean's email address book, and/or the apparatus. Here was a first taste.
Win-win. Smart smart.
The long-term possibilities are pretty breathtaking, too, aren't it? )Once this expands beyond 10-20 races. (Maybe I should say medium-term. I don't see this lasting 30-50 years, but the full life of an eight-year term is easy to conceive, plus dwindling but still strong results for another term or two. That's pretty long in political time.)
The funny part is, this kind of reminds me of what Ross Perot attempted, to pull together a huge, broad, grassroots army of boots across the country, working together for a much larger cause than electing one man to the white house.
Ross never pulled it off, not by a country mile. He fumbled around with the several approaches, but nothing ever took off. Maybe the technology just wasn't there yet, or he failed to find the enabling technology available at the time.
But these guys (the Dean guys) . . . They're starting to make me salivate. I was drawn to Dean because of Dean, but the longer this goes on, the crazier it gets, the more I think it may be one of those amazing marriages of the right man at the right time, coming together with the right band of wiz kids to help make it happen. Karl Rove is good, no doubt about it, but he never introduced any innovations like this team. In my lifetime, I've never seen so many powerful innovations coming out of one campaign. Not even a fraction of them. And it's not even the election year yet.
More and more I'm starting to see the value of nominating Dean as not just Dean, but Trippi and the rest of the team, too. If they can start cranking up the machinery Perot had in mind--the army of volunteers we used to see mobilized by the old parties and the labor unions (the concept is not new, the mechanism to resurrect it in a modern world is)--we could finally make the Dems/Liberals/Progressives vital again.
And of course, it takes the charismatic leader at the top. Did Ross fail to find the right machinery, or did he just freak out too soon, and blow the personal campaign behind the movement? He demonstrated pretty clearly that once you get a movement like this off the ground, but you've got to keep it rolling. You can't leave it idle four years at a time, and you can't run it all from the bottom, with a hopelessly fractured agenda, and no leader to get behind that anyone in the movement believes can win anything. You need the army mobilized all the time, and you need the same strong leader behind it for at least four years, preferably eight, preferably leading from the White House.
Wow, I really got myself into a tizzy there. But it really can happen, and it's already well on its way. Thanks for the little demo guys.
|
|
10:40:47 PM
|
|
|
Just out from AP:
Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt are battling for the lead in the Democratic presidential race in Iowa as they have for the last few months, according to a poll released Tuesday night.
Dean, former governor of Vermont, was at 26 percent, and Gephardt, a Missouri congressman, was at 22 percent in the Zogby poll, a difference within the margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
Good news for Dean. Iowa is looking more and more like the crucial state. And he's got much, much more money he can pour in there for TV commercials than Gep.
(Everybody else was in single digits.)
|
|
10:08:19 PM
|
|
|
This is scary or relieving, depending where you live.
Study released yesterday showed: "that 15 of the largest U.S. cities were home to more than half of the nation's HIV/AIDS cases between 1986 and 2001."
No big surprise, really, but always useful to be reminded that your geography can have a big impact on your health. I'm relieved to see Denver doesn't appear on the list. Some surprises, though. I'll be a lot safer in Chicago than expected, but NYC is worse than SF:
The report's overall numbers break down as follows, with a list of cumulative cases and the number of AIDS cases per 100,000 people:
- PENNSYLVANIA -- Philadelphia: 20,369 (26.5)
- TEXAS -- Houston: 19,898 (18.7); Dallas: 13,119 (20.5)
- PUERTO RICO -- San Juan: 16,372 (35.3)
- WASHINGTON, DC: 24,844 (152.1)
|
|
6:45:36 PM
|
|
|
Big story in the Times today about the dubious methods of that Johns Hopkins researcher who admitted back in September to screwing up on the preposterous ecstasy study where 20 percent of his lab monkeys died from a normal dose.
The villian is one Dr. George A. Ricaurte, who seems hellbent to use any means necessary to "prove" ecstasy is dangerous.
The stuff in this article is incredible. I can't believe an institution like Johns Hopkins continues to back this guy. Disgraceful.
I would really like to know if drugs like ecstasy, ghb and ketamine are dangerous, how dangerous, what the risks are. Never going to get that from dishonest people like this.
And no one is ever going to trust the anti-drug campaigns until they start speaking just a little truth. It's so counterproductive.
A few of my favorite quotes:
"It's hard to trust George," said Dr. Julie Holland, a professor of
psychiatry at New York University who has edited a book on Ecstasy and wants
to test it in psychotherapy. She accused him of "playing games with his
data" to win more federal grants by making the drugs look bad.
Dr. Richard J. Wurtman, a prominent clinician at Harvard and M.I.T. who has
clashed with Dr. Ricaurte, accused him of "running a cottage industry
showing that everything under the sun is neurotoxic."
Some great info on ecstasy here.
|
|
5:21:19 PM
|
|
|
Interesting Village Voice story on how and why Howard Dean is gunning hard to win New York:
New York today is still up for grabs, and securing the state comes with juicy rewards. From New York, campaigns feed a supply line of human capital to nearby battleground states, especially New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Candidates fight for New York cash, and take turns sunning themselves in the abundant media light. And while none of the campaigns say they are looking this far ahead, a strong showing in New York sends warning shots to the Republicans who will overrun the city next August during their national convention.
|
|
5:02:39 PM
|
|
|
This is new. Fifteen active gay military men and women have formed a group to fight the ridiculous Don't Ask Don't Tell ban. They call themselves Gay & Lesbian Service Members for Equality: GLMSE.
Finally, a group to fight the ban from within. They have to keep their identities secret, but they're open to reporters to tell their stories. Interesting stuff at their website.
|
|
4:47:33 PM
|
|
|
Wesley Clark is really counting on winning a bunch of the Feb. 3 primaries. Big new ad-buy continues to indicate that strategy.
He must be praying Gephardt will deprive Howard Dean of a one-two Iowa-New Hampshire punch, or at least that he doesn't use it to roll over the next round. It could get really interesting if Dean wins the first two, but then Clark wins several the next week.
Of course the problem of that scenario is this is such a momentum game, it's going to be very hard for Clark to pull that off if Dean gets both the first two. Maybe he thinks that if he goes into NH night leading enough in following-week states, the press won't write him off and his lead won't crumble.
Risky strategy, but all he's got at this point.
Highlights from AP:
Clark's campaign is spending about $200,000 in each state -- South Carolina and Oklahoma beginning Tuesday and Arizona later this week -- to run his 60-second biographical ad that highlights his military career. . .
Campaign advisers say internal polling shows Clark either tied with or leading candidates at the top of polls in those states, and the ads are meant to boost voter knowledge of Clark, who entered the campaign Sept. 17.
|
|
4:41:42 PM
|
|
|
That old man. That old church. So much to answer for.
The gist of the AP story:
Two months after Pope John Paul II warned that the elevation of V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire could mean "serious difficulties" in efforts to unify Catholics and Anglicans, the Vatican announced Tuesday that a February meeting in Seattle to work on a common statement of faith "would have to be put on hold."
|
|
4:33:26 PM
|
|
|
Kind of an interesting Salon cover story on the race to win Hollywood's heart in this year's campaign. Pretty much mirrors the rest of the campaign:
Edwards had a great early start that dried up completely, Kerry raised a lot of money for awhile, but the spigots have stopped as he heads toward loserdom, and it's mainly coming down to a battle between Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. With Gephardt holding down a somewhat smaller contingent, that could gain momentum if he beats Dean in Iowa. (Another reason Dean needs to beat him in Iowa.)
The writing is nothing special, and it's kind of a skim piece, but it's a little different than I've seen lately.
|
|
12:29:09 AM
|
|
|
|
