Survivor is back! Survivor All Stars is just three days away, so here is the first Open Thread for Comments. Plus my predictions and wish lists and horror lists. We're all waiting for yours.

How Survivor Open Thread Comments will work all season:

(based on what we learned during Pearl Islands--rationale at the bottom, if you're just joining us):

• Each week, I will post an entry with a title in this format: "Survivor All Stars Open Thread -- Comments on Episode x, Feb y." (This week is a little different because it includes all your pre-show predictions, etc.--I thought I'd start off confusing you.)
• If you're looking at that post on your screen, just click on the comments button at the bottom of it, and you'll be there, in the discussion thread.
• I will also post a link directly to the comment thread (i.e., not to the blog post but directly to the comment window for that week's thread) at the bottom of every Survivor post throughout the week. So any time you see any Survivor post, don't comment on the post you're reading, click the link to the thread for that week, and join us all there.
• I will also post a link to all the comment threads on my Survivor All Stars page, which I will also link to at the bottom of every Survivor post. The Survivor All Stars page will actually have two links to every open thread: one in the week-by-week section for each episode, and one section listing all open threads together. (See the Table of Contents there.)
• I will try to get the open thread post up a few days before each episode, when people want to start talking about what will happen that week. The same thread will then continue for comments as the episode airs and about five days after.
• This is the open thread for Episode 1. (You can click on the comments button to this post right now.) But this week is special. People have already written asking for a place to enter their predictions and wishlists and whatnot before the season starts, and I think it will be funner to all that merge right into the comments about the first episode. Most people won't arrive until it airs Sunday night, so they'll all get to see your season-long predictions and add theirs there as well.

Wish Lists and Predictions:

I'll go first, you jump in any time you're ready. Feel free to wait a week or three if you're not an addict and have not seen all 84 episodes from the first six seasons. You can return to this thread for predictions right up until the last week, but the longer you wait, the less the glory. (But newcomers get a three-week handicap on us old hags, and you can include yourself in new if you missed any season.)

My Wishlist:

• Winner: Shii-Ann, definitely.
• Runners-up: Colby and Kathy.

My Horror List:

• Winner: Satan/Jerri, definitely (i.e., she's the person I'd be most horrified to see win).  
• Runners-up: Amber & Tom. Complete list of the first nine people I would like to see booted, in order, here.

My Predictions on the Winner:

• Winner: Shii Ann
• Fall-back predictions*: Rudy, then Colby.

* "Fall-back predictions" means your second and third choices for who you think will win, not who you think will come in second and third. In Survivor, there's a huge difference.

Who knows on the winner. So many scenarios, but I think Shii Ann is smart, wily and strong enough to hold her own without being a threat. Most importantly, she is the best player out there without a target. I think she got the least far of anyone, so she will not be seen as a threat. And it helps that she's on a pretty strong team. Or maybe I'm just picking her cause I like her.

Colby? I know, I know, I'm breaking my #1 rule of this game, which I will be filling in later, that previous winners don't stand a chance, and a few others "strong" players are right up there with them, and Colby is probably most wanted man of all.

So I don't think he'll win. But . . . there are so many different scenarios. His tribe will prolly keep him around for awhile to win challenges (assuming the rules are the same), and just like last time, if they keep him too long and he starts winning challenges, it may be too late to get rid of him. He had an amazing streak of individual wins last time. Or maybe the rules will be different and one or two will ally with him and keep him around because it's in their interest to have someone winning other sorts of challenges. He's my darkhorse to take the unexpected route home. If he does make it to the finals, I think he'll smear almost anyone, especially the weak players likely to get there with him.

My Predictions on how the game will go:

• Tribe most likely to dominate: Saboga (Ethan, Jenna, Jerri (ack!), Rudy, Rupert, Tina).
• Tribe most likely to fall apart: Chapera (Alicia, Amber, Idiot Rob #1, Idiot Rob #2, Susan, Tom).
• Previous winners are history. And that includes Rupert--these people don't know whether he won--and a few other, particularly Colby, most wanted man of all.
• Most likely to go first from each tribe -- the biggest threat who is also least valuable in the competitions:
• Richard Hatch: Huge threat, little value. And they would love to topple him early.
• Jenna: Little value, maybe moderate threat. Not sure about her threat level--she may be seen as very likeable. Could be Rudy: moderate value, big threat.
• Rob C: Little value, may be seen as fairly big threat. (Shit, this is hard.)
• (More coming soon, in this space).

Big Questions:

• Will the standard dynamics hold of keep your strong backs early on, then throw them over right before/after the merge? Or will the strongest players be thrown off early regardless, just to rid them of the game? What will Colby's teammates do? Keep the strongest player in the game to win challenges, or destroy the threat early? I predict they'll keep him.
• (More coming soon, in this space).

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Rationale for the Open Thread Comments:

I can write a lot of Survivor posts each week, so comments get scattered, people miss some of your insights, and the conversation gets interrupted. Last season, we found it much more enjoyable when I set up one thread for everyone to meet and post their comments each week. We think you'll like it too.

My Survivor All Stars page.

Head here all week for Comments on Survivor All Stars Ep 1 -- And all season for Wish Lists, Horror Lists and Predictions.

Yes, you know my mood has shifted when Nabokov re-enters these waters.

I'm psychically a little exhausted with politics for the moment--don't worry, I'll be charged up for Dean again 20 minutes from now--and I thought I was revving up again for Survivor (wrote a whole spiel on it in my head in bed this morning--that's what I'm doing up already), but somehow when I wasn't looking my old little Russian friend snuck back on board.

You know that means I'm itching to write. Don't know what, don't know how, don't know when I'll possibly cram it in, but something's getting ready to pop out of me. I hope. I hope I find the time to widwife it.

But you have no idea how giddy it makes me.

These entries were supposed to be weekly, but I'm so utterly far behind.

Sorry to deprive you of your rightful dose of Nabokov.

I guess you deserve something special, so I'm going to treat you to my third-favorite opening sentence of any novel, of all time, that I have encountered. In this case, it's also the first paragraph.

From Laughter in the Dark, Chapter 1:

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

Heeheehee. Pretty ballsy opening, huh? That's the whole book, that's all that's going to happen. For two hundred ninety two pages.

Hard to imagine how he could milk such a slight story so that long, hard to imagine why we would want to endure it.

And then he plunges into one of the most riveting and delicious tales you'll be lucky enough to experience in this lifetime.

The story doesn't require that first sentence, but I love the lesson in literature it inspires. (I know lesson is a dirty word, but it didn't soil itself--it's the long, ugly line of narrow-minded schoolmarms who have been pooping on the concept since the early invention of the schoolhouse. But if you can't get over the eat-your-brocoli connotation, try this one: "The story doesn't require that first sentence, but looking back on it once you've gobbled up the story, it will mesmerize you with the vision of a whole new conception of art--writing by direct illustration, all other art by extension. I still get tingles from it ten years later. Giggles, too." How's that? More appealing? That's what I said, you'll love the lesson it inspires.)

Four basic plot points, 292 pages. And not a single moment of padding. Read this book and I dare you to come back here and show me the extra word you found squeezed in. That's right, that's what they built this comment section for, and it will alert me with an email if it takes you two years and you think I've forgotten. I can wait. And I dare you.

These books, these wonderful books, they seem to be packed with so incredibly much, and they are packed with ideas and images and insights and individuals . . . But not so much really has to happen.

Romeo and Juliet: "Two kids who fall in love, their families get pissed, they try to hide it, screw up the plan and end up killing themselves."

It's all in the telling.

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And if you're pissed at me for giving away the whole story, check out the second sentence/paragraph:

That is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in  moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome.

Is it ever. But is he illustrating how rich the story is behind the surface or how rich the human?

Human, story, do you see a difference?