Looks like my little rant yesterday did the trick. We got about four inches of snow dumped on us last night. Of course it’s warm today and a lot of it will be gone by the afternoon, but that’s okay because nobody likes driving on snowy roads anyway. At least we got our one (relatively) big storm, so I’m satisfied.

I’ve put up many more photos at Flickr, so go check them out.

Crossposted from Around Carson.

Q: Did you know there was a beatboxing flute player?

A: I did not.

My latest recap of The Apprentice is now up both at RealityFanForum.com and my new blog, On The Air.

I think Surya is one of those guys who spent so much time in business school, and breathed in so many of the spores, that now he doesn’t realize that there’s a real world out there. He thinks that we’re all just living in some kind of computer simulation and he’s still being testing for his MBA, and so if he becomes a living breathing textbook and parrots back phrases like “revenue maximization” and “strategy-led brainstorming” that he’ll get some kind of prize. It’s a Pavlovian response to the heightened situation he’s in, like he believes that just because he’s on a television show that’s called “The Apprentice”, and just because that show has been labeled “Survivor in the business world”, that anything and everything he does actually has something to do with what he learned in school. And what he learned in school, like most of us, was to memorize the textbook and regurgitate it during finals. So that’s why this constant crap is always spewing out of his mouth, because he’s actually bought into the fiction of the show, and he thinks The Apprentice is a show about business skills, the same way some people get confused and actually think American Idol is a signing competition. None of these things are, in fact, true, so Surya is hopelessly behind the curve here.

He’s in good company, though, because you know who else has bought into the fiction of the show? Donald Trump. So maybe this will work out for Surya in the end.

Go read it all.

Episode links:
Jacob’s recap
TV Guide review
Download the episode with BitTorrent

My latest recap of The Amazing Race is now up both at RealityFanForum.com and my new blog, On The Air.

For Charla and Mirna, pissing off the locals is in their blood. So on the taxi ride over to the restaurant, the two of them are in the back seat shouting at their poor driver. “Rapido! Mas rapido! This is too little with rapido.” God, it’s 20 minutes in, and I’m already sick of Mirna. “This is too little with rapido”? Really? Is that a joke? Is she doing that for the cameras? Sadly, I think she is not. And little does she know that the cameras are the only thing keeping her ass from getting dumped off in a ditch somewhere in Ecuador. Seriously.

Go read it all.

Episode links:
Miss Alli’s recap
TV Guide review
TV Squad review
Download the episode with BitTorrent

This has been cross-posted from my new TV blog, (tentatively) titled On The Air. Go check it out, but be warned that everything you see there can and probably will change in the weeks to come.

Jacob at Television Without Pity is on fire this week with his American Idol recaps. And with this passage in particular, explaining why Simon has to be “mean”:

The fact is that if you, an Idol hopeful, have no business being there, he has no business making you feel like you do. That’s counterproductive for you both, and we’re talking about a business. Not a daycare center for people who think they’re professional enough to suffer rejection, yet are not. I don’t understand holding other people responsible for your lack of talent, or your lack of professionalism, or the fact that appearance does matter, or any of the things that piss people off about the lines Simon has to draw. If you’re not the package, you aren’t expected to know it: that’s for everybody else to tell you. And the highest echelon of those people are guys like Simon, and they’re really good at their jobs, and they don’t actually care if you’re happy or not, or if you live or die, because that’s not the point of any business.

Awesome. Kick-ass. Awesomely kick-ass. Go read all of it, in two parts.

Okay folks, The Amazing Race is back on the air, and this time they’ve brought some old friends along with them. Yes, it’s the All-Star edition, featuring racers from previous seasons going head-to-head. And once again, I’m posting BitTorrent links to each of the episodes.

As always, check out Miss Alli’s awesome recaps at Television Without Pity. I’m also writing recaps myself of each episode over at RealityFanForum.com. I’ll include a link to each one next to the episode. But if you missed an episode, or just want to download them for your collection, this is the right place.

The torrents can now be found on my new site, On The Air. Bookmark that page, and visit back each week!

This is what they gave my wife as a birthday gift at the school where she works.

She didn’t get it from her friends, she didn’t get it from students, she got it from the main office of the school. This is not a joke. This is not a gag gift. This is what they give everyone for their birthday.

A couple of months ago, my wife noticed that one of her coworkers had a bag of popcorn sticking out of her purse. Back then she wondered why. Now she knows.

There’s something pretty bizarre and insulting about handing out a single bag of popcorn as a birthday gift. It’s almost like an F-you, like when your waitress sucks so bad that you only leave a nickel for a tip. If you leave nothing, she’ll think you just forgot. So you give her five cents as a way of sending her a message. That’s what this feels like, you know? It’s so insignificant, it feels like an insult. Almost like you’d rather they didn’t get you anything. You’d rather they forget your birthday than give you popcorn.

I guess I can think of worse presents to get, but that doesn’t let them off the hook.

My latest recap of The Apprentice is now up at RealityFanForum.com.

Oh god, here we go again with Trump. Trump is out of town “on business”, which really means he’s giving another one of his inane Learning Annex lectures. He’s up on stage talking about some crap or other, and there’s a whole group of people who may or may not be extras hired by Mark Burnett to fill up the hall, and someone is holding a sign that says “Trump For President”. This is so horrible.

Go read it all.

Episode links:
Jacob’s recaplet
TV Guide review
Download the episode with BitTorrent

It’s been months and months, but I’ve finally published another update to the Ormsby House Renovation Gallery.

This update is so far reaching I couldn’t even assign it to just one month. So I called it the Winter 2006 Update because there are pictures in there from November, December and January. And yet it’s still only one page, because there really wasn’t a lot of exciting stuff going on. The new sidewalk got laid down, and the pool’s sunroom was built on the roof.

Go check it out. Also look at the Then And Now article I wrote comparing the Ormsby House when it first opened to the OH today.

If you’ve been a reader of this site for any amount of time, you might remember that a few years ago we went through a flurry of home remodeling. We ripped up all the carpets, put down wood and tile floors, and stripped the bathrooms down to the studs and rebuilt them. The last of this was done two years ago, and we thought it really would be the last.

But no. I cocked up the bathrooms so bad, the showers in particular, that water was leaking everywhere and the drywall was rotting away. So this spring we’ll see the house once again filled with the implements of renovation, as I have to tear the bathrooms apart once again and rebuild them. This time, I’m not using sheetrock, I’m using waterproof cement board. I’m not using plastic panels, I’m using ceramic tile. And I don’t care what my wife says, I’m sealing that son of a bitch up with three inches thick of caulk all the way around. It’s getting done right this time, or else.

Or else next time we just sell the house.