MaKaM

Guess the Minnesota couple needed a new column in their spreadsheet: What wifey wants: value 100.

Dangit, that couple in San Diego stole my schtick. They liked nearly everything, didn't whine about stupid stuff and were generally likeable. WTH, House Hunters? Deviating from the script?

Part of me wants to apply to be on the show (despite not being in need of another house) and say that my schtick is that I love everything about all houses. No "Oh, I hate that this doesn't have character and an open floor plan" instead "I love how blank this canvas is, I can totally add some chair rail. Separate rooms? More walls for bookshelves!" "I love avacado green bathrooms!" "next to a railroad track, cool, trains are neato!" etc. At least is would be a refreshing change from the "Ugh, this kitchen isn't white/granite/stainless" and "I NEED five bedrooms and 10 bathrooms and a spa retreat and a home for my mini-camel and a man cave all on my impossibly small budget."

She irked the hell out of me too. And I was so excited for the episode. My grandparents had a lake house in Stevensville (and my aunt and cousin still do, the show was definitely not househunting in their neighborhood) and I wanted to see the place I spent my summers in shown well. As it was, I would hate to be neighbors with such a picky negative nancy. I know a lot of it is scripted, but could these people not take a moment and consider how they will come off on national television, spending well more than the average person can afford and then moaning because the floors are the wrong color or the Amish made cabinets aren't white, etc. But the floors in the other two houses were similar colors and didn't get any comment. "I want a house with character" I think means they want crown molding and maybe some chair rail with shadow box molding under it. Nothing else. The 20-somethings in California with their million dollar budget also wanted "character" until they saw a house with actual character. With regards to the Minnesota husband, I thought that if they could afford that triplex (and have the rent coming in from the unit they were moving out of) their budget should have been higher--if realestate in the area was so expensive they couldn't afford to live there, wouldn't rent be equally expensive? I am hoping they were just trying to live frugally rather than over-extending themselves. My brother and sister-in-law have four kids under 5 but he makes several times the national average salary and she was getting up in age so they couldn't space them out if they wanted to have as many as they wanted. The Minnesota couple was also strange when the houses were smaller than they wanted, but the biggest room was still going to be theirs. But Duggars just piled the kids into bunkbeds and went on to make the next one so maybe that was their plan too. I skipped the Charlston(?) ghost-afraid lady and husband because it was a re-run and I hated them on their original appearance on the show when they wanted to buy a mcmansion to prove that they had "arrived" since hubby had gotten an executive position, she required 4 bathrooms minimum because that was what rich people had, and how proud she was to be mommy to her doggies.

The face was so off on the soldier tattoo. It was weirdly squished and pin-head-ish and no one mentioned it--it was all about the vague hand or how detailed the (dark) clothing was. Which was criminal because the guy was hot and that tattoo was not. At all. And then the girl with a clear pinup with passable hands, two different feet, and a damn cute face gets sent home because one thigh is slightly thinner than the other or because the skin color isn't a stand-out? Oookay... I didn't hate Mike's but it was wrong that he didn't give the girl even enough boob to fill the cup of the top. Exaggerate buddy!

They re-ran the Chicago couple with "The Never-Ending Renovation" yesterday (the one where they had to remove the whole third story, she was pregnant, they went $120,000 over budget, the city shut down the third floor until they got a variance, etc). I looked to see if there was any update and the contractor posted to her blog. Et voila! The Initial Build (with more/different pictures than HHR had) The Final Reveal (with even more problems occurring!)

Soapstone doesn't have to be maintained at all. If you want it dark, yeah, oiling it when you first get it will do that. If you don't care about it being gray at first and darkening over a longer time, you don't have to do anything to it. It is the same stuff in high school chemistry labs and you know they aren't in there oiling those things. The waterproofing was definitely product placement, and SUCH a bad idea. Address the water on the outside, foolish homeowner, or the hillside is going to be pushing your wall over. Sealing it up on the inside is nice but is a bandaid (says she who had a failing cinderblock wall that someone kindly painted over to hide the moisture issue behind it) They definitely should have addressed the ivy before gutting the inside. The critters and moisture that those vines promote. YUCK! When they said their budget in the beginning, I said that the exterior needed that alone. I am guessing a complete reside due to rot and tenting the house to get rid of the termites.

"Oh, no, where are we going to have nerding out space in our tiny house with our three small kids? And where is our family table and sofa going to go in the same tiny house?" "Are we idiots?" yes, yes you are.

If you are going to build a tiny house, put it on a barge, and bring it over to your private island, it might make sense (and be cheaper than trucking the materials and workers out to the island). Otherwise...no.

I know the florida couple was trying to sell container houses, but why would they use that particular one as an example? Sure, the furniture piece was cool but it was completely wrong sized for the space. Even the "you can pull out this bed for you guys" was asinine because you could pull it out to twin width, not any further. I did like the episode where the lady was looking at one that the kitchen was raised and a bed pulled out from under it (and storage under the pull out stairs. It had a bed in the loft area too. If you didn't need a second bed, you could turn that pullout bed into lots of storage space. That's where all the books could go! It was one of the more practical tiny houses I've seen. I am guessing it is difficult to come up with things you don't like in a tiny house you aren't going to buy and they fall on the default "gosh this is so small, why isn't there X full-sized appliance?" The couple with three kids and a fourth on the way who got the ugly green bus were just idiots. They also had a dog. Six people and a dog living in a school bus? Color me skeptical. I am with those who think they just couldn't afford an RV for their camping trip. And ew ew ew on those mattresses. Don't show that on TV you gross people. The layout of the bus was one of the more practical ones (other than the bathroom).

Incorrect. The only Olympic sport where men and women compete as equals is equestrian. Sailing, tennis, ice dancing, and figure skating pairs have mixed teams. Women boxers do not contend against male boxers, etc.

Diving is judged and yet the announcer always had a pretty good idea of what kind of scores each dive was going to get. It wasn't some big mystery why one dive scored x and another scored y. Maybe people who watch synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics a whole lot (and dancesport) can watch a routine and figure out immediately what kind of score that will get, but I sure as hell couldn't. And I dislike anything that has an artistic impression or choreography component. I hate that in figure skating too, so it isn't just summer sports that incite my wrath. The addition of theatrical elements does not improve the overall impression--it looks like theater, not sport. I wish artistic gymnasts wore more sporty leotards (and shorts, god, shorts, I have seen too much of Aly Raisman's ass and know too much about Catalina Ponor's waxing routine) but at least their scores are not dependent on how much bling and eye makeup they have on. Can't say that about SS, RG, or I am guessing dancesport. Now if dancesport were completely replacing both rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming, I could get behind that. I like sports where men and women can compete together/against each other.

Well, Al is 60, maybe he will take early retirement. Fingers crossed.

I think RG needs to go (SyncSwimming too) unless they become coed or have a men's version. Equality across the board and all that. I also prefer timed sports vs judged ones (and anything with a ref is judged) and any sport that has choreography judged is getting the side eye from me. the complete domination of the sport by a single country is as worrisome in RG as it is in women's basketball. RG is lovely to watch and clearly athletic, but I would drop it in a second from the Olympic program (the team competition if not the individual) and add spots back to artistic gymnastics (which now will only get teams of four for the Olympics, 12 teams vs RG teams of 5, 14 teams) or trampoline which gets only 16 per gender. Rhythmic had 70 in the team section and I am not sure how many individuals (24? 16?). Not really necessary to have that many when the single rule seems to be: Russia Wins.

Yeah and until the old guard of sexist jerks dies off or retires, expect it to be business as usual. They are in too deep to deviate from the formula and risk a ratings slide that affects their advertising and until the hire someone with vision, it will be the same announcers saying the same tired lines and pushing the same storylines. They *could* try new things in non-Olympic years (like firing Trautwig) but the best they can come up with is an asinine stoplight system.

The per capita counts are misleading though because it assumes you have no more medal - worthy athletes than the quota allows. Using Women's Gymnastics as an extreme example, the US could have fielded 3 medal contending teams (one made solely of Texans) and if the all around and event finals didn't here 2 per country quotas, all 5 women could have made the all around and 3 swept the podium. The floor exercise and beam would have had at least 3 in it, all medal threats. If the 2 other imaginary US teams were there, another uneven bars medal threat, vault threat, and floor exercise reigning world medalist would have contended. The women's hurdles that the US swept is an example where they couldn't have won more medals, but the reigning world record holder didn't even make the team. Either way, it is interesting to see the ways to break it down. Number of medals vs delegation size would be interesting but team sports would skew that. It is also interesting to see that Russia did okay even without track and the US didn't snap up all their missed medals. A lot of countries seem to have shared the benefits of Russia being absent.

NBC should have some good data from the US for this Olympics on what was streamed live, what was streamed after the fact, what wasn't looked at all. That will likely inform some of their programming decisions for the next time. If only they would release it so we all could see and they would release what info they are using to determine that Ryan Seacrest is a good addition to the team. Because I want to have words with those people.

I am straight and never found him appealing until they did a late night segment on him and showed he loves his dog. Okay, I softened a little there. But otherwise, never saw much appeal. I will also admit that I think Tori Bowie is my new girl-crush. I also think that from a certain point of view, he was exaggerating for attention and not exactly lying. It seems the elements of the story were there, taxi, badges, guns, money exchanging hands (though not Lochte's it seems) in a dodgy way and to a drunken idiot asshole, those have the makings of a fine story to get a little limelight back. If the gas station owner tried to get a bit more out of them than was strictly necessary to cover the cost of spraying down the wall and replacing the poster, well, who can blame him? If Lochte wanted to make himself out to be the hero he already is in his own mind, well, he's an idiot. Idiot + booze + "adventures" = finally I am getting some attention away from Michael Phelps!

NBC believes that Nancy Housewife likes the story and drama and doesn't know how to watch sports. She wants reality TV. So they don't clutter her little mind up with facts and statistics and instead use an asinine red-yellow-green stoplight system to tell you if the score is good--and they need to re-explain it every broadcast. No explanation why diving doesn't need this system, but Gymnastics viewers are apparently too simple to figure out that difficulty is one number, execution is another number and the final score is the simple addition of the two. Even the execution deductions are fairly logical once you know what to look for (.1 step, .1 leg separation, .3 hop, etc) and anyone can understand that getting an 8.8 out of 10 is not bad at all, they don't need to be told 1.2 deductions is a green score! It is also why you get cameras following Aly's parents in the stand and endless chalking up instead of showing actual routines and why during US Trials, the camera was on Gabby's back for three minutes, waiting for her to turn around so the NBC voyeurs could get a glimpse of tears to broadcast. It is why Nastia has to play along like everyone has a chance to make the team when anyone who follows the sport knew the team was 99% set and Nastia knew it too. So we can get the high school drama of catching the tears and anguish of those who didn't make the cut.

It is similar to how Johnny and Tara with Terry Gannon were superior during the daytime coverage of Figure Skating at the Sochi Olympics. Well, as soon as they are moved to primetime, they have to push the party line and a lot of the fun and off-the-cuff stuff is lost. Johnny is still managing to be unique and have some flavor in his announcing, but it is a lot flatter than it was before they had to hit their expected talking points.

Clearly you missed "King Kohei" from the last 8 years (though he is on the backend of his career and hasn't been quite as dominant). Regarding the streaming/app/other, I hooked a laptop directly up to my TV and streamed using the internet. No apps required. Thank you HDMI ports.

I thought NBC was actually very low-key in their mentioning that it is a potential future issue but that she is fine competing in the games. They even mentioned how terrible the previous handling of her situation was and how things that should have been private, weren't. But they had to mention it because anyone who knows her story or just tunes in can see the difference in physiology between her (and, honestly, Wambui) compared to the other women in the final. It is believed (but not confirmed) that while the IAAF had a limit on the testosterone in your blood to be considered for women's competition, she was on suppressors and her results were more in line with the rest of the field. Since those requirements were overturned, her times have significantly improved. While everyone has different advantages and disadvantages due to their physiology and biology, and working to utilize or overcome them is the nature of sport, it is an issue that requires further discussion as our understanding of the fluidity of gender increases.

Nastia has mentioned that her commentary has been essentially neutered by the network. She is given notes on what points to hit and told not to clutter up the broadcast with details. Same with Daggett. NBC thinks that Nancy Housewife just wants to see the pretty girls "fly high and stick the landing" and doesn't want to know about the work, requirements, or history that goes into any of the moves (aside from hearing for the 15th time that Aly's beam dismount is named for US OGM Carly Patterson). Daggett is very informative and insightful when live tweeting an event. So he does know his stuff. Nastia is told not to tell us that Aly is really awful on bars and has to choke out "that was a really good routine!" when she knows that it will be a low scorer. She also has to play along with the manufactured drama of "The Russian is winning, Simone could lose the medal!" when anyone who follows the sport even a little knows that Simone's BB and FX advantages meant she could have sat on the beam and had a cup of tea and still won. My only complaint about the daytime guys was that someone needed to give them results in a bigger font or something because Jim kept reading things that were 14s as 15s and that is a pretty big difference in gymnastics. Track, well, Hammond and Ato were getting a little awful toward the end. Hammond: The men's 5,000 prelims where the top two get automatic qualifying spots to the final with American Someone attempting to get one of those two automatic transfer spots in the men's 5,000 prelims. Yes, Tom, we got it. Men. 5,000. Prelims. 2 spots. No need for 3 repeats. Ato too was getting a little fatigued it seemed and started getting repetitive and inane. Or the notes he was given to mention were inane. It could be that my threshold for Hammond is lower than most because of how awful he is at figure skating announcing. Seacrest was useless during the closing ceremonies but at least we had Mary Carillo and Mike Tirico to see us through. Would have loved to see their expressions every time Seacrest opened his mouth and stupid fell out.

For anyone who wanted a scenic montage: http://stream.nbcolympics.com/nbc-day-15-primetime Skip to around 3:48:15 if you don't want to watch it all again.

Yeah, nothing can top Barcelona unless aliens with laser eyes come and light Tokyo's cauldron (it's possible!)