selkie

The times we've seen Racers get medical care in the past, it's been from local doctors and clinics. (Achilles Tendon in Tahiti, someone getting sick in the Middle East, and probably a fe more I'm forgetting) Credentialing is likely an issue in that regard- once you get outside of the usual regional pacts like the EU, there probably aren't a ton of reciprocal agreements about accepting a medical services license for a doctor/nurse/paramedic from Country A when you're in Country B.

Note to self- roll of duct tape and some nail clippers in the pack if I ever get cast on TAR because at least you can tape up that kind of nasty ankle sprain and get some support for hobbling along. I assume that there was a 'no touching the sheep' line in the Racer's extended instructions because otherwise the dentists would have just picked them up and carried them into the pen directly.

Universal Sports is showing 10+ hours of Worlds coverage, and is available legally for any streaming device that carries the Dishworld channels for about $10 a month for their English language sports package. (edit) Are constant announcer mentions of the Chinese women lacking both endurance and power code words for 'they're undernourished even by elite gymnastics standards' because they looked pretty gaunt even in comparison to the North Korean vaulter.

For me, it's often after season four that it all starts to fall apart. Seems like the showrunners and writers at that point have run out of ideas that are both good and somewhat original and have to start recycling or revisiting the stuff they though wasn't good enough for an episode back in season 2. ER managed to avoid this by having a pretty heavy cast churn. And by George Clooney leaving the show early on so we were spared any more of the excruciating Doug/Carol romance. Clooney is a very good actor, but Doug Ross was a horribly written stock character- #27- rebel and bad boy with heart of gold- and that Clooney made him likeable to many (though not me) is a measure of his acting skill.

USA Swimming is deep enough that it's not too unusual for one of the big names to botch the annual international A squad/national team selection meet and miss qualifying for Worlds/Olympics/Pan Pacs and then successfully come back the following year just fine. The issue tends to be if you're at the level where you can final at the big international meets but don't quite have the sponsorship deals coming in- getting named to the US National Team (which is different than getting named to an Olympic or World Championships team, though there's usually about a 90% overlap between those two lists) gets you about a $38K a year stipend plus full health insurance and some additional endorsement deals from USA Swimming if you've got a Top 12-16 (it varies every year) World ranking in at least one event. So if you're on the fringes, national team status can make the difference of whether you can afford to train another year. But for someone like Phelps, even if he had a massive bad luck streak while gambling, he still doesn't need the national team money. Phelps' withdrawl means that Tim Phillips gets added to the 2015 World Championships squad in the 100 fly, and his other slots look like they roll down to swimmers already selected to the WC team. Not sure how the National Team spots shake out. I don't see USA Swimming reinstating Phelps, and suspect that there was an agreement made in conference call among Chuck Wiegus, Bob Bowman, Phelps, and USAS' legal counsel. Phelps has already met time standards for the 2016 USA Olympic Trials- Qualifying period started on July 30, 2014, and both summer nationals and Pan Pacs were after that date. So he's qualified for Trials in the 100 free, 100 back, 100 fly, and 200 IM. (Don't remember if he's got a 200 free time from Pan Pacs, and those results aren't nicely up on Omega Timing's web site.)

RFF has the Delta routing connecting through Atlanta, with a confirmed sighting on one of those flights.

While I haven't been an Amanda fan to this point, I thought there was something oddly charming about her wanting to make sure that the Yeti was treated with proper respect and integrity. I wonder if the usual reality show sleep deprivation was starting to get to her.

Most of the time, Byrnes is shown just walking with a cane, but there were times on each show (Wiseguy- showing him without prosthesis made Vinnie's connection back to the FBI seem more vulnerable, and in Highlander, he was the contrast to physically perfect people who could live forever) where they were using the disability to add some symbolism to the bigger story.

Six Feet Under was pretty good about showing occasional recreational drug use that never really turned into an addiction. When PAX was doing original programming, they had Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye about a deaf woman whose excellent lip-reading skills got her a job on an elite FBI survelance squad. Actor Jim Byrnes lost both legs in a car accident, and then was' Lifeguard' on the crime drama Wiseguy and watcher Joe Dawson on Highlander:The Series and his disability came up as a plot point on both shows. (He's also one of those guys who shows up on half the series filmed in Vancouver, so there might be more of that I haven't seen.)

In their brief time on the show, the realtors did at least give the sound effects team the chance to break out the regionally appropriate Steel Drums of Stupidity in lieu of the Gong of Stupidity and leave us amused that someone didn't wax well enough or something, leading to pixelated groin/ass. I wonder if we're going to see the dentist get his steroids confiscated by customs somewhere down the line.

The original Prisoner was big concept-big symbolism about individuality, the struggle for freedom against totalitarianism, the creepiness of incessant state surveillance, the willingness to trade freedom for relative safety, and a whole buch of other things. While the visuals were straight 60s Mod (and were part of the show's charm) the scripts seemed relevant for a long time after the show ended, and when BBC America, I think it was, aired the show again somewhere around 2003 when the hysteria to Do Something Anything about 9/11 was at its peak, there were some things that were pretty freaky when you compared show to current atmosphere. The show was really Patrick McGoohan's baby, and any attempt to remake it without him as AMC did, had about a 98% chance of missing the fundamental theme and point of why the first one was a cult classic.

For the two seasons of Boardwalk Empire I made it through, I thought that it did have something of a similar atmosphere to Carnivale. So i was always vaguely disappointed that all of the monsters in Boardwalk were entirely human and thought the show could have been livened up by a few vampires or something similar.

Over time, NBC forced the purging of a lot of the original H:LOTS detectives, a number of men as well as Kay, in favor of more attractive sorts. They kept wanting it to be more like Law & Order because that's where the ratings were better, but it just was too different.

And then NBC made them dump Kay Howard and her amazing hair for not being conventionally pretty enough. Leo was also very good as a middle aged (and looks it) lawyer in Treme.

I've heard of it too. I remember really liking it when my local PBS station was showing it in the 80s.

Jack was also smart enough to know that if you actually used a bathroom in CTU, you had a 50/50 chance of dying a horrible death before you got to the sink to wash your hands.

Basic cable is currently not regulated by the American FCC for profanity like broadcast tv is. The basic cable networks self-censor in order to try to keep it that way, and it sometimes seems pretty clear that Mad Men only gets so many 'Fuck's a season, or that they've got a limit on the number of naked ass shots they can use per episode without going to the blur on Naked and Afraid.

Although the show is not really my thing, I've got this weird compulsion to defend 'Here Comes Honey Boo Boo'. They come across a a fundamentally caring family who are supportive of Alanna's pageant dreams and generally mean welland it bugs me how a lot of the criticism seems to come down to 'how dare someone make a reality show about people who are fat and on the poor end of working class' and I'm just not big on the classism and fat-bashing vibe that comes off that criticism. I really do find them far more tolerable than the Kardashiai.

Hantuchova: the eating disorder years was kind of uncomfortable to watch because she looked like she'd snap in half at any moment. It does seem like Townsend has dropped some weight form the pictures I saw of her last year. As far as nutritionists go, she's probably at a high enough level that she can find someone competent who would work with her for an endorsement instead of cash payment.

Smile because It Happened- Jens Voigt's farewell column for Bicycling magazine: http://blogs.bicycling.com/blogs/hardlyserious/smile-because-it-happened?cid=socBL_20140830_30615956

I've rediscovered Lucky Louie on HBO, and looking back, they had a good set-up, were reliably funny and it so should have gotten at least a second season.

Bizarre for one of the athletes to just drop dead in the middle of a game. Universal sports is covering the Youth Olympic out of China meaning they bought cheap rebroadcast rights to the Eurosport English language feed. Opening ceremonies are going on right now, and their commentators aren't as snarky as the NBC crew but tend toward just as banal. I can understand why the Olympics would want to extend their brand and all, but the elite junior circuit is already pretty entrenched in many sports and they're also seriously limiting entries per country (swimming gets a maximum of 4 boys and 4 girls per country, only enough to put together a relay) so it's like they aren't ever trying to make it a real championship for the under 18s.

Crossposting the William Casey lawyer ad because he really is the godfather of the thread:

I'm starting to miss the Gatorade World Cup commercial. The editing is just so tight in terms of getting the song to sync with the soccer players, and I found myself watching all the way through every time I stumbled upon it:

As someone who gets half their network television channels from Alabama, I can say that it can get a lot worse than Titlemax: