simplyme

RHAP is what? Is that the podcast?

Upon reflection, I'll agree with this. It's an excellent point that most sports have multiple levels that people can play at, not just pro. At this point, ANW really doesn't.

Lots of sports take into account your appearance and backstory, especially for women. A player's marketability in part determines whether they get hired or sponsored. Ever seen an ugly women's ice skater? It's also easier to make it in, say, NASCAR* if you are good-looking and highly marketable. I'd certainly say that the UFC prefers attractive female MMA fighters. That said, I don't feel that enough of ANW is standardized yet for it to quite count as a sport. Having different obstacles at different cities essentially sets the standards differently for various competitors. I would also note that I don't necessarily see sport and reality competition as two completely different things. The difference here is that sports are not tied to a specific tv show. ANW is tied to the tv show, and should the show cease I would be surprised if it could continue on its own as a sport. *Having had the "Is NASCAR a sport?" discussion with friends, my answer is yes. We used the highly scientific method of asking "Can I do it with a beer in one hand?" to determine the answer.

My brother and I refer to something similar as the Little Gods Are Listening. Whenever someone says something that tempts fate like "I haven't had a car accident since I was 16!", the Little Gods can hear them and BAM! Accident. It happens all the time in sports. A commentator notes that the QB hasn't had an interception in some stupid number of pass attempts. Next throw? Intercepted. Maybe there's a Little God who watches ANW and listens for Akbar to say he believes?

That's something I'd totally do. @SophiaD did you mean Tremayne Dortch?

I admit I don't watch BB (aside from the second season of Australia's BB years ago, which was apparently very different), but I love reading the recaps and forums for my amusement. I don't know who the female houseguest on the left in the photo is, but for my personal aesthetics I'm hoping that's either a really bad photo or they start feeding her big sammiches pronto. I'm assuming the guy is Victor, and he's about a gold necklace and lowcut shirt away from a job at a shifty used car lot.

An excellent way to phrase it, Nashville. Thank you. :) I simply picked an example for each group she mentioned. I'm sure we could do the same for almost any such group.

I particularly loved her singling out Russians, Germans, and Italians as peaceful people. Every ethnicity has within it the capacity for terrorism and horror. To name extremely well-known examples attributed to some members of those ethnicities that she apparently missed: the terror tactics of the KGB, the Holocaust, and the mafia's tactics. Deciding that someone is peaceful or not based on ethnicity is stupid.

Well, this post did it. Tipped me right over the edge into adding Cheers to my Netflix list. Thanks, Mr. Ramos.

My brother and I to this day can sing the Albania song, and at least once a year one of us references it.

Apparently you were not as scarred for life as I was by Ninja Baby, the man who wore a balaclava, baby bonnet, and giant diaper and not much else during Season 6 (I think?). Or possibly you erected a protective mental barrier over that memory. *shudders* He may even have been on more than one season.

And if that's true, that money is well deserved, because that was handled really horribly. They treated it like it was a joke and she was overreacting by being upset, yet in most (all?) US states it is illegal to rub up against someone in that manner without consent. You can't punch someone, but Hatch got away with that. It was bs. *gets off her soapbox* Happy belated 4th, Americans!

Well, Nina was definitely the star of that article.

I mostly remember thinking Ian had gone insane, then wanting to smack all three of them. Repeatedly. The details of who did or said what between Tom, Katie, and Ian got lost in the fog of time, but oh, the urge to smack is still clear as day.

Oh! Brian! He's one of the best examples I can think of where luck screws the player.

I sort had a knee jerk reaction when Brian Arnold came back the next year after making it to Stage 3 and said, "Hey, I quit my job to train for this full time!" Then I realized it wasn't my marriage and I don't know their financials. Maybe they have an agreement that in a few years his wife gets to quit her job and write The Great American Novel while he supports them and the kids or something. Anyways, I admit he's still not my favorite, but intellectually I can realize it may not be fair to him. You may dislike him for completely different reasons... or just disagree with me. :)

Great links in that article. I certainly understand that there are people annoyed by her voice, and I don't think that makes them misogynists. People just react differently to different sounds, tones, and affectations. I honestly don't even notice the vocal fry when she talks. I don't know why. It could be that I spent years working with the public and people with a wide variety of backgrounds and accents. Or that I spent a number of years in Pittsburgh, home of Pittsburghese. Once you hear people that sound like this YouTube video, things like vocal fry don't register. :) Or I could just be slow. :P Mostly I think we can all stop assuming that if people don't have the same reaction to her voice, it must be because they either didn't listen enough or there's something wrong with them. People have different experiences and notice different things. I think Michele's voice may just be one of those "agree to disagree" topics.

Good for him! Also good for your mom. She sounds a bit like my dad, who once called me to remind me that "the new Ninja Turtle show was on." It took me a good two or three minutes to figure out he meant the new season of ANW was starting, but I appreciated (and was amused by) it.

Okay. Started thinking about this more and decided to just do the math. Curse you. Turns out we're both wrong. Assuming a 100 pound Kacy and a 160 pound NinjaX with the same velocity when they hit the tramp, they get the same bounce (disregarding friction, air resistance, etc. I had to assume straight up rather than a specific trajectory.) If anyone wants to see my math (because admittedly it's been a loooong time since I took physics and I've been known to make mistakes), feel free to ask. This site on trampoline physics was helpful for formulas. (I also converted their weights into mass first.)

I want to toss in that although height/wingspan are Kacy's most common problems with the way the course is built, her slight weight can work against her too. Anything that involves a tramp, for example, it will be harder for her to hit the tramp with as much force as a competitor with more mass and harder to get a really good bounce. (Force = mass x acceleration. With her smaller mass, she would have to accelerate more to get the same force.) Anything where ninjas apply body weight to momentum to help move objects (like that square die that they hang from and "roll" along a track) will also be harder. Of course, she also has a lower center of gravity and she doesn't have to support 200 pounds by her fingertips in certain obstackes either. You definitely want to be built lean and between 5'8" and 5'11" to have the optimal build, imo. This is one reason why I've always liked Dustin McKinney, for the record. He's something like 5'2".

I can't imagine trying to do an ANW course with Parkinson's either. Good Lord. When Kristine asked the guy with seven daughters what it meant to have them all there, things got a bit sarcastic in the Simply household. Poorly phrased, Kristine. (Comments started with "I didn't forget one at WalMart" and went downhill from there.)

Stop writing longhand and get a computer? Did they cast Gen Xers or Neanderthals?

I think they would then have to standardize the city qualifiers to all be the same. Other than that, paying some amount to finishers is reasonable to me, with bonuses for top times. The more stages you complete, the more you get paid. This would essentially be changing the payout system from the gameshow-like "Winner gets all... or nothing!" and moving to a more conventionally performance-based tiered spread of the loot. A lot of sports and other competitions (poker tournaments, for example) give the first place finisher the lion's share of the money, but second, third, etc. place also get smaller payouts. The only problem with this is that while I certainly think it's fair, I don't see any incentive for the producers to do it. Their goal is to make the most money they can.

The reason NFL players are paid a decent amount is that the level of talent and commitment it requires to play at that level is a rare commodity. Also, they're unionized. NFL stars get huge wages because they are gamechangers. The level of talent required to be a ninja at this point just isn't as rare. If 20 of the "best" ninjas were to suddenly not compete anymore, they could be replaced without a drastic difference in the product quality. If you removed the top 20 players from the NFL, it would be noticeable. There is often a large talent gap between first and second string, and an even larger one between second/third string and college level. Maybe we should compare it to pro golf instead, as that is a person vs environment sport where the best performer wins rather than team vs team. If the top 20 golfers in the world disappeared, they would be hard to replace. That said, pro golfers make money by winning and through endorsements. They don't get paid to train and play. They actually have to pay an entry fee for tournaments, too.

Well, sure. There are lots of things I'd love for someone to pay me to do. :) But realistically they're only going to get paid by NBC if one of two scenarios occurs. 1. They successfully make it up Mt. M the fastest. 2. The amount of free, good talent drops to the point that NBC can't get enough people of sufficient caliber to do the course. Right now there's a surfeit of would-be ninjas. NBC has plenty of people who want to be on the show and are willing to for free. They aren't going to pay anyone until that pool dries up or it becomes apparent that the pool that's available has insufficient talent to be interesting. Then they might offer to pay to encourage applicants of a higher caliber. But right now? They don't need to, so it's a show producer's market. Until that changes, if ninjas want to make money off ANW, they'll have to figure out how to parlay the publicity into money--which a number have done, I suspect. I guess a third reason NBC could pay would be if someone managed to sue them over something, but I imagine the waivers for this are god awful.