SVNBob

This is why this upcoming season of The Amazing Race will be the first one I've seen in years. I couldn't keep track of the time shifts because of run-over. And it's a shame, because I love TAR.

20 days and counting. And just for the record, I was never a pirate. Just often pirate-adjacent, or at least pirate-approximate.

One could say I've had some experience in the matter...

In honor of the ocassion, a round of grog for everyone. Courtesy of the crown. May their coffers never be empty...til we get to them, eh crew!?

The only observation I had for Einhorn's trick was that he got the names of all the male participants while they were in the audience, then had them come up on stage to get mic'd and name tagged. Plenty of time for an off-stage assistant to add names to the "predictions". Plus there aren't as many possibilities for how the trick could shake down as Einhorn suggested. He was saying "thousands" or "millions" (which is an obvious exaggeration). But if my math is correct, there are only 216 possible combinations of tables, food, men, and envelopes. Getting 1 possibility out of 216 is still impressive.

Or the fact that Morgan had Wossy seated deliberately facing him and still for the "silhouette" and there was a camera behind Wossy to show us the cards.... But I personally agree with the speculation in the spoiler thread. It makes the most sense.

The US remake of Life on Mars handled using the Towers in a very powerful way. For those that missed both series (UK and US), Sam Tyler is a present day (for the US version, 2008) cop that gets in a car accident, and wakes up 35 years in the past. The scene that follows his waking up plays out very much the same in both versions, but since Sam is NYPD in the US version, that scene ends on him in stunned disbelief at seeing the Towers in their full and recently opened glory. This is the only version of the scene I could find, but the music is wrong. It's supposed to be the titular Bowie. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6xp4k_travel-back-to-1973-w-sam-tyler-on_shortfilms

Not that it's necessary, but 5 Athena (JayKay, CuriousParker, RA, Dougal, SVNBob) -1 to complete the side.

While it was nice to see their reaction, I thought it was too much, and for the same reasons stated here. Yeah, he did the trick pretty well, but some of his moves were way obvious. Even in P&Ts version with clear cups and Penn narrating the trick the entire time, some of the moves they do are still subtle. Gazzo was not as subtle, and very obvious in places, so I would not praise him as much as P&T did.

Two ideas along this line of thought: What if they still could find the HII by just looking, but they still need the clue anyway? Like say the HII is locked in a chest, and the combination and/or key is with the clues. And the combination isn't necessarily written in the clue, but is hinted or riddled at (take the age of X player, add Y's age, divide by the number of Z's siblings... that kind of stuff). I suppose they could brute force a combination, having loads of free time. But someone hiding away from camp for long enough to do that? They'd probably get caught. Or what if the HII is incomplete. And information on what is needed to complete the HII is in the clue. Example: HII hidden under a significant tree near camp. Clue points that way but also says (in Survivor Poetry, of course) "Once the Idol you have found/ take a feather from the ground/ Tie it to the Idol neat/ Then the Idol is complete. The feather is/ the Idol's trick./ With no feather/ it's just a stick."

From the Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks album. I've still got that disc. Probably should pull it out again soon. Lots of good covers on it. Blind Melon's cover of Three is a Magic Number is also very good. Let me guess...there's a list of seven words....

For those that are interested, there's now the SleepyCast; the official Sleepy Hollow podcast. It's a Nerdist* Network podcast, but was actually conceived of by the producers of Sleepy Hollow, so this particular cast will have tons of cast and crew access. In fact, one of the interviews in this first episode is Orlando Jones. Right now the show is in recap/refresher mode, giving the highlights and brief summaries of 2 or 3 episodes along side interviews with cast and crew about the first season. But once season 2 starts in September, they'll be doing reactions to the new episodes as they air, the day after. *For those that care, the Nerdist himself has not appeared, yet (it is only the first episode after all).

It's technically Dusk, I guess. That means a Day has been officially called but Night hasn't yet started. So we're in the weird between time. Fortunately, the bar opens at Dusk. So I'll have one of my usual.

Finally, a bit of logic I can follow. And a consensus. In the nick of time too. 5 BizBuzz (CuriousParker, RA, Athena, Dougal, SVNBob) 0 to put on giant sunglasses and a feather boa.

First one accusation flies, then another one flies, then another one flies...lord is this confusing. That's why I've been standing back. Trying to stay out of the crossfire and waiting for something more stable and concrete to come out of all this discussion. There's no consensus yet to vote with or against. And I've got nothing to add that hasn't been brought up already.

Some people might remember Ricky Jay from an episode of The X-Files. He played a magician that, for a special live performance, rotated his own head 360 degrees without an apparatus. He was later found dead; decapitated. He also guested on an episode of Mythbusters helping Jaime and Adam with a myth about using playing cards as lethal projectiles.

Since you're a JP fan, I recommend checking out the second season of Solitary, as he's one of the contestants in that iteration.

Which had to have been a joke made in the one show at some point.

That explains the lack of Zoe and Victoria. And Ben and Polly. And Dodo.

As I told my mother: They had to leave her there. Otherwise, it would have spoiled the joke. That said, I did like their misdirection technique of telling the audience one way the trick is done while actually doing it another way.

By the math, that is correct. 10 players left. Majority is half plus one. 5 egavasc (stacey, TMunz, Dougal, JayKay, SVNBob) 1 to scratch with pages torn a phone book found at a pay phone.

Actually, I think a non-album format, (i.e., strictly singles released via download) would be better for a parody artist like Al. The biggest reason: temporal capitalization. How many flash-in-the-pan songs have there been in the last 30 years that Al did write a parody for but didn't release because the wonder of the one-hit had passed before the rest of his next album was ready? Probably quite a few. But now, without having to fill an album, Al has the freedom to release a song whenever he has one ready to go. And according to the interview linked above, he's thinking the same thing right now.

I'm confused, and tired, and in need of a drink. Bar-elf, please pass me a beer from my personal stash.

I know CSI started this trend, and they actually had a reasonable explanation for why they do that. Small bits of evidence tend to show up better in a dark room under a directed light beam than in a lit room under the diffuse light. Here's the thing, it actually seems to work. I've lost small objects in a well-lit room and cannot see them at all. But when I turned off the lights and used a flashlight to look, in the exact same spots, I found the objects

So I was trawling through TVTropes.org, as one does, and hit their pages on Crowning Music of Awesome. Which reminded me of several great moments to share. A couple from awards shows: The 2003 Grammys. The "In Memoriam" segment ended on Joe Strummer, which lead into a powerhouse performance of "London Calling" in tribute, performed by Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, Steven Van Zandt, and No Doubt. The 1998 Grammys. Pavarotti was scheduled to receive the Living Legend award and perform, but he was ill and his doctors advised against it. So with only around 20 minutes notice, they found the one person in the building who not only knew the song Pavarotti was to perform, but was the really the only person who could have filled the spot. The Queen Diva herself, Aretha Franklin. And a couple from when MTV was actually in the music business. MTV Unplugged. A great concept. Get the popular performers of the day to do acoustic sets of their songs. Worked great for Eric Clapton and Nirvana. Then they did something that no one expected and probably shouldn't have worked. They got a rapper to go unplugged. LL Cool J. And he did knock it out, because his mama said so. Then there was Ultimate Mash-ups. Before abandoning music, MTV tried to capitalize on the popular Internet trend of the music mash-up. The concept for the show was to get two artists of disparate genres and have them mash-up their songs. Only one collaboration and thus only one episode was ever made of this series. But it did lead to some awesome music. And of course, there was also this.