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Sheikh Yerbouti

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  1. I agree about triangulating a scramble, or inserting some other hint that choosing order wisely is good strategy. Maybe creating challenges and making it clear that one is about luck (needle in a haystack), one is about brains or fine motor skills (when will adrenaline make that most difficult?), and one is about brawn (when will you best be able to tackle a physical task and still have energy to complete the leg). I love the scramble concept so it’s not just a first-in first-out line of boring tasks as final legs tend to be, and I hope it's here to stay. Unfairly physical is relative. I practice flying trapeze as a hobby. I was able to do knee hang without having any other athletic background, with caveats I'll explain below. As a bucket list / date night activity, it’s all about timing and letting physics and the lines puller do the work. I would not have been able to swim out to a buoy or climb endless flights of stairs to get my next clue, but that doesn't make the physical aspect of the Race any less fair. I am sure there were several practice rounds without a catcher before Corey’s “first try.” Knee hang is the very first trick recreational schools teach, and a fair number of people can get the timing good enough to catch by the end of the first class. I felt all the Rob though. I took several classes (averaging seven turns per class) to be able to invert with catch timing, and a couple more after that to catch consistently. Rob had the added challenge that he probably needed to look for someone signing the prompts. Flying trapeze is all about timing, and beginners have it drilled into them to listen for the calls. You need the "ready!" / "hep!" to leave the board at the right time, and you need the “legs up!” / “hands off!” / “hep!” to complete the knee hang and catch at the right time. Hard enough to get that right when you can hear the cues but your brain has the zoomies trying to figure out what your body is doing. More difficult if you’re relying on visual cues (such as the catcher clapping). The straddling around the bar is called hocks style, and I'm glad that was given as an option for the guys who needed it. Tucking/piking under the bar simply isn't possible for some people depending on body proportions (arm length compared to torso and legs), no matter how athletic they are or how much flexibility and compression strength they have. I struggled with trying to pull my legs between my arms for two or three classes before an instructor finally taught me hocks, and only then was I able to progress. To this day, I do every trick I can hocks style, and skip any that can only be done with a true tuck or pike under the bar. While I didn’t enjoy any of those bands’ style of music, and yes my ears did bleed, I’m hesitant to blame the bands themselves. Have you ever heard a cell phone recording of a very good live show? The bootleg sounds horrific. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt that production goofed the audio setup. I mean, they’re professionals, and goofing the audio is unlikely…but I’d rather think that than think TAR hired three terrible bands for the evening. Those hugs among the winning and waiting teams at the finish line looked genuine. This is what happens when you cast likable teams. The Race speaks for itself, no need to stunt cast or manufacture drama to be enjoyable to watch. Take heed, producers! Bickering is not entertaining. Amazing scenery and clever tasks are entertaining. Final random thought. “Coarse language” in the tv rating indeed. They edited the glass blowing to sound as dirty as possible.
  2. Yes, this exactly. I learned how to drive stick in a right-hand-drive car on the left side of the road. It was adjusting to the opposite in the United States that was the challenge for me, LOL. And to be honest, I preferred shifting with my left hand while keeping my dominant right hand on the steering wheel. This season of 90-minute episodes knocked (hurled?) it out of the park. My favorite final three ever. My favorite roadblock ever. (Until next week, perhaps, as the previews show my favorite hobby as part of the final leg.) Riverdancing has to be one of the most brutally precise performance tasks The Amazing Race has ever done. I could listen to this show all day, although I’m sure hearing the same sequence over and over must have driven the waiting partners crazy. Doing so many physical tasks and then having to slow my adrenaline-driven lizard brain down enough to memorize and recite convoluted poetry, knowing it was the only thing standing in the way of being one of the final three teams, would have fried me.
  3. It would be wild if this episode piqued more interest in Slovenia than having a Slovenian First Lady of the United States.
  4. This might be my favorite episode yet. So much old-fashioned racing drama. Smart transportation maneuvering undone by train delay, but would have been undone by hours of operation anyway. Running off confidently in the wrong direction. Footrace up the stairs. A competitive team bailing a climb they could have won. Footraces everywhere, down to the final mat. I love when teams are in the same camera shot so we know the closeness isn’t just editing shenanigans. I was shocked to realize TAR had never been to Slovenia. I know they've been to Croatia and Romania, and the other Balkan countries have some really stunning scenery as well. Beautiful scenery and brutal tasks, and it’s always fun to say “I’ve been there / lived there!” when watching this show. There were several points where I seriously thought about the medical screening and safety precautions production must take. I consider myself reasonably healthy, but even seasonal allergies can knock me on my butt. They would have had to carry me off the field in an ambulance had I attempted the hay task. Same with the stairs. My stubborn, competitive spirit would have ignored all warning signs that I was about to collapse from a heart attack. I seriously worried about Rob when I saw the preview for the second staircase task. The editors must have really loved this team, because they only showed Rob’s initial lack of enthusiasm at another climb and then arrival at the clue box, and none of the certain struggle on the way up. I gave some side-eye to the people who didn’t get 1991 on the first try. I wondered whether they had to prove they saw the numbers before attempting to answer the question, because most people could have — should have — known the answer from the clue alone. This is not History with a capital H we learned in school. The fall of the Berlin Wall, dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s comprised an all-consuming series of current event we lived in real time and that entered even elementary school lesson planning (remember the Weekly Reader?) …. And then I realized that only really applied to anyone over the age of 40 or so, and probably even then primarily to military brats. And then I felt very old and wondered about the day when youngins would struggle to remember when September 11 happened because it was something they maybe learned in school and not part of their lived experience. Anyway back to the race. Lena and Morgan’s departure was telegraphed when they gave a very glum-looking talking head, while Whine-aleigh had none of that. Sorry to see the sisters go. Their bickering was annoying but relatable to my sibling relationships. I do wonder if this team did something to piss off production, because even scenes that could have been edited as power moments throughout their race (e.g., polishing off a plate of bugs to win the express pass) were edited to show them in their worst light. The top three teams to finish are my top three for the win. If either Rob, Corey, Greg, or John is single and into women of a certain age, call me! I live in the neighborhood of America’s premier Deaf university and only Deaf Starbucks, plus lots of local businesses have ASL-capable people on staff. Rob and Corey would be very comfortable in my home. :-)
  5. I'm not surprised that the kind of spatial disorientation that makes Lena unable to read a map or discern left from right would also make it hard for her to distinguish between a six and a nine, underlined or not, floating in the water and viewed from the air.
  6. I’m not always clear what the racers see on their clue cards compared to what Phil describes, but from description alone, making rice paper wrappers (essentially crepe technique) would have been the obvious choice over dressing a motorcycle. Then again, I’d take my chances in a kitchen over a mechanic’s shop any day. I also would have chosen paper over plastic simply because of the environmental factor implied in the name play. When given the choice in a grocery store, I always choose (presumably recyclable) paper over (in landfills for thousands of years) plastic. Choosing the plastic detour would have felt like choosing the petrochemical bag tax, and my overthinking mind would have concluded that the race runners designed the tasks accordingly. Paper all the way! Morgan and Lena made a choice about the express pass with the best information they had at the time. In retrospect, they would have been better off doing the boats and skipping the detour. Or making the call sooner and also choosing the paper detour. Or not using it at all. Even if they’d come in last, they’d still be in the race. Because it was a (non) non-elimination leg. “Search for Phil on the mat” ≠ “Make your way to the Pit Stop.”
  7. I like all of the teams this season, which means every week I’ll see a team I like eliminated. That said, I’m happy the casting seems to be biased toward love of the Race than toward drama for the sake of drama. I didn’t even notice the rank order didn’t shift much because the tasks seemed to provide plenty of potential to jump ahead based on skill. I wonder how long they actually took. I would have noped on out of the lotus task. I live near the Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens in DC, and I love the annual lotus and water lily festival. But I refuse to go if the lotuses have peaked and empty seed pods await. Trypophobia, anyone? I don’t go into water if I can’t see the bottom, and fish and mosquitos and spiders and NOPE. The fact that there were so many new buds among the wilted blossoms and empty pods was very distracting. A plant plant for the show? The shopping task was made for Victor and Jocelyn. “I speak the language and own a grocery store that sells these things,” LOL. I thought the other teams that tried this would have been really hung up, but editing magic made it look like everyone blew through, and any mistakes were quickly correctable. Jackfruit is my favorite meat substitute for party dishes like buffalo chicken dip and barbecue pulled pork. I realized this episode that I would not recognize a jackfruit in the wild, because I only know it out of a can. Same for a lot of the other tropical and exotic fruits I know by name but not by pre-deconstructed appearance.
  8. Laura Donnelly (Jenny) plays Elsa Bloodstone in Werewolf by Night, the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe available on Disney+. Fun for Halloween viewing!
  9. I'd watch that spinoff too. If I remember correctly, Colin and Che did this during the off-season a few years ago. A weekly half-hour Weekend Update during the summer. I enjoyed most of the sketches in this episode, but I'm also probably part of MTS's target audience. The way some of you feel baffled about the humor in girl talk and booty workouts is the way I feel during most segments most weeks. It's a big world with lots of content worth satirizing. Doesn't have to be dumpster fire politics and white dude humor all the time.
  10. Yikes. What a waste of a Friday evening. Promising premise, terrible execution. The whole plane crash survival storyline was just the background to an extended therapy session. Lots of endless flashbacks and hallucinations of parental and relationship angst amidst silliness like her not getting thirsty and searching for water until day three or four of her ordeal in the wilderness. And don't get me started on the ending. Skip this one.
  11. I'm so glad I wasn't the only one who thought this. I was so confused by the whole sequence. Why was she taking a pregnancy test in a store and not at home? Why did the scene end with a closeup of the test in the trash? Why was there only one line indicating "not pregnant"? Was the whole thing manufactured drama meant to test Kobe's commitment? How long was she going to carry out the charade?
  12. That's too bad. I'm sure COVID also had something to do with truncating season six. Having never read the books and just going by show alone, I could think of lots of storylines they could have delved into that wouldn't involve Cait/Claire at all. More Young Ian with the Mohawks. Fergus and Marsali in New Bern. Checking in on Jenny and Ian at Lollybroch, with a scene of seeing how Laoghaire is dealing with knowing her daughter ran off with people she despised. Following Morag MacKenzie after she parted ways with Roger after their voyage. More 1960s/70s anything. Anything at all connecting the 1770s storyline with the 20th century. On the podcasts, the showrunners always talk about how they film more than they fit into an episode. Even an episode of cut scenes would have been welcome to fill out the season.
  13. [Channeling The Amazing Race] One month, six seasons, two hundred years of drama…binge complete and I now officially can join the ranks of people suffering through Droughtlander. Agree that I would have liked to see Claire reacting to the whistling of the time traveller the next cell over. Although I realize she would have been put in the women’s part of the jail, not a cell near a man. Minor detail in the land of time travel, nine lives, and Colonel Bogey. Who else can’t hear that song without singing, “Bobos, they make your feet feel fine. Bobos, they cost a dollar twenty-nine….”? Regarding how few Ridge settlers showed up to help the Frasers, it must have been terribly slow to comb through 10,000 acres of land (15.6 square miles or about four miles square) on horseback or foot to rally up the troops. Might have been more efficient to light the Celtic cross up high. But also wondering why eviction notices weren’t handed out to people who turned against their landlords in the months of shunning leading up to the homestead siege in the first place. I know previously a great deal was made about Jamie not being able to afford the taxes on the land without settlers, but at this point in history (dawn of the American Revolution), surely he would have known he’d have space to sort out his own traitors. I have so many impressions (not coherent enough to be called thoughts) about life in the 18th century North Carolina backcountry as depicted on the show. The layers upon layers of clothing worn in southern / mid-Atlantic heat and humidity. The citizen patrols dedicated more to vigilantism and rounding up escaped slaves (the latter not depicted this season but historically accurate) than true justice, believed by many to be the origins and ethos of modern day police forces in America. The uneducated small-mindedness and hypocrisy that still plague communities today. Still thinking the whole lot of time travelers are crazy for choosing to stay in that era, Jamie Fraser or not. I think Allan is the father, but Tom is the murderer, and his insistence on accompanying Claire isn’t so much to protect her until she can receive a “fair” trial as it is to be able to confess during said trial.
  14. I thought we were going too see his reaction ping for the characters as well. The curious, knowing glances between Jamie and Claire as Allan possessively hugged the baby's coffin to his chest. Then cutting to Jamie standing on the porch, staring off into space while the cogs visibly turned in his head. Then what I thought was his "Zoinks! I know who the father is!" moment as he turned on his heels to head into the house. Only to confront Lizzie for her fabulous three-way action. Live vicariously through me. I just finished the penultimate episode of all the episodes currently in existence after a monthlong binge of six seasons, and I'm going into the finale still unspoiled about the story ahead.
  15. Even later to the game that you are, courtesy of a Netflix binge. I too feel like there's something more to Ulysses. In a time when it was illegal to teach slaves how to read or write, he's literate, well-spoken, and debonair. Where (or when) did he come from?
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