I'm enjoying it more than I did last season. The boys vs. girls thing didn't do much for me, but watching the utter futility of this year's Morgan tribe is really fun. It's a cross between watching the '62 Mets and the Three Stooges.
It was amazing how quickly Morgan fell apart. The footage shown makes it look like they swam ashore and immediately scattered alone to shop in the village. They left their baggage unattended and their shoes were stolen. That first day in the village, the Drake team had the gal who could speak the language and they really made out with provisions, but Osten pushed really hard for Morgan to leave immediately like he was the leader or something. That's screwed them since day 1. They've gotta be asking themselves why they were in such a hurry to get to their deserted island.
And when are they going to catch on and get rid of Osten? Sure, the guy's a bodybuilder and has a lot of strength, but he's obviously not much of an athlete and doesn't add a lot even to the physical challenges. And mentally he's a basket case. I mean, why the hell did he swim out to one of the puzzle pieces last night if he knows he's not a good swimmer? He pretty much single handedly lost them the boat-sinking challenge 3 weeks ago, by standing up right on the edge of his boat and thus pushing it down hard enough to swamp it. Not to mention his constant "I'm getting out before I catch pneumonia and die." whining. He is an interesting case study in the "gym muscles" phenomena, where guys who are really bulked up and have a low body fat are almost useless when it comes to any sort of real life application of strength.
Andrew is a leader? As far as I recall, this is the first time that a tribe has officially picked a leader, and Andrew just sucks. "Well, we've got to pick up our game" is about the most leadership he's shown. What has his leadership given Drake, exactly? Lost every challenge, no food, can't fish, etc. He's got like Dubya powers; he seems smooth and self-assured so no one in his party seems to realize what a fool and failure he really is. He has a higher opinion of Osten than even Osten does. He thinks Osten is Morgan's team anchor -- and in a good way, not the anchor around their neck way that he is in reality. Also, Andrew thinks that all of that losing has made Morgan mentally stronger than Drake. Shyeah, right. The strongest LOSERS ever.
Jon's behavior is truly bizarre. But here's just a guess: he knew his scheming would break his word to someone, and he's not used to this kind of thing. So he got hyper-nervous and completely lost his composure. So not only is he kinda weird, but he's really bad and inexperienced at lying. That may be admirable, but in Survivor it means he's a goner. Jon won't make it too far. When Probst was asking him questions at tribal council, you could see Christa and (I think) Shawn sitting behind him staring at him with distrust, and they're from different factions. Nobody trusts him and he doesn't seem to be making friends.
The thing about Rupert is that he is gonna win every immunity challenge. The man must be half machine. He was tipping over boats in the boat game, holding up that girl without sweating. And look at the determination, when he said if we want to throw a challenge leave me out because he doesn't lose challenges. Damn. Go Rupert. Those guys that make fun of Rupert, they are poking at a sleeping monster. Wait till he gets pissed. That guy on adreniline is gonna just bowl everyone else over. Rupert is awesome, but maybe not sly enough to be Richard Hatch. I'll be fascinated to see if he helps Morgan win their reward challenge next week. Just feeding them should help their chances.
This season so far has been the perfect mix of wit, treachery and unbearable characters. I love Rupert and Sandra From Drake. When she traded her gold necklace for the whole grill kit AND the chicken, she earned my undying respect - as Rupert did when he stole the other team's shoes.
I am glad that it is getting harder to just survive on Survivor. Positioning yourself as a useful provider should be a more viable strategy than it has generally been before, in order to counterbalance the lazy schemers and blindly loyal drones. I'm looking forward to later in the game, when it's less about physical challenges and more about scheming and treachery. Morgan has already shown themselves to be fools by throwing the last challenge with no real reason to do so, other than a vague, "we should like, vote somebody off." and they had no idea who to vote off, but finally voted the troublemaker Burton off, and then got Rupert snatched by the bonus penalty. Their overconfidence may be their downfall, despite the incompetence of the other team.
What I never get is the frantic rush people are in to nail down alliances and, in this episode, to apparently shake things up just to shake things up. It's also interesting to watch people struggle to balance their game strategy personas with their real selves. The length of the game means that very few people can maintain their "game face and focus" in front of their competitors at all times. People just can't seem to set aside their need to bond with other players even for a few weeks. Because of that there is a constant tension with some players attempting to superimpose fair-play rules into the game while other players revel in the devious scheming and treachery of fighting dirty.
Don't call it a comeback. Despite all our best efforts to put our most hideous decade behind us,the 1970s just won't go away.
In the whiplash cycle of pop nostalgia, the era of Day-Glo smiley faces and grimy misery has come back around at least three times already, less than a quarter century after it choked on its last bong hit. We've seen endless retreads of the flared pants leg and the platform shoe, the natural and the Fu Manchu. Punk is well into its third incarnation; hell froze over and the Eagles reunited. Subtlety and grace have been cowering in the corners of commercial culture for years now; garishness clearly grabs all the attention, and sells.
<snip>
More to the point, after 20 years of American invincibility, social conditions are once again verging on the wretched. Jobs are disappearing. The power grid is proving archaic and potentially hazardous. We've got overseas conflicts with no easy withdrawal in sight. And public service is a national joke.
Sunday's New York Times Magazine was entirely devoted to the return of the '70s in the Big Apple. Among the signs: the flight of the affluent carpetbaggers, who are once again leaving the city's neighborhoods in the hands of the diverse working class. Crumbling social services. And, by way of silver lining, the resurgence of a scrappy underground arts community, making some kind of aesthetic sense of the scrap heap.
<snip>
It's fitting that the novel of the year re-creates the strife of the '70s, in all its sooty restlessness. Jonathan Lethem's "The Fortress of Solitude" is a thinly disguised account of Lethem's own upbringing in a bohemian family in a fitfully gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood. The author's deft feel for pop culture is distilled in a key passage, painful in more ways than one, in which Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music" (sing it with me, people: "white boy") provides the inescapable summertime soundtrack to his main character's unnerving 1976.
Wasn't everyone's 1976 unnerving?
In praising the book, author Michael Chabon wrote: "He captures precisely -- as only a great novelist can -- how it feels to love the world that is, on a daily basis, kicking your ass." Much like Lethem's 1970s, these double-O years are kicking our collective ass. It remains to be seen whether we'll be able to come out the other side still loving them.
I'm enjoying it more than I did last season. The boys vs. girls thing didn't do much for me, but watching the utter futility of this year's Morgan tribe is really fun. It's a cross between watching the '62 Mets and the Three Stooges.
And when are they going to catch on and get rid of Osten? Sure, the guy's a bodybuilder and has a lot of strength, but he's obviously not much of an athlete and doesn't add a lot even to the physical challenges. And mentally he's a basket case. I mean, why the hell did he swim out to one of the puzzle pieces last night if he knows he's not a good swimmer? He pretty much single handedly lost them the boat-sinking challenge 3 weeks ago, by standing up right on the edge of his boat and thus pushing it down hard enough to swamp it. Not to mention his constant "I'm getting out before I catch pneumonia and die." whining. He is an interesting case study in the "gym muscles" phenomena, where guys who are really bulked up and have a low body fat are almost useless when it comes to any sort of real life application of strength.
Andrew is a leader? As far as I recall, this is the first time that a tribe has officially picked a leader, and Andrew just sucks. "Well, we've got to pick up our game" is about the most leadership he's shown. What has his leadership given Drake, exactly? Lost every challenge, no food, can't fish, etc. He's got like Dubya powers; he seems smooth and self-assured so no one in his party seems to realize what a fool and failure he really is. He has a higher opinion of Osten than even Osten does. He thinks Osten is Morgan's team anchor -- and in a good way, not the anchor around their neck way that he is in reality. Also, Andrew thinks that all of that losing has made Morgan mentally stronger than Drake. Shyeah, right. The strongest LOSERS ever. 
Jon's behavior is truly bizarre. But here's just a guess: he knew his scheming would break his word to someone, and he's not used to this kind of thing. So he got hyper-nervous and completely lost his composure. So not only is he kinda weird, but he's really bad and inexperienced at lying. That may be admirable, but in Survivor it means he's a goner. Jon won't make it too far. When Probst was asking him questions at tribal council, you could see Christa and (I think) Shawn sitting behind him staring at him with distrust, and they're from different factions. Nobody trusts him and he doesn't seem to be making friends.
The thing about Rupert is that he is gonna win every immunity challenge. The man must be half machine. He was tipping over boats in the boat game, holding up that girl without sweating. And look at the determination, when he said if we want to throw a challenge leave me out because he doesn't lose challenges. Damn. Go Rupert. Those guys that make fun of Rupert, they are poking at a sleeping monster. Wait till he gets pissed. That guy on adreniline is gonna just bowl everyone else over. Rupert is awesome, but maybe not sly enough to be Richard Hatch. I'll be fascinated to see if he helps Morgan win their reward challenge next week. Just feeding them should help their chances.
