- Another week, another great episode of The Amazing Race. This week, the four remaining teams left India and headed to the Far East, landing in Osaka, Japan for a hectic day in a city where not only is English not a primary language, it's hard to find anyone who speaks it fluently. Going into that environment, one team had a clear advantage: Ron and Cristina, the father-daughter duo whose younger half, daughter Cristina, spent a semester studying abroad in Japan and knows the Japanese language well. That knowledge helped them as they and two other teams, Nate and Jen as well as Nicolas and Don, landed in Osaka and got started on their tasks. What about the fourth team, you ask? Well, everyone's favorite mellow couple, TK and Rachel, started this leg of the race in first place but they picked a two-stop flight to Osaka instead of the one-stop flight the other teams took, so they were AWOL for most of the episode. All of the teams had to find a specific train station upon arriving in Osaka and get a clue from the station's janitor. That clue informed them that their next task was for one team member to don party of a cab driver's uniform and take two waiting passengers to their destination a few miles away, meaning they had to navigate the city's confusing streets on their own. Jen, Nic and Cristina took the challenge and after some trying moments on one-wa streets, they found their destination, a local post office, dropped off their passengers, who gave them their next clue, and headed back to the train station. From there it was on to a Detour, which means choosing between two different tasks. One task was going into a two-story flower shop and finding one of only a few real flowers hidden amongst millions of fake ones. The other task was playing robot soccer using a cell phone which controlled the movements of each team member's robot. Once each team member scored a goal against the robot team, they got their clue. Only Nic and Don chose the robots, which led to some high comedy as 69-year-old Don tried to learn how to work the controls. The robots fell down, misfired but ultimately did the task and the challenge was completed. Nate and Jen went to the flower shop and got there first, and during their time there, they were repeatedly heard talking about how they were going to win this leg of the race and how important that was to them because they had yet to win a single leg. Ron and Cristina arrived soon thereafter and elected to start on the second floor of the shop. Some trademark Nate-Jen, "I hate you' banter ensued, but Nate and Jen found a real flower first and went outside to hail a taxi. Unfortunately for them, the first few drivers they tried didn't know where their destination, the pit stop for this leg of the race at a local park, was. So Ron and Cristina were able to finish the Detour as well and they found a cabbie who knew where to go....or at least he said he did. They took off before Nate and Jen and despite their cabbie having to stop and ask for directions, Ron and Cristina won this leg of the race. Nate and Jen finally found a cab driver who knew where the pit stop was and came in second. Nic and Don, who fell slightly behind during the taxi cab challenge, hustled to the finish line in third place, with the leg finishing the way much of it had gone down, with Nic carrying his grandfather's backpack to help the team move faster. It's yet another reason I'm rooting for these two to win the race, because they're working together, picking each other up, not constantly infighting and because Don remains the coolest 69-year-old around. He continues to admit that he isn't as young, strong or fast as the other competitors, but says he's going to go balls-to-the-wall for as long as he can. The leg concluded with TK and Rachel landing in Osaka, completing their challenges as darkness set in and finishing in fourth place....only to find out that this was the second of the race's two non-elimination legs and so they weren't eliminated. However, they are three hours behind all of the other teams and will face the Speed Bump in the next leg, a challenge only they must complete. After next week, we'll be down to the final three teams, which will lead us to the season finale. It's been a fantastic season of the Race so far, and the final few episodes should be no exception....til next time.....
- Few things are as cheerful and light-hearted as the inner politics of a strike. Two sides at an impasse, lobbing verbal salvos back and forth, making accusations and taking stands on issues while refusing to back down....it just gives you the warm fuzzies all over. Jay Leno is experiencing some of those warm fuzzies right now, as the Writers' Guild of America, of which Leno is a member, is attacking the comedian and host of The Tonight Show for going back on the air and fueling his opening monologue with material he wrote himself because his show's writers are among those on strike. The WGA is arguing that Leno has no right to do what he did, which sounds idiotic and in fact, it is idiotic to say that. Leno and his representatives are rightly arguing that he is free to write and perform his own material on his own show, even if the WGA remains on strike. NBC's contention is that under federal labor laws, the rules that were in place under the previous agreement between the writers and the networks/studios still apply even though that agreement has expired and no new one has been reached yet. The WGA disagrees, saying that because Leno has always been designated as a writer on the show, the strike exception he's taking protection under doesn't apply. Personally, I've been siding with the writers up to this point in the strike, but in this case they need to shut the f' up. Leno can do what he wants and speak for himself. If he chooses to write his own material and perform it on his show, then you need to respect that and stop hassling him. Besides, the biggest beef in this dispute is that writers don't receive a big enough chunk of the revenues from the sale of their shows and movies through digital means, and last time I checked, The Tonight Show isn't offered on DVD. Take a chill pill, writers, and realize that your fight is with the networks and studios, not Jay Leno. He's just trying to make the rest of us laugh, which you all are doing a miserable job of right now.
- Taken on the surface at face value, hearing that Kevin Federline has been awarded sole custody of anything other than a bar of soap, a razor and a pair of pants that actually fit would be disturbing. This guy is the ultimate leech and hanger-on, a guy who built a life mooching off a famous wife and gravy-trained his way to a record contract and a healthy string of alimony payments. He thinks he's a gangsta rapper and a tough guy, but everyone else sees him as a poseur and a filthy, dirty scumbag. However, when you put his situation in context and realize that his being awarded sole custody of sons Sean Preston and Jayden James by a court commissioner means that Britney Spears won't have custody of them, that changes matters substantially. A court commissioner in Los Angeles has awarded sole custody of Sean Preston and Jayden James to K-Dirt and suspended Spears' visitation rights, which might be the key part of this whole equation. The further Brit is from those kids, the better their odds are to grow up and not be total freak shows. Commissioner Scott Gordon made the final determination and set another hearing for Ja. 14, at which time he'll re-evaluate the situation. The decision comes a day after Spears was hauled from her home by paramedics after police intervened when she refused to return the children following a court-monitored visit. It took nearly three hours for the dispute to be resolved, not the best situation when the fate of your custodial rights is being decided. If you slotted K-Dirt on a parental continuum that included all the parents in the world, he would be very near the bottom in terms of quality of parenting, but the fact is that as much of a sleazy lowlife as he is, he's still a thousand times the parent Brit is. I still say we need to kidnap those kids and have normal, functional people who shower from time to time and actually wear underwear in public raise them, but at this point settling for K-Dirt having them and Brit not being anywhere near them is a suitable alternative.
- I know feminists, in all their righteous anger, are always fighting to improve their position in the world and to make sure that women aren't excluded from anything they want to take part in, but I'm not sure this is the kind of inclusion you really want. The recent trend in Iraq, as insurgent groups grow more and more desperate in their struggle against foreign military forces (wrongly) occupying their land, is to feature women as suicide bombers. Three recent bombings have been carried out by women and these incidents suggest that insurgent groups are in such dire straits that they are ignoring the usual rule in their society of not including women in fighting. The al-Qaida attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces have shown that the terrorist group is willing to go to literally any extreme in its fight against the opposition. "There's a sense that this is an act of desperation," said Col. Donald Bacon, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. These aren't the first suicide attacks by women, but they are among a few select incidents since 2005. During that time, there have been 667 suicide bombings, only 14 of them carried out by women. That works out to about 2 percent, so you can see that it's far from a common practice. The first of the three most recent female bombings took place on Nov. 4, when a woman detonated explosives next to a U.S. patrol in Diyala's regional capital of Baqouba, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Seven U.S. troops and five Iraqis were injured in that attack. Another attack took place on Dec. 7, when a woman attacked the offices of a Diyala-based Sunni group fighting against al-Qaida in Iraq, killing 15 people and wounding 35. The last of the three took place on New Year's Eve, when a bomber detonated her vest filled with explosives near a police patrol, wounding five policemen and four civilians. So there oyu go, ladies. You want to be included in everything and given the same chances as men get, you got it. You now have an equal chance to blow yourselves up in a misguided fight for a terroristic cause if you so choose. Not quite on par with getting the right to vote, but you take what you can get.....
- Brian Nichols may be a convicted felon, but at least the guy is persistent, determined and focus. That his focus is directed at attempting to escape from prison for a second time has proven problematic, but you still need to admire his dogged tenacity. Nichols already has one prison break (coincidentally, Prison Break returns to FOX a week from tomorrow!) to his credit and according to an investigation by police in Atlanta, Nichols has recently been hard at work planning another escape after being captured following his first attempt. He broke out of the Atlanta courthouse in 2005 in a bloody escape that left four people dead, including the judge in his rape trial, a court reporter, a sheriff's deputy who chased him outside and a federal agent he encountered a few miles down the road. He then forced his way into a woman's home a few miles from the courthouse and was captured there after spending the night. After being returned to prison and being faced with new charges stemming from that escape attempt, Nichols wasted little time concocting his next plan. He talked his girlfriend, Lisa Meneguzzo, 38, of Beacon Falls, Conn.,, into helping him and also attempted to bribe a paralegal and two sheriff's deputies to help him in his plot. Seriously, who is this guy, Al Capone? Bribes, killing judges, multiple escape attempts. Dude, I know prison has to be the last place on earth you want to be, but seriously take it down a notch. Bribing law enforcement officials with cash and the prospect of sex with the women with whom you were collaborating? Seriously bro, you're making a great effort here, but it looks like you're aiming higher than your intelligence can carry you. A rape and four murders, coupled with an escape from prison and another attempted escape....let's just say you're a wanted man and you're probably not going to be free now or for the rest of your life. You also don't appear to be a very good escapee, seeing as the best you've done is getting a few miles from the courthouse before stopping to spend the night. You're in jail to stay, B., so embrace it and get used to it.
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