AMAZING RACE – 10/14/12

Jaymes and James are up next. I have no clue which one is which, which sounds really dumb except that one insists on adding a “y” to his name. Way to go, JaYmes’ mom. Moving along, one has a stupid Prefontaine-style sweat band on his forehead that is sitting so low it borderline covers his eyes. I thought it was ridiculously low and this was confirmed by the fact that it half covered his ears. What the hell is with this style? Reminds me of the stupid visor. There STILL are a-holes wearing those dumb things out there. If you’re not Tiger Woods, you’ve got no excuse to be still be wearing a freaking visor. It’s always these “I think I’m good at golf because I dress like a golfer” losers that seem to be wearing them. As the late George Carlin once stated so eloquently, no one is interested in what the top of your head looks like, dumb*ss. Get a real effing hat already.

Well, Rob still hasn’t gotten rid of that awful neon yellow goatee yet. It’s a bad week for Sun In. He’s not exactly a positive advertisement for the stuff. Kelley at least seems to have trimmed up that mullet. It’s still 80s ugly, but not quite a true mullet anymore. Rob shows us his fine intelligence with a nice “Git Er Done!” pronouncement. ZERO surprise when he said this. Every time I hear that phrase I want to punch that Larry guy in the face. Of course, the fact that he’s gotten rich from annoying stupidity like that makes me want to punch myself in the face.

Back to Gary and Will. Are these two downers or what? These two are always so freaking negative! Especially Will. I don’t think that guy has smiled yet. Anyway, Gary rattles on about how they’ve tried so many years to get on the show that they should know this better than anyone else. Uh? Am I missing something? What does trying to get on a show a lot somehow make you better at it than the other people who also probably tried to get on the show a lot? And these two haven’t really been running at the front of the pack so far. May want to finish in the top five before you start patting yourself on the back, pal.

We are next focused on a long sequence in which some teams are able to make it onto a train and other teams just miss it. Ryan the piece of crap Jujitsu guy is questioning some lady on the train about when the next train leaves. He starts smiling ear to ear because the chick says all trains are 3 hours apart. They show all the peeps who made the train smiling like crazy. Yeah. I am assuming these people have watched the show before? When do they EVER have this kind of scenario where they don’t level out the time issue with some kind of a delayed task. You know, they arrive at the next place at 8pm and there’s a locked gate and a sign there that the next boat leaves at 7am or whatever. Anyway, CBS tries to heighten the drama as they go to commercial like this is some kind of cliffhanger with the Natalie and Nadiya twins left despondent on the railroad tracks as the train pulls further and further away. Of course, as it turns out, I’m wrong. There is no delayed next task. Thanks for making me look stupid, CBS.

Back on the train, Y (I’m calling this dumb*ss “Y” now) and James have the brainy idea to have everyone on the first train agree not to u-turn anyone else on the train. First problem: Abba and whatever his partner’s name is are at the back of the train and can’t agree. Second problem: They act like a freaking handshake is some kind of a blood oath between brothers. With 1-2 mill on the line, you think a freaking handshake between strangers means jack sh*t? I don’t. Let’s remember the chick with metal legs and not spleen that got run over on the very first leg. No one’s gonna care that they shook Y’s hand if it means putting their team in a better position to win a million (or two million) bucks. I don’t even want to know where that hand has been, either.

Anyway, the train finally makes it and the first teams are at the Detour. The choice is Egg Head or Lion’s Head. With Egg Head, the teams have to go get eggs while riding in some rickshaw thingy and then have the eggs cooked on coconuts that are on fire on top of their heads. Then they have to eat the eggs. Some Indonesian art form or something. Dumb in terms of a task and dumb that this is art to someone. But, whatever, what do I care.

Lions Head entails putting on a 40 pound top-heavy costume that you hold in place with your teeth or something and parade down the street, dancing at times. I know this won’t be a popular opinion, but I just don’t get this crap. I think the Mummers and parades in general are stupid. Who watches this crap and who the hell does this for a living or whatever. Anyway, I’m going to blast off once again that these tasks seem too easy. I mean, the teams were handed their clues right on the train. Really? You can’t even make them navigate to some other location to heighten the drama a little? The egg task is basically fitting your butt in a rickshaw with your partner and picking up brown eggs at a market. Come on now. I’ve had a harder time getting eggs at Walmart when it’s busy. And we hear all this footage with teams going on and on about how hard this task was. Try Fear Factor pal. And it’s for 50k not a cool million. Yeah, it’s hot there in Indonesia. We get it. But the task itself? Please. All right, I guess they had to fry the eggs on their heads too. But again, I’m not blown away at the difficulty of any of these tasks. May have been a good time to have them eat octopus brains or whatever. But eggs with Tabasco sauce? That’s a regular breakfast around here. And there were no face plants with those dumb lion’s head costumes. They couldn’t set up banana peels or an oil slick out there to ensure a little entertainment for us? Step it up, CBS.

We’re next introduced to the Double U-turn. Apparently, it is anonymous, so maybe they are hoping people are more likely to do it. Of course, we’ve got our finger pinky swearing d-bags from the first train that don’t have the balls to U-turn anyone. Real exciting stuff. After the double U-turn machine thingy, it’s the clue to the pit stop. Again, I’m totally underwhelmed by the tasks this week. Balancing plates, frying eggs, riding in rickshaws and wearing costumes. Blah. Josh laid out one of my biggest complaints with this episode: “These eggs were fresh, they were just laid this morning!” Shouldn’t these people be eating scorpions or pubic hair or feces or something for a million dollars? Fresh eggs? You gotta be kidding me! At least make them deal with a breakfast at Denny’s or something. You know, those places that are open 24/7 should really have their sh*t together because they are always making breakfast, right? Wrong. I think they step on the eggs a couple times before the rude waitress that smells like she slept on a bed of lit cigarettes brings them out to you. And the bathrooms look like crime scenes at all times. Seriously, if you enter a public bathroom and have to ask yourself “Was it Mischief Night last night?” you should not be sitting down on the toilet.