We get our first shot of my least favorite jerk this week. Ryan apparently thinks it’s not good enough to just win two million dollars on the Race. Nope. This prick says he wants to be the strongest team that’s ever raced. Ever! He wants them to get the record for 1st place wins. Like my great-great-great-great grandchildren are still going to be talking about these two morons or something. They want to be remembered like Olympic athletes or whatever. Right up there with Carl Lewis, I guess. I hate this guy. Have I said that yet this week? Anyway, this guy is so narcissistic that he is already contemplating being on the Race a second time as an All Star or something while he’s running the Race the first time. D*ck.
Here’s the Roadblock: Build a large rudimentary scale and then weigh wood using rocks as a counterbalance. James (of Team James and Abba – Damn you, casting!) said that he can assure us that he won’t be all that good at this because he was no Boy Scout in the 80s. Pretty funny stuff. This guy was probably right up there with Gene Simmons in terms of groupie notches on his belt, parties, drugs….. Well, I guess not. White Lion wasn’t exactly Kiss. But I personally wouldn’t mind hearing some of those stories anyway.
Back to Ryan. Great. He is sitting in a taxi stuck in traffic basically berating Bangladesh as a crap country. He rattles on with sarcasm about how much he loves this traffic and that the walls are closing in on him. Oh, if only they would. That happens all the time on Scooby Doo, why not here? Ever the comedian, Ryan cracks a joke: “Next time someone says, “Go to hell,” I’ll say “Oh, you mean somewhere in Dhaka?” Pr*ck. That should be in about 30 seconds. The taxi driver looks back like he’s thinking “Assh*le!” Ryan’s probably used to being told to go to hell.
Over to Josh and Brent. Josh goes on about how he and Brent have been together 14 years but he likes to say they’ve been together 10 years and 4 years apart because Josh only comes up to work the farm on weekends and is in the city 5 days a week. Did that sound like a boring and convoluted sentence with way too much information we don’t care about in it? Yep, because it was. Seriously, who cares, Josh? I wonder how many people he’s put to sleep with that little tale. Anyway, these two can’t find a taxi for like a year or two and Brent says no less than 40 times that they need to come up with a strategy. He keeps saying that they can’t just stand there looking like idiots. Apparently that was the plan, because that’s exactly what they do.
Ah, looks like Kelley has finally gotten rid of that mullet. Now she’s just got a boy’s haircut, but it is an improvement. Rob goes on and on about how Kelley’s competitiveness in the Race is just amazing. Uh, I haven’t exactly been blown away myself. Anyone else seen any amazing feats yet? Nah. They’ve managed not to be eliminated but haven’t really stood out from the rest of the pack. Anyway, Rob rattles on about how she’s a barrel racer or whatever and mentions monster trucks again for the 500th time. BORING. Do the producers tell these people to mention their professions over and over and over? All we need is what they already give us—their names on the screen with their professions written underneath while they are talking. We don’t need to hear them repeating over and over what they do for a living.
Ryan and Abbie make it to the Roadblock. Ryan continues on his “I want everyone to hate me!” tour. He says that as soon as he saw the clue that the task wasn’t going to be heavy, he thought, “This is an Abbie task.” What an *ss. Seriously. And this guy just thinks he’s so strong. If only there were a task that started with some enormous bodybuilder kicking Ryan’s *ss and ended with him lying in a heap, sobbing in the corner. Then the Arnold Schwartzenegger-like freak of nature could spit on him for good measure. Oh, if only. Anyway, Ryan lets Abbie do the task because it wasn’t heavy but then says about fifty times that he should’ve done it himself because she wasn’t doing it quickly enough. Of course, he’s yelling to Abbie how awesome she’s doing: “Way to dominate, Abbie!” This insinuated that she was dominating Nadiya, who was also there working on the task. Had to love Natalie, she snaps at him “Actually, Nadiya is dominating.” He quickly says, “I meant she was dominating her area.” Uh, what? Like that little square of space she was working on? He backed right down, the wuss that he is.
We are at the Detour: Straw dogs or Bamboo jungle. Straw dogs is casting unprocessed jute onto huge nails to untangle the fibers and transporting it to machines that will manufacture it. Awesome. Now we see where those crap tote bags that companies give away for free as promos come from. Who the hell uses tote bags anyway? Old ladies and moron tourists at Disney and sh*t. Unless you’re trick or treating, those bags basically suck.
I have just one really, really important comment.
I am a twin. I am not only a twin; I am an identical twin.
Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever in my 50+ years of life have I called my identical twin “Twinnie.” Not once. Ever.
As a matter of fact, because my aunts couldn’t tell my sister and I apart, they called both of us “Twin” and we HATED it!
Were I ever to screech “Twinnie!” at my twin, I’d hope she’d smack me upside the head!
It is really weird you said that. I have good friends that are identical twins. We’ve been friends since fourth grade, I think. When we first met, I’d just refer to both as “Twin.” They HATED that and to this day, finally confronted me on it, and I don’t ever go there with those two. Me, the dummy, had no idea because I thought it was so cute to be a twin and didn’t know they wouldn’t like it. I even feel bad every time I refer to the girls as “the twins” but it’s so hard to keep typing all of their names over and over. But anyway, I found it weird that they were using the term “Twinnie” also! 🙂
Sorry, my editing kind of stunk on that prior post. They confronted me when we were kids and to this day I never refer to them as “the twins” or by “twin.” 🙂
Glad you posted, kwilson!
Singletons or non-identicals don’t understand that identicals (whether twins, triplets, whatever) often have a difficult time trying to establish individual identities because everyone around them looks at them (or refers to them) as a single unit or as interchangeable.
Also, it’s not helpful when parents/extended family members insist on dressing them the same when they’re too young to speak for themselves. (My clothes were always blue; my sister’s identical clothes were always red – to this day, we hate those respective colours).
Don’t get me wrong: I love my twin. I can’t imagine a relationship closer than ours (she’s married with kids; I’m a confirmed – childless – bachelorette). We both know that we have each other to count on, always and without reservation.
We’re now in our 50s, and we still have to deal with people being “spooked” by our sameness! When my sister’s husband lost his grandmother, I asked my sister if I should attend the funeral – she asked me not to, because her husband’s extended family would be sure to mistake me for her and it would make things very awkward. I understood completely and was actually relieved that I didn’t have to deal with such an uncomfortable situation.
That being said, being a twin to my wonderful sister is the greatest blessing in my life. But I would still never call her “Twinnie”!