The Tribe Has Spoken

• Random Pop Culture:
• "39 Days, 16 People, 1 Survivor!" Best sentence on TV. Nice twist at the beginning, but how stupid was that old lady, Sandy, with the gloating?
• The best hype I could have heard for the new season came on the Mike O'Meara Show this afternoon. They had one of the new castaways, Coach, on. The guy is a total a-hole. It's the best thing they could have done; have the guy you'll most love to hate do the publicity. You might have seen him on the show and recognized him as the guy most likely to be a member of the Cobra-Kai.
• In terms of picking a winner off the bat, I'm going to be partial to Stephen, the brainy New York Jew. Otherwise, I don't know. Maybe Tyson, except he's a little too forward, which means he'll have a big target soon enough.
• The Grey's/Private Practice crossover was okay -- better than I thought it would be -- but there were too many characters for it to be really good. Plus, the brain surgery special effects were a bit lacking and the whole intern games thing was horrible. As is just about anything having to do with the interns and/or Izzy. How about Bernard from Lost showing up as a patient? Weird to have a reasonably prominent supporting character from one ABC show appear on another.
• Random Hatred And/Or Love:
• I was going to post the Joaquin Phoenix video, but you've either seen/heard it by now or you can find it very easily. I'm 99% sure it's all a goof, but who cares? It's a perfect example of how much of a freaking genius Letterman is. His zingers were legendary.
• Your List Sucks!: In honor of the return of Survivor, Top 5 Current Reality Shows,
• 5. The Biggest Loser -- Yeah, it's seven-diamond, but you can tell it genuinely means a lot more to its contestants than on any other reality show.
• 4. Celebrity Rehab -- Very compelling, but it's all about how awesome Dr. Drew is. He just takes it so seriously that you can't help but do the same.
• 3. American Idol -- It can be pretty lame and it's probably a little rigged (certainly in the audition stage), but it's still fun and it still has Simon and some of the contestants are actually good.
• 2. The Amazing Race -- It's missing the personality battles that make Survivor so tense and interesting, but the locales are mesmerizing and the last few episodes are always edge-of-your-seat fare. Have to get this show into HD. Have to.
• 1. Survivor -- My favorite show of any type on TV and the greatest reality show of all time. Before Survivor, you only had The Real World, which was okay, but boring. Survivor introduced the concept of voting people off. Sure, that led to Flavor of Love, but it also has meant some great television over the last nine or so years.