It’s a little disconcerting when you put money in a vending machine and something unexpected comes out. In my case, it was a can of Coke, but the can was white. Coke cans aren’t white—they’re red. Even a colorblind person like me knows that. Except this one had something to do with saving polar bears.
I’m old enough to remember The Monkees when they were first on television, not in syndication. I even have the sheet music to “I’m not your steppin’ stone” from a book of hits from the era, though the book originally belonged to my sister. I remember watching the show with my cousin and then pretending we were The Monkees. I also had one of the die-cast miniatures. I thought it was a Matchbox car, but in looking for images I discovered it was a Corgi. I’d also forgotten that the car actually had the four guys inside it. I was surprised to hear of Davy Jones’s death because he always seemed so young and, in some ways, he was.
The women made an amazing comeback in this week’s Survivor. Not only did they win both challenges, after having won zero up to that point, they won the immunity challenge when they looked hopelessly out of it. Blind women were wandering the maze course like zombies without any guidance (it seemed) long after the puzzle-solver for the men started working on his puzzle. And then they caught up and the female puzzle-solver made short work of it. Either she was gifted, or the guy was just a moron. Or maybe a little of both. I thought it was gutsy of Colton to announce that he had the idol and then not play it. Of course, if he’d been evicted I’d be saying “stupid” instead of “gutsy.” Just like that, the balance of power shifts in the male tribe. The evicted guy was arrogant and I won’t miss him. Bill looked like he had found some kind of hallucinogenic plant extract during tribal. The guy was amped. I found it interesting that (Greg?) interrupted the proceedings after the eviction to ask if he could know the rest of the votes (has that ever happened before?) and equally interesting that Jeff refused to tell. On twitter, Probst teased next week’s episode by saying that something will happen at tribal council, a first, one of the most unexpected things he’s ever seen happen. A game changer. Any guesses?
I think it was NCIS that had an episode recently where the power went out and the gang had to resort to old-school technology to analyze the evidence and solve a crime. CSI did the same thing this week, with mixed results. As a chemist, I was flabbergasted by the way Morgan applied the chemicals while doing the ABO blood testing. The drops from her squeeze bottles touched the sample drops, which meant that she was potentially contaminating everything that came downstream. And as a crystallographer I was amused that they thought you could identify a white powder by growing crystals of the substance (instantly, by the way) and looking at them under a light microscope. I really liked David’s chemiluminscent solution to the power outage, though. That was cool.
A particularly creepy and twisted episode of Criminal Minds this week. Kathy Baker was nuts. What a messed up family. Good to see Hodge coming back to life, though. And AJ is really coming into her own now that she’s a full-fledged operative and not just the community relations spokesperson.
