The Amazing Race 19--episode 9--Gratuitous Flexing, Plus Other Important TV Stuff

Phil flexes in Belgium

Happy Thanksgiving to all ten of you reading this. Or maybe it's gone up to twenty. I have much to be thankful for and I suppose I shouldn't be pissed off that my DVR did not record Work of Art last night and the fact that this seems to be the only show that Bravo does not repeat 37 times throughout the week and that the Bravo website is totally fucked so I can't watch it on my laptop--Elroy Jetson I am not, I guess. Now I will have to wait until they have a marathon. Similar fuck-ups happened last week when I tried to record Project Accessory but the high-definition version of Lifetime wasn't coming through on cable. But they repeated Accessory and I was able to catch up, on Bravo they only seem to be showing Top Chef and Real Housewives. Not as many people like Work of Art. I did enjoy Mad Fashion this week with the dog dressed up as a loaf of bread.

Back to important business--this week's Amazing Race which finally had the teams travelling to a bunch of countries and taking their clothes off. There is nothing like a million dollars to get people to submit to shameless exploitation.The producers always find a way to provide some cheap thrills for the viewers by having the teams run around in bikinis and speedos.

The action began in Copenhagen with the teams having to memorize a poem and then perform it for a bizarre wax dummy-looking guy in period clothes, supposed impersonating a drama critic. I'm a drama critic and I know that's how I always dress when I attend the theatre. Everyone did a more or less adeqaute job except Tommy of the snowboarders and he actually got a little mad when Mr. Waxworks told him he wasn't emoting enough. It was good to see this team, which always sails to first place, encounter trouble.

Then they had to drive to Legoland and put together a lego puzzle while on a spinning teacup ride. The threat of vomiting was ever present--always a fun thing. Their next destination was a train station in Hamburg. Ernie and Cindy lost their tickets and there a little tension over what would happen if they were asked to produce them. Fortunately, the European rail system is a lot looser than its American equivalent and they go off scot-free. Brussells was the final object of the leg and this is where the teams had to strip down and peform a bodybuilding posing routine in front of three hunky judges (YUMMY) and an audience of frustrated Belgian housewives. (My favorite was the handsome posing coach and when Phil took his shirt off.) The justification for this particular task is that Jean Claude Van Damme is called the Muscles from Brussells, and the fact that there is nothing else to distinguish the Belgian capital. What else would they do--eat waffles? Maybe they'll do that next week.

Everybody looked decent and had nice bodies, particularly Ernie and Jeremy. The snowboarders, being athletes, were pretty hot too, but they were having trouble executing the routine perhaps due to Young Grizzly Adams' injuries. (The only contestant that would caused me to turn away from the TV screen would have been Laurence and he was eliminated last week.) The episode ended with Marcus and Amani winning  the leg, their first, and being told the next one started right now. So episode 10 will probabaly be all in Brussells and all five will probably in it, with an elimination at the end. It really could be anybody and maybe Andy and Tommy will actually not make it to the final 3. As we have seen, it's anybody's game and even bickering Jeremy and Sandy could make it to the last episode, but they won't win.