Jan. 2, 2001

Squeaking into theaters just a week before its sell-by date, Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000 is a great example of why putting a deadline in a film’s title is pretty much always a bad idea. Look at Disney: it released Fantasia 2000 in 1999, annoying folks who’d had it up to here with the whole millennial shooting match and alienating the niche market of career stoners who were confused enough already.

Now WCPD2K just barely makes it to the big screen in time to be true to its name. But if you’re like us (and you actually go see it), you’ll wish they’d taken some extra time, even if it meant adding the dreaded “1” to the title and made a movie that’s genuinely scary. Or genuinely horrific, genuinely visually arresting, genuinely haunting, genuinely good. Take your pick.

It’s actually a pretty good set-up, but it craps way out in most of the details. Christopher Plummer (who really should get some kind of good-sport award for appearing in so many of these films) plays Matthew Van Helsing, alleged great-grandson of Abraham Van Helsing, Dracula’s final captor in the Bram Stoker original…or is he?

Of course he isn’t! He’s Abe himself, kept alive for over a century by leeches containing Dracula’s blood. And he’s spent all that time guarding ol’ Fang’s coffin, since Dracula is apparently some kind of super-ultra-uber-vampire who can’t be killed. Warped by action movies, we immediately began thinking of ways Drac could be eliminated forever: decapitation, drawing and quartering, getting blowed up, being strapped to a tactical nuke and shot into space, being dissolved by sulfuric acid or maybe—how’s this for wacky—the sun? (These are the weak “details” we were talking about.)

Naw, instead Abe shuts Drac into his coffin, booby-traps it several ways and carefully guards it, eventually building an antiquities business over it. But in a move of horror-movie-scale stupidity, Abe locks the coffin in a huge vault with an enormous door in his front lobby as if to say, “Hey, look! There’s something extremely valuable here! Think you could steal it?”

Which a band of high-tech thieves do, managing to awaken Drac in the process and get him most of the way from London to New Orleans (the post-Anne-Rice vampire capital of the world). What’s in N’awlins, besides an ongoing Mardi Gras, tons of Virgin Megastore product placement and a distinct, persistent smell? Abe’s daughter, Mary! Seems she’s inherited some of Drac’s leechy goodness and now Death Breath is after Mary for some good ol’ undead semi-incestuous lovin’. (Hey, man, it is Louisiana.)

WCPD2K doesn’t really add much new to the genre of vampire films (but at least Abe’s sidekick Jonny Lee Miller gets off one great line: “Never—ever—fuck with an antiques dealer!”). There’s no real sense of urgency to any of the proceedings, and Gerard Butler’s Dracula isn’t particularly seductive or frightening. The whole movie just kinda plods along, then tacks on a deliberately ambiguous cross-cut at the end, just in case there’s a demand for WCPD2003 or something.

Which we’re pretty sure there won’t be.

Jan. 24, 2005

Okay, stop us if you’ve heard this one before: A small group of police and criminals must protect a precinct house from siege by a gang of thugs who want one of the criminals to walk free. Okay, yeah, Assault on Precinct 13 is a remake of the 1974 John Carpenter original film, but it takes the concept of “remake” to a rather uncomfortable extent, in that there’s not one original moment in it.

Seriously, stop us if you’ve heard these before:

• a cop with a Troubling Event in his past who’s receded to a desk job (Ding! He’ll find reserves of strength in the face of danger!)
• the police shrink he’s required to see (Ding! Lame attempts at sexual tension!)
• a criminal mastermind (Ding! Nice suits and a classical education!)
• a tackily-dressed secretary with a thing for bad boys (Ding! She’ll see the error of her ways after her life’s been threatened!)
• an old cop about to retire (Ding! He’s the traitor!)
• Gabriel Byrne (Ding! Crooked cop!)

So often, when describing lame movies, we’ll say something to the effect of, “We couldn’t make this shit up.” When it comes to Assault on Precinct 13, though, we could easily make that shit up. In fact, we knew pretty much everything that was going to happen in the movie from the moment the film started to roll.

Unlike its predecessor, AP13 is set in a soon-to-be-closed precinct house in Detroit on New Year’s Eve—what better way to inaugurate the new year than with automatic weapons and a boozed-up Brian Dennehy? This time around, corrupt cops are the thugs on the attack. And the action hero, Sgt. Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke), is still on the mend from a fatally botched sting earlier in the year and hooked on painkillers. You’d think perhaps one of these elements would increase the drama and/or tension. You’d be wrong.

Nope, instead AP13 plods along from obligatory plot point to plot point. It’s not a completely unpleasant journey; a couple cops-chatting-to-criminals moments are fun to watch. Drea De Matteo and Laurence Fishburne have a rather nice scene where they discuss sex and violence while calling each other “Secretary” and “Gangster.” To the film’s credit, the station and its surroundings feel cold, neglected and grotty. Or maybe that’s just the influence of Ethan Hawke.

Because whenever the camera focuses on Hawke’s face, you can’t avoid them: The Teeth. There they are on the big screen, the size of suitcases, larger than life and about 10 times as ugly. It’s not so much the mild discoloration as it is the utter lack of alignment, particularly on the lower rack. As you’re musing about how someone with his kind of cash flow could surely afford invisible braces, it occurs to you: Uma Thurman kissed that jacked-up grill on purpose. Maybe Quentin Tarantino wasn’t such a loathsome alternative. Besides, to the best of our knowledge, unlike Hawke, Q has never attempted to write a novel; keep your fingers crossed with us on that one.

Apr. 3, 2000

[Cue up cheesy fiddles]

“It’s time… for the Family Feud! With the O’Day family: Isaak, Trish, Colin, the slick-ass henchman with an ulterior motive and the bloated comic relief! And the Sing family: Ch’u, Han, Po, the slick-ass henchman with an ulterior motive and the motorcycle kung-fu chick! And now, the host of Family Feud…Richard… Dawson!”

Would that Romeo Must Die had been half as entertaining. We would’ve preferred to see racial gangland warfare reduced to market-research quizzes, instead of a badly written, ill-conceived action movie attempting to pass itself off as a Shakespeare metaphor. Unfortunately, the fight scenes in RMD aren’t as good as the martial action in your average Jet Li Hong Kong movie. Director Andrzej Bartkowiak (try playing “The Name Game” with that guy, we dare you) applies the cross-cut technique to disastrous effect. Cross-cuts are great if it’s an Underage Skank du Jour video where the main objective is to obscure the singer’s total lack of dancing ability. But this is Jet Li, fer chrissakes!

The camera shifts positions faster than a porn star on bathtub crank. Jet kicks! The other guy dodges—or gets hit, we’re not sure! Somebody jumps! There’s a fist! A shoe! A head flick! A breakfast taco! At some point, the fight ends and we’re not too clear on who hit whom where. Memo to all aspiring kung-fu directors: the purpose of a fight scene is to show people fighting. Keep the camera pretty stationary and let the actors move.

Even weirder than the multiple cuts is the technique we call “X-Ray Vision.” During three fights, we’re suddenly transported to those eighth grade “I Am Your Skeleton” films as the camera shows a bone breaking, a foreign object protruding through a heart or a spine imploding. All in wireframes. We couldn’t tell if it was techno-cool or the stupidest thing we’d ever seen. After a three-second debate, stupid won.

That’s not to say that there weren’t some awesome fight moments (all of which involved the camera holding still for a few seconds). Two scenes in particular stand out: when Jet breaks out of jail and when he and Aaliyah fight the motorcycle kung-fu chick. The jailbreak scene involves Jet beating the crap out of four guys while manacled and hanging from one leg. And the scene with Aaliyah involves Jet using her body as a weapon so he technically won’t hit a woman. These two sequences are almost worth sitting through the rest of the movie, and that’s saying something indeed.

Because as annoying as most of the fight scenes are, they aren’t half as bad as the rest of the movie. The plot manages to be predictable and confusing at the same time, there’s no sexual or even romantic chemistry between Jet and Aaliyah, and we really could’ve done without the gratuitous, leering hot-Asian-chick-on-chick action at the beginning of the movie. Memo to all aspiring directors: if there is boobage involved that has nothing to do with the plot, your movie automatically enters the USA Up All Night hopper.

So… One hundred people surveyed, answers on the board: What’s the best Jet Li movie? If you said Romeo Must Die, you have to kiss Richard Dawson.

Oh, fine. Here.

“Life Lessons from Stupid People” – a recap of an episode of I Love New York, 2007

“K-Fed: America’s Teachable Moment” – from my pop culture blog, 2006

Selected Facebook posts, 2011-2018

Selected Reddit comments, 2019-present

“Furry. Wobbly. Deadly.” – an encounter with a raccoon, 2009

Movie Review, Romeo Must Die – from pop culture website holecity.com, 2000

Movie Review, Dracula 2000 – from pop culture website holecity.com. 2001

Movie Review, Assault on Precinct 13 – from pop culture website holecity.com. 2005

Yeah, yeah, Britney finally kicked Kevin Federline to the curb after a two-year-plus downward spiral. We all knew that it was coming sooner or later, and that the coming divorce and custody fight were sure to get uglier than… well, see photo above.

But, in fact, we didn’t all know it. Sure, those of us over age 25 who’ve dated someone like K-Fed—or Fed-Ex, as he’s now called—could see all this coming. But we have the benefit of hindsight. What about the children? Won’t someone think of the children? Well, for the first and probably last time, it seems that K-Fed has thought of the children, for he has provided the parents of America with a walking billboard entitled “Don’t Date This Guy.”

Yes, anyone with a daughter (or son!) age 12 or older now has a clear example to illustrate what can happen when very simple dating maxims are ignored.

Don’t date a guy who can’t be bothered to shave regularly. Think what else he might not bother to do on a regular basis. No, wait, don’t think specifically about what hygiene procedures K-Fed might leave undone. You might want to eat sometime in the next 12 hours.

Don’t date a guy who’s willing to walk out on a pregnant girlfriend. You wouldn’t think this would even need saying, but clearly two folks with the last name Spears neglected to pass along this crucial tip to their oldest daughter, so let’s play it safe.

Don’t date a guy who wears a trucker hat, manpris, socks with flip-flops or boxers clearly visible from 20 paces. And especially don’t date a guy who wears them all at the same time. I cropped this picture somewhat, but you can see K-Fed is standing next to a rack of tube socks. He’s obviously planning to ruin a new six-pack of socks (the only six-pack in this picture, clearly) by bifurcating the toe-box area with the thong of a flip-flop whose foam lost its springiness years ago. Don’t let a dear family member become a party to that.

Don’t date a guy who has no apparent source of income; you will become his source of income. Britney Spears was once worth about $35-40 million. Producing and promoting K-Fed’s CD “Playing With Fire,” including sending the talentless turd on a nationwide tour, has apparently halved her financial reserves. Even the most pointless trophy wife in the world hasn’t come close to that kind of cash drain. (And for the record, I wouldn’t want any offspring of mine dating a woman with no income source, either.)

Don’t date a guy who, even when he’s all cleaned up and relatively well-groomed, looks like he’d like to sell you a used car or would really appreciate your vote in the upcoming city manager election. This is K-Fed at his absolute best; this is as good as he is capable of looking, ever. And you still wouldn’t trust him with a quarter and a nail, would you? Be sure to tell your kids that.

It may cause you some embarrassment, but you need to tell your kiddos that at first, this guy may seem kinda hot (especially after they’ve been drinking heavily—you might want to warn them about that, too). He’ll seem like the rebellious bad boy, the dangerous type that’ll get them all worked up. And at first, the sex will be pretty good. After all, it’s the closest thing he has to a marketable skill.

But before too long, your beloved offspring will get sucked into that guy’s low-aiming world of loserhood. They’ll let friendships wither because their friends can’t stand the way the guy leers. They’ll begin to doubt the value of achieving anything because that guy needs them to be less than he is, and that’s a pathetically low bar to set in the first place. They’ll quit grooming themselves and forget everything you taught them about putting a clever outfit together.

Then they’ll start giving him whatever money they have—including whatever money you give them—and putting all kinds of crap on their credit cards for him, mortgaging their future before it’s even begun. They’ll start paying his child support, just like Britney did, because he finds it such a burden and resents giving his ex one penny of his non-hard-earned money—oh, of course he’ll already have at least one kid out there somewhere. He just won’t ever see them.

And then, after your lovely child has bankrupted herself (or himself), burned all sorts of bridges, compromised their health with cigarettes/copious amounts of booze/weed/meth/whatever else this guy is on, but still stuck around, they’ll somehow become too much of a burden on this guy’s freedom. And then they’ll become the thing this bad boy is rebelling against, and he’ll go from just using them to treating them like total crap. The picture at right is what K-Fed wrote on a shower door as a message to Britney. (It’s not like he was using the shower for anything else.) “Fuck a wife; give me my kids Bitch!” Nice.

With any luck, your kid will finally ditch the loser like Britney finally did last week. But wouldn’t it be so much easier to teach the kid to avoid that kind of trouble in the first place? You have a golden opportunity, parents of America. Don’t waste it. After all, you don’t want your grandkids having ferret DNA, do you?

Who doesn’t love a raccoon? They’ve got those little masks and those little hand-like paws… and those little sharp teeth and an uncanny ability to organize into packs. Just ask this poor Florida woman!

I’ve had my own run-ins with raccoons, too. When I was living in Austin, I kept a dish of cat food on the outside landing of my second-floor apartment for the two strays I dubbed “The General” and “Little Red.” (I had hoped to befriend, trap, neuter and find homes for them, but they never even got close enough for phase 1 of that plan.)

Of course, a dish of cat food is like a flare in the sky to a raccoon, and one night I opened my door to find not a rusty tortoiseshell nor a bedraggled Russian Blue but a big, round raccoon nibbling at the Iams. It and I were both startled, and it wobbled off down the stairs.

However, when I looked down to the first floor, I saw the critter walking past the ground floor apartments toward the other stairs, and I realized that it was just going to make an approach from another direction. The little bastard. I had to be more intimidating. But how?

At this moment, a conversation that I’d had with a downstairs neighbor came into my head; she’d talked about her concern over our local pack of raccoons, noting “One of them chased my husband!” I promised myself that I wouldn’t run from a mammal that didn’t even come up to my knee (reptiles, as always, are another matter altogether).

I also recollected snippets of information from my best friend, who’d taken a class on camping to satisfy a phys-ed credit requirement. According to her professor, the best way to scare away a bear was to raise your hands above your head, make yourself as big as possible and intone in a booming voice: “Get away, bear!” (Someday, I hope to try this out on annoying co-workers to see if it works in an office setting.)

So as the raccoon bumbled up the stairs, I walked towards it, stood on the landing and spread my limbs out in what I believe is known as the Voltron position. Rather than using words, I decided to use that weird space alien noise my cat Mojo makes when he’s had about all he can take. It’s like an agitated meow with some throaty noises and some high-pitched spikes in it, and it is freaky.

There I stood, limbs splayed (with a spatula in one hand, if I recall correctly) and howling like a demented tabby. The raccoon paused, looked past me to the cat food, looked up at me (I had redoubled the yowling) and decided that even premium cat food wasn’t worth messing with the crazy, spatula-bearing, oddly shaped giant housecat. It shot me one last look of pure resentment, then went back down the stairs, and never came near the dish again.

Then my neighbor Camille flung open her door in a panic gasping, “What the hell was that?!”

Overall, we got off very easy in that apartment building: one chased husband, one temporarily freaked-out neighbor and one moment of utter absurdity. Of course, we only had the one raccoon to deal with. If they’d been in a pack, I’m sure I’d have fared no better than that poor woman in Florida.

Let’s talk raccoons. Tell me your tales of masked woodland creatures in the comments. (Plus, if you ever want to get creeped out, check out an apartment dumpster the night after Thanksgiving. Just don’t get too close.)

1-4: Life lessons from stupid people

This episode of I Love New York focused on … er … hands-on experiences, but I think a lot of deep philosophical meaning can be taken from observing the interactions of New York and the dudes — and doing the exact opposite.

(If not for that little VH1 logo in the corner, I’d swear this episode was composed solely of “fast-forward” scenes from a spectacularly cheesy porno.)

The day begins with the dudes receiving their challenge: build a doghouse for Your Majesty, New York’s little pocket rat. The dudes are divided into teams of three based on the colors of their wife-beaters.

Lord, Real looks like a thug Donna Summer. (And you’ll notice that Heat can’t keep his eyes off of 12-Pack.)

The winning team will get one-on-one time with New York, and the foreman of the winning team will get “a little extra,” New York tells us with a less-than-subtle booty pop. In the quest to designate a foreman, the black team defers to Rico’s knowledge, the gray team does rock-paper-scissors and the white team flips a —

pack of Newports. (What the hell constitutes “heads” or “tails” on a pack of smokes?)

The dudes set about building their doghouses, and it is soon made clear that some dudes are more technically adept than others.

I’m no Mike Holmes, but I don’t think that’s up to code. Mr. Boston tells anyone within earshot that he has no idea how to build things. His teammates, Rico and Chance, are irritated with his lack of know-how. Of course, his propensity for making pointless suggestions isn’t helping, either.

Note to self: Find a way to work “bleezies” into my vocabulary. Rico and Chance yell at Mr. Boston a lot, but as Mr. B points out, “[Chance] can yell at me all he wants, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know anything about construction.” And you know what? He’s right.

Life lesson: Berating the ignorant does nothing to mitigate their ignorance and just puts you in a foul mood.

Things aren’t much better on the gray team, where Whiteboy has been paired with Tango. As they’re sawing something, Tango suddenly freaks out in apparent pain, and I worry that the saw has hit flesh.

Tango immediately seeks first-aid treatment for…

… a splinter. Yeah, I’m pretty much on Whiteboy’s side on this one. I’ve had some nasty splinters, but since the age of 8, I’ve been able to push them out of my fingers my own damn self. Tango is still firmly ensconced in my “camera-whore” column.

After much yelling, hammering and painting, the doghouses are finally ready and New York makes her inspection.

For all the ER-style trauma, this isn’t terribly bad. It’s a little dark, and I have no idea what the pillars are all about, but I could see a ridiculous little teacup chihuahua like Your Majesty shaking and peeing in this quite comfortably.

The black team unveils their… um, achievement:

What the hell is that? It’s like an open-air bunker or something. It doesn’t even look like a doghouse; it looks like some hideous artifact of Eastern Bloc architecture at its worst.

And it looks like they put Pootie’s old blanket inside it, to soak up the rain and become a giant petrie dish made of Elmo fur.

Right there with you, New York. Finally, the white team steps up:

This is actually pretty nice. The white team are declared the clear winners, and Chance makes himself look even worse by protesting that his team really only had two members. It’s a doghouse competition, Bobby Beige. Take your lumps and move on.

After everyone gets showered and dolled up, New York greets Real, Heat and 12-Pack downstairs.

I am convinced that you can actually build an entire 12-Pack from parts ordered out of the International Male catalog.

Real will be New York’s companion for cocktails, she’ll have dinner with Heat and then, as foreman, 12-Pack will be New York’s designated “dessert.” New York and Real head out to the balcony for some bubbly and snuggly. (Did I really just type that?)

New York loves Real’s hair, and while I think there’s something Rick James-ian about his appearance, Real is a perfect gentleman and seems like a sweet guy who would never, say, burn anyone with a crack pipe. Now that Bonez is gone, Real is my favorite of the lot, so I hope New York treats him right.

Next up is dinner with Heat. Thus far, I’ve thought of Heat as sketchy and slimy. I’m going to add “batshit crazy” to that list of qualities. Here are some highlights of their meal together (plus a little pre-elimination bonus from the editors and me):

During dinner, New York asks Heat if he would have Mama and/or YaYa living near them in a hypothetical future. Heat responds in the affirmative, stating that he’d build a house for Mama and YaYa in the backyard. This is New York’s response to that:

And while I don’t approve of spitting in public, once again, I’m with New York on this one.

Life lesson: There’s such a thing as a healthy degree of separation from your parents. At least three blocks.

Meanwhile, Chance is still bitching about how Mr. Boston’s lack of competence caused their team to lose. Unless Mr. Boston came up with that Kaliningrad design, he’s not the reason they lost. But Chance has found his target, and he’s going to stick with it.

I do think it’s funny that Chance is impugning the masculine traits passed on by Mr. Boston’s father while doing Whiteboy’s hair, but that’s just me.

Unfortunately, whenever grudges, stupidity, testosterone and clippers are in the same place at the same time, some variation on the head-shaving hazing is going to go down. The dudes tackle Mr. Boston and try to shave his head.

As Mr. Boston tries to fend off the clippers, he calls for Tango. This is Tango’s response to that:

Life lesson: Know who your friends are, especially when you’re on reality TV.

Life lesson: Let’s all just quit trying to shave people’s heads without their consent. It never goes well.

I think Mr. Boston loses a teeny bit of hair off the back, but his golden locks remain intact. Tango’s rep with me as the most useless dude on this whole show also remains intact.

Meanwhile, New York and 12-Pack are having their “dessert,” which consists of having a Tantric advisor teach them how to… I don’t know, something sleazy. It involves a bikini for New York and a pair of leopard-ish boxer briefs for 12-Pack, which leads to a series of porn-esque shots:

[This is not a scene from a porno.] Tantric Chick is really getting into it, which makes me worry for her sanity and general rightheadedness.

[This is not a scene from a porno.] 12-Pack thinks the whole setup is weird but isn’t complaining about the skin contact. He does, however, make a liquor run in the most exhibitionistic way possible.

[This is not a scene from a porno.] Heat and Real see 12-Pack in his skivvies and wonder what he and New York are getting up to in the master suite. (I think they have different targets of concern, myself.) So they decide to climb up onto the balcony and spy on the two sleaze-birds.

It’s the most goddamn Laverne-and-Shirley thing in the world, especially when Real almost slips.

[This is not a scene from a porno.] New York is enjoying herself immensely when she notices a shadow (and a camera with a big ol’ light) in the doorway and goes to see who it is.

[This is not a scene from a porno.] New York is nonplussed at first but seems to find it sweet that Real was checking up on her. She and 12-Pack conclude their date, and then the real fun begins.

I’ve seen this clip about a dozen times now, and I still can’t stop laughing at Heat’s little “Yeaaaaa-aaaaah” or the just-plain-ridiculous sight of a grown-ass man in leopard panties doing the robot. That is comedy gold, people!

[This is not a scene from a porno.] I also love the look of concern on Onix’s face when he comes downstairs, the reaction of a sane man to an insane situation. But the insanity is just getting started.

I think the editors are trying to work a little “Brokeback”-esque music in the background, but I don’t think Heat’s blathering is completely sexual. I think Heat wants to be 12-Pack, and 12-Pack is more than happy to soak up the hero-worship. Which makes Heat so, so pathetic.

Life lesson: If you’ve been drinking, now is not the time to tell someone how you really feel about them, good or bad. Wait until you sober up.

The next day, Mama New York comes by bright and early and tells the dudes to get ready because they’re going to church. Some dudes welcome this news more than others.

Just in case, let me add that that is not a scene from a porno. Heat is also in a world of hurt.

After a lot of showering, dressing, juice-slamming and a bunch of weird noises from Heat, the dudes are ready to go to church.

Well, mostly. Mama NY says that all Chance needs to do is lose the hat, but he refuses. He piles into the Man Van with the dudes, though, while Mr. Boston joins New York and her moms in the limo.

What follows is yet another painful conversation between the blond, half-Jewish Mr. Boston and the African-American, Christian Mama New York over the possibility of biracial babies. I guess she wouldn’t be asking him these questions if she didn’t think he was good breeding material, but Mr. Boston keeps on giving such painful answers.

When Mama New York asks him how he’d feel about having dark-skinned children, Mr. Boston seems to get bogged down in the details about how dark their skin would be. He’s answering the wrong question here; all he has to say is that he’ll love his children whether they look more like him or more like their mother (and here, a shy smile to New York would put the cherry on top).

Life lesson: Answer the question you’re asked. Don’t answer the question you’re not asked.

Life lesson: If you’re the only white person in the group and the talk turns to racial issues, to the extent possible, shut up and listen. You increase your chances of learning something by 100% and decrease your chances of looking like a fool by almost the same amount.

We finally arrive at the church (is this the same church they visited in Flavor of Love Season 1? I can’t tell) and Chance is asked to take his hat off or remain outside. He chooses Option B.

Mr. Boston gets into it, to the extent his lack of coordination allows. Then Mama New York takes the mike and… goes off on some weird tangent. I can’t believe she didn’t at least bring an outline of some kind; that’s high-school forensics shit, there. She’s rambling on and losing some of her audience…

I giggle every single time I see this clip. It’s the combination of Mama NY testifying, Heat snoring and his sad little singing voice in the flashback that does it.

Similarly unimpressed is Onix. It seems to him that Mama NY is just way too over-the-top and showboaty and comes across as fake. Which I can’t really disagree with. (But I have more of a problem with the rambling at the beginning; if you’re going to be a showoff, at least be succinct.)

Regardless of the impact on her audience, Mama NY turns up the juice and cuts the damn thing loose, leading to this classic moment:

(Speaking of impact.) Even Chance is captivated, and rushes into church, taking off his hat. This results in a kind of rapprochement between him and Mama NY:

Awwwwww. That actually made me smile. (I am the biggest sap on two feet.) The dudes head back to the mansion and lounge around before elimination. While lounging with Tango and Rico by the pool, Onix shares his thoughts on Mama NY with the two biggest tattletales in the house.

This is clearly a suicide maneuver, but it’s probably the best way to get out of the running. Well played, Onix.

What follows — some time later based on the lighting — is some of the worst acting ever seen on reality TV. Watch and giggle.

“I ain’t no snitch.” YES, YOU ARE. “I ain’t no snitch either.” YES, YOU ARE. That’s why Onix told you both. And also, how jacked up is their reasoning? “Could you live with this girl, knowing that this dude had said something about her mama?” News flash, guys: Everyone’s mother has had something absolutely awful said about her at some point or another. This is not some horrible knowledge that will eat away at you in guilt; it’s just how people work.

I received this genius piece of insight recently, and it’s still blowing my mind several months later: “What someone else thinks of me is really none of my business. It’s their opinion, not mine, and besides, it’s probably more about them than it is me.” Clearly, nobody on reality shows has ever heard this. Think of the pointless drama and petty squabbles that could be avoided if only they had. Then what would we be left watching?

Life lesson: What someone else thinks of you is really none of your business. It’s their opinion, not yours, and besides, it’s probably more about them than it is about you.

So, it’s pretty clear how elimination will go. New York calls Chance’s name first, then Real and —

Oh, nice work, Whiteboy. I think Mama NY is starting to like you. Finally, Onix, Heat and Mr. Boston are left. New York starts by telling us who isn’t getting the last chain:

“Actually, I think I’m better.” Oh, SNAP! (Yes, I yelled that out loud when I first saw this, and yes, you probably heard me, no matter where you were.)

Heh. I can see his smile from here. Good for you, Onix.

New York tosses out Heat, making a crack about saying hi to YaYa for her, which he thinks was utterly unnecessary. He should be used to that by now, though. So that means Mr. Boston is staying, and he’s totally stoked to realize this. So stoked that he gives New York what appears to be the most flaccid kiss in recent history:

Ick. But I kinda like him, so I’m kinda glad he’s still there. You know who isn’t so glad?

Chance, who refuses to shake Mr. Boston’s hand. Tacky, dude.

We won’t have another new episode for two weeks, but we’re offered this glimpse of what’s awaiting us:

[This is not a scene from a porno.]

The content I wrote most often regarded claims activity: preventing fraud, understanding the risk of extreme events (such as natural disasters and civic turmoil), analyzing data gathered by the Claims department regarding trends, and similar topics.

I wrote or rewrote these posts, among many others:

• Auto application fraud up 18%: New approaches to help mitigate risk
• 2023 Turkey Earthquakes: Models Should Already Consider These Events
• Climate change vs. climate variability: their impact on insured losses
• Reconstruction cost dips signal increased market stabilization
• Will climate change lead to more hurricanes?
• Taking a data-driven view of evolving Florida roof risk