Survivor Nicaragua - episode 7...

The merge is coming next week?! Already? This seems earlier than usual. Either that or this season is just flying by.

What we saw in last week's preview ended up being two of my favorite parts of the episode. Jud / Fabio peeing in the challenge pool was disgusting. But I'm wondering if he was just saying he did that to freak out the other team. That way they would be concentrating on that when jumping into the pool instead of their aim.

But by that line of thinking, I would think his team wouldn't know either then and they had to jump in that water too. If I was in the game and found out he did pee in the pool, whether it was strategy or not I would vote him out. That was sick.

But the food hoarding with Jane was awesome. She even started a fire all on her own to cook that fish. I'm rooting for her now as that just proves that she can actually survive out there on her own. The only use she seems to have for the others is to help get her further in the game. Now if she would have been caught doing that, then that would have been terrible and her game probably would have ended a lot sooner than she wanted. But she was smart enough to go somewhere that no one would run across. Very cool.

The tribal council was pretty uneventful with the exception of Sash accidentally slipping and saying something I'm sure he'll regret for the rest of the game. In fact, it will probably be the reason he's eventually voted out.

The tribal councils from here on in should be crazy thanks to the upcoming merge. I'm thinking they'll all be going after each other now. It'll be chaos and that's what makes Survivor fun.

Survivor Nicaragua's Yve Rojas...

Yve was voted off last Wednesday on Survivor. I was sad to see that as I was rooting for her to win - she was such a nice player. But nice doesn't always help win Survivor.

I talked with her this morning about why she was voted off and who she blamed right after watching it on TV (you'll be surprised by that if you haven't heard about it already).

She also talked about some of her tribemates, including NaOnka's vicious confessionals and Dan's laziness.

Here's the full 6-1/2 minute interview (portions aired on Star 102.5).

Iron Island Museum Ghost Sounds!

I always love talking to Linda Hastreiter from Buffalo's Iron Island Museum. Every year I invite her on Star 102.5 and she always brings along the coolest EVP's from the museum.

EVP's are the sounds ghosts make on tape. You usually don't hear them when you're recording. But when you play it back, they're there. Strange. I record tons of stuff at the station and that never happens to me there, so why at the museum does this occur? Maybe electronic equipment is a way ghosts can communicate with us.

She's got a whole new batch from the past year and some of them are kind of spooky - perfect for the week leading up to Halloween.

Hear the EVP's in the full 11-minute interview with Linda (portions aired on Star 102.5). This online version includes three extra EVPs that didn't air (along with the two that did).

If you have trouble with the clip pausing too much, right click to download it to your computer and it'll run smoothly.

See the Iron Island Museum featured on Discover Channel's Ghost Lab Thursday, November 11th at 10pm (or possibly the week after).

And don't forget to visit the Iron Island Museum and try to get your own EVP's. Overnight hunts are available by reservation year-round. Or check out some of these upcoming events (visit the museum website for more info and to make reservations)...

• 10/28/10 (Thursday) - Candlelight Ghost Tour at 7pm
• 10/29/10 (Friday) - Candlelight Ghost Tour at 7pm
• 10/30/10 (Saturday) - Buffalo Paranormal Investigators event from 7pm - 2am

Also see more on the Iron Island Museum Facebook group.

Amazing Race 17 - episode 5...

I had to wait to watch this one. There's no way I could have stayed up last night to watch it AND been coherent enough to fill in on the morning show.

It was another cool location for Amazing Race - this time starting off in Norway!

Kevin's father lost the clue within seconds of the start of the leg - really? Again, don't any of these people watch the game before going on it.

So you'd think by season 17 teams would also learn that vegetarians and reality shows don't mix. You're going to have to stop being a vegetarian if you want to win a game like this. The chances of encountering a meat challenge are always pretty good. But there wasn't much complaining and Nat & Kat ended up succeeding - awesome. Maybe they will be the first female team to win the race.

"Fast Forward Taken" confused Nick and Vicki. I would wonder too if that meant it was taken while a team tries for it or taken for good. So again, I can't make fun of them. Especially since Vicki is so awesome - she was amazing at everything she encountered this episode.

You gotta feel bad for Claire. You'd think a watermelon smacking you in the face would be the most pain on the race. But then she got stuck doing one of the most physical challenges yet which involved pulling your body weight back up to the top of a giant bridge. But she did it and there's a good chance her and Brook could end up being the first female team to win the race.

That was a great episode in Norway. It definitely made me want to visit. Next week it's off to Russia. I'm pretty sure the only time I'll ever see Russia is from the comfort of my home while watching Amazing Race.

Great Pumpkin Farm video...

Yesterday, I did a live broadcast from the Great Pumpkin Farm in Clarence.

This was the first year I've gone to this giant event. I was stunned at how much there is to do in addition to the 5-acre corn maze!

There's a bunch of amusement park rides (which everyone knows I love), pig races, tractor & horse-drawn hayrides, a petting zoo, magic show, singing chickens, giant pumpkins, tons of food, a massive pumpkin cannon, and more.

The event continues today and then ends after next weekend. If you've got kids, this is the perfect place to take them - they'll have a blast.

Yesterday was especially fun because while I was there, they gave away a West Herr Toyota Corolla! It's always cool when my workday involves someone winning a car.

Here's a short video of some the Great Pumpkin Farm activities...

The Apprentice 10 - episode 6...

The Apprentice routinely starts off with two full minutes of recap from the last episode. Do we really need all that? Just recap quickly who was fired and jump into the next episode.

Especially since this episode was awesome and could have used every extra second for more pre-task footage. That always gets the least amount of time each episode and there's got to be more good stuff there.

So David was completely insane. Not a surprise. The only reason he's survived as long as he has is for the drama. He's certainly not someone I could ever see working for Donald Trump - or anyone. And how hysterical was it seeing the people he was driving around? It looked more like they were hostages than passengers!

But as Donald Trump said, he can't fire David unless the team loses. That's how the game works. So David survives to yet another episode of crazy. I really think a lot of his behavior has got to be for the camera - he can't possibly be like that normally.

And I do have to say that Clint's speech about David in the boardroom was impressive. I've ripped on Clint before, but he definitely redeemed himself this episode.

As for the women's team, they looked like at any moment they could be arrested on Wall Street. Other than Coney Island, I really don't know anything about New York City. But I would think the best place in New York for a bike cab tour thing would be Central Park or Times Square - places with lots of tourists who would love that. Businessmen on Wall Street - no (unless the stocks soared at that exact moment so insanely high that they all ran out onto the streets to party - but that's not something to base sales on).

Kelly unfortunately paid the price for the wrong location. Too bad as she seems like such a nice person and someone that would probably make a great employee just about anywhere.

And did anyone else notice Kelly's microphone during most of the boardroom? It sounded so muffled that whole time. Very distracting - and that had to infuriate the poor post-production people when they heard that.

Next week looks like David continues to annoy everyone and Mahsa gets both annoyed and loud in the boardroom. Don't get yourself fired, Mahsa! I'm waiting for the episode where you and David finally end up on each other's team. That would be an Apprentice highlight for sure!

I'm sure we'll also get to see the guys after they left the boardroom. Notice how we never got to see them watching the women in the boardroom? There had to be some ugliness when they got back to the suite! I hope we get to see more than just a few seconds of it.

Survivor Nicaragua - episode 6...

Why was Yve even a consideration to vote out? That tribe is brainless. They know Dan wanted to quit. He can barely move to begin with and is no help to them. Yet they vote out Yve.

It's like they never considered that they could quickly be down not just one, but two instantly. One would be voted out, then if Dan changes his mind yet again, he'll leave and they're down two. Insane. Especially since Yve could have helped them win challenges.

It was brainless voting all around. The other tribe had a chance to remove Marty. They knew he had the idol and they knew he didn't use it. So the second vote begins between only Marty and Kelly after the tie and they vote out Kelly B. - what?! Now you've got a furious Marty who HAS the idol still. And I can't imagine he's going to consider giving it up as the preview for next week wanted us to believe.

The preview also showed pool peeing and food hoarding - looks like they finally go completely insane next week.

Best sitcoms so far...

There's not much I watch on TV other than the three reality shows each week (Amazing Race, The Apprentice, and Survivor).

But there are two single camera sitcoms (sitcoms without a studio audience) that I'm loving. And they weren't the ones I ever expected to be watching at the start of the season.

The whole concept of NBC's Outsourced is annoying to me. Losing American jobs to another country is a very bad thing. But the show is very well written, I laugh every week, and I like just about every character (the Australian call center boss is the only one that doesn't seem necessary).

This is also a show I would watch the repeats of a few months later - there's not many shows I can say that about. So Outsourced is a hit to me. Wtach it Thursday nights at 9:30pm on NBC.



The other sitcom I love is Running Wilde on FOX. I had never even heard about it until one of my friends mentioned it to me. Mary told me it sounded like Arrested Development and it looked like something I would think is funny. She was so right. The storylines are weird, the casting is perfect, and overall the show is just very different from everything else.

Sadly, I don't see this one lasting. But maybe a miracle will happen just like with Arrested Development and this will manage to avoid the FOX ax long enough to run a few seasons.

Running Wilde airs Tuesday nights at 9:30pm on FOX (although it will be pre-empted on October 26th).

Amazing Race 17 - episode 4...

An Amazing Race episode in the Arctic in Sweden - awesome!

In addition to loving the cold temperature, some of my favorite music comes from Sweden. Many of the songs you see on the right side of my blog under "Favorite New Music" is stuff I originally found out about thanks to the Swedish music charts.

Anyways, back to the Amazing Race episode.

So Nick wanted to take a cab from Ghana to the Arctic Circle. Looks like he's as terrible at world geography as me! Actually, worse, because even I know you don't take a cab from a place with such extreme heat to the Arctic.

So we've now seen the first Speed Bump of the season. It was the extreme challenge of sitting in an ice chair for 10 minutes. What kind of speed bump / punishment is that?! That's like a short break. And it's right at the start of the leg, which will give them plenty of time to catch up if they were behind (which last night they weren't anyways).

Remember the Amazing Race player a couple seasons ago that refused to do the "challenge" where you just had to go down a waterslide? Because of that, her and her partner were eliminated from the race. Something kind of similar happened last night.

Stephanie was too scared to go sledding down a hill and after just one failed try, refused to go again. I never understand the fear of simple things like sledding, watersliding, or even ziplines (things that so many people consider fun and easy). It seems more like they just don't want to do it, so they psych themselves out of it. That kind of drama is insane to me. Especially when you know you're going to be doing things like that on the Amazing Race. Luckily for her partner, they didn't get eliminated because of that.

And then there was the Express Pass. A new feature of the race which is now finished. It seems like Jill and Thomas wasted it since three teams arrived at that task after them. But in the midst of the race, not knowing where everyone else is would be nerve-wracking. So I understand them being cautious and using it.

Next week's episode is in the neighboring country of Norway, the homeland of a-ha! So it's another country with incredible music - not they we hear any of it, but I know it's there. Plus it seems like a really cool place. I'd love to visit both Sweden and Norway someday - but I'll settle with seeing them via the Amazing Race for now.

Awesome Knoebels / Terrible Days Inn...

It's taken awhile to convert and put together some of the video from last weekend (I'm still not done), but the two videos I really wanted to share are ready.

I spent Columbus Day weekend at Knoebels amusement park in Pennsylvania and Jiminy Peak (alpine slide & coaster) in Massachusetts. Knoebels is usually mobbed that weekend because that's also the weekend Pennsylvania's largest craft show is at the park. Most people stay in the craft show though, so the lines are almost non-existent in the park.

In addition to hanging out with my friends on the Flyers and the Phoenix roller coaster (along with all the other rides), I also toured the construction site for their upcoming roller coaster Black Diamond. It used to operate as the Golden Nugget Mine Ride in Wildwood, NJ. Knoebels recently purchased it and they're reconstructing and retheming it for the 2011 season. It won't be a thrill ride (it never really was) - it will be more like a family dark ride than an actual roller coaster. Here's the video of the construction...



And here's the video from the alpine slide at Jiminy Peak (easily the best I've ever been on)...



The entire park experiences were great! But the hotel the first night, not so much. After checking in at a Days Inn in Danville, PA, I learned the hotel had no hot water. The temperature dropped to the 30's that night, so a hot shower would have been nice. It also would have been nice to know before checking in. I at least expected clean wold water. But nope, it occasionally came out yellowish.

I later learned that the hotel had been without water for three days already. Kind of makes me wonder now how they were cleaning the bedsheets and towels. Cold water won't clean them that good, that's for sure.

The hotel only compensated people $15 for this inconvenience (off a $60 room). For something this big, I would thing a comp room would have been given (even for the future).

I called the Customer Care Department for Days Inn this week and waited 10 minutes to get through (guess they don't care too much about customers that are already annoyed). The guy I talked to obviously was reading from a script. He was nice enough, but kept going back to the script when I would interrupt him.

I now have a case number and he said the hotel will contact me before the end of next week. I'll post here any updates so you can see what Days Inn will actually do for customers after sneak attacking them with a cold shower.


UPDATE 10-26-10: The only response I received was a generic e-mail in reply to a survey I took about the hotel. So today, I called Days Inn. They said the matter will be taken care of internally, but they were sending me a $30 Days Inn voucher as a way of apologizing. Each Days Inn is individually owned and operated, so this was nice. I won't be using the voucher at the Danville, PA Days Inn though, that's for sure.

The Apprentice 10 - episode 5...

After watching last night's episode, I've now decided I'm no longer going to bother asking any of the contestants who they think should become the Apprentice if it can't be them. It almost never fails that the person they mention is one of the next people booted from the show.

Nicole mentioned Tyana - Tyana got fired a few episodes later. Mahsa mentioned Gene - guess who got fired last night. I did like Tyana's answer, but that's a rarity when a good answer actually comes from that question. No more for that.

It seems like forever since Donald Trump has said it (he definitely skipped last week), but there it was at the end of the episode. "You're fired" happened twice, but even better it was the return of "I had no choice"! Except this time, it made complete sense.

Next week looks insane. And I think that's the perfect word to use after seeing that preview focusing on David. But since the preview was all about him and how crazy he acts, I have a terrible feeling that means he's going to survive another episode.

But Mahsa remains and it looks like she's in for a rough task next week. That could be exciting!

The Apprentice's Tyana...

My hopes of a Tyana vs Mahsa finale crashed and burned last week when Tyana Alvarado was fired. And Mahsa was mostly to blame!

But I learned from Tyana that there was a lot more going on than what we saw during the episode.

According to Tyana, editing changed what we saw as reality during the dog hotel task in episode 3, all throughout the viral video task in episode 4, and even during her final boardroom appearance. And her explanation of it all makes perfect sense too! (But in addition to that explanation, we also have to keep in mind that each hour-long episode compresses two full days into just 43 minutes.)

After getting (reality show phrase here) "thrown under the bus" by all the women, which one does she hope wins? And why didn't she team up with Mahsa after they both caused Nicole to be fired in the first episode?

Find out all of that in the full 7-1/2 minute interview (portions aired on Star 102.5).

Survivor Nicaragua - episode 5...

I think the producers were watching VH1 Classic and saw this Duran Duran video shortly before coming up with this week's immunity challenge.

And how exactly did the Espada team stay strong by keeping Dan? While that was a strange decision on their part, it wasn't half as strange as some of Jeff Probst's tribal council questions last night.

Amazing Race 17 - episode 3...

So I can no longer set up my Time Warner cable box to record a particular channel without a DVR (which I don't have or want). I'm not a fan of the upgrade the box went through a couple months ago - more was lost than gained. And Amazing Race isn't On Demand for some strange reason.

Good thing for the CBS website, where the episodes are streamed, otherwise I would have missed this episode. Not much happened though.

The doctors summed it up nicely at the Supply Depot when they said "does this sound easy, cause it's easy". Almost everything in that episode looked extremely easy, with the one exception being the bicycle rim / stick detour. Of course it was crazy hot while they were doing all this, but that doesn't translate well to TV.

As for the Supply Depot, I was surprised that gathering objects on a list caused so much trouble. You'd think by now teams would know to actually read the clues carefully. It's like they've never seen the show before.

The highlight of the episode had to be at the Detour when Brook and Claire were circling the small African children with the chalk and the children kept looking at them wondering what was going on.

Next week in the Arctic looks awesome. I always want Survivor to go to somewhere cold. That'll never happen though as the Survivors can't be in swimsuits then. But it always makes for a fun episode on Amazing Race though.

The Apprentice 10 - episode 4...

Mahsa is the next Omarosa. But in a different way, because Mahsa doesn't annoy me every time she's on screen (when Omarosa was first on The Apprentice, it was tough to not throw the TV out the window).

But Mahsa was right on the nose describing her personality when I talked with her. During the task, she seemed like a fun person. But in that boardroom, she was on the attack! And she scared others to join her side - I'm convinced that's what got Liza to go against Tyana.

At the moment, the rest could go away and as long as Tyana and Mahsa remain, I would continue watching. The Apprentice: Mahsa vs Tyana - it's got a ring to it, doesn't it?

So it was Clint vs Mahsa. If this would have resulted in either Clint or David getting fired, awesome! But sadly, it wasn't to be. But I'm now convinced Steuart is the only intelligent guy on that team. He's the only one that's shown any annoyance with David's insaneness.

And to make matters worse, half of the brilliant The Apprentice: Mahsa vs Tyana duo went home! Noooooooooooo!

I did like the women's video the best, but it needed to be more natural - more like Candid Camera focusing on a lot more stunned reactions and less on the actual stunt. And it needed to look less like a commercial - I want to be entertained by something and then be surprised at the end that it's actually a commercial. It had potential to be great though. The video the guys did was definitely less like a commercial, but it wasn't really all that interesting to me.

Next week it looks like the crazy continues - I love it when things go berserk in the boardroom. And it looks like David might be in trouble next week. That could be good.

Survivor Nicaragua - episode 4...

Young vs Old = fail.

So much for the young versus old experiment - next week it ends. I'm pretty confident it would have ended soon anyways with the young team completely decimating the old team.

It's not a matter of the young will always win at Survivor. It's just that the "old" on this season of Survivor isn't good.

As for the heavily hyped Hurricane NaOnka, that was one fast hurricane. In fact, it felt like the episode was over at about 8:30pm. There wasn't really anything left to show at that point.

Maybe next week the true drama will begin when the "old" meets NaOnka and Fabio / Jud. Now that will be entertainment!

As for this week, good riddance to another dull Jimmy.

The Apprentice's Mahsa...

She's loud, obnoxious, and even unprofessional according to Ivanka Trump. But she's one of the reasons this season is so much fun.

I talked with Mahsa Saeidi-Azcuy from The Apprentice earlier today. I had to ask her thoughts on Ivanka's opinion now that she's seen that. I was also wondering if there was anyone on the women's team that she does like. And of course I played the "jealous cow" clip back to her and got the story behind that.

Plus, Mahsa has been in the entertainment news for recently quitting her job at the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office. I found out more about that too.

It's very rare when a network wants a reality show contestant interviewed before they're actually off the show, so I'm wondering what's up. The previews make it look like Mahsa is going to cause trouble in the boardroom on tonight's episode.

After talking with Mahsa, I have to admit I'm a fan. Not only is she adding excitement to the TV show, but she was also a lot of fun to talk to. And not once did she scream or yell.

Here's the full 8-1/2 minute interview with Mahsa. And see more of Mahsa tonight at 10pm on The Apprentice on NBC.

Eddie Munster on The Munsters remake...

The news of The Munsters remake for NBC just came out last week and already TMZ has hunted down Butch Patrick (who played Eddie Munster on the original series) to find out what he thinks about this.

Read his thoughts & his casting suggestion for Herman Munster on the TMZ website.

In addition to being in The Munsters, did you know that Butch Patrick was also in another strange 1/2-hour show a few years later? He played Mark in a Saturday morning live action series called Lidsville from 1971 - 1973. It was one of the early Sid & Marty Krofft shows (which I'm a big fan of) - the main characters were mostly hats.

Here's the intro to it...


The complete series of Lidsville and The Munsters are both available on DVD.

Amazing Race 17 - episode 2...

I have one complaint about the Amazing Race and it's actually something that goes on every season.

I wish they would remove the teams that have been eliminated from the intro each week. It's confusing remembering all the teams to begin with at the start of the season - that just makes it even more confusing. Big Brother puts the eliminated contestants in black & white, Survivor just removes them completely, and The Apprentice has lately just been running a short intro without the contestants. Lots of options there - hopefully one will happen for Amazing Race.

Otherwise, I absolutely love this show. When the teams all bunch up for a flight, there's no needless airport drama shown anymore. And the challenges continue to be more challenging than they've been in recent seasons.

What stuns me is at Detours, teams always tend to go for the hardest tasks. It must be in the way things are worded when they're given the info. That antenna installing seemed WAY harder than just transporting a coffin. But most teams tried the antenna installing which had way too many things that could go wrong. Crazy.

And I thought the Home Shopping Channel hosts forgot something at the Detour the way the camera focused on that piece (it was even highlighted in post production) - but nothing was mentioned when they checked in. I was kind of confused by that, but maybe they were just highlighting what they were talking about in the task info.

I'm sad about the team that was eliminated, but I'm relieved that Nick & Vicki remain. They weren't as clueless this episode, but I'm sure the entertainment with them will return. And I'm still rooting for them to win. Although it looks like moodiness hits them next week.

Next week's challenges appear even harder than normal thanks to the African sun - the Amazing Race people know how to do those previews to make them look awesome without actually giving anything away. Can't wait...

The Pushing Daisies comic book...

With all the news about The Munsters remake that Bryan Fuller will be doing for NBC, I got to wondering about the Pushing Daisies comic book / graphic novel he's been working on.

The final episode of Pushing Daisies aired over a year ago. The comic was first mentioned right around the time the show was cancelled as a way to tie up the some of the loose ends. Since then, it's just been a waiting game with very little news on how things are going.

As it turns out, Bryan Fuller is still working on this and he's hoping the first comic will be released in early 2011. The third comic book (out of twelve) is being written now. DC Comics will be releasing them and they'd like five done before they start putting them out (that way we don't wait forever between releases).

Here's an article from back in January with a great picture of one of the comics.

There might also be a soundtrack that goes along with this. But I'd much rather see a novel or something else written instead. Or even better, more episodes of the show - but I'm not holding my breath for that.

The Apprentice 10 - episode 3...

Why The Apprentice is great this season...

• "Because she's a jealous cow." That from Mahsa after Tyana wouldn't let her be the receptionist to the doggie day care. I think Mahsa dislikes everyone and everything.


• Tyana putting Mahsa in charge of walking and caring for the big dogs. This after Tyana learned that Mahsa is terrified of dogs. That went as well as can be expected of course.


• David doing everything possible to lose for the guys' team so James could go home. It doesn't take a genius to see why David is unemployed. Who in their right mind would hire or keep someone employed with that attitude?


• James sending David back to the apartment. I'm so happy to finally see a project manager remove someone from a task (the next best thing to firing them). That was the smartest thing James could have done.


• Lots of whining and complaining from so-called "professionals" (yes, the "so-called" and the quotations are both needed here - some of them, especially the guys, are clearly insane). And one even reminds me of a little 4-year old tattle tale - that would be Clint when talking to Donald Trump in the boardroom.


• The one guy that was brought into the boardroom (Wade) was someone I had forgotten was even on the show! And the reason he was brought in - because he's content to just stay in the background. Wow, that was spot on.

In the end, Trump kept the unbelievably annoying player again. And as usual he said "he had no choice". What?!