Where my fellow Spokane peeps?

It’s quite a bad movie, but it did inspire the creation of my podcast, so I don’t hate it.

I’m surprised how many people in the comments have (A) seen this movie, and (B) liked it. I didn’t care for it, although I do like the basic premise.

The timing of your comment is a kind of a funny coincidence for me, because over the past few days I’ve been editing the next episode of my podcast, which will come out on Tuesday, and in it I mention Time Trap a couple times. Maybe the film is having a moment?

I have a friend who hates grocery shopping, so they get their food delivered, but then constantly complains about nonsensical substitutions. They’re not wrong that the substitutions don’t make sense, but there’s a really easy way to ensure you get exactly what you want…

In my experience, Hinge is still the best, but all of the apps have the same fundamental flaw. Imagine every person in your area who is single is in one big room and you line up to meet each other one at a time. That’s basically how they work. Want to skip meeting people with different political or religious beliefs? No problem! Just pay up (and by the way, it’s not cheap). Also, the filters are critically limited and largely superficial. It’s a slog no matter what.

From what I’ve heard, OkCupid used to work properly as a way to find people who were actually a good match for you, but Match group bought them and stripped all the tools that made it useful. I actually recently saw a great comment about exactly that.

Almost Plausible is a show where three friends take ordinary objects (for example, a paperclip, a ceiling fan, or a toilet brush) and create movie plots based on those objects.

Full disclaimer: This is my podcast.

You could call them The Silent Generation.

…

No, wait…

In my last house, the previous owners left a folder with information about various known quirks, which came in handy. They also left manuals for things like the stove and fireplace, as well as contact info for contractors they had used over the years. It ended up being a sort of owner’s manual for the house that we really appreciated. We did the same when we moved out.

My current house… There’s an under-cabinet CD player/radio in the kitchen that I almost never use, and the previous owners left the soundtrack to the Trolls movie in it, so I guess there’s that?

Radiolab has a great episode about Stockholm Syndrome, and how what we think we know is wrong.

I have a podcast that I create with a couple of friends. We take an ordinary object—such as a ceiling fan, or a paper clip, or a toilet brush—and we create a movie plot based on that object. The show is called Almost Plausible, and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

I grew up in Hawaii and used to visit Florida because my grandmother had a winter place there. I agree with your comment completely.

Early in my career, a co-worker was fired for (among other things), frequently sleeping at his desk when he was supposed to be working. The entire company was half a dozen people in a single room. I have no idea what he was thinking.

My first thought (you might even call it my gut reaction) was “my microbiome,” so it’s along similar lines to yours.

If so, it’s propagating. I live in the NW USA and have been noticing it for years.

Lost, but not the one you’re thinking of.

Travel back in time with me to September 4, 2001. It was a golden age, and reality television had taken off in a big way. NBC and CBS were each set to premiere a new show, with basically the same format: Teams of two Americans would start somewhere in the world and have to race back to the United States to win a cash prize.

NBC’s show Lost was the first to air, with CBS’s The Amazing Race airing the night after. The premise of Lost was great:

Three two-member teams knew only the final destination (thousands of miles away) and were given only a backpack full of clothes and other essentials. In addition, team members were not acquainted with one another prior to the show, and were assigned to teams. Contestants were blindfolded and dropped off with a single camera person in a remote location of an unknown country to find their way back to their home country…Teams were given no money until they managed to figure out what country they were in. During the first set, the teams were abandoned in Mongolia. (Source: Wikipedia)

The show did not do well. NBC blamed the low ratings on the fact that 9/11 happened shortly after, which actually preempted the second episode. Considering The Amazing Race debuted at basically the same time and went on to tremendous success (Lost had 1 season with 6 episodes, whereas The Amazing Race had 36 seasons and 418 episodes), I suspect something else was the cause.

So if the show was so bad, why did I like it?

First, I liked the idea that the teams started out in a location that was a mystery to them. Their first challenge was to figure out where in the world they were in a country where they (almost certainly) didn’t speak the language.

Second, although they were two-person teams, any passage they secured for themselves, they also had to secure for their camera person. You want to catch a flight? Well, I hope you have enough money to buy three tickets!

And finally, I was hooked early on when this one moment happened. It’s still one of my favorite moments of reality TV. Remember, all three teams started out in the Mongolian desert. They were spread out from one another, so no two teams would cross paths right away. This meant that as they made their way to the nearest village, they were headed to different villages.

Two teams had a similar plan: To catch a bus that drove between the villages (and, IIRC, was headed to a larger city). So the first team gets on the bus in their village, and as the bus drives into the village where the second team is waiting, the first team spots them. They then quickly convince the bus driver not to stop and to just keep on driving instead. We’re then shown two shots: One from inside the bus, where we see the second team and their camera guy as they watch the bus go by, and then one from outside the bus, as the second team watches the bus blow past them and they realize the first team is on board.

Or Wonderfalls, or Pushing Daisies, or basically anything Bryan Fuller does.

It drives me nuts that people frequently leave out the words “to be” when talking. For example, they will say something like, “the car needs washed.” No, either the car needs to be washed, or it needs washing.

Just one on each end.

Develop my current podcast further, as well as work on at least 1 or 2 other podcast ideas I have. So many great ideas, so little time.

“Because we can.”