Reality
The Race is over.
The fourth Amazing Race has come to an end. I was barracking for Jon and Kelly but I'm happy that Chip and Reichen won. Exactly how their victory was a victory for all gay people, I'm not sure. It was similar to the end of the first series with one team so far behind that it was really down to the last two.

Checking out the website I found that Jon and Kelly weren't very popular with winners. I'm not sure why. I thought they were funny, and I thought that despite all the bitching (and each gave as good as they get) that they do love each other.

Channel Seven Australia screened the show in a late time slot (now that the show has won an Emmy maybe they can a clue) and also twice a week. This meant that the series was over fairly quickly which was a shame. Bring on the fifth Amazing Race!

What they should do is do an international one, teams of people from around the world, racing to see which people are the best travelers. I'm up for it.

The Mole has been revealed
Right from the first episode I was suspicious of Petrina. I don't know what it was; just something about her seemed odd. And I wasn't able to find anything that really proved to me that she was the Mole. And it was her that was proved to be the mole. That gives me a 50% success rate. I figured out the second series Mole, but was wrong with the other two. The Mole is the best reality game show Australia has, maybe next time I will apply again; I've got more interesting tales to tell this time.

Survivor returns
Just a few minutes in to the seventh series of Survivor (well the sixth one we've got to see here in Australia) and it felt like Survivor had never been away. The music, Jeff's voiceover, the style - all so familiar and well loved. So far I like the Drake team as a whole better. Unlike the other tribe they treated the local people with respect and worked well as a team in the first immunity challenge. The others already are too snobbish and the team lacks cohesion, except for Ryan and the Scout lady (not that they have much hope of lasting too long).

And a very funny caption to what was on screen occurred during the challenge. Three guys from the Morgan team stripped off their boxers and performed with only modesty screen blurring over their private parts. We see the Drake team in the lead, then with one of the Morgan guy's naked backside in the centre of the screen up pops the caption "Morgan behind"! Did the editors and producers not see the humour there?

But ick, after exotic names for the tribes in the last series, this series we get Drake and Morgan. Two famous pirates or something, but how boring! They are English names, plain and boring; surely there was something more exciting to call them?

Breast-feeding on TV
So Kate breast-fed her baby on the Panel last week. Why do people care so much? If they hadn't actually said that was what she was doing it's not like you could tell. There was nothing rude or disgusting about it. It was done very gracefully and its annoying that there was so much negative reaction.

Of course anytime someone has a go at Kate I don't like it. Kate rules!

Mini-Cons
I bought my first Mini-Cons yesterday. I was surprised by how much I like them. I chose the trio of airplanes that form the Dark Sabre. It's kinda cool having Micromasters with more poseability. The transformations are complicated enough, and the combination in to a sword is better than I thought it would be. I put the Sabre into deluxe Optimus's hand and it looks sweet. Unfortunately the only Decepticon I have is Demolisher and his hands just can't hold, well anything!

Comics and trade paperbacks
I collected comics since I was little but slowly I'm phasing them out. Sort of. Trade Paperbacks are the way to go now. Most of the series I am interested in are now being collected regularly in bound volumes. These are such a better buy for the most part. It works out cheaper, not by much, but slightly. There are no adds, and you get whole stories in one part. I've collected Alias, Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men and the Bendis run on Daredevil this way and have given up my other X-books (New, X-Treme, Uncanny and X-Statix) to pick up their trades.

The problem is that New X-Men has just dropped a huge bombshell right when I stopped collecting. So now I have to wait five months or so to read the Planet X arc. How was I supposed to know such a big surprise was coming? I can read up all about it on ComiXfan and flick through the issues at the store, but it will be a while before the arc will be published as a New X-Men TPB Grr!

But I pick up my current trades and think this is how I want my issues, bound in one book that I can easily pick up and read. Collecting individual comics doesn't appeal to me, but reading the stories on a monthly basis... yeah I'm still kinda addicted to that bit. At least I'm still collecting the Dreamwave TF comics monthly... for now.

This weekends movies - part two
Finding Nemo scores an A-.
It's an excellent film. The story is quite good, and not as childish as I had been led to believe. It's not hilariously funny, but is humorous. What surprised me was the drama in it and how much I care about the characters. The story is quite complicated and most of it must have washed over the audience in the sold out cinema, as on a Sunday afternoon youngsters were in the majority. There were also several scenes that I thought were tense, showing just how much I cared about these cartoon characters.

Ellen DeGeneres is a comedian I have always liked and she is great in this film. Dory is such a sympathetic character, and funny as well. The couple of sharks, led by Bruce with the distinctive Barry Humphries voice, were also pretty funny.

I was too caught up following the story to really appreciate the work in the CGI. Nothing as breathtaking as in A Bug's Life, my favourite CGI film, but it was really pretty. I suspect the movie will look better when released on DVD than on the big screen. Overall it was a big improvement on the disappointing Monsters Inc, perhaps because it didn't take itself so seriously.

This weekend's movies - part one
I work at a movie cinema, mostly selling tickets, on the weekends. The best perk of the job is I get to see movies for free. This is great, because I love movies.

Over the past weekend I saw Legally Blonde 2 and Finding Nemo.

Legally Blonde 2 gets a B- on my ranking scale. I had heard nothing but bad reports about 'Legally Bland' but I thought it was an enjoyable hour and a half. It kept the spirit of the first movie, but wasn't as funny. Also the wonderful Jennifer Coolidge was scarecly in the film which was a shame, but I looked forward to her few scenes greatly.

Similarly, Luke Wilson had little to do, and how did he not get confused shooting his scenes on this film with the few scenes in Charlies Angels 2. There's pretty much no difference between the two roles - both the good guy the girl is in love with.

There were a few good laugh out loud moments, but too much of the story was too similar to the first one, which was a shame. I really wanted to like this film more, but it's still better than some of the crap horror films I watched last week.

Begins
This is the thing to do online these days I hear, so begins a blog by me. What am I going to put here. Hmm, probably links and comments that ammuse me. Or maybe something grander? Maybe not.

Not the best first entry ever, but at least it's a start. Hopefully I will update this more often than my web pages... they've been untouched for quite a while now.