My Exercise In Futility

With this season’s edition of Survivor focusing on Heroes and Villains, I realized how many seasons of Survivor I have missed for one reason or another. I can remember watching most of the first season of Survivor. Richard Hatch made great TV. I then remember watching the premiere of Season 2 of Survivor after the Superbowl. I was instantly enamored with Colby. He was physically attractive and seemed quite friendly in that first episode, the only episode I ever watched of Season 2. After that, Survivor fell of my TV map for many years; the next season I remember had Sugar on it or when JT won, or are those the same season – I don’t remember.

Curious to learn more about this season’s players and with an abundance of television time available to me, I thought it might be fun to revisit previous seasons of survivor. To date, you can purchase previous versions of Survivor from iTunes for as little as $8.99. They have seasons dating all the way back to Season 9 – Vanuatu. For me, that was as good a place as any to start.

While I won’t bore you with a play by play of each season, but I’m sure my I’ll have some entries over the next couple of weeks about the different strategies or specific things I liked or disliked about these older versions of Survivor. I’ve made it through Season 9 – Vanuatul; Season 10 – Palau; Season 11 – Guatemala; and I’m currently on episode 3 of Season 12 – Panama. I’ll get back to Season 12 – Panama in a moment. Let me just make a few comments about seasons 9 – 11, even if they are 4 or 5 years too late.

Season 9 – Vanuatul had great challenges. This was a fun season to watch.

Season 10 – Palau had some interesting characters on it. I fell in love with Stephanie. I thought she was a hard worker, a competitive person, and she should have gone much further than she did. I can see why she was, at the time, one of the most popular players of the game. I was very disappointed that Tom won the million dollar prize in this season.

Season 11 – I can’t tell you how excited I was to see Stephanie return to this season. I was very happy she made it to the final two. This season played out quite well. I do think that Cindy should have given up her 1 car so the other 4 could have had cars. I don’t know that this would have escalated her to the final two, but I think it would have been a smart move and good for life long karma. I also wish I would have seen this season as it aired - Cindy was from Naples, FL where I grew up. I found this out only yesterday. It just would have been nice to route for somebody from your own hometown.

Now, the main catalyst for this entry has been some of the changes to the game made in Season 12 – Panama. I like how the season started off separated into four tribes – older men; older women; young men; young women. I also like the concept of Exile Island and a hidden immunity idol, a feature I definitely remember in seasons to come.

My all-time favorite change to the game so far is that in this season of Survivor, the hidden immunity idol can be used AFTER the votes have been read. This is definitely a mind blowing change to the game. Personally, ever since I’ve known of hidden immunity idols in the future seasons, I always thought that this is how immunity idols SHOULD be played. Let the players cast their votes and then play any idols! The next highest voted person is then eliminated. I love this concept. I am only on episode 3 of season 12, so will see how it actually plays out.

One other thing that has impressed me about season 12 so far one of the four person alliances that has formed during episode 2. Of the Casaya tribe, Shane, Courtney, Daniel and Aras formed an alliance of four. Aras made the alliance very public and started informing the other players about the alliance and of the supposed order in which the others would be forced to leave. I personally think this is a pretty good strategy – provided everyone is on board with the alliance being public. The mistake that Aras made was that he blabbed his mouth without first telling anyone he was doing so. It made a lot of other people uncomfortable, and I feel that alone with be the demise of this alliance.  We’ll have to wait and see.

What I hate about the the entry I just wrote is that I was trying to provide hyperlinks to some of the players from season 12 and I’ve stumbled on a spoiler indicating who won already. It sucks, because I didn’t know who won this season until now – but it will still be fun to see how it plays out. I suppose for my future Survivor – Seasons Past entries, I’ll have to take good viewing notes and make hyperlinks later.

Yes, you read the title correctly. I wasn’t personally struck, but the airplane I rode in from Boston to Newark en route to Paris was struck by lightning. During our initial decent into Newark, there was a blinding flash and a loud snap outside the left window. That was it, just a bright flash and a loud noise. Otherwise it was as if nothing had happened.

For the next 10 seconds, you could hear everyone’s heart beating just a little bit faster as we all stared out the window wondering what happened. I wasn’t nervous until I heard the gongs that normally cue the flight attendants and passengers about flight activity – like reaching 10,000 feet or starting the initial decent. Once the number of gongs went beyond the usual sequence of four, I started to get nervous. As I ran through the most dramatic, life threatening scenarios in my head in the 25 seconds since the flash, the pilot interrupted the gongs and came over the PA to just let us know that although the aircraft had indeed been struck by lightning, everything was in working order and not to worry. Oh, and he suggested we all buy lottery tickets tonight. (I didn’t think that was very funny!)

I had to chuckle a little bit inside. Although I was able to remain calm on the outside during those confusing 25 seconds (as were the rest of the passengers) there were so many not so calm thoughts going through my head. It’s only the second time in all my years of air travel where I thought something had gone horribly wrong.

I leave tomorrow morning for my final six weeks in Paris. For those of you that know me, I’m sure you’re aware of my disdain for Paris. It hasn’t been so much a disdain for Paris as it has been the fact that I just haven’t been home since July 2009. I’ve started to feel guilty about my constant complaining and that the opportunity to travel abroad has been wasted on my bitter self.

Therefore, I am deciding here and now to go back to Paris with a renewed sense of exploration and wonder. I would like for my readers to suggest and tell me things to visit while I am in Paris. I am then going to visit each place suggested and take pictures and try to learn a little something about the beautiful city that I am in. I have six more weeks there and I want to make the most of them, and I want to have fun doing it.

I am definitely going to visit Euro Disney one weekend. Please leave a comment or suggestion of other sites I should visit. Help me explore the parts of Paris I should be able to talk about when I return home to the States. I promise to take pictures and post an entry about my experience at the sites I visit upon the readers’ suggestions.

Help me make my last six weeks in Paris memorable and worthy of the time I will spend there. Leave comments…