Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Cappy's Cult
"I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
Though I know that the hypnotized never lie"
-The Who "Won't Get Fooled Again"
Saturday
August 13, 2005
The latest developments on the show Big Brother 6 have me angrier than I think I've ever been at something on a reality show. There are some spoilers in here, so I'm going to save that part for a little bit later in this column. But I'm stunned at myself at how angry it has me. If you don't want to know, hold off on reading this until Thursday 8/18/2005.
I've been having amazing fun with something I found by accident: an online virtual stock trading game that uses weblogs as stocks called BlogShares.com. It's free to play; you can pay $15 to get premium membership for a year, which I've already done. I've never liked the word "blog", and I think of this site as an online commentary, but semantics aside, the concept is brilliant and very fun.
|  | Guess what? I'm Thailand!
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I bought the movies Kill Bill Volume 1 and Kill Bill Volume 2 via eBay. Last night I watched Vol. 1 (which I watched in the theatre with my bro Matt when he was down here in October 2003), and tonight I plan to watch Vol. 2, which I've never seen. I forgot just how good Vol. 1 was, but wow it was amazingly well done. I own all of Quentin Tarantino's movies (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and now the two Kill Bills), and I think he's a genius of a director.
Question: does Quentin Tarantino consider Volumes 1 and 2 to be separate films? I noticed at the beginning of Volume 1 that he put on there "Quentin Quentin Tarantino's Fourth Film". I guess I'll have to check tonight when I watch Vol. 2.
I took the country quiz (that I discovered on this site, one of many I've encountered because of Blogshares), and the result? I'm Thailand!
You're Thailand!
Calmer and more staunchly independent than almost all those around you, you have a long history of rising above adversity. Recent adversity has led to questions about your sexual promiscuity and the threat of disease, but you still manage to attract a number of tourists and admirers. And despite any setbacks, you can really cook a good meal whenever it's called for. Good enough to make people cry. |
For the record, I'm disease-free (I just had a physical at the doctor, complete with all sorts of bloodwork). Actually, I'm not all that much of a cook, but maybe that's why they have the "good enough to make people cry" line in there. And I wonder what it says about me that in these online quizzes, I've ended up as Glen Quagmire (giggity!) and Thailand? On second thought, maybe that's not worth contemplating. Heh heh.
Speaking of Thailand, only that country could have two major cities named Bangkok and Phuket with no one blinking an eye about it. Warrants mentioning.
Okay, onto the Big Brother 6 mess. The fivesome of Maggie, Ivette, Beau, Jennifer and April, which calls themselves "The Friendship" (just an awful nickname), is without question my most disliked team in reality TV history. I really shouldn't allow myself to care so much about it. But I subscribed to the 24/7 live internet feed, so because of that I've been able to follow along with things from here at home (and no, I don't listen/watch at work -- I already have a dream job, no need for slacking on the clock). Anyway, I prefer the name "Cappy's Cult" over "The Friendship", since the five of them formed a bond over worship/following whatever Eric the Firefighter (aka "Cappy") said.
In the endurance competition, which began on live TV on Thursday night and lasted nearly 14 hours and was going on even after I left for work the next morning, Jennifer (from The Cult) made a deal with Kaysar that she would put up whomever he wanted, with the idea being to "backdoor" James (a highly duplicitous player) and get him out of the house. She claimed that she just wanted pictures of her boyfriend (who's been dating her for seven years, stringing her along and using her... much like her group is doing to her, actually). She promised Kaysar that she'd put up who he said if he let her win... and then she went back on her word and lied. Without reservation.
Whatever, the game's the game, and so it goes, right? So Kaysar didn't listen to The Who and got fooled again by them. But what really burns me up is how self-righteous, hypocritical and sanctimonious Cappy's Cult is about everything. I know, I know, I shouldn't care about a silly reality show. But this group manages to get under my skin like few others have. They rationalize their actions about backstabbing on the agreement by saying, "Well, the other side would've done it this week," when that wasn't the plan at all. Friggin ridiculous. They even said amongst themselves that the reason America voted back Kaysar (with something like 87% of the vote, though they don't know that) is because "he was so evil", yet another piece of evidence of how delusional they are. Look at the Morty's TV message board if you don't believe me about how popular Kaysar was (and how utterly despised Eric and his crew were). For Matt's sake, I'm glad he didn't end up in that house of horrors with those nutcases (as I mentioned before, he was a semi-finalist to be on this season of the show). I think he was actually too normal for the show. I'm not kidding. He fit the prototype (good looking, well-built, articulate), but he didn't have a severe personality disorder like five of the six male houseguests had (and Kaysar, the one who didn't, is an Iraqi-born American, and he is unique enough in that way). Plus if Ivette was in there talking shit about him, I'd be wanting to kick the HOH front door down and... well, you can guess what I'd want to do.
If you don't watch the show, here's a quick synopsis of Cappy's Cult: Maggie (Cappy's partner), who is actually pretty normal, except for taking over as the de facto cult leader. Her willingness for evil and lying is not to be ignored, but it only gets worse from her. You have Jennifer, who is going to tell all of America tonight how lying was okay by her (I'm sure she made her parents proud with that one). You know how it is when you see flashes of people you know in other people sometimes? Well with her, occasionally I'll see a flash of my friend Velvet from Huntington (and Rollergirl from Boogie Nights, too), and it actually makes me mad that Velvet and Rollergirl are associated in my head with someone so easily duped and inherently dishonest. Okay, Rollergirl (played by Heather Graham) is a fictional character, but it still makes me mad.
|  | Ivette (shown above) is a loyal member of Cappy's Cult.
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From there you have Beau, a "personal shopper" with the fashion sense of a color-blind used car salesman from 1978. Then there's April, with her plastic surgery (fake chin, fake breasts, fake nose) who is 31 but still looks 40+ due to too much smoking and god knows what else. And finally there's Ivette, the motormouth skank from Miami who gives a bad name for all Cuban-Americans. I have friends who are lesbians, and I have friends who are Cuban-Americans, and NOT ONE OF THEM acts remotely close to how Ivette acts. Not one! Running at the mouth, using "having Latin blood" as an excuse to fly off the handle, use of racial slurs, etc. Meanwhile, CBS continues to portray her on television like she is the second coming of Martha Stewart, between her "creative cooking" and her bird feeder (which has attracted more ants than birds, but that never made TV) and her "ghetto water slide" (which was abandoned after one day, again something that never made TV). What, does she have pictures of Les Moonves and Julie Chen in a compromising position? I really don't get it. BB6 has been good about making fun of others when they deserve it (the hysterical 7/16 episode where they played the clown music making fun of Eric aka Cappy when he kept calling meetings where he made the transformation into Napoleon Eric, last week when they played the "ho down music" with April and her constantly wanting cigarettes, etc.)
If this seems mean-spirited, it's supposed to be. That's how mad they have me. I suppose the casting directors have done their job to that end, putting people that you'll care about in there, but it infuriates me.
|  | Matt (shown from a 2001 pic in Amsterdam) could've been wearing an HOH robe had he been chosen for Big Brother 6.
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Complicating things is that the Sovereign Six, make that Five, or now Four have not been smart about things AT ALL. Last week, with a 6-on-5 numbers advantage, Howie decided instead of going after the Cult, he'd try to take out James/Sarah... who were also being targeted by the Cult. Granted, James was going behind their back and double-dipping, but he had already backstabbed the other side (which lead to the formation of Cappy's Cult) and he was an obvious target. James equated to insulation from attack! So, naturally, Howie cannibalized his own team. So much for the "playing dumb" thing being an act. See, on that level, the show could've used a Matt Pickney/Dustin Gremmels combo in there, two legit good people who would've been smart enough to not get outplayed like the "Sovereign" team has been (and no chance they would've gone for a stupid team name like that). Or Matt/Rich Karg, Matt/John Pouncey, whatever. Actually, seeing John F'ing Pouncey (on drinking nights in the house) would've been funny as hell. Alas, it didn't play out that way.
That's my take on everything. I don't want to hear anything over e-mail like "How do you really feel?" -- I hate when people say that. Just because I have the ability to articulate and the balls to do it doesn't mean that you should feel low about yourself to try and get a dig in about it. It's usually said because someone isn't smart enough to come up with a more effective response than "yeah". Anyway, as Jonah Malloy used to say on Line Of Fire, that's that with that.
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