The Amazing Race

How about we lighten this up for awhile with some mindless TV?  Sound good?  Here we go!

So Gina got me back into watching The Amazing Race by introducing me to The Cowboys this season.  I haven't watched The Amazing Race since the Reiken (sp?) season, years ago.  I'm watching all the episodes on-line that I missed this season to catch me up to these final legs of the race coming up.  Some thoughts:

1) I kinda love Jeff and Jordan.  I actually think they are super fantastic.  I wish I could be more like Jeff.  He is so able to not take things too seriously.  He totally realizes that Jordan has her...umm....limitations, and just accepts it and encourages her without being mean.  He is just really good-natured.  She is sweetly ditzy.  Did you see the clip they showed of the Big Brother finale? She was walking through a crowd of people congratulating her and she looked like she had no idea why she was there or what all those crazies were yelling about.  Someone should tell her she won a lot of money already.  I loved the clip where she admitted she didn't know how to tell time "with clocks" and that the phrase "a quarter 'til" was a mystery to her.  She just goes through life in her oblivious way, which is kind of endearing.* 

2) I like Dan and Jordan a bit less after watching the first episodes.  I liked them quite a bit before I went back to the beginning. I guess that's my punishment for not watching from the first, in order.  If  I had, I'd be liking them more and more as time went on instead of backtracking to not-so-much like I am now.

3)  I wonder how that grandmother's other grandchildren feel after hearing her say that Shannon is the grandchild she knows the best and respects the most. Way to dispel the "you're all my favorites" myth.

4)  I haven't Wikipedia'd it or anything yet, and I'm sure this information is readily available.  But every time Phil speaks I always am plagued with the question "Where is this guy from?  What combination of  accents is that?".  I'm expecting something really incongrous, like he was raised in South Africa by a Japanese mother and a French father and had a nanny from New Jersey.  It reminds me of a woman I met in grad school who spoke with a British accent even though she grew up mostly in Arizona and then lived in the middle east for years.  My friend asked her about it once and she readily stated that she had never lived in Britain.  She adopted that accent intentionally, because she felt people would pay more attention to her could understand her more clearly if they thought she was British.  

*Note to Brent and Caite:  It is possible to be educationally challenged and endearing.  It helps if you are not mean.  And if you don't have a shifty-eyed, slow spreading evil grin, Caite.  And if you don't have a perpetual air of indignance about being underestimated, Brent.  And take it from all of us, that's anonymous.