Survivor: Worlds Apart Premiere

Well, I’m going to keep you updated about the movie watching that I’m doing. And while I know that there is not enough material with just B. B. Andersen, I’ll be doing something else while I write about him. I don’t know yet if I’ll do a drinking game with it or not. I might not. We’ll see what ends up happening. Plus, you may see a whole ‘nother set of movies on a new list getting created. It all depends on what my Christmas presents end up being and what my dreams may put things on my list. There’s a lot of movies that I want to add to the list pretty soon. This could wind up being a long update before we even get to the actual part, so either bear with me or skip to the part that says, “In the first segment of this show…” This is going to take a while. And while I keep track of deceased contestants, I won’t do Caleb Bankston until that season is on DVD. Wow, I’ve already said a lot in just one paragraph. Okay, Adam: breathe. Just breathe and relax. You can write this later. Since the show doesn’t even start until February, I probably shouldn’t even have started this the day after the last season ended. If you aren’t interested in the movies that I’ve been watching lately, then please skip to the paragraph that begins: now that I’m done with talking about movies. I won’t hold it against you. I don’t even know why I’m telling you about it. I guess that I just want you to know the instance I start watching Survivor: Borneo again, although, when I do that, I will add a new post to my TV blog every Sunday that I’m able to watch Survivor. Now, let’s start rambling as I have a lot to say.

I am adding this paragraph to tell you that I will be talking a lot about the movies that I watched until Survivor started again. So if you don’t want to know about them, then please skip to later in this blog. If you do want to read about them, please feel free to. I’m not even sure why I’m telling you about all of this. But I put it all here and if you don’t want to read about, then skip to the paragraph that says that I’m done talking about it. I won’t blame you if you do it. Now to begin this long and boring update about movie watching that I did

I won’t bother telling you when I watched these movies until the season started. I’ll just tell you what movies I watched and what I ended up replacing them with. I watched Aladdin and replaced it with a VHS recording of a performance of the play Arsenic and Old Lace. I then rolled Arsenic and Old Lace as was going to watch it, but the audio was poor and garbled. Turning up the volume didn’t help with the problem, so I watched a Christmas home video instead as this was back in December, before the next year started. In fact, movies watched in one year can be watched the next year (but normally not the same year) so Aladdin could possibly return to the list in 2015. Arsenic and Old Lace was replaced by The Aristocats. Thus ends the movie watching of 2014. For various reasons, a new list, to be watched on Tuesdays, was added. Here are the movies in alphabetical order: Flight of the Phoenix, a Little Princess, Mighty Morphing Power Rangers: the Movie, Raise Your Voice, Taken, and the Wizard of Oz. All of them were added because of dreams that I had about them. It should be noted that the Wizard of Oz that I’m watching is a play version that I was in and not the classic Judy Garland movie.

So I wound up watching Pocahontas and replaced it with Rat Race. I watched Stargate and replaced it with Recess: School’s Out. While I normally would only watch that towards the end of the school year, since I’m not in school anymore, I’ll watch it anytime before the first back to school commercial of the year airs. If I’m not able to watch it by then, it will be taken off of the list and I won’t be able to watch it again until next year. I also watched Raise Your Voice and replaced it with the Ron Clark Story. I’ve never actually seen that before. My mother accidently got that for me for Christmas. She meant to get me Front of the Class, but she got that instead.

We then get to the next week. I watched National Treasure and replaced it with a post event DVD of the National Youth Gathering from 2007. Shout out to all LCMS members! I was there in Orlando that summer. Anyways, I then watch Little Rascals and replace it with The Miracle Worker, which is about Helen Keller, for those that didn’t know. I then watched The Aristocats and replaced it with Amadeus, which I’ve never seen before, but am interested in watching. After that, I watched Flight of the Phoenix and replaced it with The Hitchhiker’s Guide of the Galaxy.

The week after that, I watched Fifty First Dates and replaced it with Enchanted. Fifty First Dates was one of my sister’s movies that I had to take off the list at the soonest point that I could. I am ignoring the commentary with this movie so it can be replaced. I just have only two of her movies left, unless I have to worry about VHS movies of hers being removed sometime. Back to movies: I then watched The Miracle Worker and replaced it with Mulan. After that, I watched The Omega Code and replaced it with (drum roll please) The Omega Code 2. Lastly, for that week at least, I watched a Little Princess and replaced it with Lilo and Stitch.

We get to the next week. Yes, I am already getting bored of this update and don’t know what the point of this movie update is. But, I figure that my blog posts would be too short without my ramblings like this. I will stop posting any and all movie updates when I finally get to watch the Survivor: Borneo special again. After getting rid of the Sunday list, I’ll be watching the first season again while taking notes about it which I’ll share during a hiatus between airing seasons. And yes, I’ve told you that before.

Anyways, Saturday was when I watched the post gathering DVD of the 2007 LCMS National Youth Gathering. I end up replacing it with Our Lips are Sealed. I went to the 2010 gathering as well, the one in New Orleans, but there is no DVD of that for me to watch. (Just an interesting thought for the superstitious: if something bad has happened to New Orleans/Louisiana area in 2005 and 2010, then is something bad going to happen this year, in 2015?) The next movie that I rolled was Mulan. I replaced it with Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. I do not currently have the first Night at the Museum movie so you won’t see me watching it just yet. I then watched Power Rangers: the Ultimate Rangers. That has four hours worth of episodes that can be watched consecutively. I replaced it with Paulie. With the old choice stuck between o and r, I was stuck with another p choice since I lacked any q movies. In fact, if one list doesn’t have a choice to replace it within a certain letter range, then I have to give up that list. More on that if I cross that bridge. I actually have other p choices, but I didn’t want to choose between the other ones for various reasons. Lastly, for this week in question, I watched Taken and replaced it with the first movie in the Toy Story series.

Here’s another worthless paragraph! If you actually read through the whole posts I make in the past (thank you for doing that, but please do better things with your life), you may have noticed that I mentioned being a fan of CinemaSins. Well, I once tweeted them that they should do Toy Story. They then ended up doing Toy Story. I find that a great honor, even if I probably wasn’t the only one who suggested that. Now if you want to skip to an actually important part of this blog post, go ahead and do so. I won’t mind. I really don’t know why I’m telling you about all these movies. I guess it is so you know when I start to watch Survivor: Borneo again, only during hiatus is when you’d see my thoughts on B. B. Andersen. And since his time in the game was pretty short, I might write other notes while I’m at it.

On Saturday, I watched Monster’s Inc and replaced it with Ice Age. On Sunday, I watched The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and replaced it with two things actually, the first of which will be my grade school graduation DVD. The one that will replace it will be my high school graduation DVD. But we’ll get to the later. I’m just glad that I finally stopped rolling fours for once on Sunday. Now The Hobbit series will probably reappear on this list later this year. Typically, I watch a movie, but don’t watch it again the same year. But, there are some exceptions to that rule. Anyways, on Monday, I watched another dancing video and still have more of them to watch after that so it will remain on the list for now. On Tuesday, I watched Mighty Morphing Power Rangers: the Movie. Now of the new Tuesday list, it had four movies that I watched last year on it, a movie I dreamt about in December, and a movie that I had been trying to add since last year before I gave up the list for December. It looks like the movie I could have added soonest has now spent the longest time on the list. In the first five weeks of having this list, I rolled from it a different choice so far. Anyways, I replaced the Power Rangers movie with Made of Honor.

Now I’ve mentioned in this blog before my strange history with the Charmed DVD collection of mine. I started my collection with the fifth season. I then got the first, then the sixth, then the second, then the third, then the fourth. I still don’t have the last two seasons yet. But watching the show out of order is really confusing. I didn’t want to ever do it again, but it happened again. Last summer, my brother got me a Power Rangers DVD for my birthday. It was the second volume of the second season, since he wasn’t able to start at the beginning. So I watched it and then added the Power Rangers movie that I mentioned earlier onto the list. Of course, after watching it I had a dream about it, which is why it was on the list again this year. Since the third season of Power Rangers starts right after the movie takes place, I will probably get that season next on DVD. But I still have to get both volumes of the first season and the first volume of the second season. But I’ll talk more about that in my new blog. I started a blog about Madam Secretary. Here’s the link: http://adamdeckermadamsecretaryblog.blogspot.com/

Here’s the next week of movie watching: On Saturday, I watched Heidi and replaced it with Fireproof. I highly recommend the movie Fireproof to anyone that hasn’t seen it. And if you have seen it, then I suggest that you watch it again. On Sunday, I watched Celtic Woman: A New Journey and replaced it with the next Celtic Woman live concert. On Monday, I watched another dancing video and there are still more of them left so they do not need to be replaced at the moment. On Tuesday, I watched The Ron Clark Story. It’s actually a pretty good movie. Afterwards, I replaced it with The Sound of Music, and, like other things on this list, this is a recording of a play version, this one having my cousins in it.

The next week gets a bit confusing since I wasn’t able to watch things normally. Plus, there was a movie that I watched without it being any list. Why I watched it, I’ll get to shortly. I ended up watching my grade school graduation DVD, which doesn’t actually have any footage from said graduation on it. The name I gave it is kind of a misnomer. Anyways, that choice remains on the list as there’s still my high school graduation to watch. I also watched The Omega Code 2 and replaced it with Monster’s University. After I had watched Monster’s Inc earlier this year, I stopped by a store and bought Monster’s University, its prequel, since there were no other movies at the time for me to add onto the list. What I’m referring to is that sometimes there are movies for me to add to the list that changes my usual method of replacing movies. The usual method of replacing movies on the list is normally decided by me simply rolling for a replacement. But if I recently acquired a new movie, I dream about a movie I have, or I simply want to watch a movie, then I add it to the list without having to roll for something.

So I ignored the movies for a day of the week to watch The Ultimate Gift. Why did I watch that? Well, I’m going to tell you possible spoilers about that movie. A dead grandfather is central to the plot of the movie. The day I watched this movie was the anniversary of my grandfather’s death. (My other grandfather is still alive.) That is why I ignored the rolling list for that day.

Now there’s only one last week of movie watching to tell you about from before the new season starts. Then I will just post updates once a week about each week of movie watching. On Saturday, I watched the Decker Family DVD that I’m pretty sure I told you about before. I then replaced it with the Chronicles of Narnia movie series. I’m not entirely sure that I should put that on the list again, but I think that it might work out, for now at least. I’m worried about certain movies no longer being available to me, but that could change if I want it to or I could go to a video store that I know has the movies that I’m interested in. Alternatively, I could just get rid of that option with something else. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

On Sunday, I watched Celtic Woman: Songs from the Heart. When I watch that, I also have to go online to watch two songs from the concert that aren’t on the DVD. Ultimately, looking up stuff online may be a good thing considering how I watch something online to do a cast assessment of the season. If you are reading this post, then there won’t be a cast assessment this season and I’ll explain why later. That concert will be replaced by the next Celtic Woman concert called Believe. On Monday, I watched Recess: School’s Out. I replaced it with A Walk to Remember. The last movie that I would wind up watching before the season premiere of Survivor was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That would be replaced by Dumbo. Now Dumbo should be with Rain Man and the Back to the Future trilogy as summer movies. But a Dumbo dream of mine put it on the list sooner.

Now that I’m done with talking about movies, I might as well bore you to death about various dreams I had about Survivor. One was about Survivor: Guatemala and implied that a contestant from that season died. Well, I’m not exactly sure that’s what the dream meant as they are hard to interpret sometimes. Another Survivor dream implied that a lot of my former classmates had competed on Survivor. Now in reality, I have never known a Survivor contestant before they have done the show. (I’ve technically never known any after they’ve done the show either, but thanks to social media like Facebook and Twitter, I can interact with them that way.) I hope that I will meet one in person someday, although I’d settle for a Skype conversation. I’d start vlogs where I’d interview contestants, but I lack the technology to do that and probably won’t get it anytime soon. While I could potentially borrow the technology, I don’t want to impose on anyone.

You may also be wondering where my cast assessment is this season. Well, I wasn’t able to do one. Normally, my best source of information for something like that is the Survivor preview show that airs on the TV guide network. They didn’t do one this year (that I know of at least). There might be another network with a special, but I was unable to find one before the start of the show. Seeing the first episode will taint my opinions in a cast assessment and I would be unable to do one in a real way. Thus, you will not see one this season. But I hope to be back in future seasons with it. They are well read posts, unless Google is lying to me. They could be considering how they mentioned that nobody had read my first post on my new blog (the link is posted above) even though the blog mentioned having some people looking at it. As for cast assessments, I said the first time that I didn’t know if I’d ever do them again. So I don’t know if you’ll see something about them again or not.

I had written some of a post about a cast assessment, but since you won’t see that, I’ll just steal what was meant to be in that post in this paragraph. Other parts of the post aren’t worth sharing in my mind. When a Survivor season starts with three tribes, there tends to be a way each of those tribes fare. There’s the tribe that fails immediately, gets dissolved, but still manages to have players in the finale (such as Saboga, Matsing, and Luzon). While I did not predict that the brains tribe would lose a lot last season, I did think that it would be funny if they failed as a tribe. I was right. So I don’t know which of the three tribes from this season would fail, but I’m guessing that it would be the no collar tribe. The second tribe in a three tribe season tends to do well when there’s still three tribes, start failing at the dissolve to two tribes, and be the first ones completely eliminated after the merge (such as Mogo Mogo, Kalabaw, and Solana). It would be hard to predict which one of them would be that, but I’ll go with the white collar tribe. Then there’s one last type of tribe in three tribe seasons. That’s the dominate tribe that starts out well during the three tribe stage, stays doing well in the two tribe stage, and winds up with members in the finale (such as Chapera, Tandang, and Aparri). I think that the blue collar tribe will be that tribe. I do wonder if any of my predictions will be right. I do think that we’ll find the typical three tribes dynamic, as mentioned earlier, but I don’t know yet which tribe will do what. The blue collar tribe could fail with its expectations, much like how the brains tribe did poorly in Cagayan. But I am convinced before the season starts that the winner of this season will probably come from that tribe.

Anyways, I don’t know whether or not to get into what I think about specific contestants or not. I mean, I don’t have thoughts about all of them, just some. But with those few players, I might as well mention what my thoughts regarding them are. Nina is deaf, but not in the typically sense it seems. Many commentators on youtube were thinking that she’ll be out before the merge, which just seems a bit mean-spirited to me. Do I think that she’ll do well just because they think she’ll fail? Maybe. There was another contestant named So. She was one of the lost players from last season so it makes you wonder if someone dropped out of this season and allowed her to play. Meanwhile, I just hope that my computer doesn’t have the annoying grammar check every time I write the name So. At least I can ignore what they say, which I do a lot.

There’s not much else to say outside of what transpired in the episode. I’m glad for those of you who have read this whole post. I wouldn’t mind if you skip to the actual important part. I’m not even sure why I keep doing this. But this might be something that I’d try to stop doing but never actually succeed in stopping to do. I really hope that I have said all that I need to for this blog post, outside of the episode itself. I’ll try my best to keep the movie updates to a single paragraph that will be labeled in advance. I especially hope that I can roll Seventeen Again so I can replace it with and then roll the Survivor Borneo special which would probably mark the end or close to it of my movie watching list until I have another season to get caught up on. But unless an unfortunate death happens to a Survivor contestant or Blood versus Water gets released to DVD, I won’t have anything to worry about, for the moment at least. Of course, outside of the first two seasons, I wouldn’t have to worry about watching feature length specials about them before or after watching the season itself. Future ramblings shouldn’t be this long in the future and as soon as this paragraph ends, I’ll get to the actual point. But enough of my ramblings.

In the first segment of the show, we get the usual introduction of the contestants that we get at the very beginning. Since I didn’t do a cast assessment, I might mention some of what I think of different people as they are introduced. Dan is a cocky person, from what I can tell. I’m never sure how cocky players will do in the game. Typically they are out before the merge, but some people who are cocky are like Tony and win the season. Each tribe chooses a representative. Might this be the new twist we’ve heard about? Interestingly, only men are chosen as representatives. Each of them chooses another person to make a decision. I’m wondering if these pairs will form instant alliances. There’s a blog I read and the writer is convinced that pairs is how this game will work considering how that typically happens during three tribe seasons.

In the second segment of the show, the no collar tribe gets to their camp. The pair of leaders have to decide between honesty and deception. Honesty is a bigger bag of beans. Deception would have a smaller bag of bean, but a clue to the hidden immunity idol. Sierra doesn’t believe that her tribe leaders actually chose the bigger bag of beans, which they did. Why even tell them that there was a choice if they are just going to choose the wrong one? You’d just tell them that you only had a smaller bag of beans and there wasn’t much of a choice. The white collar pair chooses the deception choice while the other two tribes make the honesty choice. This is more than likely the new twist that I heard about. It’s a pretty good one, one I’m surprised hasn’t really appeared before.

In the third segment of the show, So comes up with her lie regarding the choice and made up a third option that could have happened. Shirin was not fooled by their lie. Now that So and Joaquin are in an obvious alliance to the other players in the game, the other players on their tribe consider forming an alliance against them. Mike is already becoming the crazy person in his tribe. He randomly ate a scorpion and got sick from it. I already don’t have much hope for his long term chances in the game. I haven’t picked a favorite to win yet. Jenn and Vince are probably going to have a showmance. Will it work out? They normally don’t work out, but we’ll see. Joe becomes a leader like person regarding building the shelter.

In the fourth segment of the show, there are arguments on the blue collar as to how to build the shelter.  They thought that Dan was too serious about it. Nobody seems to like him and he knows it. If you ask me, this pair twist may make them easy targets for the other four players. Vince is probably jealous of Jenn and thinks that she connects more with Joe than with him. Well, it looks like their showmance won’t work out after all. Carolyn looks for an idol even though she doesn’t have a clue for it. Wouldn’t you know it, she finds the idol.

In the fifth segment of the show, we get to the immunity challenge. They show the yellow tribe winning the challenge so following my theory regarding that, I’ll probably think that they lose the challenge. If you don’t believe me, then rewatch Caramoan and see how other Gota was shown winning a challenge that they would end up losing. It doesn’t always happen like that, but you’d be surprised how often that is what happens. At the first stage, everyone starts out using keys but then everyone then switches to untying the knots. I always hate the challenges where only one person can help at a stage. The blue collar tribe loses a lot of time at this stage and the other two tribes get a huge lead. Only one of the three puzzles has to be solved. In the end, the no collar tribe is the first tribe to win the challenge and a race for second place starts happening next. At least people can switch at the challenge even though only one can compete at the time. The blue collar tribe pulls a come from behind second place finish. The white collar tribe failed at the puzzle and thus attends the first tribal council. Shirin is the one who failed at the puzzle and thinks that she’ll be voted out. But is that what will happen? Carolyn’s idol could come into play here.

In the sixth segment of the show, a great nature shot of a bunch of birds eating the corpse of a dead deer or deer-like creature. What a great shot! Is that supposed to represent Shirin? Maybe. But we’ll see how this all unfolds. Carolyn senses that she’s the target. She tells Tyler about her hidden immunity idol. With everyone in the game having a confessional, then I have no way of telling who will get voted out. Will the tables turn on So? Will Carolyn play her idol? There’s a lot of drama at tribal council which is hard to summarize. In the end, Carolyn does not play her hidden immunity idol. She must be convinced that she’s not actually the target. In the end, So is voted out. I’d be so nervous if I had an idol that I’d sooner waste it than risk getting voted out with it in my possession. Ultimately, Carolyn made the right choice.

On the next Survivor, the white collar tribe gets a bit risqué and Nina fights with her tribe. Maybe the commentators were right about her. But we’ll see what ends up happening. I just hope that she isn’t voted out just because of her deafness.

Total confessionals: Kelly- 1, Carolyn- 4, Will- 2, Joaquin- 3, Sierra- 1, Vince- 3, Joe- 2, Jenn- 4, Lindsey- 2, Max- 3, Dan- 4, Hali- 2, Tyler- 3, Mike- 2, So- 5, Rodney- 2, Shirin- 2, Nina- 1.

The elimination of So means that Jenn, Dan, and Carolyn have the highest confessional count in the game. As usual, I may have messed up the numbers. At least I do the best that I can. Anyways, the people currently at the bottom of the confessional count are Kelly, Sierra, and Nina. Things, of course, can and will change early into the season. Remember that my blog will be updated on Thursdays until holy week due to Lent. But I should be here every week as normal. Also, be sure to read my random blog posts that I added between the end of last season and the start of this one. I’ll probably always have random blog posts, unless I’m blogging about a previous or current Survivor season. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.