Big Brother-Final Two

First off, let me say, doesn't Jerry have anything else to wear beside that red sleeveless shirt? No one wants to see Old McDonald bare his arms, ei, ei, o. I just didn't understand the Renegade reasoning to have Memphis go on the block when I thought they should have put up Keesha and Jerry together. Now everything rests on Memphis to win the POV. If it involves brains, Jerry might have a good chance of winning, he's shown alot of smarts in this game. Dan gets a helicopter ride to the secluded beach where he meets up with Michelle. He tries to sweet talk her into winning her vote, in which this segment should have been called how to influence people and win votes (thanks, Double D). Dan was really working it and I'm not quite sure Michelle will give in, she's one tough cookie. The stair way to Veto game was a Q & A, which always gives the game a level playing field, but thankfully, Memphis wins the POV. At the end of the game Keesha lets out a nervous laugh. Of course Memphis takes himself off and the only replacement is Keesha. Keesha then gets really nervous because when she goes into the HOH room, she gets the bad vibe that they will be voting her out. When she confronts them, they slyly look away because they can't lie to her face. If I were Keesha, I would have thrown myself on their mercy and tell them that if they kept me for one more week, I will let them win and then they can vote me out the following week and then played like crazy to win the HOH. In the end, no matter how much wrath she spewed, Keesha was voted out by Memphis, Dan whispers in her ear that he took Michelle to the beach so she could tell the rest of the house. I'm wondering if Memphis knows how hard Dan is playing the game? I guess Dan and Memphis has a grand plan and things are falling in place for them. The three part HOH begins with a bumpy airplane ride and of course we know whose falling off first, Jerry. He goes down like a pile of leaves. It was the plan for Memphis to take a fall so Dan could win round one, but instead he holds on for several more minutes which looked like Dan might fall off. From the beginning, it looked like Dan was struggling, I guess he doesn't have good balance. Memphis takes the fall, and goes on to round two. I thought round two was funny with the punching of house guest cutouts. I thought Jerry would have done alot better, but the time of 8 minutes to 51 minutes was a big difference and Memphis wins round two. In a head to head, Dan and Memphis go up for the final 7 question, Q & A. I placed my bets on Dan, since he's pretty smart, and of course he wins the final HOH and Jerry is given his walking papers. To my amazement, Dan managed to be loyal to Memphis all the way through. Now it remains to be seen if the jury sees him as the ultimate player-Single D

Greatest American Dog and All the Dogs I've Loved Before

Congratulations to Travis and his boxer dog, Presley, crowned and given the golden bone title of the Greatest American Dog, with second runner up, Laurie and her cute underdog white maltese, Andrew.

As we came to the finale of the Greatest American Dog, I stopped to think about all the dogs I have owned and loved. My fellow loving, loyal companions of my past, two which rest in cedar boxes on my library shelf.

My only dog of my childhood was a beagle that we got when I was eleven and lived in Hawaii . Only a few memories linger from "Susie", like the one of the day I was taking her for a walk on the base, (we lived on Barber's Point Navy Base, Oahu), when Susie took the biggest snake of a poop in someone's calla lilies. I remember standing there frozen in sheer terror at the size and it's slithery ability of it snaking down the leaf to the stalk while the homeowner yelled at me from his front porch for me to clean it up! Of the time that Susie had gotten bitten from a centipede in the backyard and almost died and had for the rest of her days eat this horrible smelling dog food that my mother would extract from the can in a solid lump and cut it up into small bite size pieces. And of the day Susie died, my mother standing in the doorway in her blue nightgown and hair net, crying hopelessly. I had never seen her cry before.

The first dog of my young adulthood was Charlie, a mutt that someone was giving away in front of a mall in San Diego while I was attending college. She was smarter than most humans and could jump from a sitting position into your arms. She traveled with us from our house in San Diego to San Francisco, feeling at home anywhere she could sleep between us, head on the pillow, snoring. She would sit across the room by the fireplace staring at my dish because that was how she begged for treats, until one day she no longer did that and chose just to sit next to me barely breathing. When we took her to the vet, they told us she had lung cancer, to which I told the vet that I didn't know she smoked. The last day I brought her to the vet, she knew it was going to be our last day together and as I hugged her while the vet gave her the shot, I could feel her cold nose press against my cheek, her tongue lick my tears, and feel her swallow her last breath. Now I know how my mother felt that day in her blue nightgown and hair net, crying, hopelessly.

There after it was a series of dogs, mostly big goofy labs. A black one named Peppercorn, who insisted on digging up my roses in the back yard, until one day she made a hole so big it was almost in the neighbor's yard, that I put her in the hole and hosed her down with water until she was a muddy mess. She never dug again. A yellow lab named Fanny, hopelessly sweet and kind hearted, who had a benign fatty tumor on her stomach the size of a small football. A purebred Sheltie named Dottie. The day we went to pick her up at the breeder's farm in Livermore, she came out of the barn with her tiny tips of her ears taped down. She was stubborn and refused to be house broken, until into the 8th month, out of frustration, I held her over the balcony of my three story house and told her if she didn't learn to be potty trained she would end up in the garden. She never made a mess after that and her ears never did stay down. The past has been filled with lovable big dogs, sloppy in their affections. It hasn't been until now that we decided on trying out the likes of smaller dogs, which we are finding small in size but big in personalities. Two small dogs, chihuahuas, name Henry and Hazel, but that's another story.-Single D

Project Runway-What's Your Zodiac Sign?

This week's special guests are the rejected designers from this season, much to the sour grapes looks of the remaining designers. The challenge is to create an avant gard look from the the zodiac sign of one of the designers. Mostly it's Libra or Aquarius. No one chooses Cancer, hey, I really wanted to see a crabby patty design. For this post, I am only going to rant about the two most auful designs ever and that would be Blayne's and Kenley's. Blayne and Stella get paired up and both choose to do Libra as their sign. The sign should have been not to pair those two odd balls together. When Blayne tries to explain his design to Tim it sounded like he was talking in a foreign language, but somewhere in there the word leathea was uttered so we knew Stella was planting ideas. Kenley and Wesley are paired together and they choose to do Aquarius as their Zodiac sign. Did Wesley utter a single word during this episode? Once again another designer is so in love with their own creation. Kenley's is enamoured of her design thinking it so avant gard, when it is more like a costume for the the Princess of lollipop land, fly away with me Peter Pan! That outfit literally looked like it could take off or were those egg pods on the shoulders housing some grotesque creature? I'm wondering how that hideous designed translated into Aquarius? Where was the illusion of water? This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.... Poor Tim said it was looking very Glenda the Good Witch.

The designer's models will be wearing their outfits at a party hosted at the Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History where the past designers will pick the winning outfit. I'm wondering how they could even see the outfits in that ambient light? So fierce Christian was there, he makes me laugh just looking at him, such an elf! Back at the studio the designers get to finish their outfits with Stella still carrying on with her hammer.

At the runway show, Blayne's model just looked horrible in that outfit and as Michael Kors said, she's pooping fabric. It looked like a birthday party gone wrong. Little manic children ripped at that dress in protest! The judges were not too kind to Kenley much to her irritation. She so had that look of what are they talking about? My design is amazing! Yeah maybe in some Tim Burton scary Over the Rainbow movie. My favorite outfit was Joe's with his fiery Aries, but the winner was Jerrell with his interpretation of Sagittarius. Huh? I just didn't get it. This time, it will be two designers that get aufed and it's Terri, who has terrible anger issues and can't get along with anyone and Blayne, because one can only poop so much fabric. And oh by the way, snaps for Heidi getting an Emmy nod for hosting a reality show, but how hard can it be? Look pretty and say auf wiedershen?-Single D

Big Brother-Luxury Competition

The Sumo wrestler was still sitting on the clue and the house guest haven't a clue what to do. Keesha's terrified and Memphis just doesn't want anything to do with him. Finally Dan spies something underneath the Sumo's bum so he sits near the Sumo on the couch waiting for his chance to pounce. He eyes the Sumo, he eyes his bum, yeah but do we really want to touch whatever is under his bum? As the Sumo stands up, Dan quickly reaches for the clue, yes! Touchdown! We really didn't want Dan's hand to become sushi. The clue was to the luxury competition, which won't be revealed until later. Were those Renny's reading glasses that Keesha was wearing? Jerry is still up to his old tricks by trying to stir up the pot. You gotta give the old guy credit, who knew he would have lasted this long. If he wins, it will be the greatest upset of all. The luxury challenge involved bringing Jesse back in a gorilla suit. I'm thinking why? Jesse wakes up the house guest from their slumber, did they even brush their teeth?yuck! This competition involved figuring out the phrase from the clues in the backyard. They had three hours to figure it out. Three hours? It was like three hours of complete boredom. Jerry is quick to make his three guesses, all wrong. Dan is turning out to be the smart one and waited until all the unnecessary clues were eliminated. His guess, bury the hatchet, which made no sense to me at all, was the winning phrase. I thought it would be a typical BB phrase, you know, power of veto, head of household etc, but this one was in left field. I bet some of the house guest would like to bury the hatchet in someone's head! Dan won the challenge and was notified that it was a trip to a remote beach and that he could bring one buddy either from the BB house or the jury house. After much contemplating which looked agonizing, he chooses Michelle, because she got a trip stolen and he might win points with her. Dan decides to hide it from the rest of the people in the house. I'm like why? Eventually they are going to find out and then what? He's going to need a guardian angel bad! At this point does anyone care? He should have taken Memphis as a reward for keeping his end of the bargain when he took him off the block.

For the nomination, I guess Memphis and Dan come to the conclusion that in order to throw the heat off their pact, Memphis will go up on the block, so that Keesha and Jerry won't think they are in cahoots. Again why? And again, at this point, who cares if they know they have a pact? It's four players, why not come clean? If Memphis or Dan don't win the POV, then the power is all in Keesha's hand and she might end up eliminating Memphis if Jerry gets his way. -Single D

The Apprentice UK - On the cheap

After only two weeks, Sir Alan mixes up the teams and he picks the project managers for each team. He picks Matthew for Impact and you would have thought Sir Alan had just told him that his mother died. Matthew had that deer in the headlights look, even by his own admission, he has been trying to hide and stay below the radar. Ha, not this time bucko! Sir Alan also picks Adele, who came very close to being fired last week, for First Forte. The challenge is to buy items for the lowest price. Each team is given 1000 pounds (I wish my keyboard had that symbol) and a list. The items include a diamond (clarity and grade listed), a bottle of champagne (vintage and brand listed), a mattress, a dental checkup, a bowler hat (don't ask me), a Freeview (I think that may be like a Tivo) and some jellied eels, those British like to eat strange things. All that and be back at the boardroom by 5:30pm. Adele starts out by assigning everyone titles and tasks. She assigns Miranda the job of Professional Assistant and tells her she is to take notes and do whatever Adele tells her. Adele also says that if they should lose, Miranda will be coming into the boardroom. No pressure there. Ben & Tim go off to buy the diamond and come out smelling like a rose when they got a 200 pound diamond for 130 pounds. Meanwhile, Adele is busy reminding Sebastian that she didn't give him permission to go running ahead of her and to stay with her. Heel boy, heel! Matthew's team fares much better even without benefit of a leader. I really didn't see him do much of anything. Good thing for him he has a great team. Saira gets the mattress for 20 pounds less than the asking price and she didn't even have to drop the f bomb. Her and Raj talk a shop keeper into giving them the Freeview and Paul gets the money exchange for 9 pounds less than the going rate. I'm telling you, Paul could sell you your own car! Adele is still bickering with Miranda, telling her that she is not taking good notes. Hey, the girl found jellied eels on special, give her a break! Matthew's Impact team wins the challenge by 100 pounds even without the bowler hat. Their reward is dinner with Sir Alan at his favorite Italian restaurant. The episode didn't show any of the dinner, it must have been boring. The boardroom was anything but boring. These girls must have taken lessons from Omarosa because the fir was flying, not so politely this time. Everyone blamed Adele for the loss and Adele blamed Miranda for everything. Poor Ben gets pulled into the boardroom with Adele and Miranda and he wisely keeps his mouth shut letting the girls go at it. Even Sir Alan said they sounded like two old washer women. Miranda can't keep her mouth shut and keeps interrupting Adele and Adele can't stop talking. Sir Alan decides to give Adele another chance and Miranda gets the dreaded "you're fired". Double D

Ghost Hunters - Iron Island Museum

The TAPS team is back and they are off to Buffalo, NY and the Iron Island Museum. The museum started life as a church then became a funeral parlor before becoming a museum. When the curators where cleaning out the basement, they found about 40 urns of ashes that were never claimed while the building was a funeral parlor. Reports include feelings of being followed, locked doors which open on their own and full body apparitions.

Kris & Kris experience the front door unlocking itself and opening right after seeing a figure by the door.

Jason & Grant (J&G), in the old viewing room, start to question a spirit boy named Jimmy. They have a K2 meter set up and ask Jimmy if he would light up the lights and they light up like a Christmas tree. Just to make sure it's not coincidence, they continue to ask questions and get lights with every question. Grant finally has to ask Jimmy to stop lighting the lights. Come on, the kid just wants to play!

J&G decide to go to the attic after hearing footsteps coming from there. The opening is tiny so Grant goes as far as he can into the attic and sees that there really isn't a floor, only rafters. He sees something block the window and it starts coming at him. Jason decides he has to see this for himself so goes into the attic opening and also sees a figure walk by the window. They send Tango into the attic either because he is the smallest or most gullible. Tango starts doing EVP work and doesn't get any response so he asks Jason's permission to curse at the spirits. Jason grants permission and Tango goes off on a tangent calling the spirits all kinds of names that can't be repeated here. It was hysterical! He finally his tirade by telling the spirit he's glad he's dead.

During the review, the team gets a lot of EVPs from the attic. One voice was a man asking "what do you want?" just before Grant sees a figure coming toward him. Another EVP is when Tango was provoking the spirits in the attic. As clear as day you can hear a voice say "leave me alone". I'm telling you I had goosebumps from head to toe when I heard that one! Even Tango was creeped out.

J&G tell the museum manager not to worry that the place is haunted because it appears that the spirits are used to them being there and won't cause any problems. Double D

The Apprentice UK - Candidates in Toyland

Apparently last week the girls used all the hot water and breakfast food in the house leaving the guys starving and taking cold showers. This time when the phone rings, the guys are ready. They get the instructions to be ready to leave at 7:15am sharp. The guys let the girls sleep in so they can get the showers and breakfast. They were nice enough to wake them up with 20 minutes to go. They meet Sir Alan in a luxury car showroom. Let's see, cars on Project Runway, cars on Apprentice, I'm detecting a trend here. The assignment this week is to design a toy for children. Lindsay is the project manager for the girls and is already braced for conflict. Isn't that setting yourself up for disaster? Raj is PM for the guys and they decide right away to design something for boys. They come up with the idea to update a trading card game by making it electronic. Raj tries to encourage participation to get a name for their game but Matthew is too busy reading Sir Alan's book and says he will go along with whatever the group decides. Raj takes him aside to tell him that he is not contributing to the assignment. Why is that being chewed out sounds so much better with a British accent? Lindsay presents her idea for flashcards with symbols on them that she calls "Secret Signals". Girls are to make up a code for the symbols and flash those instead of talking. Little girls not talk? Lindsay says this is supposed to be pretend texting. How is this even remotely like texting? I think Lindsay missed out on something in her childhood and wants to relive it now. The other girls are just staring, slack-jawed at Lindsay, cue the crickets. They also had an idea of a construction type toy using electricity. Fortunately they see the flaw in that plan and came up with battling robots. Both teams go to a focus group to pitch their ideas. The girls robot idea is a big hit with the kids but Lindsay still wants to produce her cards. She calls for a vote and her team all say they want the robots. Lindsay then says she wants to meet with the kids again. They get two groups of kids, one group is split between the cards and robots while the other group wants the robots. So with three votes, mostly for the robots, Lindsay calls for yet another vote saying the other votes were split (what kind of math was she using?). Even though the last vote came out overwhelmingly for the robots, Lindsay decides they will produce both toys and she eventually didn't listen to her team and went with the cards. You knew she would. The guys are in love with their game, Switch Base. I still didn't see exactly how it worked but they seemed to like it! They present their design to the toy manufacturer and it looked like a hit, even the manufacturer was asking questions and offering suggestions. The girls presentation went over like a lead balloon even the manufacturer was yawning. The guys win again and get to go to a county home for some skeet shooting. They all could shoot pretty good which makes me wonder if all Britons are born with this talent. Sir Alan is disappointed in the girls again. In the boardroom, most of the girls are being polite but they still name Lindsay as the reason for the failure. Lindsay brings back Adele for not participating in the presentation and Miriam for I don't know what since she seemed to be Lindsay's biggest supporter. Adele's reason for not doing the presentation was that she was so against the flashcards and that Lindsay would not listen to her team or the focus groups. Well, you can imagine how Sir Alan felt about Adele not participating, he also was confused as to why Lindsay brought Miriam back. Lindsay stammers her way through the boardroom and can't come up with a good reason why she shouldn't be fired. Sir Alan lets Adele know that she is not entirely safe and fires Lindsay. Double D