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July 11th, 2003
09:16 pm - Ephemeral
In this year's (increasingly desperate) British version of Big Brother, the producers have been playing with the format in several ways. First, we had a housemate swap with South Africa for a few days. Second, we had a housemate introduced into the house late in the game for no apparent reason. Third, tonight we're going to vote an evicted housemate back in. They can't effectively play the evictions-and-prizes part of the game any more - they're just there to be entertaining. (Hopefully.)
This LiveJournal recommends you VOTE GEEK as previously discussed; to return Jon Tickle to the house, call 09011 21 44 05. (Calls cost 25p.) If you want to vote someone else back in, you can look the number up yourself. This is ephemeral because the voting lines close a little after 10pm UK time - so another 40 minutes or so.
Of course, this screws up the essential Big Brother paradigm completely; now no longer is an eviction final, it's all "...unless the producers decide to have the evictee go back in". Well, this is one way to answer criticisms that "all the interesting people have been voted out already", I suppose. It's really not going to be natural to have a housemate in there just as part of the scenery, not playing the game any more. It'll be interesting to see whether Jon playing the game for real is different from the returned and considerably-more-BB-induced-presence-aware Jon in there for no apparent reason. (If it doesn't work, the producers will probably let us vote him back out again anyway.)
Non-UK folk. For those of you who use the LiveJournal portal and have turned the random user feature on in the right hand column, have you ever had it give you a random user with a journalid above 8192 or so? The random LJ link does a good job at doling out modern LJs as well as long-time ones, but the LiveJournal portal random user box is very heavily skewed towards the old ones...
Current Mood: unimpressed, Big Brother, unim
Current Music: pressed
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Although I like the logic behing VOTE GEEK, don't you think that Lisa being sent straight back in would be the most unforgettable piece of road traffic accident television, like, EVER?
Oops. I'm not supposed to have a cruel streak, am I? :-) don't you think that Lisa being sent straight back in would be the most unforgettable piece of road traffic accident television, like, EVER?
Yes, valley Erick. :-) I was very tempted to cast a vote for her for exactly that reason too - but, in the end, didn't. It would've been very disappointing if we had voted her back in and she had taken 24 hours to think about it. (And then she might've said no, to compound the anticlimax, but that would've at least been funny.)
Jon won. We win.
I reckon that they're almost certain to bring him out early. The final day of BB is very traditional, with the contestants ejected one at a time so that they can do interviews. Having Jon there right at the very end to celebrate with the winner would make no sense. (Unless, to be funny, they leave Jon in there even after the winner has gone out. That would be hysterical.) Besides, I'm sure they can work out some way to evict Jon twice. That would be funny too. How about this scenario?
* Jon and BB successfully keep it under wraps that he can't win.
* Jon is kept in as the last person in the house.
* The winner isn't told that he/she is the winner until they leave the house and join Davina.
I think Jon could play that game, and it'd make for a superb series finale.
I also think that Jon is the "real" winner of this series anyway. ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/3568650/588494) | | | A cunning plan, Mr. Lendl | (Link) |
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That would involve people not being told that they can't nominate Jon - or people nominating him and having their nominations for him ignored.
Hmm. Hmmmmmmmmm. I like the way you're thinking.
Actually, there is a difference - when they get down to the final two in the house, they traditionally announce the winner rather than the nth evictee. I guess they could do lots of not-to-the-house mugging and pointing out that they're going to lie to the housemates about who won, but it would be... weird.
"Even Better Than The Real Thing", I suspect. I broke my self-imposed rule and voted for Jon to go back in the instant they announced it. Especially if he goes back in the suit! Love it. And I genuinely think they'll be relieved to see him (after Lisa) and probably rather nicer to him than they were before! I suspect this was my first vote this series too. Possibly my second, but if so, I can't remember my first. Happily, I've been watching very little of this series of Big Brother indeed - just the Fridays, really, plus the very occasional BBLB on the days when they've had particular stunts.
Has Dermot O'Leary's dancing over the past few days generally been regarded as actually quite good or deliberately ironically bad? I can't tell what passes for good and bad dancing these days...
Something looked not quite right about Jon's suit to me. Don't know what, but there was definitely something the tiniest bit off. Hmm. It's my first vote ever. I didn't watch more than five minutes of series 1, none at all of series 2 - and then I met  imc who is an addict so I watched rather more of last year's (despite scheduling our wedding rehearsal dinner for the night of the final I still wound up watching it, at 2am, when I couldn't sleep!). This year I have been largely housebound and/or bedbound so have watched even more of it (and there's a fair chance smallclanger will arrive during a crucial bit, too). But in principle I don't like it. I've got sucked in, though. Dermot dancing - I think he intends it to be crap. At least, I hope so. Pretty sure he said something to that effect earlier this week. Dunno about Jon's suit, I just like the fact he wore it for the hell of it. That's our Mr Tickle. Mr O'Leary clearly intended it to be bad. Whether he intended it to be unwatchably rubbish is another matter... ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/63488894/719755) | | From: | jumbach |
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| Date: | July 11th, 2003 02:39 pm (UTC) |
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I'm sure the call would be considerably more than 25 pence (about USD 0.45?) for me. And, of course, I'd have to add that pesky "011," which for some reason results in my long-distance operator coming on and asking for my pin. Even though I never signed up for this "feature." I find it irksome.
About USD 0.40. (Oh yes - we can get approximately USD 0.025 less for our GBP 1 today than we could do two days ago, due to our shift in base interest rate, which is less than helpful when you're buying US currency. Grr, arg. To be fair, I should have seen that coming.) The question of what it costs to call an artificially-priced phone number from abroad - indeed, if it is even possible - is an interesting one. Britfolk, I swear by Just Dial, which lets you call the USA (and, heck, most of the developed world) for the price of a roughly-national-rate call to an 0870 number - that is, GBP 0.0395 per minute including VAT between 6pm and 8am on weekdays. The service takes a bit of getting used to (you do need to dial the 00 before your country code, area code and so on) but really does work. Most of the time. If any of you USfolk can find a counterpart cheap calling service to let me call the UK from the USA over the coming week at less-than-hotel-international-rate-don't-e ven- think-about-it rates, I would be most grateful. ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/5537227/899098) | | From: | imc |
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| Date: | July 11th, 2003 03:59 pm (UTC) |
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When I was in NYC staying at a youth hostel (the one on Amsterdam Avenue) I bought a $10 e-kit card which seemed moderately reasonable. I can't find it now, although I thought I knew where it was. http://www.ekit.com/ekit/homehttp://www.hiayh.ekit.com/ekit/home(don't know if there's a difference in service between the youth-hostel one and the generic one). Not bad at all, but I was hoping to have to spend less than US$10 on a card. (Or US$20 if you pre-pay your account on the web.) The rates for the two look the same, for what it's worth.
On a previous trip I picked up a US$20 40-minute-global card from an airport, which was probably an AT&T card, but in the end I was less than satisfied with it - calls from payphones were double rate, calls from British payphones were about 5* or 10* rate and so on. Nevertheless, if a US$5 10-minute card were available then I'd snap it up in an instant. (I'd rather pay US$5 for a 10-minute card than US$10 for a 30-minute card, for instance.) I have half a suspicion that BT may sell some sort of similar global roaming card at the airport, but half-remember that being an awful price. Oh, and LHR 4 << LHR 3 in terms of shops and being an interesting place to have to wait. (I've heard someone suggest LHR 4 < Victoria Coach Station, which seems a little harsh - though only a little.)
Many thanks for kindly pointing it out anyhow! check out www.10-10-987.com . Looks spiffy, but:
Unfortunately, it is not available from pay phones, cell phones, hotel rooms, dormitories, military bases or most businesses.
...and...
No, 10-10-987 is a long distance access code for calls made from home. Calling cards are not available.
...also looks completely unavailable to me while I'm away. Nuts.
Thanks for trying, though - definitely on the right lines in the right ballpark. Silly as this sounds, it was genuinely exciting edge-of-your-seat television.
This year's Big Brother has been incredibly weird now they're trying to force entertainment out of it. But I'm watching! it was genuinely exciting edge-of-your-seat television
He speaka-da-truth.
I do suspect it is a strictly one-time-only stunt and would lose all value if they were to repeat it in future years, like Celebrity Big Brother probably ought to have been. (Heck, there's a good argument that Big Brother at large probably ought to have been a one-time-only meeedja event.) Unless, of course, there are the ever-mysterious Very Different Circumstances to cloud the situation. Indeed. This year has been most odd, but from my point of view quite compelling for it. Certainly for the purity of the show it probably should have stopped after the first one. But when it got watched that was never going to happen. All the making a point about "how Big Brother reserves the right to change the rules at any time" right at the beginning of the series makes sense now.
And hey! We've got Teen Big Brother - The Experiment to come yet. Milk it! |
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Re: Got One