Hope everybody enjoyed their Christmas / Chanaka and got to spend some time with friends and family

Writing every day is much harder than I thought, especially if you throw in Christmas on a Wednesday. I’m going to try and remember the last weeks and write some of the highlights. I’m also going to try to find some time to get away for a day or two where I can write with no distractions. I may also have to skip Wordle, and Connections, and get free coins on the TOPPS Bunt and Star Wars Card Trader App.

Here is some good advice from Jia Jiang (Author / TED Talk Speaker). I have been following him for years = since he made videos for “Rejection Therapy” where he went 100 Days trying to get rejected to help him get over his fear of rejection.

Getting Things Done With Positive Self-Manipulation

The big thing from last week was the Survivor 47 Finale. Before digging into some of my thoughts, I would like to congratulate Rachel LaMont for winning the title of Sole Survivor and taking home the grand prize of $1,000,000.00. She played a great game and was a deserving winner

I was going to write earlier, but I wanted to gather my thoughts for a bit. I also saw there were a lot of discussions going on on Twitter / X and Facebook, and I wanted to let these die down so I wasn’t influenced by all the chatter.

While I really enjoyed this season, there wasn’t anybody who made me think they were one of the best of the best. I think it is just how the game is played now, compared to the past. Players seem to stay in their lane, never really looking to stir things up. They seem content just surviving from week to week and not trying too much to rock the boat. An example is Sue, who found an Immunity Idol early in the game and did nothing with it. She just held on to it, and finally played it last time it was good. Maybe she was thinking that by showing she could keep it a secret, the jury would give her credit. Looking at the final votes, it really had no effect. It seems to me, that once Survivor went to a final 3, there is always somebody who makes it to the end but then gets no votes, and is basically an afterthought. This shows you need to make a defining move at some point that makes you memorable.

Also, it seems that when they went from 39 to 26 days, there is less downtime, and therefore less long-term strategizing. Having to make quick decisions after each tribal counsel changes how you play. In the old game, you would have 2 to 3 days to try and change people’s minds after each Tribal Council, so if you blindsided somebody’s close friend, you had time to smooth things out and explain yourself. Now you need to almost play day-to-day, and hope you’re on the right side of the next vote

And this seems to affect the editing of the contestants as well. If you’re not actively looking for advantages, or discussing making a big move, there really is no time to show you on TV. So while the cast members get to know each other extremely well (by virtue of being stranded together with nowhere to hide), the TV audience does not see this. So when they mentioned what a great person and player Caroline was, I was like “Huh?, She didn’t do anything special, or do much that I saw.”

As for the overall game, I feel they need to bring back some of the older challenges, where people were forced to make decisions against each other. I liked the challenges where the contestants would have to break tiles by smashing them to see who could survive to the end. Having to choose between individuals including your closest allies makes things interesting. Not the same as when somebody winds a reward, and then has to choose who will go with them.

Still a fun watch, and looking forward to Survivor 48 in the Spring (“Survivor” Season 48 will premiere on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025 for a two-hour special)

Survivor has been a big part of my life for the past 25 years and still fascinates me to this day. Still think its the best Reality Show on TV, due mostly to its simplicity. While there are times when things happen to people that are totally out of their control, for the most part, you will not be eliminated by shear luck, which forces the contestants to think and strategize to get to the end.

Thanks to CBS, Jeff Probst, Mark Burnett Productions, Castaway Television Productions, The Casting Team, the Directors, The Producers, The Writers, and all the crews that have spent the past 25 years bring Survivor to life and entertaining me and the millions of other fans

Still working on getting on the show, and hopefully, my name will be called, and after actually playing the game, I will be able to see things from the inside and truly reflect on all my posts over the years

Some other things that happened over the past week

I watched the first 2 episodes of “Beast Games” on Amazon. Hosted by Jimmy “Mr. Beast” Donaldson, it’s his take on Squid Games with a $5,000,000.00 Grand Prize. I really enjoyed the original Squid Games (Season 2 premiers today), as well as the Netflix reality show. I am a big fan of Mr. Beast, as well, and he did a great job with his show. It’s really interesting to see people put in situations regarding money. It reminded me of what goes through inexperience, or general low-stakes gamblers. They will win some money, and then usually lose it back. After losing it back, they justify things by saying, they just gamble for fun, or I started with nothing, so no big deal. But if you were to randomly hand somebody $1000.00 cash, let them hold it, and tell them it was theirs to do what they please, and then an hour later, told them to give it back, they would not be happy. “You gave it to me, and it’s mine. You cant take my money”

This brings me back to Beast Games. They started with 1000 players, and throughout the 1st two episodes, they offered people money to walk away and drop out of the game. Most of the people declined the offer and decided to hang around with the chance of winning the grand prize. Maybe I would decline a few hundred dollars for the experience, but once the offers started to go up to $10,000.00, $100,000.00, and even $1,000,000.00, it just seems crazy that people still turn it down. One of the crazy things is that a lot of the challenges so far, have included a lot of randomness, where as a player, you really had no input into the outcome. They divided the contestants into smaller groups and then said if anybody wanted to drop out, they would get some money, and everybody else in the team would be eliminated. All it takes is somebody to grab the money, and a bunch of players who were chosen at random are eliminated. So to me, there is no way I would not take the money. Will be interesting to see how things play out the rest of the way. Would you turn down 2 Million Dollars to have the opportunity to play against others for 5 Million? Also, if (and most likely when) they do a 2nd season, will you get a bunch of people applying who are looking for a quick grab. I think I will apply and then take the 1st amount they offer. $20,000.00 for 15 minutes of gameplay is not that bad.

Got a box of “A Christmas Story” trading cards for Christmas. This is a new set put out by Cryptozoic. I haven’t opened my box yet, but once I do I will post some of my hits (Supposed to be 1 Autograph Card and 1 Sketch card per box). I actually have a friend who draws sketch cards and did some for this set. Would be cool to pull one of his cards.

Also looking forward to the new “Cheers” cards coming out in February by Rittenhouse Archives Hopefully this set does well, and we will see some more of these one-off sets. Looks like the card companies have realized they need to adapt their strategy to smaller popular titles, instead of putting out set after set of “Star Wars”, “Star Trek”, and “Game of Thrones” cards rehashing the same autograph cards. People are now looking to invest in new cards for a show or movie that they have fond memories of. Cryptozoic did well with their Ghostbusters set a few years back, and hopefully, they will continue thinking outside of the box

As for sports — The New York Giants have two games left in this miserable and disheartening season. Long since eliminated, the team has no spunk, no spark, and no direction. Everybody is waiting until the Monday after the season ends to see what owner John Mara decides to do. Will he stay the course with the current GM and Couch or will he clean house and look to go in a different direction. I have been saying for a while that I would get rid of the GM / Coach to try and bring a fresh attitude into the organization. Right now they are in NFL Hell — A bad team that is also boring

Hope the Mets make the decision to bring back Pete Alonso. If you can’t keep a homegrown talent who loves the team and wants to be here, then we are in a sad state of things. I understand that MLB Baseball (as well as all other professional and collegiate sports is a business), but we need to make sure to keep some fun and excitement in the games as well. Once sports become only a numbers game with players with no allegiance to where they play and are only concerned about how much they get paid (Which is happening in College), why should fans even care? Might as well get rid of the team names and affiliations, and just have a generic league or generic teams where players move at will between teams, and nobody really cares who wins or loses. Sad that kids these days will not be able to look back and say they saw Player A or Player B play for their college and made an impact on the University and gave them lots of special memories. Instead, Player A will play at 4 or 5 different colleges, sit out any bowl games due to transferring or fear of injury, and then go to the NFL Goos for him, but he will have no long-term impact on any of the schools he played at, and nobody remembering most of them after a few years.

Time for a break — Will be back soon (I promise) with some more thoughts, as well as a list of Movies, TV Shows, Books, and Music that I have been enjoying, and looking forward to

Regarding TV and music, here is Hozier performing “Fairytale of New York” on Saturday Night Live a few nights ago. I really like the performance. Hope you enjoy it as well

#PEACE

#CBS
#Survivor 47
#JeffProbst

#BeastGames
#MrBeast

Marillion – A Better Way of Life

AverageAndy