I Love The Challenge

Whelps - another reality season passes and another league ends, and I found myself with my second league win.  Wow.  The feeling is still great and I find myself elated by the outcome.  Unexpected.

Haven't yet posted even about the thoughts for my draft. I've started a writing gig as a Padres baseball blogger, but that's neither here nor there.  My team of Cara Maria, and Cooke, along with Camilla, Emily and Preston turned in an Amazonian powerhouse performance for the win.

Drafting last overall this year left me in a bind, but it turned out not to matter.  For the most part, the blue chip male competitors were taken off the board when it came to my turn, such as wes/ct, johnny/frank, etc, and thus I went with strong female competitors in Emily and Camila.  I actually believe that the ladies have stronger earning potential than males in accordance with our rules.  The ladies earn as much competition points as men, but I feel overall earn more potential for bonus points.  Women tend to kiss or hook-up with men and women on tv for instance, and also tend to get burcled or cry.  Even in the liberal world of MTV, it is still considered audience neutral or attractive to show women on women action as intriguing or sexy while the inverse does not hold true.  I will say that I am very intrigued by the new Frank and Marlon personna of "alpha male" gay.  Men do tend to earn more points than women in fights or tirade points, but I believe that is almost a wash and only a slight advantage.

My strategy for picking players is always based first on competition and longevity.  Getting bonus points is huge, but hard to predict.  Also, I believe veterans try to stay on for the money and play it safe with less drama over then years, ala johnny or wes, getting less and less camera time, while rookies do all sorts of crazy variable behavior to earn camera time and that precious invite back to the next challenge.   The longer a player stays in general, the greater the chance for bonus drama points.

My MO has been to pick women, but it also is more difficult to predict competition longevity for the ladies.  Women on the challenge are a bit more political savvy than men, and thus their survival is sometimes politically enforced(eg Diem) vs competitively earned.  I was fortunate enough to grab Emily as the strongest competitor, as well as pick up both CM and Cooke.  Although CM is a whiny unpopular and disliked my little pony girl, or at least portrayed that way on camera, she is very athletic with huge biceps and I would take her physically over many.  Cooke I fell in love with on the show.  She is a true athlete who played professional soccer in the Philippines, and was raised a navy brat and half asian half white star that also did modeling.  She has now been signed to play in the US professional soccer leagues, with other stars like Hope Solo, Abbey Wambauch, and Alex Morgan.  I hope she still has time to play with us on the Challenge.  Preston was a thrown in pick - I don't like him.  I hope I never get him again.

As for other players, I love that my favorite ginger Wes won again.  But I'm aware enough that it was his CT pairing that made it work.  They had a complementary blend of skillsets that got them to the end.  Wes is awesome and I relate to him.  For ppl that dislike Wes, you would probably also dislike me, and that's ok.  CT grew into a superstar this season, and having TJ change the political voting to make males earn the ladies vote to stay in was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to CT.   The truth within is perhaps every woman on the planet that watches this show fell for him on a primal animal level and would agree to try to make babies with him if given the chance.  Any other statement to the contrary is simply an outright lie.  Marlon and Frank intrigue me as a different brand of gay male that can break the boxes society places on people yet again.  Johnny is over the hill.  Knight needs help getting sober.  Jemmye is psycho but I like her in a jerry springer kind of way.   No more Diem...sorry, she is saccharine, at first you think its sugary, but then you got this weird aftertaste in your mouth.

Merry xmas all.