The Amazing Race, Season 10, Episode 2:
Huh-Huh-Huh…I’ll Bet She’ll Make a Game
Outta Your…Uh, Never Mind By Landru

Aren’t you surprised? It’s me again. It was supposed to be somebody else, but what happened was, she gave birth. I mean, like eight years ago. And as a result, she had a pretty crappy evening, and I agreed to take over so as to make this here episode disappear. Actually, we both had a pretty crappy evening, but she’s taken a few more bullets than I have today, so duty, honor, and country demand, quite reasonably, that I be the one to step up and do the things that must be done. After all, before all of these crappy events occasioned by her giving birth (eight years ago) happened today, she had gone to work, and picked up and dropped off the birth-results (my vehicle has mysteriously disappeared into the Black Hole of Automotive Service, for like four freakin’ days), and dealt out most of the adverse consequences of her giving birth (eight years ago) that did not accrue to us, and sat in traffic. A lot. All I did was sit at home and supervise the maids and play NCAA Football 2007 and yell at the Black Hole of Automotive Service and pick up the pizza for dinner (in her car) and take a few phone calls from the school that is responsible for the daily management of the thing to which She gave birth (eight years ago), that thing being, according to wildly divergent accounts, a charming and intelligent little eight-year-old boy person with some unfortunate problems, or Damien, or Ted Bundy, or Mike Steele, or something in between that may actually not deserve to be chained up and dropped in Loch Ness, but the jury’s still way the hell out on that one and will likely stay there until somewhere around 2015, but we’ll try to give you fair warning on the verdict, when a meaningful trend can be discerned.

Anyway, poof! It’s gone. The episode, I mean, not my Jeep.

Okay, it’s not gone yet, but it will be, really soon. I mean, you’re not getting the full ten thousand word treatment here, mmkay? There’s gonna be a lot of brakage. Especially in the parts where nothing funny is happening, or when my vocabulary is so choked up with anger that I can only be bitterly angry, instead of just bitterly angry in a sort of marginally entertaining way.

Most of the latter, by the way, will involve Kar/Lyn. Actually, so will a lot of the former, come to think on it.

Okay, so let’s see…previously on The Amazing Race, I wrote a few thousand words of sarcasm and gave all of the teams insulting names and reminded you that the show is hosted by a not-at-all-winsome and extremely-well-padded transvestite named Dixie Melons. Some other stuff happened in the show that the producers thought important, to wit, the token Amputees preboarding an aircraft and pissing off various teams, most especially the token Welfare Mothers, who appear to be easily pissed off, and went to Beijing, and some freakishly annoying religious fanatics got eliminated unexpectedly, and the token Amputees struggled up the Great Wall, and teams arrived at the pit stop in some mostly irrelevant order and varying states of disarray, and Apu and Manjula got there last and were, therefore, shat out into the world by Dixie Melons and the TAR production crew.

Credits roll, and we’re off to:

Commercials:

Another enervating AOL commercial, for AOL; a chick on a couch writing about menstruation on her laptop, for some drug that evens out things that bleed for five days and don’t die; skinny models, for a laxative, and it’s really nice to see that TAR got all the cool Survivor reject sponsors; billboard painters and the apparently otherwise unemployable Jon Lovitz, for Subway; and CBS, for a load of shitty CBS television programs.

So we start at the Great Wall of China, which I was, sadly, unable to visit during my trip to China. This may seem to you to be unconscionably stupid. And I suppose that it is. However, it’s a day trip to the Great Wall from Beijing, and I was in China being employed, and those employing me had many needs that I was expected to fulfill, so I was pretty much lucky to get a plate of kung pao at a tiny little homestyle place across the street from the place where the wankers all ate fish eyes last week, let alone get away from my duties as a holder of hands and an offerer of wet-nursing and a shill for whoever it was I was working for, let alone slip out for the eight consecutive hours required to go visit the Wall, since I was also in a hurry to get the fuck out of China, which is a shithole (albeit a far more interesting shithole than, for instance, Seattle), and back to my beloved wife-person, who had, for that weekend only, temporarily stowed the things to which she gave birth in some place that did not involve us for 48 glorious hours.

Dixie Melons gives us some narrative that is intended to create some form of suspense. It doesn’t. Instead, I’ll just tell you that the teams are headed for Mongorea, where they will encounter Mongoreans, who have torn down Shitty Wall, which was, as you know, built by the guy who owns and operates Shitty Wok.

They must go to Mongorea by bus and train, ending up in the capital of Mongorea, Genghisville (actually, it’s Ulan Bataar, but who the fuck cares?), and there doing whatever it is that Dixie Melons and that crazy production team have dreamed up for them.

Mongorea is interesting. For a given value of interesting equalling “not interesting.” It is a desert, and it is such a gigantic mongomofo desert that it dries out Beijing, hundreds of miles away, and covers it in dust and sand, regularly. This will be an interesting discovery made by thousands of people descending upon Beijing for the 2008 Olympics, or possibly for the 2007 China Bowl, which the NFL just announced yesterday as a panacea for the unfortunate problem of 1 billion people on this planet not giving a flying fuck about the NFL. While thousands of unwilling Chinese laborers are planting millions of fucking trees to act as sand and dust breaks against the relentless natural action of this gigantimongomofo desertification, I am here to tell you that this doesn’t work, because the shithole part of Beijing that distinguishes it most from a run-of-the-mill dank and yeasty shithole like Seattle is that it’s really dry, and dusty, and polluted.

My, how I do tangentialize. So we’re on the way to Mongorea, whereat we will observe some religious ceremony and claim cluefulness.

The Gaywad Drug Addict Models, not to be confused with proto-Asians Gaywin and Gayerwin, leave first, after confessing about how happy they are that they’re no longer practicing junkies. Bad Daddy and L-Girl are next, with Bad Daddy once again affirming that he is an absolutely fuck-awful person who should be beaten senseless by dildoes wielded by remorseless, humorless lesbians who hate men (as opposed to remorseful, funny lesbians who want to do a threesome with me and Ilse; Lucy Liu comes to mind as an appropriate candidate). The Token Amputees are next, with Gimpgirl whining incessantly about her fucked-up bionic leg. The Beauty Queens are next, and we get a gratuitous glimpse of thongs under their sweatpants as they climb over a fence. The Daters confess about how they’re going to kill each other in their sleep, because he’s psychotic and she’s not only more psychotic, she’s a super kingkong mayamaya beeeeeitch. This group is the first bus to Mongorea.

The second bus to Mongorea, two hours later, is peopled by the GameCock Cheerleaders, who do, in fact, appear to be game for…uh, never mind. Gaywin and Gayerwin are next, followed by the Flamers, who need to be bitchslapped, and the Angry Welfare Mothers, and the Hillbillies, who have gotten neither smarter, nor more articulate, nor more palatable since we last ran into them, one short week ago.

We were so innocent then, weren’t we? So many bad, bad things had yet to happen.

There is much camaraderie. The Hillbillies tell us that they ain’t never been around queers and nigras and slopes and lesbians and all manner of other weird and offensive and godless types. I’m not shitting you.

But it’s all okay, because most of those people have never been around dirt-stupid hillbillies whose teeth are still crooked even after they’ve been pulled out to save money on dental work and replaced with randomly arranged pieces of old bones jammed together into something that will masticate roadkill.

But it’s okay. Mrs. Hillbilly likes them queer fellas, and Mr. Hillbilly doesn’t seem to be beating her for it. At least not on camera.

Bus ride. 99 bottles of beer on the wall. Back at the bus station, people are dancing and having fun, activities wholly inappropriate to the gravity of the task at hand. The bus ride yields to a train station. No notice is made of the fact that we are, once again, crossing the Chinese frontier, a thing which, I am here to tell you, is not a thing that is small. Oh no. That bottle of Aquafina in your flight bag feels like a brick of fucking heroin when you’re being stared down by a motherfucking Chinese Border Guard. And that $60K in hard currency that you’re carrying strapped around your waist so you can pay off anyone who needs to be paid off during the course of a 350-person, three-quarters-of-a-million-dollar conference in a dirt-poor totalitarian Commie country? Let’s just say I was a lot more comfortable shooting up that day-care center, back in the day (to be fair to dirt-poor totalitarian Commies, it was no picnic conveying the not-inconsiderable remains of that gigantimongous wad of cash back into our own very fine country). No, it is no small matter to cross the Chinese border in any fucking direction, even in the direction of Mongorea, which is close personal friends with them there dirt-poor totalitarian Commies. I am left wondering how much it cost TAR to make it happen without hitchery.

Conspiracy occurs in the train station. The Gaywad Drug Addict Models foil a plot by the BQ’s to keep a secret. They are abundantly proud of themselves for outsmarting platinum blondes. The blondes are too stupid to be proud of anything but their hair.

The scene in front of the train station is far more disturbing. The Amputee and her own personal Fetishist are being stared at by the assembled provincial Chinese persons. She begins to dance and show off. The Fetishist attempts to collect money from those watching. What a fucking reprehensible, steaming pile of cabbage-induced shit. This asshole needs to be struck by lightning, except slowly, agonizingly, the world’s longest and most self-aware lightning strike evar, and even that’s too good for this smug, debilitatingly insensitive vulture.

The second bus ride gets to the station before the train departs, enabling yet more bunching. And oh, shit—it turns out we’re not in Mongorea yet, we’re in Erenhot, which is out in some portion of the fuck-all nowhere of China. So that whole frontier-crossing diatribe? Just move it up here, mmkay?

During the train ride, we’re subjected to yet more self-reflection from the Gaywad Drug Addict Models, who really should be holding hands with the Amputee Fetishist when he’s struck by that long, drawn-out bolt of lightning.

So everyone hops into taxicabs. The Super King-Kong Mayamaya Beeeeitch gets splashed by some street water because she’s riding with the window open. “Can I get diseases from that?” she whines. No, you lachrymose uberhostile twat, you’re far more likely to get diseases from the swine you allow to penetrate your needy and not-at-all desirable body. Now die slowly, you most severely gruesomely fuckugly of Ugly Americans. And scream while you’re doing it, except quietly so I’m not distracted by it.

Frenzy, much frenzy, people jockeying for places faster than we can about tracking. There are varying levels of depression and paranoia and confidence and gloating and other forms of distracting noise that do not involve annoying persons dying slowly.

A short person in a mask greets the first teams to arrive, and there is some dancing and clanging and suchlike, followed by some clue-giving. The clue instructs the not-at-all-loveable losers to steal a surplus Russian military jeep (the official motorized conveyance of Mongorea, which was, before it became one in socialist brotherhood with the dirt-poor totalitarian Commie Chinese, a satellite of the Soviet Union existing only to reduce the footage of border that the Soviets would have to guard against Chinese incursions in the Border War that the two Commie fucktard giants waged for about 40 fucking years), drive to some village, ride horses to a meadow, and get a clue that will presumably lead to a prostitutional and conniving Detour, or a ronery Roadblock.

The jeeps are, as you’d expect of a Commie-era motor vehicle, useless and obstinate pieces of shite. The spacing of the religious rituals guarantees some artificial spreading of the teams, and this after we went to so much trouble to bunch them up in a train station. There are various acts of intra-team aggression perpetrated by various shitheels. I will not waste your time or mine by describing them in any detail.

The trip to the village is really irksome. The Gaywad Drug Addict Models are the first to break down; they get a flat tire. Various teams pass them by. The GameCock girls’ Jeep stalls. No one passes them by, because they’re way behind and lost anyway. There are various expressions of self-pity before we head off to:

Commercials, brought to you by the awesome Excedrin/CVS/CBS Axis of Evil:

an evil axis, for Excedrin, CVS, and CBS; Jason Whatshisnugget and the other guy, in yet another in their series of stupid, insipid, not-at-all funny, untruth-laden Mac commercials; a kid swimming in Froot Loops, for a Froot Loops ripoff undertaken by Cheerios; various fat firefighters, policemen, and construction workers, for Quiznos; a trailer, for a DVD about a cartoon monkey, which I will not name because I quite seriously fear that to type or speak the name of this cartoon monkey in this household will set up a hue and cry of demand for this fucking DVD, which I will not abide, mostly because I am, according to some denizens of this structure, an extremely Mean and Cranky Old Man; an Audrey Hepburn impersonator for the Gap, and while I am reminded that I will not shop at the Gap, I am reminded that it’s a damn shame that I wasn’t around to try to nail Audrey Hepburn back when she was so eminently nailable; and CBS, for some number of television programs that are not, in any respect, amusing.

And we’re back, where the Drug Addicts receive assistance for their flatness problem, and the Game Cock Girls are hampered by their lack of flatness.

So down at the horsey place, the teams must strap on Official Mongol Horseman helmets. One of the BQs demands to be paid tribute in Mongorean barbecue. She thinks this is funny. It isn’t.

The Hillbillies get stuck in the mud. We do love a joke that writes itself.

So there’s some attempted comedy associated with riding. And a lot of bitching, mostly by the Super Kingkong Mayamaya Beeeeeitch, who takes a tumble. And whimpers. A lot. I enjoy her pain.

I also enjoy the pain of one of the BQs when she tumbles from her horse and is dragged by one foot. It’s a dangerous place, Mongorea.

Over at the Place of Cluefulness, Dixie Melons cheerfully tells us that we are facing a Detour, involving a choice between two traditional Mongorean tasks. The choices are Fuck a Sheep, or Nurse a Goat. Some teams’ choice will be driven by their possession (or lack thereof) of the proper equipment for the task. In Fuck a Sheep, a male racer must insert his penis into a sheep (of any gender), and deliver a convincing rogering. In Nurse a Goat, a female racer must breastfeed a goat until it stops bleating.

It is my sincere hope that the foregoing paragraph is the worst grouping of words, bar none, that you have ever been forced to read in all your years of digesting my reality television summaries.

So the actual task involves packing up a tent and getting a camel to pick it up, or loading water jugs onto an ox-driven cart and using them to fill a water barrel.

Seriously, my way was a lot more interesting, right?

Brak brak brak whining, bitching, whimpering, bickering, as the teams undertake their sheep-fucking and goat-nursing. The Hillbillies get a new Jeep to replace the one they sunk in quicksand. Several teams are bitching uncontrollably about the horse-riding, before they even get to the sheep-fucking and goat-nursing.

Amputee and Pervert change tasks. He barks at her when she protests. He is a complete fuckhead.

Those hauling water are having trouble because the jugs are unstable (the water jugs, you fucking freaks), and so are the oxen. Various oxen stampede, including the ox under the nominal control of the Amputee and the Pervert. The Amputee is in tears—it is rapidly becoming apparent that this is her usual modus—and he becomes a pedantic, smug, overbearing piece of shit. Sadly, she does not destroy him in his boots. I feel the tiniest itty bitty twinge of sympathy for her, even though she is completely fucking dreadful. Their ox stampedes again, before it is time for:

Commercials, brought to you by Sprint:

Peyton Manning in a wig and moustache, for Sprint; Peyton Manning in a giant rubber bladder, for Gatorade; Peyton Manning and his father and brother, for eggs checking to pancakes; Peyton Manning in an apron, for some credit card; Peyton Manning in a dress and lipstick, for the United Transvestite College Fund; Peyton Manning in a tutu, for the Hold Me Closer Tiny Dancer School for Prima Donna Ballerinas; Peyton Manning skydiving, for some trampoline company; Peyton Manning trapped in a fishing net, for Uncruel brand Dolphin-safe tuna; Peyton Manning in strappy mules, for DSW; Peyton Manning giving his brother a wedgie, for the NFL on CBS; Peyton Manning in a gay adult bookstore, for some AIDS prevention campaign; Peyton Manning hugging Mike Steele, who claims that the Washington Post threw Oreos at him while falsely accusing him of raping Peyton Manning’s kittens; Peyton Manning in a wig and moustache, again, for Sprint, again; and Peyton Manning, for My Local News.

And we’re back, with oxen running wild. The Amputee and the Pervert return to camel-loading. Kar/Lyn beg Jesus for assistance in loading their camel. He makes them do it anyway. The Daters bicker. I’m guessing that in this case, she’s the one who’s gonna hit him.

The BQ’s finish pouring water, but one of them has lost her Mongol helmet and has to go find it.

Ilse thinks “Mongol helmet” is really funny. Sometimes I just don’t understand her. But then I slap her ass a few times and everything becomes more clear.

Bad Daddy and L-Girl finish watering and get clued up; they are to drive to yet another village, where the Hotel Mongorea awaits.

Here’s the difference between me and everyone else who writes summaries: in anyone else’s summary, except maybe TechNoir’s, you’d have had to deal with a joke involving the Eagles right there. Not here. No way. Don Henley must die, I tell you.

Kar/Lyn abandon Jesus and their camel, heading off to haul water. The BQs keep looking for a helmet, not hitting on the simple idea of stealing someone else’s. Stupid twats. The Daters continue to bicker; Super Kingkong Mayamaya Beeeeitch is in deep tears.

Nothing worth mentioning occurs for the next four or five minutes of footage. This is good, because it’s getting late and I’m tired of this summary. The next noteworthy thing that occurs is that the BQs find their Mongol Helmet. Ilse is laughing. Excuse me, I’m going to slap her ass and see if I find clarity.

Bitching, moaning, whining, complaining, felching. Bad Daddy and L-Girl get passed by the Amputee and the Pervert, and then by the Gaywad Drug Addict Models. The simple expedient of driving faster does not seem to occur to Bad Daddy.

Three teams are plagued by breakdowns; Gaywin and Gayerwin stop by the side of the road, while the Game Cock Girls and the Welfare Mothers can’t even get their surplus Soviet pieces of shit to start. Gaywin and Gayerwin are the first to get rolling again while, back at the meadow, the Game Cock Girls are the first to get help. A local Mongorean handcranks their surplus Soviet piece of shit back to life. The Welfare Mothers are surprised to find that two cute, perky Southron girls who asked nicely got help before two crabby, self-important, trash-talking nasty Bamas. Karma, she’s a bitch, but before Karma plays out her hand, we’re off to:

Commercials, brought to you by Sprint, and you know what that means:

Peyton Manning in a wig and moustache, again, for Sprint, again; Peyton Manning with a big head on a little body, accompanied by Derek Jeter’s big head and some other big damn heads on little bodies, for the Hydroencephaly Society; Peyton Manning at the bottom of the ocean, for a Talking Heads album; Peyton Manning in a car, for NASCAR on Fox; Peyton Manning as a cartoon, for the Curious George movie…aw, shit; Peyton Manning in a casket, for CBS police shows; Peyton Manning dry-humping Jeff Probst, for Survivor; and Peyton Manning in a chalk outline, for My Local News.

And we’re back.

So over at cluefulness, the Amputee and Pervert find that the Ronery Roadbrock involves shooting a flaming Mongorean arrow at a target. When the target’s burning, the racers can run like hell for the Pit Stop.

The Pervert finishes first, as the Gaywad Drug Addict Models look on in disgust. The Amputee and Pervert dash to the Pit Stop, where Dixie Melons awards them a trip to Mexico and a threesome with the Travelocity Gnome. They rant about how cool they are. The Amputee confesses that she’s done with the Perv after this show is over, and she’ll be back in the Hustler personals. For, y'know, anyone who's interested.

So, people shoot flaming arrows, and the Gaywad Drug Addict Models come in second, followed by Bad Daddy and L-Girl, after L-Girl manages, after about forty or fifty tries, to launch an arrow into the target. The Flamers are shooting at the same time, but whichever Flamer is doing the Roadblock is doing a very creditable job of shooting an arrow like a girl, if such a thing is possible. However, the blind squirrel finds an acorn and they manage to finish.

The Daters bicker over the arrow-shooting; Mister Hillbilly is almost as lame as the Flamer; and a blonde whisks the BQs into next place. Other arrow-shooting occurs; Super Kingkong Mayamaya Beeeeeitch sinks one, and the Daters finish nextish. The Hillbillies get in next, as the non-limping Mrs. Hillbilly whines about how badly she’s fucked up her ankle.

Suspenseful drama is being set up on the back end, as the producers are unwilling to tell us who, between the Game Cock Girls and the Welfare Mothers, is more lost. Gaywin and Gayerwin finish next, and the Welfare Mothers get to the shooting range while the Game Cock Girls once again ask directions and establish that they are hopelessly, fuckall, no-shit, Truly Effing Lost. The Welfare Mothers come in ninth.

Finally, as the sun sets, the Game Cock Girls fire flaming arrows at the targets, setting a whole field on fire. Eventually, they give up and trudge off to the Pit Stop, where Dixie Melons titslaps them into tearful irrelevance. They babble. In the morning, when their confessional is filmed, their tears have passed and they are once again hopelessly perky in their pursuit of Game Cock. And so we beat off, sails unfurled uselessly against the prevailing wind, which carries a distinct whiff of Tony Chang’s Mongorean Barbecue and Third-Floor Whorehouse, on H Street between Seventh and Eighth, in My Local Nation’s Capital.

Commercials:

Peyton Manning fucking a gnome, for Travelocity; Peyton Manning overdosing on Oxy, for Excedrin, CVS, and CBS; Peyton Manning in lip gloss, for Victoria’s Secret; Peyton Manning as Robin Williams running for President; Peyton Manning in Massachusetts, fucking a goat and nursing a sheep (he just can’t get anything right there); and Peyton Manning promising me sunny skies on an overcast day tomorrow, for My Local News.

Next week on TAR: Bad Daddy pimps out L-Girl at a Mongorean bus stop, and the Flamers have a hissy slap-fight with the BQs about who has the deepest throat.

Thanks tons for reading, and for bearing with this late substitution.  ¶ 11:09 PM