Alrighty, we’re starting with Emily and James. I don’t know if I have an opinion on it. They’ve been together for a year and they seem to be pretty happy, but from what I understand, which isn’t much, there are issues there. Rumors have it that there is a little bit of jealousy and lack of trust going on. I don’t know this for a fact, but I do know that Emily seemed to have an issue with James being supportive of any girl other than herself, particularly Veronica. Hmmm…

The game show. It took FOREVER for this thing to start. Our call time was something like 10am, but as you can see, this game went into the night. There were issues with the buzzer. I guess the tech guy was having difficulty getting them to work, so we all had to sit in this one spot waiting for hours for them. It was one of the hottest days there, and we sat around guessing what the mission would be because this time, no one had heard anything about it. While we waited, we decided that it would the opposite of Freeze Your Butt Off – we thought we’d be in a box to see who could stand the heat the longest. I was worried about it because that’s beyond dangerous, but then again, they didn’t mind giving us frostbite, what’s a little dehydration?

Once we did get there, we had to delay playing it because they realized that the judge couldn’t see the buzzer lights because of how bright the sun was, so we had to wait until it got dark enough. Realize there was no actual buzzing sound, the light was the only way to tell who rang in. Once we did start playing, they needed us to hurry because they had to clear the area since the place was reserved for Taye Diggs’s wedding. That’s pretty cool.

We show up, and it’s a game show. Now I’m panicked, and it has nothing to do with the rules. I hate trivia. I never know the answers, and I was thinking they’d go down the line one by one asking questions. I was terrified. Even if I know the answer, if I’m asked on the spot in front of everyone, I blank. Chronic issues here. I get nervous on the first day of class when we have to go around the room and say our names and what year we graduated. “Hi, Um..I’m Lori. Lori Trespicio. Oh, wait, were we saying last names? Anyway, what was I supposed to say? My year? I’m a senior…” Just an idiot. You wouldn’t think so since I love performing, I love attention, and I went on two TV shows, but being put on the spot like that in that kind of forum, I can’t breathe. Anyway, we hear that you have to buzz in to answer the question, so now I feel completely safe, and I’m ready to play.

Let’s talk about this whole concept of this game. I liked the game. I thought it sounded like fun. Those guys are not perverts, they’re not assholes. If you got an answer wrong, they don’t make you feel cheap or slutty. These are all good people we’re here with, so no one feels embarrassed. No, that doesn’t mean that we would parade around naked together, but having to take your shirt off to reveal your bra? Our bras cover more of us than our bikinis. I don’t see the big deal there. My point is, we’re all comfortable around each other, and that makes a difference.
The rules: if you buzz in, which you are never required to do in the whole game, you must answer the question correctly. When you answer you receive a token. If you answer the question incorrectly, you may either give up a token or take off one article of clothing. If you’ve answered incorrectly and you have no token to give up, then you must take off an article of clothing, or you could quit the game if you like. Standing there silently in the game and not actively participating whatsoever will earn you the minimum amount of points, which was something like 10 at the time. If you choose not to even stand there, you are eliminating yourself and you receive 0 points – a score that will drastically affect your cumulative. Yes, I thought it was unfair because we only need to remove two pieces of clothes before it’s controversial for us, and they can remove 3 without looking any different than they do everyday. Even if they do remove all four pieces, they are never showing anything because they are behind the stand, where if we had to remove our top, we’d just be standing there with our boobs out. The girls who were participating decided that if we got into the position where we had to move a third piece, we’d go with the bottom because though it seems worse to have nothing covering our lady-region, better than that having our boobs just out and showing. Either way, none of us planned on getting ourselves into that position anyway.

So, next thing I know, Anne is crying. Anne is one of my favorites, so even though I don’t share her opinion on the morals of this game, I won’t give her any shit. She gets very nervous about being around a situation that involves taking your clothes off, even if you never have to take of your clothes. She had real moral issues, and that’s cool with me. However, from what I recall, Christina had no problem with the game whatsoever. It was in July, so my memory could be failing me, but I believe I remember Christina thinking it was no big deal and was going to play, but she in a group of best friends that includes Anne, and wanted to be supportive of Anne’s decision, so, she jumped on the bandwagon, as Veronica pointed out in the inner circle later. Emily had issues with it too. She was very upset. She was rapidly getting fed up with the whole challenge. We were all talking in the girl’s bathroom, and Emily runs in and says, “I came here to do things like cliff-diving and sky-diving – real challenges, but this is fucking bullshit.” Tonya was not comfortable with it either. She’s a conservative girl, but her main issue is that she was a counselor at a camp, and she did not want her kids seeing her participate in that. Ayanna swore that the one thing she wouldn’t do when she got here was anything having to do with taking off her clothes. Though Ellen, Melissa, Ruthie, Genesis, Veronica, and myself repeatedly explained that you do not have to take your clothes off, these girls still refused to participate. It was stated very clearly between the non-participates to the participates that no one would feel ill-will towards anyone’s decision. Fine, no biggy.

As Melissa put it, there are some things some people can do and others can’t. Melissa felt comfortable being in this game and playing however she can play, but if it were something like cliff-diving she would never do it. She said that this was one of her chances to do really well, and something may come up soon that she’ll refuse to do. I didn’t think it was a big deal at all. Though I respected the girls who didn’t want to play, from my perspective, I thought it was dramatic and silly. I think they came off on the show as looking a little bit self-righteous and sort of lame. Again, I don’t think these girls are self-righteous or lame, but I thought it came off that way. I WILL say that I’m a little…strike that, VERY disappointed when I saw that clip of them driving away singing about how they don’t have to take off their clothes to be liked. I’m sorry, but I don’t fucking have to take off my clothes to be liked either. If you understand that it’s just a game, then why don’t you chill out and fucking play it? Also, don’t talk to me like we’re the classless ones for participating when the girls who didn’t play just went up to the lounge and all got trashed on Red Stripes. Yeah, because that’s classy. What? You don’t have to take your clothes off, you can just pound beers? Interesting.

I’m all out of order here. So, what I thought was happening was James was going to not participate, but Emily agreed that he should or he would be going home. Side note: Jake was going to go home that day no matter who left, so James could have not participated. Funny. Well, I was wrong because from what I can see in this episode, Emily felt betrayed. I had no idea that was going on.

Now, if Tonya said that she thought it was totally cool for whoever wanted to play, she just personally didn’t, than why was she thanking James for considering to not play as if she was standing for some big cause and glad that he was picketing along? I’m confused about a lot of this. This show reveals a lot of shit that I did not know when I was there.

Okay, I’m watching “Club Zero” right now. What the fuck is going on here? How is it any more degrading for girls than guys. We’re all playing by the same rules. I don’t think it’s a misogynistic game. “They can kiss my white ass?” I think that’s a weird statement to make. I felt a little embarrassed for Emily when I saw that clip. Also, why are you in scuba gear? It’s so fucking hot out. Anyway, “We’re smarter and better than that”. So, we’re not? Hmmm…

Antoine says “Chivalouresque” instead of “chivalrous.” Funny.

Okay, whole other thingy to talk about. The guys have more players, therefore, the chances of our having one player with the most cumulative tokens in higher since there are only five girls competing against each other, and they have ten. It is a good point, but there’s nothing you can do about it. If they had five people who wanted to sit this out, than it would be fair. It’s not our fault that we had less players. So, the guys whined and whined for a really long time about it. They weren’t mad at us, but they were sort of taking it out on us. So, I had an idea – if we won, we’d keep five bikes for us, and five bikes would go to the five highest scorers on their team. Theo thought it was a great idea, and all the girls standing there agreed that it would be just fine. The judges didn’t care either. James, on the otherhand, flipped out. He started yelling at us about how horrible we were as teammates to just abandon our other players and sacrifice their prizes. He yelled and screamed, and we reminded that we were offering him a solution to shut HIM the fuck up for complaining about how unfair we were. I knew James didn’t give a shit about our team unity. He was only defending Emily so that she could get the prize if we won, but Emily doesn’t even care about team unity, so what the fuck is James talking about? The others girls were told when James ran up after the game to let them know that we were going to give away their bikes if we won. Those girls got pissed, and I got pissed in return. I understand that those girls did not want to play for themselves out of principle. That does not mean they are not a part of this team. If they cared about our team unity, they would have at the very least sat on the sidelines to cheer us on. Instead, they made up that song about how much better they are than us, and then they left us completely. If we won the game, I would find it mighty hypocritical of them to preach that they couldn’t even WATCH the game, but they would gladly accept the prize won it. Funny how principles vanish when it comes to prizes. In their defense, maybe they would have liked it if we at least had discussed it with them before we offered that as a solution, but again, they weren’t THERE to talk to. They were getting drunk and singing about how we need to strip to be liked. Hmmm…

I thought that the portrayal of the game show was just great. It looks as fun as it was. I was a little annoyed though because once the guys decided to let Jake answer first to accumulate points, I thought we should do the same and USE our advantage of less players. So, I wouldn’t answer questions I KNEW the answers to because I was waiting to see if Ellen knew them first. I’d turn and look at Ellen and say, “Do you know this one?” And if she didn’t, I would ring in. Mind you, this only happened twice, but still, all the girls kept ringing in for themselves. So, here I am trying to figure out how the girls can win, and I’m missing out on points for myself. So I just started ringing in when I knew one. Result: We didn’t win. I don’t remember only losing by two though. Again, we have been lied to about points. When we lost, we weren’t counting up to see if we were close. Jake had something like 15 or 20 of those tokens. He won by a landslide.

I like this episode. I think Ellen looks fun and smart too, which is good because she’s gotten so much shit from previous episodes.

James makes a statement: “My girlfriend and I have had to deal with so much crap that it’s just not worth it anymore.” I think the “it” refers to the challenge, not their relationship. That’s how I interpret it.

Inner circle talk: Anne was upset that we didn’t all come together as a team. Well, this is why I think that the other girls should have hung out and cheered us on if they didn’t want to do it. I don’t see why we all had to quit when we didn’t want to. I mean, I don’t have a moral problem with it, so it doesn’t seem right to not play. I mean, if I don’t want to eat bugs and we had to, I can’t expect that all the girls not eat it and we be a team to support my hypothetic love for insects. You know?

Tonya leaves. Sad. Saying goodbye to her Jamaica is still to this day the last time I’ve seen her or spoken to her. Don’t know where she disappeared to.

Scenes from next week: Anne says that Veronica is one huge pool of negativity. I’m looking forward to watching this because if Veronica was so negative, I need to see some footage of it because I don’t remember that at all. Wow, I just had no idea people had these opinions of anyone. Anne and I hung out a lot, we never talked about anyone. Weird. Okay, well, we’ll see, we’ll see.