Weekend

[prog]

Had a great weekend. Saturday classicaljunkie and I drove to the south shore to meet my mom for her birthday. We drove around the area together and looked at the houses I grew up in, which still look quite the same, though Cliff Top is smaller than I remember! It still has a nice "Cliff Top" sign; I'm glad that its name has survived whatever sequence of owners it

Comments

[dougo]

We were discussing this on Friday: isn't Hull/Nantasket really considered "the cape" rather than "south shore"? Or does "south shore" really mean "everything between the Charles and Rhode Island"?

I still don't know what to make of Dreamz. He claims he never really intended to keep his promise, but he sure seemed to agonize over the decision to break it. Was that all an act? He doesn't seem to be that good an actor. I am totally for the it's-just-a-game ultra-deceptive style of playing Survivor/Big Brother (a la Richard Hatch or Johnny Fairplay), but something about his betrayals seemed too... clumsy to be rewarded, even if it did get him to the final three. (And how was anyone surprised that it would be a final three instead of final two? Did nobody watch the previous season? Was it not a huge hint that Rocky made it onto the jury?) And how could Dreamz have ever believed he could win against Earl in the final vote? I guess that was groupthink-everyone was talking about "sympathy votes", which has never happened in

[prog]

This was actually the first time I'd ever watched Survivor, joining a little after they merged into the purple team, and long after all the openly jerky players got the boot. So seeing the jerk parade at the end was kind of shocking to me.

My best guess about Dreamz' thinking is that he ultimately went into a black-and-white analysis mode, figuring that it is always better to get closer to the end, with all other concerns (such as how a last-minute betrayal of the season's most charismatic contestant would play with the jury) falling by the wayside.

[prog]

Also I didn't know about the final jury mechanic at all, where all the season's losers vote for which of the finalists gets to win. That's actually quite clever!

[dougo]

I have deeply mixed feelings about it. It's basically a huge kingmaker situation, where players who no longer have any stake in the game decide the outcome. But what it really means is that the entire game is about figuring out the psychology of how to get these kingmakers to make you king. It's weird that such non-game reasoning becomes a game skill, and it's certainly not a game I'd ever want to play myself, but it's fascinating to watch.

If you like that, you should also check out Big Brother, which I think starts in June. It has the same jury mechanism, but a lot more interesting game structure leading up to it. Unfortunately the players tend to be more annoying than in Survivor, since the struggle to survive is replaced by the struggle to remain sane in a locked house, but it's still pretty entertaining as a game.

[dougo]

Also, if you're not sick of it yet, you might like to read Shannon Appelcline's analysis of Survivor from a game design point of view.

[prog]

This is cool.

[dougo]

The only openly jerky player during the game was Rocky (and to a much lesser extent, Stacy), and his final jury interview was pretty tame. Alex's diatribe really kind of came out of nowhere. For a while he was my favorite after Yauman & Earl, though near the end he did and said some stupid things that made me glad he lost

[prog]

I grew up with Hull being identified as part of the south shore. It's a couple minutes' drive from Hingham and Cohassett, and a little further to Quincy, and those are hardly on the cape.

The Cape describes those eastern coastal areas of Mass that aren't part of the bay, no?

[dougo]

I just looked at a map, and now I realize I've been totally misremembering where Hull is. Yes, it's obviously nowhere near Cape Cod, it's on some completely different curled-north spit of land. IGNORE ME!

[dougo]

As usual, Wikipedia clears up more of my confusion. I always thought "Shore" meant "bank of the Charles". For some reason it never occurred to me that it actually meant the shore of the ocean (harbor).

[prog]

Ohh. Yes, that would be confusing!

Unlike too many things in this state it actually is a meaningful, if somewhat ambiguous, name.

[dougo]

At least I figured out the Inbound/Outbound thing pretty quickly. But why the hell is Norfolk County south of Suffolk County?!