Huh. Lemme go listen. I'll email you.

Word of advice to anyone who likes the wilderness survival shows on Discovery: Do what Survivorman does. Don't do what Man Vs. Wild Guy does. I just saw Survivorman for the first time a week or so ago, and love the show because he clearly knows what he is doing. I did a lot of wilderness survival stuff when I was a teenager, and some of the things I remember are among Survivorman's generally excellent advice. Actually, don't do everything he does, because he also demonstrates how people in bad situations make fatal or near-fatal errors, so when he does something that makes him look 10 years older in about 10 minutes, don't do that.

Anyone doing what the Man Vs. Wild Guy does, on the other hand, will die. That show has the guy giving horrible advice, over and over again. For instance, if you're lost in the desert, don't try to swim down stagnant water in a box canyon. The dead animal floating in the water means STAY AWAY, not JUMP IN, THE WATER'S FINE. If, while taking an ill-advised swim through stagnant water in a box canyon, you encounter debris blocking your way, do not try to swim under it. If you do, you could get hung up on the debris, caught in a narrow crevice, or just simply run out of air and drown. Another thing: you don't have four minutes of air. Considering how dehydrated you are, a minute is pushing it. When you reach the inevitable 30 ft wall at the end of your box canyon (If you're MVW Guy, you may be asking yourself: not a river? Really, this stagnant water that is not running anywhere doesn't go to a river?), don't try to climb out chimney-style unless you happen to be an expert mountain climber with gear. If you didn't have, say, a camera crew, an EMT, and a survival guide onhand to help you do these proposterous things, you would most likely die. Which gets to my final beef with the show: the clearly superior Survivorman tapes himself demonstrating wilderness survival techniques for 7 days under worst-case scenarios, but the MVW guy has cameras shadowing him and thanks his crew at the end of the show. Fuckin' wuss.

One last thing: if you are caught in quicksand (which is something different than what happens to MVW Guy when he claims to be caught in quicksand), don't struggle with it, for god's sake. Geez, I hate that guy and hate that the Discovery Channel is billing his show as something people can learn from.

I suspect from the sound of it that the show is the doing of Greenpeace extremists who want to fight against population growth.

Ugly Betty: Betty went to a posh Soho hotel on assignment instead of Atlantic City with Walter, so he ended up joining her and being all whiny and annoying. Betty's sister had to ask her kid's gambling father for money to help pay for Ignacio's lawyer so he'll probably show up in the next Thanksgiving episode. Salma and Daniel finally slept together with the predictable result of him actually being interested but her blowing him off because she has a boyfriend. Also in non-news, she looks hot all episode. And she ends up publishing Betty's article instead of Mode. Finally, Wil has to schmooze the Texan head of "Walmart" and ends up at what I assume is supposed to be Hogs and Heifers in the meatpacking district, but they end up in the Village at Babbo, so it's all good. Sadly, Amanda and Mark(?) were hardly in the episode, so it was a bit more serious than previous ones. Happily, we never saw Fey.

Heh. I just came across our very own Typo Boy cited in Ezra Klein's blog. I love when Buffistae pop up in other corners of my world.

Corwood, I saw a survival special on the National Geographic Channel that was hosted by a British special forces soldier who was much more informative and helpful than Survivor Man--plus, he was more low key. I don't know what it is about Les that makes me wish he get eaten by a bear (in spite of his pragmatic, sound advice).

I saw the ads for MvW and just wondered why they're doing another survival series--it's lame and redundant.

Watching Wednesday's Colbert, I think there needs to be a national movement to elect more singers.

But then you end up with Sonny Bono in Congress.

You can get that on video from Crooks and Liars, btw, for anyone who missed it.