Sarah’s challenge has some wonderful match possibilities if we can get some money moving in the next day or so, so let’s keep working on recaps.

TAR 15-7: Picture Communication For Exceptional Children (this teacher works with itty-bitty special-needs three- four- and five-year-olds, and they need pictures to help them communicate, as many are nonverbal)

TAR 15-8: It’s All About Words (that teacher can’t get DICTIONARIES, people)

TAR 15-9: Clay Animators Unite (I think this one speaks for itself! It’s Claymation! How bad do you want to know students are doing Claymation because of your donation?)

Should those three get done, we’ll go from there.

Now working on TAR 15-6. Project: Native American Reference Books.

There is something about a teacher saying, “I cannot afford reference books.” This is a pretty small one — under $400! — so let’s go let’s go let’s go.

Okay, guys. There are actually only a couple weeks left in Sarah’s drive, so in order to make sure we exhaust your interest in funding recaps (which I expect to run out, so please don’t worry about hurting my feelings!), we’re going to start funding them ahead, and we’re going to throw in Survivor. If one gets funded, we’ll put up the next one, and we’ll see how far we get in the season.

Tonight is TAR 15-4. (That means Season 15, Episode 4.) That one is already covered. The project for TAR 15-5, next week’s episode, is Sixth-Graders Make Connections To The World Of Birds, which combines writing (which I love) with birds (which my parents love).

Prefer Survivor? Survivor 19-6 airs this Thursday. The project for Survivor 19-6 is this one, called Third Graders At A Kindergarten Reading Level — Help!!, which just won me over completely.

So if you’re still game, I’m still game, and we’ll keep going until you have given all you wish to or my fingers cramp up. Heh.

Hello! As you probably know if you are reading this, the reason this recap was completed was in support of Sarah Bunting’s fundraising drive for Donors Choose, a fantastic charity that raises money for school projects. I offered to recap an episode of this season’s Amazing Race if folks would make sure that a project to provide fitness activities for at-risk students (specifically Frisbee Golf) got funded. It was funded, so here we are.

If you would like to see another recap next week, the project is Googly Eyes for kids with multiple disabilities. Please use that link to go to Donors Choose so that your donation is credited to Sarah’s drive. There is currently $455 to go as of this writing. If that project is funded before it expires on Saturday (you don’t have to mention me, you don’t have to care about a recap; just read about the Googly Eyes and see if you can stand it), we’ll be on for next week. And thanks to all who have already donated.

Previously on Hi, Phil! HI, PHIL! REMEMBER ME, PHIL?: Teams raced all over Vietnam, also known as The Home Of Flo’s Spiritual Chickens Coming Home To Roost In Zach’s Figurative Nest Of Abject Misery. Marcy thought sad, weepy things about Vietnam that suggested instantly that she was about to be eliminated. (Next time, Marcy, concentrate on the delicious cuisine of a country and not the serious feelings it causes you to have. It’s always the brooders who are moved by their surroundings who wind up getting the boot! Don’t be a victim!) Lance was like, “Keri, I’m done with you,” but Keri didn’t run fast enough, so before she knew it, she was getting love noogies and having her heart’s underpants run up the flagpole or whatever the FUCK that guy does when he wants to show affection. I can only imagine. I am trying not to.

Also last week: Zev and Justin broke an ear off a giraffe, and while I’d like to tell you that’s a euphemism for deflowering a member of the Vietnamese women’s basketball team, it in fact simply means that they broke an ear off a giraffe. Flight Time and Big Easy made it to the mat just ahead of Spiky McGee and His Perky Ladyperson. Oh, and Lance was really impressed with himself for being able to rip apart a VCR with his bare hands. Hey, don’t laugh — it’s going to look really bad-ass on the police report when he gets arrested in 1989. Phil referred to Lance as “the lion,” which I think was code for “Dear Race support staff, please make with the tranquilizer darts,” but Lance is still awake for now, while Marcy and Ron became the cannon fodder they were always probably destined to be. Farewell, Marcy and Ron.

Nine teams left. Who will be eliminated … next?

Credits. Freakish biceps! Natural wonders! The natural wonder of a freakish bicep! You know, in some ways, so little has changed. [BOMP.]

Ho Chi Minh City. Drunken careening cameramen try to be like, “Um, don’t mind all the disease-repelling face masks; it’s VERY HOSPITABLE!” Phil turns out to be standing next to a big green star in the middle of a mess of traffic, so I hope he’s being careful. Phil takes us back in history to the surrender of the South Vietnamese at the “Reunification Palace,” which it seems to me is a little like calling the end zone at Lambeau Field the “Lying On The Ground Together And Hugging Each Other Plaza.”

Either way, though, this was the third pit stop. Presumably, teams were able to use their mandatory rest period to eat, sleep, and reunify. (Chicka-bow.)

6:53 PM. Flight Time and Big Easy are ready to go, and they’re in uniform today. The clue sends them to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where Phil explains that they will go to the Foreign Correspondents Club and “make contact with” an editor who will give them a clue. Flight Time Globetrotterviews that he is having all kinds of interesting experiences on the race, such as “cleaning Big Easy’s socks and underwear.” Hee.

6:54 PM. Spiky and Perky. He is wearing a bandanna wrapped around his head to prevent the hair uprising from becoming a full-on revolt, which would only lead to civic unrest, a mousse coup, and ultimately, complete follicular anarchy.

6:58 PM. Gary and Matt, AKA Kool-Aid Man and Kool-Aid Man’s Dad. Gary tells us that Matt’s hair has been many, many colors in addition to pink, and this, I believe.

6:59 PM. Brian and Ericka. That’s Miss Am-Ericka, to you. BOOYAH! Sigh. I don’t get pageant people, really. Brian interviews that they have spotted a “jungle theme” in this year’s race. Crickets chirp uncomfortably as everyone tries to figure out where he is going with this, and then he goes on to say that they have seen a variety of animals. Unfortunately, the two animals he mentions are zebras and ducks. Now, I am quite sure zebras do not live in the jungle. I am even more sure ducks do not live in the jungle. I realize that saying you have spotted a zoo theme doesn’t sound as interesting, but that is essentially the only way you are going to get ducks and zebras to be part of the same thing.

7:06 PM. Sam and Dan, Stealth Gay Bros.

7:16 PM. Maria and Tiffany, Oblivious Pursuers Of Stealth Gay Bros.

So everybody starts arriving at the airport, where, unsurprisingly, they encounter large numbers of Vietnamese people. Unfortunately, Big Flight Easy Time and Spiky and Perky discover right away that there are no flights to Phnom Penh until tomorrow at 12:25. So that’s … eighteen hours, give or take, at the Ho Chi Minh City airport. I hope there’s a Starbucks.

7:25 PM. Mika and Canaan, the first TAR team ever named by the parents of the kindergarten class at the Arlo Guthrie Organic And Possibly Communist Alternative Preschool Of The Earth.

7:31 PM. Zev and Justin. Justin explains that he and Zev met at camp and became friends, and Zev says that Justin is a great guy who, among other things, “took [him] into his group of friends,” for which Zev is “very grateful.” My favorite thing about this team is that this is clearly true, that Justin clearly greases the wheels for Zev socially to some degree, but he likes the guy — it’s not pity, it’s not “look how great I am for dragging my unusual friend around as if he were, for instance, some short-of-stature cousin I wanted to use for martyrdom and as an occasional side-of-beef hauler.” They make themselves laugh in the cab, concluding that because they can’t pronounce “Phnom,” they’ll call it “Sean Penn, Cambodia.” Heh. That’s just stupid enough that it seems like something I might do with my friends.

7:32 PM. Lance and Keri. Lance’s arm is bandanna’d up like a Chachi leg as he explains in an interview that they are getting married after the race (you can see her brain making a “maybe, maybe not” hand gesture inside her skull), and he thinks the race is basically the equivalent of five years of marital stress. I am not actually married myself, but I would say only this: HA HA HA! It really is not that. I mean, if you want to know whether that makes sense, ask anyone who’s been married five years how the daily grind has affected her, and see if she says, “I swear, it’s been like three weeks of traveling around the world on someone else’s dime.” Lance says that he needs to “open up and listen.” And then he puts her in a headlock and is like, “JUST KIDDING NYAAAAAH! WHO’S MY BABY? WHO’S MY BABY?” No, no, he doesn’t do that. He is tooootally sincere.

Teams continue to converge on the airport and crowd around the Vietnam Airlines counter, where the lady no doubt wishes she could hang a big banner behind the desk that says “NO SRSLY 12:25 TOMORROW STOP ASKING.” Everyone seems to be getting the same tickets, but there’s some emphasis on Zev and Justin being stuck in traffic that begins to suggest that their position is going to be important — and that means ticket problems. We also learn along here that Zev’s way of sassing cab drivers is to tell them, “I’m going to call your mother.” Which I find odd and hilarious. I think he learned the mildest verson of Yo Mamma jokes that has ever been taught. It’s like he heard somebody say, “I’m going to [inaudible] your mother,” but he was nine, so he assumed it was “call,” picked it up as a piece of trash talk and never reconsidered.

Indeed, at the airport, Justin and Zev are behind Lance and Keri, which Lance is polite enough to rub in their faces before tearing the top off a can of spinach with his bare hands and then tipping his head backwards, opening his massive yap, and pouring it in. Congratulations, big fella, you’re making the bar very proud.

As it turns out, Justin and Zev and Lance and Keri can’t get tickets for the flight everyone else has, leaving at 12:25. Instead, they have to take a different flight, which leaves at 2:15. Dun! They both make it onto the standby list, though.

Electric guitar music provides the “Eighteen hours later …” segue, and we are suddenly watching the teams with tickets get on the shuttle to head out to the flight, while Biceps Biceptington and Mouthy Mouthahan and Justin and Zev endeavor to get off standby. The other teams are pretty pleased to apparently be leaving two teams behind. But wait! Back at the ticket counter, Justin asks again whether they can possibly get on the plane, although of course, if they can, that probably means Beefaroni Meathead, Esq. and Janice From Friends will get on as well.

(Side note: Would you have believed, during the pilot more than eight years ago [!], that I would one day refer to a dude as “Beefaroni Meathead, Esq.,” and it would NOT be Rob?)

Commercials. Let us pause and think happy thoughts of seasons past. Mine are all about shoulders, what about you?

When we return, the tension continues to mount at the ticket counter until — surprise! — everybody gets on the flight. That was totally unexpected based on the assumption I always carry that what appears to be disaster just before the commercial will always continue to be disaster after the commercial, because anything else would feel cheap and manipulative, right? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 157 times … wait, eventually it turns back to shame on you, right? Man, I hope so.

On the shuttle out to the plane, Justin chuckles, referring to his almost-flight-missing, “That would have been a tough way to go.” Excuse me, I have a pain in my foreshadowing bone. Won’t you pardon me while I see about a plaster cast?

Lance actually flexes his fucking bicep on the way out to the plane, like that isn’t the greatest way ever invented to announce that you are made of suck and noodles, hold the noodles. The rest of the teams see him coming just as they’re about to climb the little stairs to the plane, and you can see that part of them is thinking, “I almost got a big lead on these teams,” but the other part is thinking, “I almost got to fly to Cambodia without this guy on the same plane I’m on.” “NO CHEAP WINS BITCHES NO CHEAP WINS!” he hollers at them. Which is great, since you know he’s totally the guy who would try to win a game of H-O-R-S-E by calling ticky-tack fouls. (”Um, wrist contact! That’s your R, asshole! THAT’S YOUR R RIGHT THERE!”)

So to recap the recap up to this point, here’s where we stand: We have spent the entire first act of the show to do nothing except get as far as “So the first thing they do is: everybody gets on the same flight.”

The Amaaaazing Red Line on the New And Improved Amaaaaazing Map By Amaaaazing Google shows that they are going from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh. Hey, look! Cambodia contains a flag and some monks! At the airport, Justin and Zev are the first into a cab on the way to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. “Very fast, okay?” Justin says. “Like the cops are chasing you, but safely.” Heh. I like that: “Like a bat leaving hell in an orderly fashion.” Other teams follow, including Gary and Matt, who are happy to hear that their driver is a speed demon. Trailing teams include Mika and Canaan and Lance and Keri.

(I am now envisioning Lance in his own personal-injury ad, which I suspect would take a long time to film. “Have you been injured by a fight in a bar with an excitable kind of ragey dude with a hankie wrapped around his arm who kept flexing at you? Yeah, that was probably me, so you should sue me. Wait, cut, that’s not what I was … shit, I have to start over. Okay, in 3, 2, 1 … Have you been injured by a guy who got pissed off watching football at a bar and decided to throw a chair, only he kind of lost his grip on the chair, and it flew the wrong direction? Yeah, that was me, so … shit.”)

Zev and Justin make friends with their cab driver, whose name is Thierry. The lead teams head inside the FCC (that’s Foreign Correspondents Club, not the regulatory agency), where they are supposed to be looking for the guy who is eyeballing them suspiciously from behind a newspaper. Is this a spy club? I’m not sure “foreign correspondent” implies intrigue. Doesn’t it imply … reporting? And if so, why is the assignment editor hiding from the reporters? Are assignments given to foreign correspondents a secret? Maybe I am working for the wrong media outlet.

As the first couple of teams collect their next clues, it turns out that they’re given in the form of mocked-up newspaper sections. Because that’s what a foreign correspondent’s assignment editor does — hand out copies of the paper. I fear that this metaphor here has gone horribly awry, and/or everyone who came up with this particular clue got all of the relevant ideas about journalism from that episode of The Brady Bunch where Peter calls himself “Scoop.”

But there are more depressing things to worry about, as the clue turns out to be a picture of Jackie Kennedy standing up in a car during an official visit to Cambodia. They’re supposed to use the picture to find a hotel with a suite named after the woman in the picture — who isn’t identified for the teams. The suite, Phil explains, is at the Hotel Le Royal. When they get to the hotel and find her picture hanging on the wall, their clue will be there.

Matt and Dan immediately decide they need to find out who the woman in the picture is. Now, I wasn’t alive when that picture was taken either, but I have to tell you, that is not only a picture of Jackie Kennedy; it is a very typical picture of Jackie Kennedy in which she looks exactly like … Jackie Kennedy. It’s not a trick question.

The teams have no idea who she is, but fortunately, their drivers all know what hotel is in the picture or referenced by the picture or something, because they get on the right path. Maybe Jackie Kennedy is the David Hasselhoff of Cambodia. (Yes, I do hold the copyright on that comparison, thank you very much, please do not use Jackie Kennedy: The David Hasselhoff Of Cambodia as the title of your Jackie Kennedy biography without consulting me.)

The other teams show up at the club, and things go swimmingly until the last team — Mika and Canaan. Everyone else has said some variation of, “Can I have our next assignment?” Canaan says he wants the next “task.” The assignment editor gives him nothing. (Editors CAN be capricious and demanding, you know.) Canaan says it again. And again. And now he’s getting irritated, because the guy won’t give him the clue. Finally, he rereads the clue and figures out that he’s using the wrong word, and they manage to get what they need and get going. Well, that was agonizing.

As the teams are all piling into their cabs, the little Zither of Confusion cautions us that a couple of teams have been directed to the Royal Palace rather than the Hotel Le Royal — specifically Ericka and Brian and Gary and Matt.

Meanwhile, Justin and then Gary recognize Jackie Kennedy in the picture, at long last, and when prompted, their partners realize that is who it is. We now go to an interview montage starting with Gary, who explains that he knew it was Jackie Kennedy. Then to Canaan: “The picture was a picture of Queen Elizabeth.” And then there is a hilariously loud gong that announces that he will be repeating history at the Arlo Guthrie Organic And Possibly Communist Alternative Preschool Of The Earth. And then Flight Time says, in the cab, “It’s one of the queens from here.” And Mika adds in their interview, “It was definitely somebody of the Cambodian descent. It looked like the people of Cambodia.” Oh, yes. Yes, definitely. It was that famous Cambodian, Jackie Kennedy. Take us home, Dan!: “It was like a queen or a princess or something.” Yes. Yes, it was. It was Princess Pillbox Hat, of the Big Sunglasses Dynasty.

Zev and Justin get right to the hotel and find the picture hanging on the wall, and they retrieve their clue. The Detour offers them a choice: Cover or Wrap. In Cover, you have to sell four motorcycle helmets to a family of four, including two adults and two kids. So first you have to find the helmet stand, and then you have to find a family, and then you have to count the people in it, and I already hate this Detour option and we haven’t even talked to anyone yet, let alone tried to sell them something while not speaking their language and that is crazy.

In Cover, you go to a market and find a lady wearing a particular scarf. Unless I have to find a lady wearing a particular scarf and sell her to a family of four, I’m going to say this option is much, much easier. Zev and Justin run off to the Russian Market, where Wrap is, and the sad part about this (in retrospect) is that they are having a great time and running a great leg, with help from this awesome cab driver.

Gary and Matt and Ericka and Brian are at the palace — which is not where they should be. They do, however, find people who put them on the right track.

At the Russian Market, Zev and Justin hunt for the stalls that they need, while back at the hotel, more teams are picking up the Detour clue and picking Wrap. Thierry is still with Zev and Justin as they look in the market for a lady with a purple scarf. That is one full-service taxi driver.

The only goofballs to go with Cover are Lance and Keri, who make that choice after she asks their cab driver whether it will be hard to sell helmets to a family of four for ten dollars. He tells them “It’s okay,” and I think that’s the basis on which she pretty much makes the decision, despite the fact that I am not at all convinced that he had any idea what she was asking. In my experience, hearing the words “It’s okay” is not an incredibly powerful indicator that you are being understood by a person who has a different native language than you do, let alone a powerful indicator that he has thought through the nature of your problem and concluded that, in fact, it’s okay.

Zev and Justin find the purple scarf (with an assist from Thierry), and they get their clue and are on their way. The clue tells them to go on foot to Wat Toul Tom Pong to find their next clue. They want to stay with Thierry, so they have him drive while they run behind the taxi. Heh. If only Heather and Eve had followed their taxi instead of, you know, ridden in it. How very differently things might have turned out.

Other teams pick up their scarves at the Russian Market. When Flight Time and Big Easy pick up their scarf, they also find a couple of American women who, drawn undoubtedly by patriotism and the milk of human kindness, and not at all by television cameras and Harlem Globetrotter uniforms, walk around with them to help them find the woman they’re looking for with the scarf on.

Maria and Tiffany are sitting in their tuk-tuk on the way to the Detour. “I don’t understand what’s taking so long,” one of them mutters. Considering that they are stuck in traffic, I would tend to chalk it up to the large number of other people on the streets of Cambodia, but perhaps they are looking for a more nuanced answer.

Zev and Justin find their way to the Roadblock, which reads, “Who’s ready to go bananas?” Phil explains that monkeys are highly revered in Cambodia, to the point where the royal family has a “monkey master” who “trains dancers to behave like monkeys.” Now, I am no genius where monkeys are concerned, but if you like monkeys, would it not be cheaper to simply employ monkeys directly, rather than dancers imitating monkeys who have to be trained by a monkey master? I’m just raising the question. If monkeys are making more money than people acting like monkeys, then free-market economics would suggest that monkeys should become unemployed and should have to go to work doing something for which willing and cheaper humans cannot be substituted, such as watching The Jay Leno Show.

Phil claims that someone will, for the Roadblock, “quite literally go bananas,” by which he means that the person will make monkey-like movements, thus figuratively going bananas, because literally going bananas would pretty much require the involvement of bananas, Phil. The task consists, in fact, of three “monkey maneuvers” that the person has to master before they can move on, none of which look particularly difficult. The moves will be “demonstrated by their monkey master.” I look forward to the day when I can use this as an excuse for my own actions. “It was demonstrated by my monkey master! I HAD NO CHOICE!”

Zev takes the task for his team, and Justin interviews (looking suspiciously glum, oh noooooo) that when he saw Zev putting on the mask and tail, he thought that was great, since “everybody who knows Zev would like to see him wear a tail and a mask pretty much at all times.” Heh. As we watch, Zev finishes the first maneuver and his little graphic (labeled “Monkey Maneuvers,” which is really twee) ticks off one checkbox. Zev also finishes the second maneuver without any trouble.

We check in on Brian and Ericka and Gary and Matt, all arriving late at the Russian Market after being misled to the palace instead of the hotel, as you’ll recall.

Elsewhere, Lance and Keri grab their helmets and start walking around, calling out for someone to come and purchase them. You know, whenever I’m out shopping, I am always drawn to loud people walking around screaming in a language I do not so much speak that I should come over and pay them money for safety gear of unknown origin that, should it turn out to be faulty, will result in mybrain being splattered on the Cambodian streets along with the rest of my family of four.

Back at the Russian Market, teams are still hunting for scarf-wearers. Spiky notes that the task was difficult, because of the size of the market and how hard it was to spot people in the crowd. He calls it “like finding a needle in a haystack.” I think that is an exaggeration. If you constructed a haystack made of people and one of them was wearing a scarf, I still believe it would be easier to find than a needle in a nearby haystack made of hay, no? Brian and Ericka, on the other hand, get incredibly lucky when their scarf person is, like, walking right past the stand at the moment they pick up the scarf, so they’re on their way almost immediately. Fortune favors the tiara-blessed!

When Flight Time and Big Easy find their scarf lady, she doesn’t immediately respond to their cries, leading Big Easy to claim, “She tried to run from me; that’s cold-blooded.” Hee. As they’re leaving, Maria and Tiffany are finally arriving.

Back at Monkey Town, Zev is trying to master the final Maneuver, but this one requires him to walk on the pole all bent over, and as Justin explains it in an interview, Zev has “the body of an 80-year-old man.” Heh. Thus, he finds this part a bit more difficult. As Justin tries to encourage him, Zev eventually calls out from behind the monkey mask for him to quit it with the encouraging. Aw. Aggravated monkey!

Sam and Dan get there next to start the monkey play (none of this is dirty, I swear). Zev, meanwhile, gets more frustrated and eventually sort of plunks down on the ground.

When we get back from commercials, Zev explains that he had a kind of a panic attack over the fact that he was struggling with the task and Justin was yapping in his ear and so forth. You can see Justin struggling with how much encouragement is the right amount, and what kind is the right kind, as he tries to get Zev to focus and go back to it.

Sam and Dan actually get finished with the roadblock first and get the clue to head for the pit stop. Phil warns us that the last team to check in … may be eliminated.

Back at the Russian Market, Mika tells that the market was “hot and tight.” Okay, that is an inside joke — so to speak, hotcha! — if ever I saw one, because previous abstainers from sex have also said “hot and tight,” so either Mika is being funny or the show is, or else “hot and tight” really tends to emerge as a thing you say when you are not having sex with the person you are dating.

Zev finally finishes his Monkey Maneuvers, and he and Justin receive the clue to head for the pit stop. Back in the cab with Thierry, they head for the pit stop.

Teams continue to hunt for scarves — Gary and Matt are looking, Mika and Canaan are looking, and Lance and Keri are not looking, because they are trying to sell motorcycle helmets to random strangers on the street, but I’m sure that as their taxi driver told them, “it’s okay.”

Finally, Gary and Matt and Spiky and Perky get going, and Lance and Keri finally irritate enough Cambodians that somebody is willing to buy the damn motorcycle helmets so they’ll stop talking. Those are some Cambodians taking one for the team.

Sam and Dan were not prepared for tuk-tuks to be slow. Dear Sam and Dan: Tuk-tuks are slow. Welcome to the race. Also slow: camels. Walking. Ducks and zebras. (Crap, maybe THAT’S the theme!)

Elsewhere, Zev makes his monkey face for the camera. He is right; it’s pretty good.

Perky is, according to Spiky, “a monkey and a half.” That should totally be on her Valentine’s Day card. Though it would make rather an unwieldy wedding-ring inscription. Gary is also a perfectly fine monkey, though perhaps more like a monkey and a quarter.

Unsurprisingly, when Lance and Keri arrive at the Monkeyblock, she decides to do the work. I’m not sure “lithe” is something he’s particularly making a priority. Keri gets right to work. I wonder if one of the maneuvers involves poo-flinging. If so, I have a suggestion for her.

And now, back at the market, Maria and Tiffany finally locate their scarf-wearing target, as do Mika and Canaan.

Zev and Justin pile out of their tuk-tuk and run to the mat, where Phil welcomes them as team number one! Yay! Well, that’s a relief! I didn’t want anything heartbreaking to happen! They look extremely happy. At the moment. Soon after, Sam and Dan check in as team number two, and right behind them are Flight Time and Big Easy as team number three.

And now: tragedy. We cut to Zev and Justin, who are talking about the fact that they are down one passport. I think the way this works is that when you come in, you have to do a check to make sure things are in order, which includes showing your travel documents — unfortunately, precisely so something like this can be discovered if it happens. And Zev’s passport is not in the pack where it’s supposed to be. Reluctantly, they return to the mat and explain the situation to Phil. He tells them that unless they have their passports, they can’t continue, and they’ll have to find their passports before the last team checks in, or they’ll be eliminated. And everyone else will get to stay, including Maria and Tiffany again, and Maria and Tiffany will avoid their logical fate again, and they will chalk it up to something good about themselves, and I’m kind of not that hot on them feeling good about themselves, I’m sorry to say.

As for requiring the passports to show up before the las team checks in, I understand from a logistical standpoint that you would want to do it this way, because you would want to know by the end of the leg who was out. But at the same time, it creates such an artificial result that you’d get, it seems to me, better outcomes if the rule were that you had to find your passport before it was time for you to leave. I don’t think it would have mattered in this situation based on what I heard later (apparently, they dropped the passport while taking something out of the bag at the monastery near the monkey thing, and it was found there and turned in to the Embassy, which wasn’t open to return it to them for days), but you can imagine a situation where check-in was earlier in the day and the teams were close together, and it might seem kind of phony to boot somebody because they couldn’t find their passports in 20 minutes but found them an hour later, such that they could have continued without any problem.

After the commercial, they tease us with a sequence where Phil has them empty their backpacks, and it seems like maybe it’s going to be there when they dump everything out, but it isn’t.

Anyway, Phil says they have to head back out and look for the passports, so this is where their affection for Thierry comes in. They decide to get on the phone with him and see if they can track him down.

Meanwhile, back at the Monkeyblock, you will not be shocked to hear that Lance is hollering at Keri about various things he wants her to do differently, monkey-wise. She finally tells him to shut up. Thanks, Keri!

Maria and Tiffany are finally at the Monkeyblock also.

Thierry agrees to come back and work with Zev and Justin to find the missing passport. Obviously, the first thing they want to do is search the car, which is the single place where they spent the most time.

Keri finishes up the Roadblock just as Mika and Canaan arrive. He becomes the monkey, which Maria is busy doing for her team of crafty, cutthroat, usually lagging poker players. (It is fascinating in retrospect that they figured their biggest problem would be that they should play fake-dumb, because they’d be seen as overwhelming powerful favorites if they let on that they play poker, since they’d seem like big and intimidating successes. I think they’ve gone all the way around now and back to a whole different dumb, so that I don’t think anyone would be surprised at this point to learn that they’re lying about the poker and actually fold paper hats for a living.)

Zev and Justin return to the scene of the Monkeyblock with Thierry.

As it turns out, Maria is not the most graceful of monkey imitators, as she keeps falling off the balance beam, as it were, while trying to walk across on her feet and hands. Canaan, on the other hand, seems to be a natural, and is not only doing the maneuvers, but also apparently having monkey-language conversations wtih the monkey master from time to time. There’s a point, I would think, where it’s cool if your boyfriend can imitate a monkey, but you might not want to see him get too involved in having silent discussions with other people also imitating monkeys, or you’d start to suspect that he is going to age weird.

Brian and Ericka are very happy to be team number three, all things considered.

Canaan is finally done. Maria is finally done, too.

Gary and Matt are team number four. Congratulations, guys!

Zev and Justin are in the cab, trying to figure out what went wrong. They know they had the passport at the airport; how many places could it have gone? (I have to say, this is the only way in which I fault them — I would think when you’re out of the airport, you would secure the passport somewhere that you don’t have anything else, and not flopping around loose in the pack, which is where it apparently was, allowing it to fall out when Justin took out the headlamp. But these, of course, are the reflections of a couch-dweller, and should be taken for what they are worth, which is essentially nothing.)

Spiky and Perky are team number five. Mika and Canaan and Maria and Tiffany are in tuk-tuks on the way to the pit stop. Maria is proud, but adds, “I wish I could have been a better monkey for my teammate.” I can’t stand them, but that wouldn’t be a bad philosophy for everyone to adopt. Be a good monkey for your teammate. Otherwise: Bad monkey! Bad monkey!

So … as Lance and Keri approach the mat, he is doing … kicks. Like, I guess the idea is that they are monkey-related, or at least monkey-adjacent, but I think what they really demonstrate is that … well, you know how they say that if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail? Lance is one of those guys where he has a foot, so everything looks like you’re supposed to kick it in the head. I have never seen Phil shoot such a blatant “Oh my God, what are you doing, you stupid asshole?” look in my life. I am developing a narrative in my head where Phil hates Lance so much that he is having dreams about riding his long-distance bicycle back and forth over Lance’s spinal column while Lance is asleep. I think I am close.

Against his better judgment, Phil checks them in as team number six.

In the cab, Zev is growing increasingly depressed. Me too, dude. He’s sure they would have won. He can’t believe he lost a document and it’s going to get them kicked out of the race.

And here, indeed, are their chances waning, as Mika and Canaan check in as team number seven.

In a development demonstrating the basic hostility of the universe, Maria and Tiffany check in, thus snuffing out Zev and Justin, even if they were about to find the passport, which they weren’t. Phil tells the girls they are in last place, but he also tells them that someone else has gotten screwed over by lost travel documents. They are nothing but giggly over their great luck; they don’t seem to have any curiosity whatsoever about who lost their documents. From that, you can tell they don’t really have friends on the race (or they’d ask who it was), not that this didn’t seem to be the case already.

In the cab, Zev says to Justin, “I don’t think it was supposed to happen this way.” Justin agrees that it was not. In the interview that happened later as they were processing all of this, Justin blames himself and says that he feels like he’s “a little bit prone to carelessness,” and maybe he let Zev down a little. “No,” Zev says. “No letdowns.” He goes on to say that it’s just a freak occurrence that could happen to anybody and nobody would have deserved it, but it happened to them for whatever reason.

They return to the mat, and they tell Phil they still have no idea where Zev’s passport is, and he tells them they’re done. Both guys lament that they were doing really well and running a really solid race (which is true), and you can just tell that Justin, in particular, wants to die. It’s nobody’s fault, it really is a freak occurrence, it really is almost impossible to completely avoid, and that’s all really really true. But at the same time, he had the stuff in his possession, and he’s not going to stop feeling like crap for a while, even though he absolutely doesn’t need to.

Zev explains in an interview that what he learned was that he is capable of dealing with unexpected things and doesn’t have to live by a daily routine. What I like about it is that instead of being impressed with himself for making a point to other people about what he’s capable of, Zev is happy that he himself learned that he can do more than he thought. He’s not the first person to ever say it, but there’s something about the authenticity of these guys, where neither of them will tell you that Zev doesn’t have challenges that other people don’t have. Neither of them will tell you that they didn’t have questions about how he would do with the chaotic atmosphere of the race. But at the same time, it’s a very real and very heartfelt relationship that fully acknowledges, but doesn’t rely upon, this difference between them. Zev doesn’t want you to fawn all over how impressive it is that he managed to do the race, and Justin certainly doesn’t want you to fawn all over how great he is for being there. They like each other; they’re friends.

But that was a heartbreaker.

Executive Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer.

Next week: Dubai! Very hot weather! Car racing! And potentially another recap, depending.

I have no idea whether the desire for a recap had much to do with it, but the frisbee golf project is funded, and I will have a TAR recap for you by, let’s say, midnight Wednesday. I am considering adopting a similar project for a Survivor recap, but we’ll see how that goes.

Thanks again to all of you who have contributed to Donors Choose, for this project or any other. It’s a really important cause, and when you think about the fact that kids who probably have very little opportunity for recreation are going to have a chance to get outside and have what we all hope will be a great time, I hope you find it as pleasing as I do. (I realized later that they list the donors, so you can see that this is one I didn’t actually give money to, because I adopted it for this instead — rest assured I am not all talk, and I have given money to other projects. I just wanted that to be clear.)

Here’s the offer.

From time to time, I get very nice comments from people who wonder whether I still watch The Amazing Race or Survivor. If this frisbee golf project is completed before it expires, which happens on Monday (there’s about $575 to go), I’ll provide a full recap of Sunday’s Amazing Race, which you will be able to read in this space, free of charge. If that’s successful, we’ll see about repeating the stunt for future episodes of either show.

I don’t have beautiful craft projects to donate, but I can crack on muscle-bound dipwads and drool over Phil all the livelong day, so if that’s up your alley, hit it. Make sure you use the link below to enter the project so that your donation is credited to Sarah’s wonderful Bet Red fundraising drive. If you’re not familiar with it, Sarah explains here.

Frisbee Golf!

I used to be able to enjoy the Oscars in a relaxed, carefree fashion. Now, I run a pop-culture and entertainment blog, which means I enjoy the Oscars as a backbreaking workload. But somehow, I still sort of look forward to the entire, overblown thing.

We have been doing a ton of Oscar coverage at the blog this week, including some stuff I’m very happy about. We landed a fashion discussion with Heather and Jessica today, and we’ve got some other stuff up from this week, and I’m doing a liveblog on Sunday night with the Music Stylist and the Couch Baron, and tomorrow, I am spending all day seeing the Best Picture nominees (in most cases for the second time). Follow me on Twitter at monkeyseeblog, and I will tell you all the horrifying details. My hope is that the Twitter feed will become a good way to get very short updates on whatever is currently horrifying or thrilling me.

Now that Survivor and The Amazing Race are back on, I hope to make my way back over here to talk about them, but believe me, it’s mostly good news that I’m working very hard right now. I’m lucky to be dealing with NPR, and with MSNBC (where I’ve been doing Grey’s Anatomy every week and where I think I may be doing some Dancing With The Stars soon), and with whatever else comes along. I regret that I have, like, no time to write for free, but if you think about it…it’s kinda good news.

Everything’s good. I’m just wildly busy.

I seem to have nothing to say these days, so I have decided to fill time with the first three pages of what was to be a story about a major-league pitcher who turned into a head case and wound up in the minors. These three pages? Have nothing to do with that, really. I wrote this long ago; I am pleased to have it see the light of day, because honestly, this is my cheap, cheap sense of humor in full flower, because I love stories with people falling down.

***

Until the acquisition of Tom Finn, the most sensational event in the history of the Rockland Claws concerned the cereal box races. At every home game, between the third and fourth innings, three lucky kids from town would crawl into hulking foam cereal box costumes: a Cheerios box, a Chex box, and a Wheaties box. They would then race around the bases, and whichever kid finished first would go home with an autographed ball and a gift certificate from the DQ. The fans would leap up in the grandstand, knocking over beers and stepping on foil pretzel bags and yelling, “Cheeeeerios!” or especially “Wheeeeeeaties!” The Chex fans tended to try to get up something a little more percussive — “Chex! Chex! Ch-Ch-Chex!”

One summer, Mike Parco, who was at eight years old already a bigger asshole than most men can ever hope to become without being divorced at least twice, developed a certain fondness for racing in the Cheerios costume. His mother, Talley, was in charge of the lobster-roll stand, and she was widely suspected of sleeping with Doug Lexington, who worked in Fan Relations, which everyone had already snickered at so much after the first summer that no one even cared anymore.

For whatever combination of legitimate and scandalous reasons, Mike raced in the Cheerios costume for about ten games straight, but he never won. And that’s when Talley started to complain that there was something wrong with the Cheerios costume. Why did the kid in the Cheerios costume never win? She concluded, as only a mother could, that the cereal box races were fixed.

She demanded — in a letter to the editor of the Rockland Post-Gazette, no less — a scientific test of her theory. She proposed that Mike be allowed to wear the Wheaties costume at the next game. It was the only way to restore public confidence. Given the slowness of summer and the intriguing blend of sex, sports, and official corruption that permeated Talley’s complaint, it was no surprise when an unusually large crowd packed the stands on the night that this showdown between the giants of General Mills was scheduled to take place. Mike waddled out there in his Wheaties costume, standing up next to Dutch Halloran’s kid, whose name everyone hated (it was Addison), and who was thus generally called Double Dutch. He was wearing the Chex. And on the end, wearing the cursed mark of Cheerios, was Bree Blythe Netherington, the shortest girl in the third grade who, everyone suspected, could not see out of her eye holes and would most likely run directly up the first base line and keep going until she smacked directly into the right field billboard for Righteous Heating and Plumbing.

The kids waited impatiently at home plate until they heard, “Go!” They took off, or took off as much as three children can while wearing rectangular foam sleeves that cover them entirely down to about their knees — or, in Bree’s case, their ankles. Indeed, Bree nearly dragged the edges of the Cheerios box along the ground, but surprisingly, she was the first to get to first base. As expected, she continued running in a straight line. “Cheerios, turn!” someone in the crowd shouted, and she immediately spun to her left and headed for second. Bree was little, but she was spry. It was a dead heat behind her between Double Dutch and Mike Parco. In order to prove Talley’s theory that the Cheerios costume was bewitched, it now appeared that some mishap would have to befall Bree. Of course, when Bree passed second base, she headed into center field. “Turn, Cheerios, turn!” And she did.

It was just after the crowd coaxed Bree around third — she lost a little time on the turn — that Mike began to move away from Double Dutch. He came up on Bree, who had gotten the bottom of the Cheerios box thoroughly dirty by this time, and who was beginning to get tired from bumping its edges along in the dirt. As she passed the Claws dugout, Mike’s foot came out from under the Wheaties box and he almost appeared to be trying to kick Bree. “Wheaties is cheating!” someboy shouted. And just then, Mike jabbed that foot out again, and Bree tumbled forward, landing directly on what was, under all that foam, her face. Mike ran by her and crossed the plate as she lay helplessly on the ground with her arms and feet waggling.

They made Mike give back the gift certificate, of course, once the “instant replay” in the form of Mrs. Netherington’s digital video camera made the dirty deed perfectly obvious. Bree got her sundae, and Mike was banned from the cereal box races for life.

But as exciting as that was, CNN never came to Rockland to ask about Bree, the way they did when they found out about Tom Finn.

Hey, y’all. In case you didn’t know, one of the reasons things have slowed over here is that they’ve picked up over at the NPR blog, which sounds (and feels) more like me, I think, than it did when I was first getting started. There are TV recommendations, guest appearances by lovely people (including, recently, Miss Sarah Bunting), and lots of other goodies.

But one thing we’re doing over there that ISN’T me babbling like me is the new movie poll, or movie poll series, really, with which we could use your help. We’re going to open nominations in a variety of nifty categories over the next little while, and the more input we get, the better. Commenting does require registration, but it’s really not a difficult process, and as I’ve said before, you can enter the wonderful world of NPR social media and then we can be NPR social-media friends!

Anyhoodle, please head on over today and in the coming days and participate.

We begin with a look at the many animals of Africa, most of whom played no part in this season of Survivor whatsoever. I do not recall the episode featuring murderous, rampaging deer, nor any horned deerlike things that are not quite deer, which frankly I suspect of being fictional beasts created by the crew by tying cardboard horns to some actual deer, and frankly, shame on you, deer-defiling crew members.

Aw, I missed you guys.

Anyhoo, I do recall one elephant scenario, and then the Let’s Look At The Giant Sheltered Totally Tragical Gorillas incident involving giant sheltered tragical gorillas. But compared to the Africa season I recently watched, during which the players had to stay up all night and tend the fire so they wouldn’t be devoured by real actual things with big teeth, and which was played behind a lion-proof wall of thorns, the idea that there are renegade deer wandering around kind of makes this look like the kiddie pool of African landscapes. I’m just saying.

Anyway, previously on Survivor: As Jeff “No Fat Chicks, Or Skinny Chicks, Or Really Any Chicks” Probst recalls, 36 days ago, 18 yahoos were stranded with nothing but a giant American television production to sustain them. Charlie wore a tie – remember that? Jeff claims that “every move was shadowed by dangerous wild animals,” and then we cut to – you guessed it! – the single elephant scenario, which you’ll recall happened only because a couple of dudes went out in a boat chasing the elephant, who says in the clip, “AH AM BEING SHADOWED BY DANGEROUS AMERICAN DOUCHEBAGS!” “They were as far away from civilization as a person could possibly be,” says Jeff Probst, forgetting that some parts of non-civilization do not include crew trucks. It’s like going to Epcot and pronouncing, “It’s as close to Europe as a person could possibly be.” Because: beer steins!

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