 November 2009 | Gary and Matt Closer After TARDate: 11/19/2009
People posted a great interview with Gary and Matt about their experiences on the TAR, what did you think about this quirky, fun team?
Source: People.com Interview
 You had a great run for two people who had spent so little time together in recent years. What was your strategy?
Gary: We went in trying to put our many differences aside. We realized we had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we wanted to take advantage of it to the best of our ability. In order to do that, we had to get along. We set the goal early on to have fun and that eased a little bit of the stress.
Before the Race began, you were worried about embarrassing your mom and wife. How has she reacted to your television debuts?
Matt: She has been embarrassed about a few things — mainly dad wearing a dress.
Gary: She was proud of how he handled the ducks. But I sang in public and wore a dress on national TV. Matt wasn’t about to wear the girl costume.
Matt: It was strategy on my part. I figured the man outfit would be bigger and I’d be able to compete better if my clothes fit better.
Gary: Nice try. I’m not buying it.
Matt will forever be the guy who didn’t know what a candelabra was. Matt?
Matt: I’d never heard that word in my life. We weren’t told to look for something with a number on it. It just said find the candelabra that will lead you to the next room. When you don’t know what it is, it’s difficult. And by the time we arrived, there was only one left sitting on the table. There wasn’t a line of them so it isn’t obvious that’s what you’re supposed to grab.
Gary: When you’re running behind, you don’t see other teams carrying them around. There are advantages to running the Race with other teams. You feed off of them. To his credit, he figured it out deductively and actually made up some time we lost doing the speed bump.
Did you have a favorite moment or place along the course?
Matt: Every new country was spectacular. I had done almost no international travel before this so to see the locations and the people was unreal for me.
Gary: The sight we saw in Ho Chi Minh City with all the rain and the scooters and the people will stick in my mind forever.
Matt: And the crazy thing about it is that they’re happy and having a good time. Why aren’t more people happy in America if they are smiling constantly despite living with so little?
Your goal was to become closer through racing. What was the most important thing you learned about each other?
Gary: Whenever Matt did a roadblock, he knocked them right out — water in the desert, ducks, bell counting, destroying the VCRs. To see him step up like that was huge. It makes a father proud.
Matt: My dad doesn’t give up, but I learned that he was human. Growing up, he was the father figure who seemed perfect and I idolized him. But I realized he makes mistakes and it brought us closer. He wouldn’t have been able to do this alone and that made us seem like equals.
Did the closeness stick?
Gary: We have talked more in the last two months than we have in the last two years. It’s carried through. [Harlem Globetrotter] Big Easy lost his dad a few days before we started and he was my age and he had to watch Matt and I competing together, which was hard, and we sat down and had a couple of really good talks about it and it made me appreciate sharing the experience with Matt all the more.
By: SillyLins
ADD A COMMENT
| Highest Form of Flattery is Imitation?Date: 11/18/2009
I noticed recently on Dr. Oz they performed a little competition, a la Amazing Race, as part of their Ultimate Health Challenge. I like that the show has become so ubiquitous that other shows imitate the style. It was hard to watch though because it wasn't done as well.
Did you see the Dr. Oz challenge in which Bob held a competition where the competitors raced around the city based on clues?
What do you think of shows copying the Amazing Race style?
I wonder which show is going to imitate Amazing Race next. Better yet, I wonder which show I want to copy the style. Can you imagine Amazing Race meets CSI?
By: SillyLins
ADD A COMMENT
| Globetrottin' in StyleDate: 11/17/2009
I have a theory. To make it onto one of these reality TV shows, you gotta be a character. And by that, I mean you've either got to be either seriously flawed (*cough* Mika *cough*) or have a big personality. This season's Globetrotting duo of Flight Time and Big Easy just exudes personality. Heck, they don't even have actual names!
For a high-fivin', hip bumpin' look at this season's winner for most personality, check out this Globetrotter mashup.
BY: WILD-KAT
ADD A COMMENT | Say goodbye to Gary and MattDate: 11/16/2009
Am I wrong , or did we all know that it was just a matter of time before the quirky father and son team of Gary and Matt were eliminated from the race? Last night's episode seemed to prove that destiny was just out to get them.
On last night's episode, having been saved from elimination the prior week, the look-alike-yet-not-very-look-alike team also lost some time by way of a special speed bump, where Matt was obviously smitten by a young blonde in the Sauna Bus. Of course it didn't help much either when Matt couldn't figure out what a candelabra was, and the two were rather comical as they failed to spot the obvious clue box at their next stop.
Sigh. In the end, I think Gary and Matt also exceeded their expectations in the race, both entering not so much to win, but to spend time together and bond. On that level, Gary and Matt were a big success!
BY: WILD-KAT
ADD A COMMENT
| Revisiting Season 6 Hay Bale RollDate: 11/12/2009
This week we revisited the hay bale roll challenge began on Season 6 of Amazing Race. Do you remember the first time they went through this challenge? WOW, it was one of the toughest. I thought we could revisit how it all began.
By: SillyLins | Amazing Race: Travel Suggestions FromStockholmDate: 11/11/2009
I love finding some interesting articles written about the Amazing Race and possibly some behind the scenes scoop. Well this week, I stumbled upon this funny article on People about some travel suggestions from the Amazing Race.
What do you think, pretty funny right?
From People:
The final five teams headed to Scandinavia on Sunday’s Amazing Race and, asked to blow up dynamite, some blew up at each other when they hit the switchback, a task that required players to tackle one of the show’s most brutal roadblocks. Things might have been a little less heated had the teams used the following travel tips.
- Never take the elevator when you have other options: From the Stockholm airport, teams took a train and a ferry to the Tivoli amusement park. Already behind three pairs who got an earlier flight, the father and son rode an elevator to the platform, which caused them to miss a train Mr. and Miss America caught, and it set them back 15 minutes.
- Watch like a hawk: Once at Tivoli, a team member had to ride the Fritt Fall and spot an arrow showing the way to the next clue. It was only visible for 15 seconds before riders plunged 24 floors in three seconds. Eagle-eyeing the sign seemed easier than stomaching the drop for Cheyne and Sam. The only female to do the task, Ericka, merely let out a trademark “Oh hell no,” before the fall, and Big Easy was disappointed that he was too tall to participate.
- Befriend your gnome: The arrow pointed them to a ring toss, where the could pick up a Travelocity gnome. Teams were responsible for dragging the icon to the pit stop. In past seasons, players have left the little guy behind and been penalized, but this year no one did. Maybe it was the healthy attachments folks formed with him. The Globetrotters named theirs, Cheyne made out with his and Miss America provided cover for hers during an explosive challenge.
- Limit lost driving: When the brothers and the All-Americans couldn’t find the quarry that was the site of the dynamite detour, they stopped a local and convinced him to lead the way. Mr. and Miss America paid a cabbie to take them there. Father and son drove in circles, although they did finally make it there while another team was still constructing their sandbag wall and hadn’t yet set off the charge to expose the clue.
- If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all: Meghan was upset with her boyfriend for not listening to her pleas for help during sandbag construction. But when she got to the Bogs Gard Farm, he provided only words of encouragement as his crying partner took on the first-ever switchback, which revisited the horrible hay bale search that a past team did unsuccessfully for 10 hours. Dan’s backseat unrolling left his brother Sam threatening to kill the “moron” as he ripped through many of the 186 bales looking for one of only seven clues. A few hours in, he realized the error of his ways and cried, “I was being such a jerk yelling. I’m not proud of myself today.”
- Make a wish: At the leg’s start, birthday boy Flight Time expressed what a good gift a first-place finish would be. As Big Easy headed out to the hay field, Flight requested that he go get him a present and he was the first to find a flag despite starting third. He got his wish and a trip to Turks & Caicos. “This is the cake and the icing,” he said. They weren’t the only team who lucked out this leg. Gary was rolling with the punches for an extra three hours before he completed the task and was ready to get sent home when the host happily told them it was a non-elimination round.
By: SillyLins | More about Meghan RickeyDate: 11/10/2009
 It's been a couple of days now, and I'm still in awe of Meghan Rickey's die-hard performance in the hay stack challenge. She's the 23 year old account executive from San Diego, who's been dating partner Cheyne Whitney for the last five years (yup, since she was 19).
How cute can their story be? They met during a game of tetherball on the elementary school playground (I bet Meghan won) and have known each other for more than a decade.
Though she doesn't seem to tweet much, you can hear more from Meghan herself by giving her a follow on Twitter!
BY: WILD-KAT
ADD A COMMENT | Pit Stop!Date: 11/9/2009
| Luckily for father son team Gary and Matt, last night's episode ended as a non-elimination leg of the race, leaving 5 teams still competing for the title.
Among the other remaining competitors:
- Meghan (and Cheyne), who rocked in one of the toughest challenges out there,
- Flight Time and Big Easy, the Harlem Globetrotting team who keep it carefree and exciting,
- Brian and Ericka, who exemplify the principle that opposites attract, and
- brothers Sam and Dan, who demonstrate the power of a blood bond.
Can you predict this season's winner? Cast your vote to the left and tell us why! |
BY: WILD-KAT
ADD A COMMENT | All Female Team Felt PressureDate: 11/5/2009
 The Amazing Race contestants Tiffany Michelle and Maria Ho have admitted that they felt pressure being the only all-female team.
The professional poker players from California, who were eliminated from the game for not being able to complete a challenge, told DS that they thought it was "time for a woman team to emerge" victorious on the CBS reality show.
"So, when we looked around the room and saw that we were the only chick team, definitely the pressure was on," Tiffany said.
She added: "Not only did we want it for ourselves, and to maybe make way to be that female team, but we definitely felt the pressure to represent for the other women."Maria explained: "But, it took us about five minutes from starting the race to realise that if we stay focused on something like that, on trying to become the first female team to win, then we're never really going to get anywhere."
By: SillyLins
| The Amazing Race GameDate: 11/4/2009
CBS announced today that eight new video games based on CBS' television shows will soon become available for fans. CBS has teamed up with casual games developers and video game publishers - including Ludia, Ubisoft, Merscom, Legacy Interactive and Mindscape - to develop these games
Included among the titles will be video games based on the TV properties The Amazing Race, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Diagnosis Murder, Ghost Whisperer, Hollywood Squares, Criminal Minds and Survivor. Available at retailers starting holiday 2009, the games will be released on a variety of platforms including PC/MAC, Xbox 360, Wii and Nintendo DS, iPhone and iPod touch.
The Amazing Race (Ludia Inc.) game is based on the eight-time Emmy award-winning television series where team players split up in pairs for a remarkable journey across exotic locations in a race against time. Players will face frantic challenges and tasks as they navigate through detours, roadblocks and other unpredictable game elements from the show. Working together strategically throughout the game is essential as each team tries to discover hidden clues that are crucial to getting them to the Pit Stop first - and one step closer to ultimate victory at the check-in mat. This video game will be launched throughout North America across multiple platforms in tandem with the show's 16th season. | What Goes on After the RaceDate: 11/3/2009
Ever wonder what goes on after a team is eliminated from The Amazing Race? After each episode, CBS airs an "Elimination Station" video clip where ousted members learn who's coming next. It's a chance to see the contestants with their hair down and get a real sense of the group's nitty gritty on the most recently eliminated duo.
BY: WILD-KAT
ADD A COMMENT | Femme Fatal in AmsterdamDate: 11/2/2009
In a frustrating-to-watch episode of the Amazing Race, the only all-female team of Season 15, Maria and Tiffany, quit the competition after a series of back and forth and back and forth choices.
During the challenge portion of the episode, the "femme-fatal" duo chose dance over game but were unable to make it pass the high striker carnival game. However, them swingin' arms were needed once again when they went over to a Dutch version of golf (complete with wooden clog). Unsuccessful at farmers golf, Maria and Tiffany went back to the high striker and forth again to golf to simply strike out.
BY: WILD-KAT
ADD A COMMENT | Religion and the "Race"Date: 11/1/2009
 Last season's TAR winner, Victor Jih, has been blogging about this year's Race over at RealityWanted.com. I love reading previous players' comments because they have so much insight into the current teams' experiences.
This week he touched upon the always controversial topic of religion, and mentions that he was surprised that when Mika and Canaan were faced with the water slide challenge last week, they weren't shown praying (considering they'd been depicted as devoutly Christian). Victor reveals that his and Tammy's mother asked them to pray every day while they were on the race, and they heeded her words after their notorious, disastrous third leg in Transylvania. But perhaps for the TAR producers, this aspect of their team wasn't noteworthy.
READ THE WHOLE POST ON REALITYWANTED.COM
BY: mdashes
ADD A COMMENT | |
| About this Amazing Race News Blog Hi! I'm a super fan of Amazing Race (who isn't?) and this blog belongs to the fans. Here's how you can contribute:
• Become a guest blogger! Email a moderator.
• Comment on the posts |
GLOBE REPORTERS
|  | SillyLins
Favorite Travel Stops:
London, Scotland, Sedona, Seattle, Washington, DC
Dreams of:
Alaska, Italy, Australia, Spain, NYC, Boston, Caribbean
|  | Wild-Kat
Favorite Travel Stops:
Anywhere I can get a drink in a pineapple with a tiny umbrella
Dreams of:
New places where I can get drinks in pineapples with tiny umbrellas
|
Want to exchange blog links? Send a message to SillyLins.
|
Share this
