Big Brother 11 (2010)

Continued from previous Big Brother here: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/celebrity_big_brother__2010.htm

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Below are my on-going comments from the interactive forum here:

http://www.ttapress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=182

I like the circus theme - and the 14 housemates are quite interesting - including Laughing Friar Tuck - and Shabby who risked concussion upon her entry and 13 weeks in hospital...
I'll mention Caiomhe - just to prove I can spell her name.
Ben. the writer and broadcaster, seems one to watch...

Mario the Mole - not sure how he can hide being a mole, when dressed as a mole...?

! see the winners out of this lot are going to compete at the end with best housemates from the past... Hmmmm
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exuding languor...
in 'a lady likes milk tray' way...

Brilliant report, Marion.

I wonder how people can miss BB. Although your reports stand on their own, as Gilead appreciates, there is an added dimension to them if you've actually watched BB.

Still, I don't think we are going to change people's ways on the last programme. So much trivial and important has flowed under the bridge already since 2004 when these TTA reports started. Too late now to share the artistic, mundane, philosophical, human, show business kaleidoscope that has been BB. It has influenced many of the fiction books I'm now getting published.

I agree that the latest BB seems to promise even more!

The mole-hole scenario is well thought out and, so far, they seemed to have hit the random target with Mario as its central figure. David was a good target's target to choose for the beach-ball.

The intro speech by each HM was useful and enlightening. Today I shall deal with Shabby. She is BB10's Angel whose wings ripped off when rushing about somewhere. Keen to give forth of her Lesbian credentials, but really she is a comic book character in short trousers from the Beano who aspires to be a sad clown one day in this circus scenario. Her part is already being written; she is busy inwardly learning the lines to fit the milieu of people she finds herself in. The rushing about was merely a misbegotten attempt to become the Pete-type (tourettes) winner she orginally intended to be. A role she is already revising. A role with empathy, as she showed she was worried about David not reading the beach ball.

One day we all have to read our beach ball.
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Intriguing that the only one who stayed on the ground was someone calling herself Sunshine!

She is an intense lady in her red outfit and Olive Oyl face -

Those weren't snores so much from Steve as bloated pig-snorts - creating a suspenseful situation in waking up someone just as the Mole carries out his task at 4 am (birds just starting to twitter and tweet). What a waste of good food at a time of Recession, I say!
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I espy three potential couples: Ben and the Gay Mole, Govan and Josie, John James and Blowjob Rachael.

What was all that about the vegetables spelling out 'twist' at the end?

I think I'm losing my grip.
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An interesting exercise in bluff, double-bluff and minus-bluff, the impossible task of mario the mole that was a foregone conclusion of possibility by retrocausality - and its one retro-casualty: Dr. 'cry-baby' Sunshine (and possibly Shabby for talking about nominations).

Josie reminds me of Doris Day.

Nathan - the Oasis reject! lol

John James - in his hood, something from a 'Lord of the Rings' crap-film.

Govan - Smeagol / Gollum disguised as a hobbit, or vice versa?

And what a waste of food - again!

in the war, I was taught to stew dead scraps.
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As with previous BBs at this early stage in proceedings, I'm now beginning to live in the faces; these are people who I happen to think about (for good or ill) and who have entered my life in a very strange way, with their baffles and fables, veils and piques, two-way filters of truth and fiction. The thing about truth is that it is monumental, untouchable, but humans can't approach it without being blinded by differing elements of fiction, some fiction voluntary and conniving, other fiction involuntary and sometimes to be pitied. Marion's report above is a wonderful word-picture to net the core of things happening, whether truth or fiction or both. Whatever the case, it is the 'truth' of what she sees. I see it too. I see it with her, among the personality crags and faces wherein we shall live for the next 12 weeks. taking them for granted by paradoxically not taking them for granted (or vice versa), i.e. by peeking at their ... well, yes, their veils and piques, vales and peaks.

I'd add a note about Corin's nifty neck-dance last night. An involuntary glitch of 'character' or a conniving show for the cameras?
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I agree with you, Marion, about Govan. He's a new Horror character (a subtle wheedler) that needs immortalising in a fiction book, for those who have so far escaped his insidious influence. I am nothing if not altruistic. Is his surname Shipyard, by the way?

Shabby Sunshine and 'Monk' David up for eviction, but I hear a rumour that they are to have a comepetition and the one who wins escapes eviction and can choose someone else to go up for eviction!

I like 'Doris Day' Josie so far the most.

Govan's mantra of "you don't know my motives, you only know what I say my motives are" (or words to that effect) ... does he really mean that? Despite his complete dislikeability, that sort of sums up BB for me.
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BTW, Corin is an interesting case study in 'business as usual' - a loving companion for Shabby, if it's not too late. A squeaky Jordan - with no plaster for blind spots.

Nathan, someone else under the radar. If he is a reject from Oasis I suspect he'd write foul graffiti on their Wonderwall, given the chance. Another 'business as usual' character.
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An interesting discussion between Shabby and Ben - which goes right to the heart of Big Brother. For example, was she hamming up her anger at being told she hammed things up? Probably.

Caoimhe still continues to skim along under my radar. With Ife, I've even forgotten I have a radar at all!

Dave's starring role tonight on two counts was all rather silly. Why do they mess around with long-tested rules - there is something unsatisfactory about Rachael facing the public vote when she wasn't nominated.

And Govan is in Dry Dock for a while longer....
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BTW, Sunshine appeared low-key in her reaction to nomination, Marion, but we are not shown everything. Another fact to factor in when only watching the summary programmes, as I do.

And did my eyes deceive me - Josie an impulsively infantile suck-a-thumb?
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Yes, I began to like Corin yesterday.

And Ben, Mario and Dave snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug represented a strange new version of morecambe and wise or laurel & hardy in their double bed scenes that we always took for granted as innocent - as we should.

And Ben keeps putting his foot in his mouth. And is he leading Mario on, I ask, by enticing touchy-feely contact between them? Or is he leading his own latent side of himself on?

JJ and Govan each separately have long-practised methods of argument (used in real life beforehand) and articulate them as if there can be no logical comeback against their arguments. But that attitude is silly because every argument has its flaws, however carefully mustered. Human nature's frailty entails believing ourselves 100% right about anything - which essentially means we are surely not.
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Hey, did you see that? Just this minute Corin gave an exact imitation of Marion's twirling Avatar. It was breath-takingly similar.
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Yes, I was glad Rachael went for all the reasons Marion gives. And I, too, didn't like her interview. She is actually quite thoughtful in her own way and probably quite a successful kid on the block - but she did not do herself justice during her time in the house. A bit like the England team. Good when playing for her club.

Corin's 'mission' lying was done all very chirpily. As I said before this lady is 'business as usual', in quite a positive way. However, although Nathan, Caiomhe and Ife are similar, my radar is now only picking them up as ricochets off tiny homunculi in the corners of the screen.
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Thanks, Gary. I hadn't realised the identity of Shabby as a previous film actress.

She is certainly very well spoken - and I think I like her.

I am kicking myself (of all people) not to recognise that the name of Bob Righter (the clown with flashing eyes in the cabinet) is an anagram!

Ben is both a prig and that other similar word he used when speculating about what the audience thought of him!
Still, I like him better than JJ and Govan.

Sunshine became a cloudy day when she heard the crowd chanting her name negatively. Everyone was lying, I'm sure, when they told her that they didn't hear her name!
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I think they're Vuvuzuelas - and they grow in Caracas. Not to be confused with certain secret areas of the Pampas.
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That's who I've been trying to think of that Corin resembles. She's the new Bet Lynch (Bet Gilroy)...!

The Shabby - Caoimhe 'thing' is developing. Not sure where it's going, but it at least got Ife into prominence for the first time.

Govan doesn't look happy.

I think the person I like the least in the House is Dave. There's someting very dissembling about him ... indeed self-dissembling, too.

Nathan is probably the most 'natural' i.e. as he is in the outside world. Not my sort, really, though.
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I, too, was shell-shocked by the latest BB. It was like the nightmare after the circus, where they had once all put on happy faces. Josie had now smeared her make-up over her lips and nigh bared her chest in whorish mien. And Shabby had taken over (from Josie) the role of Doris Day in a grotesque version worthy of this nightmare, with braces and Calamity Jane swagger.

Ben was the dreamer dreaming the nightmare, visions swarming around him, some pawing his body, others tugging at his mind.

Phew!
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I thought the Tree task for Shabby was a brilliant idea and adroitly conducted by Shabby - and, funnily, I didn't have the same feelings towards Ben's predicament as Marion did. Perhaps I should have done.

Anyway, it sort of backfired making BB seem like a cruel agent provocateur in people's emotions, even though it was Shabby who chose Caoimhe as a dinner date.

However, one wonders how much Shabby (an actress by profession) is acting out these emotions or really feeling them - or both!!!

If she is really feeling those emotions, she did exactly right to tell Caoimhe about the task - whatever the consequences with BB's Tree of temptation. BB will be seen to be even more cruel if they now deal cruelly with Shabby.
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Caoimhe was very clever acting upset when bombarded with a Beckettian tape-loop of Ben's voice 'huis clos' with pictures of him around her. She knew that BB could not afford to be seen to be creating mental distress in a HM for too long.

Did Shabby choose Mario for the eviction vote because she thought him the least likely to be voted out? I didn't really understand that bit.

And - what a hoot! - David is still drunk with the Holy spirit. In fact his Lord's coming out of his stomach! (Wasn't there a HM in a previous BB who had things coming out of her belly or chakras?)

Nathan is a real rough diamond, with the emphasis on rough!

And, nice to see Ife prominent again.
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Through the course of BB we shall see the spiritual journey from Ife to Life itself. This will be the natural culmination of our own spiritual journey with BB ab initio.
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So ... Ben is an 'overwrought' 'paternalistic feudalist'

So ... Ife is is a philosopher of life : "We are all people, and we all live and learn"

So ... Dave's belly is bubbling with rivers of joy.

So ... the inevitable tying themselves up into knots regarding the talking-about-nominations rules has now set in with a vengeance

An animal farm ... or circus ... or zoo
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Beniel in the Ben's Den - Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin

I forgot it was backward day! Me! Who has been obsessed with retrocausality for the last year!

And yes JJ did stamp on Sunshine's ankle.
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JJ and Sunshine seem to be getting closer and Ife larger than life. She is a slow burner. Her imitation of Ben after the huge black sticky squashed spider suffocating him was priceless.

Nathan now seems the HM who is so himself that one wonders if he's just popped into the house on the way to a gig.

I hope Dave goes tonight. Him and his drunken Lord.
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[And why was Ben wearing a shirt with an outsize collar?]

He thinks he's Harry "Brideshead" Hill.

Govan going is OK by me. Dave to go next. Him and his bubbling belly.
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Ah, Gary, I remember Mikey. I often am amazed at how blind people possess an ability towards a normality of life. There was an amazing blind lady recently on 'Deal or No Deal'.

As to last night in the BB house, it is funny how over the years minor food substances have caused major World Wars in such a close community. Crisps, this time. But isn't there an advert on at the moment about giant crisps attacking the world? Or did I dream it?

I've gone off Josie. She seems very conniving and exhibitionist. Well, they all are, but some hide it better than others!

But my least favourite housemate is Dave. Evandemongelical and Episscopalian.
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Well, I think the winners of the penalty shoot-out are going to be sorely disappointed when they see the England - Germany match. They should have had Ife playing rather than Rooney!

Shabby is becoming quite an articulate philosopher of life. I am beginning to like her.

I was a bit disappointed in Ife in her bahaviour towards Sunshine regarding the Cosmic Crisps

Nathan's coming out of his shell and the more he does that the less likely I am to like him more!

JJ and Josie - I imagine the Move Over Darling song in the background as they spoon.
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I think Nathan was the star last night. The use of his muppet in the Diary Room - and then later when he tried to exchange half a cake for cigs and beer. "No snoggie-woggie without boozie-woozie'.

I think they tailed off in their muppet surrogacy towards the end of their task and didn't deserve to win it. But they couldn't not have Steve's party.

A karaoke party (cf the muppet surrogacy) that I am glad I didn't have to attend!

PS: I wonder if they could have talked about nominations with their muppets and got away with it? A very interesting (and amusing, as Marion says) experiment in puppetry-by-puppetry, i.e. in the context of all the other interesting human and philosophical phenomenology thrown up by BB.
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I haven't been able to write here till now about last night's programme but most of it has now gone out of my head. Thanks, to Marion above, I have been able to re-live it.

I go along with her usual perspicacious observations.

I am beginning to like Sunshine. She seems to have her head screwed on without it being screwed on too tight.

I really have antipathy towards Dave and was cheering JJ on - as long as it was done tongue in cheek. Towards the end I thought JJ crossed the line into disrespect. I certainly hope Dave doesn't escape the vote this week. Him and all his bubbling belly-joy in the Lord. I even prefer Stephen Baldwin to Dave!

Ife is turning into the office whinger. I've known many like that in my professional days.
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Well, much auditioning tonight by Shabby for a part in a theatrical play where she can let rip in Pinteresque rages.
The most interesting thing however is that she *thinks* she is not acting.
Also, interesting to note she is quite good at it. I want to see her in 'The Birthday Party'.

Enjoyed Josie's mimicking of JJ. A bit like she had JJ's muppet to use.

JJ is quite a queer cove. I can hear his voice now irritatingly present even though the room is in silence.

Damn! Dave got off again. But pleased he chose Caiomhe to replace him. She is a cold chill down the spine.

Ife is strutting around busy with mundane thoughts of smoking...
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Yes, as I implied in my piece before, CAOIMHE out! with your cold-chill spine and arbitrary letters in your name that apparently say KEEVER. She were ever iffy.

Thanks once again, M, for your pungent and incisive BB commentary. I hope these wonderful essays are not written just for my, Gary's and Gilead's benefit on this single thread.
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Wow! Marion. We loll across your sparkling reportage like Disgay Dave over Ben? ... no, like odalisques upon your bed of fine words.

Caiomhe stepped up the raunchy stakes with Shabby quite cynically - for votes tonight and the eviction of Sunshine. I certainly hope her ploy doesn't work.

Corin is trying to do a Nikki in the Diary Room - with her own repeated catchphrase: "How embarrassing is that?" - in her squawky voice: a cross between Bet Lynch and a mandrake root. Corin has a formula for winning and I am only beginning to notice.
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I've got it! Corin - Hylda Baker with a soupçon of Hilda Ogden!
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Marion, I am devastated that Sunshine has gone full stop. Also devastated by the Shabby - Caoimhe conniving that caused her going.

I do however have a sneaking regard for Shabby and her Beckettian Pinterisms.

Ben did well. I shall always remember his piece on 'mobile homes'.

Davina is right : Steve is a nice bloke but he does nothing. Or do we expect Housemates always to do something? Why should they?

And Nathan, too. He has his moments in the radar, but basically Nathan is Nothing. A rough nemonyte.

And Girl Iffy. She is living embodiment of her own dodgy existential place in the conjunctions of grammar.
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Not much happened tonight. Only an internal view of happenings last night.
I fear this may be the case here on in.
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Well, Marion, it only goes to show. Your discoveries of perception found much where I found none last night.

Or maybe it was just the mood I was in.

Let's hope tonight's edition will re-ignite my tutelary angel or daemon muse.
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...and, indeed, tonight inspired me. Especially the moral considerations arising from Ben's punishment under the aegis of an excellent American corporal (whether an actor or real, this man was brilliant) - and Ben's flunking his punishment with someone else being punished instead.

Ben's carefully wrought yet patronising rationale of his behaviour towards Mario - was another BB gem. Mario seeking privacy for this conversation takes on a new light when we think of the millions watching!

The political discussion with Nathan, too.
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It's a shame Shabby is about to leave, The whole situation of the Iffy Girl's fabricated anger and the reaction of the 'Mean Girls' reminds me of behaviour on the internet and, even, sadly, of my own behaviour sometimes thereon.

Has anyone noticed that Nathan and Ben (other than the hair and the voices) are identical twins?

The beds fiasco was very school dormitory immature. But who can talk?
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I am sad about Shabby.

I said earlier that Nathan is Nothing.

Indeed, for me, he is a black hole in reverse.

I am finding the whole programme depressing at the moment.

But your report of it, Marion, brightened me up.
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Thanks for the alert, Marion. A more positive evening, indeed. Nathan comes out of his shell (he almost strung some sensible words together) - only to be put up for eviction by eviction-busting-game-winner Caiomhe. But I'm in two minds - because I want her to go, too!

Ife was brave (foolhardy?) in actually admitting to Caoimhe what she said about her in the diary room about 'leading on' Shabby. Bravo, Ife! Probably a unique event in BB history - someone so dangerously 'up front' about divulging such a sensitive DR entry.

The shoes task with Sophie was a real hoot! She is a game girl, and Doris Day would be proud of her. The on-the-spur excuse about visiting the loo was priceless.

Cheered me up.
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Wow! Really good robot with impressive movements, huge size and fright- as well as humour-value. It doesn't look as if it's anyone dressed up but a genuine robot. A scenario that fits with (otherwise boring) tattoo-tapestried cyborg-Steve in a Mad Max film!

Caiomhe has been faith-baiting Dave - I think I'd be doing the same but in a much more subtle fashion, I hope. An interesting interaction. Neither came off well.

Rosebud plump-lipped Ben is bit fey and effete - and the others are noticing.

Corin remains the formulaic soap star in the Diary Room - and she has no engagement with people other than via the variety-show-of-self she puts on.

Nathan is beginning to learn to articulate like a growing child. He is slowly emerging from his own collider-hole.
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The clashing of cultures - in politics & religion.

Ben and Steve. (Is Ben right that Steve has never read a book?)
Caoimhe and Dave. (Who has the Devil in them?)


Then the clashing of evil wheelies with hooks.

Now Nathan must sling his hook!
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CONTINUED HERE