Big Brother Craze

You know everyone is talking about it, everyone is hoping, everyone is speculating – will there or will there not be a Big Brother 9 as early as February? Will it be a normal one, or a celebrity bitch fest? WHEN WILL THEY TELL US?

Well – It seems there’s a bit of a scoop posted over on Zach’s blog by his friend Mike – you’ll have to take it for what it is (hearsay!) but perhaps he’s not messing with us… MAYBE IT’S TRUE and oh my goodness how cool would THAT be?

Big Brother 9 Confirmed
By Sysop
November 9, 2007

In a conversation today with Robyn Kass of Kassting Inc the primary casting agency for Big Brother, it was confirmed that Big Brother will commence in February.

They are very busy at casting the show as I write this and Robyn asked me to pass on the word to get your applications in or contact her at her website, http://kasstinginc.com/ .

I asked Robyn during our conversation if the Big Brother rumors were speculation or was there a basis in fact? Robyn replied “We are casting with the thought in mind that the house guests would move into the house during the first week of February.

I can not quote on the following, but my feelings are it will be a normal Big Brother, not a Celebrity Big Brother and it is a strong possiblility that the summer Big Brother will also take place.
Mike

Ooooooooh just the thought makes me giddy, how about you?! Soon as I hear more, I’ll post more!

And no, this time I’m not talking ‘bout sex (baby, let’s talk about you AND me… er. Uh. Sc’use me.) but rather about the Hollywood Writer’s strike that’s due to start tomorrowish. What’s that got to do with Big Brother? Well! Two little sentences in a recent article by Variety TV, posted on November 2nd, has people in an uproar.

The article talks about the fall launch of Network TV and how it’s not really been the high note that the big networks expected it to be, and many of the head honcho’s are worried about what the strike will mean to Network TV.

“It’s been an abysmal season,” says one entertainment president. “What ultimately worries me about a strike is, are we hastening the narrowing of network TV? If we have to put up a sign that says ‘gone fishing,’ luring viewers back is going to be even more difficult.”

Sunday night, CBS showed that they’d already gone to their best bench players, and started Amazing Race – the Emmy winning race around the world. While it’s not been a complete disaster, the season may have been disappointing enough to have some execs looking for a ‘mid-season do-over’.

For CBS, our favorite network here at Big Brother Craze for obvious reasons, They’ve had some solid hits, and a few ok’s, and they’re pretty content with the numbers so far, but they do have midseason plans. There’s 48 hours mystery shows plus game shows and such waiting in the wings. In January they’ll have to fill various time slots, Kid Nation, and for a few weeks, Survivor while we’re between seasons. The contingency plan is what the Big Brother Fans in a buzz – two little lines:

Then there’s “Big Brother.” Summer staple could easily return as soon as March — maybe even with a long-rumored celebrity edition.

While the thought of a celebrity edition makes me want to throw up a little – depending on the definition of ‘celebrity’ and all – the thought of an additional run of Big Brother as soon as March? THIS makes me GIDDY and all kinds of tingly and happy!

Now it does continue to say that launching a new comedy night might be easier – but we can always hope, right?!

Funniest thing said in the house today? Daniele, upon leaving the DR, where she was going to ask for something to do - arts and crafts or anything. “Apparently we’re supposed to entertain ourselves in this house! I didn’t get that memo! Was that in the rule book?!”

It was funny. Maybe you had to be there. She started to entertain herself by going upstairs to mess with Zach and steal his doorbell and got a “Daniele. Stop it.” from BB before she even got close. Now she’s redressing the rabbit shrub by the door. OH THE EXCITEMENT! WE CAN HARDLY HANDLE IT!

However, earlier, Daniele was the first in the house to put together the untold facts and realize that there would be a live show tomorrow night. No one would confirm it for her, saying only to “Expect the unexpected!” The main telling fact was, of course, that there was no POV Meeting today. That will happen on the Live Show tomorrow. BB let the houseguests sleep in until 2pm, which is going to bite for those who want to get a good night’s sleep tonight!

The conversations have been boring, and repetitive, so! Here are some things to read and talk about instead!

BB8 Dish has an interview with Mike, Zach’s college roommate.

Reality Wanted has a follow up interview with Kail. In it, she admits that she is now glad that Eric won’t win because of the Jen comment he made as he left. She clearly wasn’t aware that it’s a longstanding joke in the house. She’s not the only one, but oh well! I thought it was funny.

Big Sister complains about Dick and his son’s admission to ‘cheating’ by sending a coded letter that got through Big Brother’s watchdogs - though her main complaint (as with other’s I’ve seen) is that BB did nothing about it. Perhaps because the message was outdated? (And Vince said elsewhere that Dick missed well over half the message anyway. Ha!) So, What’s your take on it?

And last but not least, I received this comment via the feedback button from Kathleen: (For the record - only comments under an entry show up to everyone!)

Double Standard used for Asians.
T.V. show - chat rooms & news services ignore derogatory comments @ Asians but burn up the wires in outrage over anti-semantic slur of same type. Pathetic rant by Big Brother’s Amber on “selfish, money-hungry Jews, w/ big noses” (sic) caused national outrage, but Big Brother’s golden girl Dani’s “Asian people are stingy though” as with Jameka’s (the sole African American House Guest) “Eric has chinky eyes” (sic) has garnered no attention. Even more troubling is the lack of concern from posters & denial that the Asian comments compare in any way to Amber’s comments. The handful of posters that have raised the issue in fact have been booed & accused of going overboard in “pc-edness”. Ironically, one poster stated “that compares in no way to Amber’s vile comments”.

Dani’s statements start at about 6.40 minutes in this clip. HG’s talk about wedding rings, credit scores, tippers and Asians (see at @ 6.40 min)

My thought on the comments is they all should not have been made, they’re all wrong and un-pc and such. However, this is a pressure cooker situation, and while many of us swear that we’d never be caught saying such things, we’ve all - admit it or not - said something we regret, that’s against someone and can be an ‘ism of some sort - racism, ageism, etc. None of us are perfect. None of us can say we’ve never once made a comment that would hurt another person, or multiple persons. It’s just that most of us have managed not to stick our foot in our mouths on live TV.

Should all the comments get the same apology from CBS and the people involved? Probably. Should they cause the uprising they have? Most likely. Will it change anything? Probably not - not until we as parents teach our kids not to hate - to accept everyone for the people they are, for personality, not race, size, sexual preference, age, etc. It is not the government or schools or CBS’s job to make sure our children learn these lessons. It’s up to us, and we make mistakes.

Live. Learn. Love.
Move on.

/soapbox. What’s your take on it all? Sound off! I’ll even let you use my soapbox!

And! Don’t forget! TUESDAY LIVE SHOW! We’ll see the Veto Competition, and an eviction and the beginning of the Final Three HOH competition! See you here!

Big Brother, BB8, BBUSA, BB USA, houseguests, CBS, hamsters

Here’s some more vids:

Now they’re on lockdown outside.. the Statue took a bow, the Mad Hatter waved goodbye..

The houseguests had better have been paying attention! Can’t wait for tomorrow’s show! Keep checking back - as things pop up, I’ll be sure to post them for you!

(PS - thanks to all the hard working live feed video capturers - my vid record keeps crapping out. You guys are the bomb!)

More vids after the cut!

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It’s just another day in the Big Brother House! Paranoia reigns, and Amber is complaining to Jessica then Jameka that they think Dustin and Eric are in a Secret Alliance now. You know, I don’t think that the Big Brother House is big enough for all of these Secret Alliances! And see if this reasoning sounds familiar:

- Eric and Amber never talk game. Dustin and Jessica never talk game.
- Eric and Dustin (but mostly Dustin) have a habit of asking the girls “What was that all about?” every time they have a conversation with someone, or each other.
- Eric apparently told Jessica that Amber is jealous of him and Jessica and told Amber the same thing in reverse.
- Every time Amber has a conversation, Dustin is all over her asking what it was about, but never gives up his own info about his own conversations.

Is ANYONE ELSE seeing a pattern here?

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No, no no - Dick didn’t do anything to Jen. Sheesh. BUT! Nick is not the only new ‘do this week! In fact, Eric was so inspired by the mohawk, he got himself a fauxhawk (or as Jessica said - a JewHawk!) I think it’s pretty cute and suits him, actually - what do you think?

And not to be outdone, Dustin gave himself a good buzz too:

Now, as for Dick, since so many people are up in arms about what happened last night.

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Today is eviction day and the houseguests (hamsters) are restless. As I mentioned before, I don’t subscribe to the feeds, but there are loads of people who post snippets and updates around the net, so I’ve been keeping up. The worst part about the feeds I find is knowing ahead of time who wins what - even though we don’t see the actual competitions until the prime-time CBS slots. But it’s a small price to pay for watching the hamsters scurry about in abject boredom.

Everyone is feeling this two-week long start - they’re ready for it to start hopping and get on the regular schedule. (The houseguests are in the house 6 days before we get to the premiere night - have to have things to air, and all!) Kail is more then ready to get rid of HoH duties, and the rest of the house is more then ready to have someone else take over.

Many of the conversations about the house are of folks trying to figure out who would do what with the next nominations if they win Head of Household. The Mrs. Robinson alliance is worried, and rightly so, that if they don’t win, two of them will go up.

Speaking of Mrs. Robinson - way too many of these people have never heard of The Graduate or the song! Dick finally has to school them on the plot of the movie, and even risks getting yelled at to sing a bit of the song to Amber. Ooooooooh. Light dawns! Good lord. Also? Only about three of the houseguests know where the name “Big Brother” came from and how it applies to their situation. I’ve never read the book, but at LEAST I know where it comes from, and that it’s NOT because of the organization “Big Brothers, Big Sisters” and a willingness to help them.

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Well it’s official - Samantha was an alternate.

WeLoveBigBrother had a well-timed interview with Executive Producer Allison Grodner yesterday, and asked her about Samantha, the girl who appeared as a houseguest on the TVGuide Channel preview. Samantha was an alternate houseguest in case someone dropped out or broke the rules before entering the house. While Allison said that we’d have to “tune in Thursday” to see who actually made it into the house, I think it’s safe to assume that the 14 people on the CBS website as well as the new commercials are the ones playing the game.

Hopefully we’ll see Samantha back for a future season, as a lot of people seemed to like her clip. Photo is courtesy of Joker’s Updates.

big brother, bb8 samantha, big brother who is samantha, bb8 cast, allison grodner

There’s been a lot of discussion going on about the pairs of enemies that are entering the house. Two have been confirmed so far.

First, Dick and Daniele are father and daughter. Dick’s MySpace page contains a post about how he and his daughter don’t “get” each other and haven’t spoken for “about a quarter of her life.” There’s also a photo of Dick with his daughter and son, Vincent.

Vincent has confirmed the relationship in this post on MySpace, as well as this thread at SurvivorSucks where he answers some questions from fans.

The other pair that is 99% confirmed is Carol and Jessica. They both hail from Haysville, Kansas, and are both dancers. That sets the stage for some competitive spirit already. Carol’s dad has been posting at Joker’s Updates, and apparently confirmed the connection.

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A new poster over at Joker’s Updates has posted what they believe is the cast list for Big Brother 8. It’s also been posted at TV Grapevine. This post quickly grew legs and has spread all over the ‘net.

Before getting to the list itself, let’s take a quick look at the credibility angle first. While the poster is new to Joker’s, he’s apparently been posting for some time at Survivor Sucks, which is well-known for spoiling Survivor cast lists. On the other hand, he says he got a “few minutes glance” at the BB cast list, then at the bottom of the post he says, “don’t ask how I got it.” Unless he was taking notes, it’s hard to imagine that he remembered all of this information after a glance. Plus, leaked cast lists happen all the time and they’re very rarely accurate.

The list contains 14 slots, which could mean 14 houseguests. It could also include the alternates that are to be sequestered with the houseguests in case one of them disqualifies themselves before entering the house. (Remember Brandon from BB4?)

So, without further ado, here’s the list, verbatim, that was posted:

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After my posting yesterday about Lex possibly joining his Survivor nemesis Boston Rob in the Big Brother 8 house, I got an e-mail from our very own Lessa, who skillfully writes the Watching Survivor blog. She has a source who confirmed for us that Lex will NOT be joining the cast this season. So there you go. Not that we believed it anyway, right?

Right?

Besides, wouldn’t you rather see Alicia and Kimmi battle it out all summer?

Someone’s having some fun over at Wikipedia.

Now, not only do we have Boston Rob rumoured to be on Big Brother 8, but also his Survivor All Stars “enemy”, Lex van den Berghe. Check out Lex’s page at Wikipedia.

Lex has signed on to appear in Big Brother 8 for the summer of 2007.

While I seriously doubt that either one of these two will be houseguests, I suppose it’s a possibility that they’ll make an appearance for a competition or some kind of special episode. But let’s just sit back and watch as this one catches on like wildfire, shall we?

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I got an e-mail from a fellow reality-obsessed friend this afternoon, in which she made fun of me for missing some “major Big Brother news.” This news? Is that Rob Mariano will be a part of the BB8 cast.

Holy heck. Well, if this is true, how did I miss it indeed? I searched Google news and hit up my favourite BB hot spots online, but came up with nothing. Then I found it - there’s a post at Survivor Sucks pointing to Rob’s Wikipedia page. Near the bottom, I found this little nugget:

Rob Mariano will be playing the Big Brother game in CBS upcoming Big Brother 8 (US) reality show starting July 5th. Its still not known what role Rob will play but many people expect him to play the villain. It is still unknown if his wife, Amber, will be playing the game, but many believe that her recent book ventures have brought an end to her reality show adventures.

And yes, there’s a source site listed, and I have no idea how credible this information is. But let’s put it this way. If Rob Mariano is a contestant on Big Brother 8, I will print this post and eat the paper it’s printed on.

Update: The Wikipedia entry has been changed (big surprise there) and now reads:

Rob Mariano is rumored to be involved with Big Brother 8.

As Heather correctly says in the comments here, Wikipedia is updated via user entries. Which is precisely why it isn’t always a reliable source of information.

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