At Malakal post-tribal-council, Ozzy insists that he would have toootally never voted Ami out if she’d been honest. Honest how? “You can’t try to get me out unless you tell me in advance you’re going to try to vote me out”? “You have to tell me after the fact that you tried to vote me out, and then I won’t try to vote you out”? This is so dumb. What he said last week about how he goes after anyone he finds out was trying to get him out? That’s not unreasonable. Not sophisticated strategic thinking, necessarily, but it’s defensible. Of course, rather than sticking with that, he’s decided to make it all about honesty, like he threw Ami out of the Babysitters’ Club for hurting his feelings.

“If she’d just stuck with me, she’d still be in this game!” he says. Yes, if Ami had just been loyal to Ozzy, he would have kept her in the game slightly longer before voting her out. Why didn’t she see the obvious wisdom in this course of action? He might have allowed her to finish as high as sixth! Stupid Ami. What did she want, to win?

And then Erik talks for a while, but all my head hears is “blah blah yah yah OZZY OMG WOOOOO!”

I realized after writing last week’s post that what’s great about the credits is that this season, even though they throw people out of the credits now after they’re voted off, I actually still can use the credits to remind myself of people I’ve totally forgotten: “What’s a Natalie?” It’s just that this time, it’s people who are still playing.

Over at Airai, Eliza and Jason have a little chat, after which she lemurviews that they’re allies, because they both love the game, and they “both annoy people.” Ha! And this is where Jason whispers to her that he has the idol. It begins, people.

A very skinny-looking Cirie grabs some treemail that tells them to grab all their stuff and follow the map. Erik promises Ozzy that he won’t be flipping sides, and Ozzy can do whatever he wants, and Erik will ask Ozzy before he makes a move, and Ozzy looks really good in that hat. Ozzy’s like, “Cool,” because what’s he going to say? “I reject your slavish adherence to my wishes”? And then Erik says one of the weirdest things I have ever heard on this show, which is that he and Ozzy now have a “zookeeper bond” where he’s a monkey and Ozzy is a zookeeper. Oh my God, keep your fantasies to yourself, Erik. I only wish Erik would share this with Ozzy, you know? “Say, uh, Ozzy, how about if I’m the monkey and you’re the zookeeper, and it’s mating season for me, and you come in the enclosure to give me a banana…”

Over at Airai, Alexis exfoliates her face with sand (!) as she tells Parvati that she’s going to be “unwaveringly loyal.” So that’s what her voice sounds like! And then Parvati tells us she’s “in such a hot pickle,” and the barf starts to rise in my throat. She explains that she can either go with herself-Amanda-Alexis-Natalie, or she can go with herself-Amanda-Cirie-James-Ozzy. So many options!

Of course, when the tribes see each other, Eliza is extremely unhappy about Erik being there and Ami not so much. New tribe name, new tribe flag, stupidest things about summer camp, lanyards, whistles, friendship bracelets, yankety-yank.

I like the way they just serve them a bowl of bats, not like a gross food challenge, just like, “Hey, you want a feast? Here are some delicious head-still-on bats!” Man, those bats are pretty hard-core. They look like they died of natural causes five minutes ago and have only been lightly steamed. James, of course, is untroubled by this and says they taste just like rabbits. Vampire rabbits.

Pretty much the only thing Erik has done that I liked so far is telling everyone that “Dabu” means “good” in Micronesian when it’s not true. It’s kind of a random act of screwing around that amuses me. I also enjoy the interview in which he suggests that “Fo-shizzle” would have been just as good. Now, if he had convinced them that “fo-shizzle” meant “good” in Micronesian and they had named the tribe “Fo-shizzle,” that would have been impressive. I think Amanda would have gone for it, probably. God knows Jason would have.

Ozzy, of course, gets everyone to agree to stop playing until he says they can start again. Later, he and Alexis are all cuddled up while she talks about being shocked that Erik is still there and he brags about how it was all his doing. (“Stick with me, baby, because fire represents life, if you get my drift.”) Amanda is shown stewing nearby. Amanda’s interview talks about how she and Ozzy have been “doing this together” for all this time, and now Alexis just wants to come in and get right in the middle of it! See, Amanda, this is what’s wrong with getting carried away with the Doing This Together. Now your feelings are hurt and your game is clouded, and a little less allowing the guy to eat your head on Day 2 might have made all of this a bit simpler.

Alexis, on the other hand, couldn’t be happier, especially when she sees the awesome Malakal beach. She seems completely unaware of Amanda’s intent to destroy her. Ozzy makes contact with Jason and declares in an interview that Jason wants to “prove himself” to Ozzy and everyone else. I wonder if having already led his team to victory in practically every challenge where his team and Ozzy’s team have faced off has done anything for Jason’s self-esteem in this regard. Ozzy also says that Jason having the fake idol “is a beautiful thing.” He does not explain what, exactly, he thinks the fake idol is going to accomplish, other than giving him something to congratulate himself about. We’ll get back to that.

Plinky music plays as Jason looks for a place to hide his non-idol. It is the plinky music of plink, in which plinky plinkliciousness plinks you directly to your doom — or, as it happens, someone else’s.

Eliza and Parvati talk, and Eliza professes surprise that Ami was trying to vote out Ozzy, and she tells Parvati she hopes the old Favorites are all sticking together. Parvati is noncommittal, and she takes much smirky, mean-girl delight in telling Eliza as clearly as she can without using words that she — Eliza, that is — will be going home next if Parvati has anything to say about it.

Parvati’s descent into the deepest depths of being a really bad person begins as she interviews about how “hilarious” she finds Eliza’s efforts to profess loyalty to her. Parvati apparently believes that her ironclad case against Eliza has something to do with past efforts on Eliza’s part to make an alliance with people other than Parvati, but that’s extremely idiotic, if that’s her thinking. It really doesn’t matter if Eliza had a plan in the past to try to get you out. She’s not supposed to be “loyal” to you out of actual loyalty; she’s supposed to be loyal to you out of you being her best option right now. That’s the best guarantee you have of a rational person’s sticking with you — are you the best option she has right now? If Yul had used this theory, he couldn’t have used Jonathan to beat the old Raros; this is idiotic. Because right now, joining with the majority is Eliza’s best option. It might not have been before, back when there were thirty people on the island and everyone was riding to tribal council in horse-drawn carriages, but who cares?

This is how you know that Parvati doesn’t really have disdain for Eliza for game reasons; that would make no sense. Parvati dislikes Eliza for personal reasons, which is fine, and I’m sure Eliza’s talky, intense, in-your-face nature could be annoying. But that’s not even why Parvati doesn’t like Eliza. My opinion is that Parvati doesn’t like Eliza because Eliza is so utterly unimpressed with Parvati. Parvati is used to believing that her power comes from men wanting to have sex with her and women being jealous of her, and Eliza has less than zero interest in being anything like Parvati, and she’s pretty obvious about it. That’s not Eliza’s game, life-wise. I recently noticed that Eliza went to Sidwell Friends School in D.C. — that’s a very, very good school; that’s where the Clintons sent Chelsea. She graduated summa cum laude – that’s summa — from Syracuse University. She’s just about done with law school at Fordham. Eliza? Is not going to be a foxy boxer. That’s why Parvati hates Eliza much more than Amanda does — Amanda knows she’s a pretty girl, but she doesn’t assume that all women should envy her. Parvati does, and Eliza doesn’t (envy her, that is), so Parvati hates Eliza’s guts and cannot wait to get the better of her in Survivor, because that’s going to prove that Parvati doesn’t have to take nose-looking-down from anybody.

Next up, Parvati breaks it to Amanda that she’s gone and formed an alliance with Alexis and Natalie, and poor Amanda keeps sitting there waiting for the punch line, where Parvati says, “And now, we’re going to smoke those bitches for stealing your man!” But the punch line doesn’t come, and Amanda is sort of like, “Hm.” See, since Alexis is this boyfriend-stealer, Amanda wants to get rid of her before she gets a look at Ozzy’s hidden immunity idol, if you know what I mean. In an interview, Amanda makes this about not wanting to go up against Alexis the “motivational speaker,” but of course, that’s idiotic, since it implies she’d rather go up against Ozzy The Wonder Dolphin Boy, against whom she would pretty much definitely lose. Think about it: she lost to Todd.

The treemail implies some kind of endurance challenge. But before that, Jason comes up with his brilliant plan to give Eliza the hidden idol in the event he wins immunity today. As much as I’d like to see Eliza survive — and I really, really would — I don’t really see why Jason would do this. It’s not like protecting the two of them for one more week will change the game, even if you get rid of Ozzy. Then you’d still be crushed by the rest of the crowd. You can’t build on an alliance of two people to the point where it make sense to burn your idol. I have to say, if I were Jason, I’d hold on to it.

I hate the fact that the show is dragging Eliza into this plinky-music business, as if she’s part of the stupid, because Eliza has no way of knowing that Jason is enough of a stump not to know the difference between an idol and a stick. This plan is perfectly fine from her perspective. She’s not dumb for thinking he’s going to give up his idol — he is going to. A logical person isn’t going to demand to see the thing ahead of time in this kind of a situation.

The challenge involves being held under a cage while the water rises and seeing how long you can stay after your nose and mouth can’t stay above water anymore. While Probst says this tests your ability to remain calm, it also tests how flat your face is. In the end, it’s Ozzy and Jason, and Jason outlasts him, not even looking particularly concerned, while Ozzy pops up looking about fifty years old and about a minute from death. These face-offs aren’t exactly proving that Ozzy is unbeatable.

Back at camp, Jason is giddy at the thought of booting Ozzy from the game, while Parvati is giddy at the thought of booting Eliza. Parvati interviews that Eliza has been her “biggest rival,” claiming that Eliza has been trying to get rid of her since “day one.” How dare she! Parvati would never play both sides against the middle, unless one side had Ozzy and James and Cirie on it and the other side had Alexis and Natalie on it. I mean, then, maybe she would, but that’s the only time!

And here is the sequence where Eliza wants to get the idol if Jason is going to give it to her. You can tell that her biggest concern right now — logically enough — is that maybe Jason isn’t really serious; maybe he won’t really give it to her. She has a really limited imagination when it comes to Jason having a head full of sawdust.

Ozzy is telling Alexis his surfing stories, because she’s really impressed. And there’s nothing Ozzy likes better than a fresh person who’s really impressed. Amanda, because she can’t walk over and pee on Ozzy  to mark him as her own without attracting attention, is off trying to talk Cirie into voting off Alexis. When Amanda reveals that she’s not sure she knows Ozzy as well as she thought — by which she means, “I think his head is easily turned by a starry-eyed bikini” — Cirie is openly delighted, because she’s been looking all along for a way to break into the group of four — Ozzy, Amanda, James, and Parvati — she’s aligned with, and this is her best hope yet.

And now, Eliza opens the “hidden immunity idol” Jason has left for her. She opens the cloth about a third of the way and says, “This isn’t it.” Because Eliza is not a moron, and she knows the idol is not going to be a stick. “This is so stupid — this is just a napkin!” she exclaims. Logically, Eliza assumes Jason is trying to burn her, so she stomps right over to him and demands to know what he’s “trying to pull.” She doesn’t understand what the point is of fucking around with her — “I’m going home anyhow,” she says in frustration, probably assuming not illogically that this is a big plot by all the other rotten bullies to make her look stupid. “It’s not the idol,” she says. “It is the idol,” he disagrees. She immediately tells Jason that if he really found this thing hidden, then Ozzy has the real one and planted a phony. At some point, in spite of the fact that she’s completely screwed, you can tell that Eliza becomes amused by this conversation a little bit, because she cannot believe that this knucklehead actually thinks that the hidden immunity idol is a stick with two eyes and a mouth carved into it. Some superfan.

“That can’t be the idol.” “Why not?” “…Because it’s just a STICK!” “I know.”

At tribal council, Cirie tries to make trouble by stressing what a strong player Alexis is. And then Alexis biffs it by speaking of Eliza’s skills in the past tense in anticipation of her boot, which Eliza gets unnecessarily eye-rolly and indignant about. Because…it’s coming, lady, and you’ve played well, but you don’t need to get like that just because everybody knows it’s coming. And then there’s a big discussion in which Ozzy and James get very blunt about “nobody likes” and “everybody hates,” and Ozzy is pretty specifically aiming it at Eliza, and it’s really unnecessary. I guarantee you, “everybody” doesn’t hate Eliza. A group of Survivor contestants isn’t “everybody.” There’s nobody in this group who’s going to appreciate Eliza’s argumentative, wackadoodle nature. There’s nobody in this group who’s going to think it’s cool that she’s so smart. “Nobody here is a good match for what might make Eliza a fun person to be friends with” is not the same as “everybody hates Eliza.” I’ll tell you right now, Eliza would be welcome in my living room anytime, because even though I suspect she’s kind of a loony, I also suspect she’s a hoot, and I like a hoot, and not all of these people like a hoot. They are hoot-haters. HOOT-HATERS!

One of the things I really like, that I think is interesting, is that after Probst asks Eliza whether she thinks she’s liked and she says she isn’t, James immediately jumps in to say, quietly and kind of warmly, “She’s liked.” I think it has occurred to him that this is coming on more like a pile-on than he intended. I think James, in a weird way, does like a hoot, or at least appreciate a hoot, even though he’d complain that she drove him nuts with all the talking. I think James is sensing the bullying dynamic here, and he’s not really feeling like he’s on board. Weirdly, Parvati takes this opportunity to discuss Eliza’s shifting alliances, as if that has something to do with “liked” and “not liked.” Parvati has mentioned that she herself is working a couple of different alliances and working behind people’s backs; that makes it utterly nonsensical that this would be her reason for not “liking” Eliza. It might be her reason for voting Eliza out, but if she’s going to be a total bitch, she’s going to need a different reason.

The thing with Parvati, I think, is that I’ve never seen someone so meritless be so haughty.

Jeff Probst, of course, joins in the pile-on, because he has no interest in smart women like Eliza, either, so for some reason, he decides to fully jump in on Parvati’s side, saying, “Eliza, welcome to tribal council. No free rides.” Free rides? How about the free ride fucking Parvati is getting? I hate it when Probst does this; I hate it. If he’s going to participate like this and he’s going to take sides in personal arguments, he shouldn’t host the reunion; he should be there, and somebody else should host it, and that person should get to question him on his bullshit, because are you serious?

So the voting happens, and Eliza gives her “fuck it” about praying for a miracle, and Parvati gives her Nelson Muntz-ian “ha ha” speech about how Eliza messed with the wrong foxy boxer. “I hope you learn from your mistakes the second time around.” Wow, Parvati. I guess you really showed her.

Of course, Eliza hands the stick to Jeff Probst, who announces that it isn’t an idol. And while her tormentors are busy giggling, Eliza has bigger things in mind, so she firmly states that if that isn’t a real idol, then Ozzy has the real one and planted a fake. Ozzy chuckles at his own cleverness, apparently not noticing that with this over, the net result of his cutesy-poo plan to show off by planting a fake idol is…basically nothing, except that at a time not of his own choosing, it was revealed that he has the real idol and planted a fake. You can argue all day about whether it’s better to tell people or not tell people that you have the idol, but I can’t imagine this being a good way for them to find out. So…well done, genius. For camera time, that was a great move. For congratulating yourself, an even better one. But for game reasons? You know, I don’t think that did a whole lot for you.

Look, she knew she was going. It was all she could do, and she went out fighting. I still think she’s a hoot. The one thing that comforts me about the unbearable smugness of Ozzy and Parvati is that…you know, they can’t both win. One or both of them is feeling fat and happy right now, and will ultimately go down hard. That gives me comfort.

What’s most baffling to me about the piece is that it lumps How I Met Your Mother in with Two And A Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. Apparently, this is because they’re all on Monday nights. While they’re technically a group in this sense, the inclusion of How I Met Your Mother actually argues against Goodman’s entire thesis, which is that these shows are all “underappreciated” because snobs who miss Arrested Development refuse to acknowledge the appeal of traditional laugh-tracked sitcoms.

What’s wrong with this argument is that almost everyone I know who is in this group — who loves The Office and 30 Rock and misses Arrested Development — loves How I Met Your Mother. Despite the laugh track, despite the fact that it’s on CBS, despite the fact that it’s on Monday nights, despite the fact that it has setup-punchline moments more often than The Office, people like it anyway, for exactly the reason Goodman discusses: it’s funny. How I Met Your Mother underachieves in terms of ratings, but so does 30 Rock. There’s huge audience overlap there.

I don’t dislike Two And A Half Men because it has a laugh track, though I generally disfavor laugh tracks. I dislike it because I think it’s stupid. Not silly; there’s nothing wrong with silly. 30 Rock is intensely silly. But when I watch a set of punch lines from Two And A Half Men all in a row, as in this CBS promo, it makes me want to set my own hair on fire. None of it makes me laugh, it all sounds like variations on jokes I’ve heard four hundred times, and I simply don’t find any of it even a little bit amusing. I do, however, find How I Met Your Mother amusing, and when it was on, I found The King Of Queens amusing, although it would have been better without the laugh track.

I watch Judge Judy. I watch Trading Spaces. I watch America’s Next Top Model and World’s Wildest Police Videos. You know what I watch on Monday nights when I’m not watching CBS comedies? Dancing With The Stars. I mean, get serious. There’s not a room on earth I’m too cool for, and certainly not one defined by the fact that it contains unsophisticated humor. I watched The Big Bang Theory, and the reason I never watched it again wasn’t that it wasn’t hip enough. The reason I never watched it again was that it was agonizingly unfunny with the exception of perhaps two brief moments in a half-hour show, which simply is not adequate. Goodman seems absolutely convinced that no honest person could claim to have not laughed at Two And A Half Men, no matter how much he or she may have “stifled” it. Seriously, I promise you: that show does not make me laugh. It does not tempt me to laugh. I do not experience cognitive dissonance.

As for Rules Of Engagement, the premiere of which is the ostensible reason for the piece’s appearance at this particular moment, I haven’t really watched it. But that’s not because I’m too cool for it. It’s because it contains David Spade. I have seen David Spade do his thing in a number of different venues, and it’s always basically the same deal, and I thought it was funny for about three months back when he was on SNL, but I haven’t found it funny since. Am I not allowed to think David Spade isn’t funny? Does thinking David Spade isn’t funny make me a snob?

Oddly, Goodman’s praise is enormously faint for these shows. He suggests that The Big Bang Theory should be watched because it makes so many jokes that one occasionally works, and that you should appreciate the fact that the leads are working so hard. You know what I don’t enjoy in comedy? Sitting there thinking, “That guy is working really hard to make that joke work.” Two And A Half Men gets the rousing defense that it “hits the periodic punch line.”

You know what? There’s a lot on television. If you like Two And A Half Men, good on you. If you like The Big Bang Theory, that’s great. But I find an accusation of snobbery being leveled at people simply for choosing to skip something about which even a defender can only say it “hits the periodic punchline” to be a little unfair. The very people Goodman is talking about are the ones who forwarded the Robin Sparkles video to all their friends and who still watch “Slap Bet.” This is the kind of piece about TV that always frustrates me, because there’s so much to say about shows that are interesting, and this seems like the only thing anybody could think of to say about Rules Of Engagement: “Premiering tonight, and not quite as entirely devoid of merit as you may have heard, and if you don’t agree with me, you’re a snob!”

I am a lot of things about TV, but I’m no snob, and I don’t have to make amends with the on-air comedy stylings of Charlie Sheen to prove it.

But they’ve had the Starbucks splash sticks at my sister’s Starbucks in Virginia for a year or more, and I’ve always been extremely envious of them. Contrary to what I’ve seen said in a few other places, the splash stick is not only good if you drive around with your coffee, though admittedly, that’s one of the most compelling uses. If you’re bringing back several drinks, which people do all the time, you wind up carrying them in a tray, and they do tend to slop around. It seems to me that they could have done this with a shorter thing — I’m not sure why the stick needs to go down into the coffee like that. But my sister has saved them, typically, so she has one in the car when she needs it. She often carries one in her purse.

I realize it’s incredibly petty, and the fact that I used to splash coffee around when carrying coffees back to several people at once doesn’t justify making more plastic and destroying the earth, but I cannot help it — when I heard they were bringing these somewhere besides Virginia, I was unduly happy.

So I was extra-intrigued by Greyhound’s introduction of Boltbus, its new line between the same cities most commonly served by Chinatown buses. Instead of the usual Greyhound approach of stopping fairly frequently and taking a long time as a result and costing a lot, Boltbus only goes between a few spots, and it goes express with no stops. In New York, it leaves from a couple of places, one of which is at 33rd and 7th across from Madison Square Garden, only a couple of blocks from the F train. Better yet, it drops off in DC right in front of the Metro Center stop on the D.C. Metro, making it very easy to go wherever you need to go next. I decided to try it out this weekend for a last-minute jaunt to D.C. to see the MS — missed my sis this time, but I’ll get her next time, and it won’t be long, because I LOVE BOLTBUS.

They promote two things about Boltbus very prominently: it’s cheap, and it has wireless. Indeed, even at the very last minute, I paid $40 roundtrip from New York to D.C., and if you have a little more notice, you can get a ticket for $30. Or $20. Or $14. Or, if you book a month or so in advance, $2. That’s right — part of their charm is that they offer a one-dollar fare each way, provided you book early enough. Not many of those two-buck fares are available, I’m sure, but that makes New York to D.C. and back the same price as taking the train from Brooklyn to Rockefeller Center.

At any rate, this trip was $40, compared to $140 at the very least for the non-express Amtrak train, which takes about the same amount of time, and probably more like $300 for the express Amtrak train. For that price, I got on a clean, comfortable bus in Manhattan and got off that clean, comfortable bus right outside the Metro. It wasn’t noisy, it felt safe, the drivers were courteous (the one back from D.C. to New York was an absolute hoot), and it was pretty much flawless service.

Not only that, but the wireless worked. They don’t even have wireless on Amtrak. Granted, it dropped in and out a couple of times, and one lady told me that she took one bus of theirs where the wireless didn’t work. But for me, it worked, and it meant that I could send email and be on IM and basically pass the time on my four-and-a-half-hour bus ride without boredom laying a glove on me.

I definitely give them a thumbs-up, and if you’re an east-coast traveler, you might consider it.

• Music Stylist Stephen is among the pundits on the latest All Songs Considered show over at NPR.org; hear a whole bunch of new music, including a new Eef offering (Eefering?) and some new Shearwater, bound to make you weep. (The “Listen To Show” link there will open the NPR player, which is one of the easiest and least annoying audio players I know of, so don’t fear it. The Eefpearance is in the second half or so of the show.)
• Sarah is porting over old Vines at Tomato Nation, and if you’ve never treated yourself to Robert/Roberta, you must. It’s a hilarious letter, and the response is even funnier. Of course, there is also Jack The Tomato-Stealer, who really pushed his luck with the “striking a blow for human rights” argument.
• I love everything BeneFit. I don’t know whether the “shimmering powders” will still be up when you get there, but I am not into that, because I am over 20, and therefore, I do not wear shimmering powders. But BeneFit makes more normal-looking, unobtrusive, easy-to-wear stuff than anyone, and some of the flaw-correcting items actually correct flaws. (Obviously, they’re not flaws in the sense that anyone needs to feel bad about herself, but there are days when you wake up on the suck side of bad sleep or bad moods and don’t necessarily want to wear that fact around all day.) As Tara and I have both tirelessly said, the pink Eye Bright pencil is so very versatile, particularly if you are pale like we both are.
• The always-funny Fire Joe Morgan is on fire today, and as is often the case, the source is Ken Tremendous, who recently outed himself as Michael Schur, The Office writer and portrayer of cousin Mose. Mr. Tremendous is almost as aggravated by baseball-statistics-likers being portrayed as basement-dwelling losers as I am about bloggers being presented the same way. But he’s better at saying it.

So that’s four items of tireless advocacy, and if you like music, good advice, looking refreshed, and sports talk, you can thank me later.

When I was at Oberlin, I was in the women’s a cappella group, Nothing But Treble. (Hey, I didn’t make up the name, dudes. They all have puns in them. Shut up.) Anyway, in probably…the fall of 1990 or spring of 1991, we had the Columbia Kingsmen open for us, and they did “Cezanne,” as well as “The Mayor Of Simpleton,” which I was just mentioning down in the First Warm Day post.

And I finally found a video of the original song (apparently not the original-original, but…close enough — from what I’ve been able to discover, this is a scooch different from the original and this is the one the Kingsmen worked off of), and it delighted me so much I cannot tell you. I invite you to enjoy one of my favorite pop novelty songs of all time, and I deeply thank whatever late-thirties dude was the soloist on both this and “Simpleton” for the Kingsmen, because I have a VHS tape of this concert somewhere, and I watched him sing it many, many times back in the day.

And now I really have to do some work.

Of course, it was entirely obvious to Consumerist that Sturgis had simply forgotten all about the pop, as we all either have or almost have. He checked out, he forgot to pay for what was stashed under the cart, and NOW HE GOT ARRESTED! Consumerist went on:

Robbing a bank? The Great Case Of Pop Robbery Of ’08? Yes, I’m sure the guy’s grand plan was to buy over a hundred dollars worth of groceries as a cover for his brilliant $4 pop theft.

We humbly suggest that this police officer is not very good at his job.

What followed were (at last count) 247 comments in which Consumerist readers expressed disgust at “rent-a-cops,” railed at stores actually expecting you to demonstrate that you have PAID for the merchandise with which you are leaving the store before you leave with it, recommended email bombs aimed at everyone who worked for the city where the man was arrested, made countless personal comments about the idiocy of the security officer, explained how the customer clearly had an unassailable legal case should he choose to sue the officer and the store, and basically operated on the absolutely credulous assumption that Sturgis was a man railroaded by an inept system.

And then…oh. Oops. Security tapes demonstrated that Sturgis paid for his groceries and then, on his way out, stopped and stole six cases of pop, and the security guard caught him, and that’s why he was arrested.

My point here isn’t really to slag Consumerist, which is a very valuable site that very often helps people get satisfaction in situations where they otherwise couldn’t. I understand how this happens. But imagine what would have happened if the store hadn’t had surveillance footage. They could have protested until they turned blue in their collective corporate face, and there would still have been Consumerist commenters who would happily have posted the home address of the security guard if they could’ve found it, just to see that he was punished for his terribly unfair act. It’s only the video that led to this ending.

What I’m saying, really, is that it’s a reminder to everyone — me included — who reads and reacts to things, that whenever you hear one person telling a story, it’s enormously important to remember that it’s that person’s version of what happened. People who are being held accountable for their actions are not trustworthy reporters of what they did wrong. While I understand that the lie belongs to Sturgis, the fact that it was apparently swallowed whole by Consumerist, and by many of its commenters, without the slightest hint of skepticism, belongs to them. Everyone seemed to say, “Hey, this guy claims that he’s entirely blameless and the other party behaved entirely irrationally. What an outrage that he’s entirely blameless and the other party behaved so irrationally!”

There’s no particularly complex confabulation here, either. The guy didn’t produce false evidence (other than his own story) or prove the officer was otherwise incompetent or anything that should have negated the general obligation to be cautious in evaluating his claim. All he did was say he was innocent, and he received the benefit of an absolute and ironclad assumption that he was.

During my legal career, I worked on both criminal cases and employment cases, and let me tell you — when you hear something like, “Nobody would pay for $150 in groceries and then steal soda,” don’t you believe it. You cannot imagine the ridiculous, illogical, self-destructive, easily discovered, counterintuitive, generally wackadoo things that people will do until you see a hundred files cross your desk in which they did them. In Oregon, I worked on a case where a guy got killed over chemicals that his “friends” were planning to make into meth, and none of his “friends” knew that you couldn’t make meth from that kind of chemical. People do idiotic things all the time, and one of the most common ways they defend themselves is pretty much, “That’s idiotic; therefore, I would not have done it.”

And then you see yet ANOTHER person who cannot manage to learn that he should enjoy his adult sites AT HOME, and not AT WORK. Or a person who doesn’t understand that if you leave on your delivery route with 25 cases of beer, you deliver 10, and you return to work with five undelivered, somebody at some point is going to say, “I wonder what happened to the other ten cases of beer.”

The point I’m trying to make is this: before you roast the cop or the boss or the other “bad guy” alive, make sure you aren’t doing it on the assumption that in all cop-citizen, boss-employee, or similar confrontation, the cop/boss is lying if the citizen/employee says so. That poor security guard did his job precisely as he was supposed to, and for it, he got 200 people calling for his head. The store was able to prove with a video that he was in the right this time, but how often do you suppose this happens and there’s no opportunity for public vindication?

I had to run an errand over in Park Slope today, and that’s about a half-hour walk for me, which fortunately came on the First Warm Day. It’s not really the first warm day; it’s been warming up for a while. But this was the official First Warm Day in my mind, because it was the first day that I went outside and thought…spring. This means only one thing: the launch of the First Warm Day Collection on my MP3 player. (I do not use an iPod, because I had two, and they both failed within a couple of months of purchase, while my Creative Zen Vision has already lasted a couple of years with no problems.) In no particular order, the First Warm Day Collection.

The New Pornographers, Mass Romantic. There are people who take the position that this is the most perfect pop record ever made, and I’m not sure I’d disagree. Everything about it, beginning with the fact that it actually starts with a guy yelling, “ONE! TWO! ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!”, is defiantly joyful and perfect for spring. If the hooks in “Letter From An Occupant” don’t make you feel good, I suggest antidepressants, because something has gone horribly wrong. (Special Bonus: While looking for a good source to demonstrate the awesomeness of the band by pointing out that there’s more to the wonderful “The Bleeding Heart Show” — not on this record — than what’s been given to you by the marketing department at the University of Phoenix, I came across this fan video, which is awesome in the way some fan videos are awesome, in that it’s so sincere and contains such spectacularly literal matchings of footage to lyrics. See, the lyrics, “It looked as if I picked your name out of a hat,” and Pam picks Jim’s picture out of the teapot! Squee!)

Marshall Crenshaw, Marshall Crenshaw. Okay, perhaps you are one of those unlucky people who only knows Marshall Crenshaw from “Someday, Someway,” which — don’t misunderstand me — is an absolutely spectacular pop song. But it is a sin and a crime that this guy never quite popped as a huge star. He wrote a whole string of stuff that’s infectious and inventive and just crazily catchy, including “Whenever You’re On My Mind,” in which the way the guy is smashing the hell out of the drums elevates a ditty to a sort of soaring manifesto, and “There She Goes Again,” which is a perfectly formed confection that people spend their entire careers wishing they could write. Crenshaw was a guy who had a really good handle on his own appeal, and the Rhino reissue of this album includes a bare-bones cover of Buddy Holly’s “Rave On” that makes a perfect pairing with “The Usual Thing,” which certainly could be a Buddy Holly song, but isn’t.

Semisonic, Feeling Strangely Fine. This was a hard choice. This is a great warm-weather band — ironic, because: Minnesota — but I was torn between this and All About Chemistry, which I also like a lot. Feeling Strangely Fine is cursed with the fact that it opens with “Closing Time,” which was overplayed to the point of “Unwritten”-like agony, but it also has some great tunes on it, including mix-tape tribute “Singing In My Sleep” and “This Will Be My Year,” which is not summer music, exactly, but it’s ambivalent fresh-start music, which is almost as good. All About Chemistry, on the other hand, opens with the band’s single best First Warm Day song (that would be the title song), but after that, it’s pretty contemplative and mellow, so on balance, I went with the other one. You could argue it either way, though.

Fountains Of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers. Don’t even try it. Don’t even try being a “Stacy’s Mom” snob, because don’t even try it. As a First Warm Day song? It’s unimpeachable, and it’s not even the best First Warm Day song here. It’s probably “Bright Future In Sales,” but I also have a big soft spot for the almost entirely unknown “Hey Julie,” which doesn’t have the breadth of most of my picks in this category but is marvelously light and funny. My Music Stylist and Jane Wiedlin’s Boyfriend have had near-fistfights about this record, partly because late in the proceedings, it gets kind of flabby, but that’s what’s great about taking walks with your MP3 player — you can stop before you get to that stuff. You could make perfectly good arguments for any Fountains Of Wayne album, honestly — Utopia Parkway has “Red Dragon Tattoo,” after all, and Fountains Of Wayne has “Radiation Vibe” — but again, on balance, this is my pick.

John Wesley Harding, The Confessions Of St. Ace. John Wesley Harding is a really interesting, baffling artist, because the songs are brilliantly written, but they’re often arranged in a sort of corny, ’80s-y way that renders them kind of flat. But this particular record is still very effective, and while you’re most likely to have heard “I’m Wrong About Everything” (which was on the High Fidelity soundtrack), the near-novelty “Goth Girl” and the short but sweet “You In Spite Of Yourself” are where the warm-weather brilliance emerges. In this particular context, Harding’s tendency to sound like ’80s radio doesn’t do any harm.

Ryan Shaw, This Is Ryan Shaw. What a really, really, really good record this is. Fortunately, my favorite thing on it — the Jackie Wilson cover “I’ll Be Satisfied” — was the Song Of The Day, so you can listen to it here. Everything on the record is just as lively and irresistible as this, and I dare you to sit still through the whole thing. As the SOTD essay points out, Ryan Shaw knows what so many American Idol contestants do not — if it’s a great song, you don’t need to rewrite it in order to cover it; you just need to be really, really good.

Honorable Mentions. There were a few songs where I really couldn’t justify picking the album, but the individual song deserves mention. Harvey Danger’s Little By Little is not a First Warm Day Record, because it’s way too depressing on balance, but both “Cream And Bastards Rise” and especially “Happiness Writes White” are contenders. I don’t think Elvis Costello makes summer music, but on the expanded version of Imperial Bedroom, there are two little throwaway-ish numbers — “I Turn Around” and “From Head To Toe” — that should be considered. Stars does more thoughtful music than summer pop, but “What I’m Trying To Say” from 2005′s fabulous Set Yourself On Fire, beginning with the amazing line “You look so good in the clothes of a poser,” will pick you up. (The only YouTube representation of the studio version I was able to find was attached to a Veronica Mars fan video, which: absolutely not.) XTC is a little bit hit-or-miss for me, but any list of perfectly formed pop songs has to include “Mayor Of Simpleton.”

10:01 PM: HOW IS IT NOT OVER? IT’S NOT OVER! Oh, man. Mariah Carey. Figures. With such a weak-ass show, though, what could possibly have gone long by this much? Did Robin Williams just storm the stage with that Russian thing without being invited? This completely confuses me.

9:56 PM: Daughtry is still as boring to me as he was when he was on the show. Boo!

9:55 PM: DAUGHTRY! This is the closer. The closer is Chris fucking Daughtry. In a show that also included Annie Lennox. Way to go, jerks.

9:50 PM: They have saved Brad Pitt for last! I really, really wish he weren’t wearing that stupid cap. Projects to build housing are pretty cool, though. “He wants to be the first baseball player and lawyer in space” — aw! I think they’re all just really happy about seeing Brad Pitt. Aaaand here he is!

9:49 PM: So: Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, David Spade. They hit the trifecta of bug.

9:42 PM: I was listening to Robin Williams do this SAME THING in about 1986. Not one new trick since then.

9:40 PM: Oh my God, I would so rather be watching the actual Russian Idol.

9:38 PM: Dear Miley Cyrus: Pardon me if I find your sympathy for the poor somewhat hollow when you could lift them out of poverty by giving them a set of tickets they could scalp.

9:34 PM: Miley Cyrus AGAIN? Do we really need to see the same celebrity twice? Does she have some purposeful stomping she didn’t get done last time? …Apparently so. And really, when you yell “2, 3, 4!” during the only moments when the band isn’t playing, it kind of defeats the purpose.

9:32 PM: Ashley Tisdale is donating her old nose to poor people who don’t have noses.

9:25 PM: Dane Cook barf barf barf barf barf.

9:23 PM: The lesson here is that singing in a stage ensemble like the Rent cast does is harder than it looks, and coming up with that really true, impressive choral sound, even in a pop-style show, is not for sissies. It’s amazing how this song falls apart when nobody can get out of his or her own head long enough to sing in unison. There’s a lot of unison in this song, and it means having humility and learning to blend, which none of these goobers are trained in.

9:21 PM: Reese Witherspoon promotes the Children’s Defense Fund. That’s a good choice of charity, and AT LEAST IT’S SPECIFIC. Unfortunately, Reese does not have the natural touch of an Annie Lennox. She seems very nice, but the thing where you’re comfortable anywhere? She does not have that. I guess because I was raised by teachers, I’m always particularly impressed with programs focused on schools, which is why I commonly give money to Donors Choose. (Love the letter packets! Got one once that said, “Dear Donor: We learned with our computer that you could give a hamster a bath!”)

9:13 PM: Britain donates millions of mosquito nets! Now that needs a “One Shining Moment” video.

9:10 PM: I think they maybe could have chosen someone to introduce a malaria film who would have a slightly easier time conveying seriousness. (Stephen: “Does anyone on Earth have less gravitas than Sarah Silverman?”)

9:07 PM: Sheila E. Wow. And a whole chorus of show choir kids!

9:05 PM: Oh, Gloria Estefan. It’s nice to know somebody still thinks she’s relevant.

8:56 PM: Carrie Underwood. So very much the heart and soul of this show, because she’s so unobjectionable and so brutally generic. And can she walk in that skirt? Is she on top of a cake? God bless her, there’s nothing but melisma from fifteen seconds into the song. I love the way this show equates depth of feeling with number of stringed instruments, incidentally. It makes it much easier to figure out how I’m supposed to be feeling at any given time.

8:52 PM: I always really, really like Simon Cowell when he goes out and does normal stuff. I don’t know if I’m an apologist or what, but I generally think that’s a good guy, and an honest guy, who does what he does well and doesn’t have pretensions about what he does. And indeed, you get him with poor people, and he’s weirdly able to relate especially because he doesn’t pretend this is natural to him; he acts like a visitor, which he is.

8:50 PM: Is Jimmy Kimmel going to sing “I’m Fucking Simon Cowell”? Because that would be awesome.

8:49 AM: Every thought I have about what Celine Dion looks like standing next to underfed children makes me seem like I am made of evil with a dollop of whipped psychosis, so I’m going to keep them to myself.

8:41 PM: Hey, I got my wish! She’s singing!

8:37 PM: Hey, Annie Lennox! Now she’s kind of cool. She is way cooler than Bono. I wish she were singing. I also really love how easy she is with the kids in this segment, picking them up just like a mom — any mom. There’s something about her manner that seems much more genuine and real than most celebrities who go and have their pictures taken standing next to children in Africa. You can totally tell that at some moment, she thought about whether she could adopt those boys. For an instant, anyway, she thought about it; you can tell.

8:34 PM: The Beckhams ask that you donate money for people who “have no world.” Victoria is shocked to know that some people don’t even have ridiculous fur hats.

8:30 PM: Oh, of course it’s “Fix You.” Of course it is. That poor, poor song.

8:28 PM: Damn, it’s the Katrina stuff that always kills me. Damn you, Fox.

8:25 PM: Oh my God, Adam Sandler, stop acting like you’re better than this. You’re not better than ANYTHING.

8:20 PM: THIS JUST IN! FERGIE CAN DO A WALKOVER! OR TWO!

8:19 PM: I swear to God, there is nothing in the last fifteen years that has done as much for Heart as American Idol. There’s this small collection of people — Heart, Diane Warren, Martina McBride — who are, like, eight times as famous because of American Idol. Heart was famous anyway, but where do you mostly hear actual Heart songs now in the context of existing popular culture? American Idol. And did Fergie really need to butt in? I just listened to her. Heart needs her help, is the theory?

8:16 PM: I feel so bad about the fact that I’m one of those people who can’t forget the pictures of Fergie after she wet her pants onstage. I really admire the way that later, she was like, “I didn’t get to go before I went on; what’s the big deal?” But it is still the first thing I think of every time I see her. I apologize, Betsy Wetsy.

8:08 PM: Wow, they got Bono for their charity project? That must have been tough.

8:07 PM: I kind of like the way Miley Cyrus performs by stomping over to one part of the stage and then turning on her heel and stomping over to another part of the stage. Like, “I will sing some lyrics over HERE! And then over THERE! Have you noticed that my hair is BOUNCY? Because it IS!”

8:04 PM: This bit where Billy Crystal and Miley Cyrus have never heard of each other could not be stupider if they both did it with their tongues hanging out.

8:01 PM: Wow, Billy Crystal looks OLD. And puffy. (Stephen: “Is Billy Crystal morphing into Christopher Walken before our very eyes?”)

7:54 PM: Okay, I’m kind of interested in this Band From TV performance. I’ve heard of it, and I can’t remember who’s in it. I hope they explain it better. GREG GRUNBERG! Oh, Teri Hatcher. I liked you better as Lois Lane. I’m not too excited about the — OH MY GOD, BACHELOR BOB. Is that Dr. Chase on fiddle? How hot! It would be nice if they’d explain who all these people are.

7:50 PM: Paula and Randy! Like it’s the Academy Awards! Hey, at least she’s standing up. And they are visiting poor children. No swimming pools, and lots of gang activity. I like how the carefully stay with the woman who works at the school until she bursts into tears. Don’t miss that part! Hey, at least they all hugged Paula. But this whole thing underscores my fundamental problem with Idol Gives Back: what charity are we giving to?

7:45 PM: Snoop Dogg! Surrounded by small children! I wonder if those children qualify as “bling” for tax purposes. That would make quite an itemized list. “Grill, giant microphone cover, moppets.” Poor Snoop is telling the audience how to clap. Sadly, they need it. I also would think they could have afforded kids who can put their hands in the air and wave them like they just don’t care without hitting each other in the face.

7:43 PM: The only thing I can think of while watching this high-concept “yellow jug” ad is how the ad agency must have been so impressed when they thought of it. It’s a yellow jug!

7:41 PM: I would buy Stiller Whips Whitney’s Ass For Charity.

7:40 PM: Maria Shriver! Mrs. Governor Of California! And Seacrest made it through her intro without doing his Schwarzenegger. But the band did not get through it without playing “Maria” from West Side Story. I guess that pegs the number of songs with “Maria” in their names at one. Maria wants me to be a volunteer. I’m sorry, but does her forehead and brow look kind of…Klingon to anyone else? Forehead too shiny; brow too pronounced. Seriously, her eyes look mean. “We can all be American Idols in someone’s life.” Barf-o-meter: 1.

7:38 PM: I think George Lopez just declared for the presidency.

7:34 PM: There’s a Jimmy Johnson other than the one with fancy plans and pants to match? Oh, wait, that’s Jimmy James. That guy still looks like he might have fancy plans and pants to match. Flame-retardant NASCAR pants. I think I just figured out what I want for Christmas!

7:32 PM: I never thought I’d find anything with less street cred than Step Up 2 The Streets, but I’d say this opening number is right up there. Is there a reason for Idol to be hosting a review of various dance styles? Isn’t this a singing show? It’s like this is an obituary for Dance: 1986-1998. Dear poor and needy people: At least you do not have to watch this. Oh, it’s the So You Think You Can Dance people! That makes sense, and yet it makes no sense.

7:30 PM: The time has come, bitches. And by “bitches,” this time I mean “Ryan Seacrest.”

Starting at 7:30 ET (that’s in half an hour!), watch this space for live and ongoing coverage of Idol Gives Back. I’m not going to lie to you — the reason I’m doing this is that I want to watch it and I will for entertainment value, but I am fairly sure I will be crushingly bored, and struggling to entertain you will keep me awake. I will be following it live, and also probably stealing the best of the annoyed text messages I am likely to receive, because nothing pleases me more than lifting brilliance from my friends.