FROM RUSH HOUR TO MUSH HOUR: Tonight marks the conclusion of GSN's airing of season 1 of TAR, and I figured a thread was appropriate for the occaision. I'd never seen these episodes before, and it's interesting to see how things have changed. A few more noticable things about the first season that have changed:

• Phil plays a much less prominent physical role in the earlier season--he's not there to greet/interview at the close of the leg.
• It seems odd to have all the teams pretty much sitting and waiting for the later teams to arrive at every pitstop.
• Season 1 doesn't seem to have relied much on "pitstop interviews." It's much more narrative and talking to the camera during actual racing or in pauses in racing. The good thing is that it's contemporaneous commentary rather than retrospective, but also, it undermines seeing the drama between teammates.
• Leg structure has changed dramatically--now, a flight or long-distance travel typically leads off the leg, creating an early bunch. In a lot of legs in TAR1, it'll be route marker/task in location one, then long distance travel, second task, and finally, pit stop. One important impact this has--it can minimize the helpfulness of a Fast Forward, since the Fast Forward is invariably before the long distance travel, giving a bunch opportunity. Interestingly, the late bunching potential didn't have that much impact in most cases--often, teams would have gotten so backlogged earlier in a leg (Kevin and Drew and the Guidos) that they miss the bunch opportunity.
• Interestingly, while other reality shows, like Survivor, have become much more "alliance-centric" over the years, there's been much less chat of alliances as TAR has evolved.
• For all the complaints about recent years featuring "unlikable" teams like Jonathan and Victoria and Colin and Christie, basically, all of the final teams in TAR1 are kind of dicks to each other and/or other teams. Kevin and Drew and Frank and Margarita spend much of their time yelling at each other, the Guidos engage in blatant deception and borderline cheating, and Rob and Brennan can be pompous assholes. (That said, I'd probably race much like Rob and Brennan did.)

Other thoughts on TAR Classic are invited.

GARBAGE OUT, GARBAGE BACK: Stuffing random artifacts from a messy coffee table or desktop into the postage-paid return envelopes provided daily by traditional junk mail houses is a tit-for-tat resistance tactic that hits the mailers' postal numbers for the price of a stamp while providing a mild moment of absurdist venting for the recipients' misanthropic main boilers. I highly recommend the practice.

There is now an Israeli company attempting to provide an on-line analog, according to the BBC. While it's unclear how ethical or effective it is in actual practice, in theory it's hard not to like the idea. Of course, the on-line version lacks the personal touch that comes from providing Capital One with a fistful of expired cat litter coupons, an unwanted take-out menu and ticket stubs from Batman Returns.

THE MOVIE WILL BE ABOVE AVERAGE: After creating Mark Wahlberg's career, getting an actual performance out of Tom Cruise (interestingly, as a self-loathing man who's made his living by creating a cult of heightened masculinity), attempting to transform Adam Sandler's tendency toward fits of rage into a commentary on the American character, and getting two Oscar nominations for writing, it wouldn't be a bad question to wonder what Paul Thomas Anderson is up to now. The Times answers the "what?" (serving as a backup director for a film starring, among others, Kevin Kline, Lily Tomlin, Tommy Lee Jones, Virginia Madsen, Woody Harrelson, and Lindsay Lohan), but fails to answer the "why?" The article's still worth your time, and heightens my excitement for what appears to be an interesting and quirky project.

RADIO RADIO: Radio, as I understand it, is that thing in my car through which I sometimes permit Jim Lehrer and the BBC World News to speak to me. I have no other use for it, except for occassional visits to the Church of St. John Coltrane courtesy of the fine folks at KPOO. (Tuesdays, noon to four, if memory serves.)

Actually I can listen to quite a lot of KPOO, just waiting for some cheeky DJ to get phonetic on the station ID instead of going alphabetical. I've only heard that once in five years.

Commercial radio however, makes my teeth ache. I've yet to succumb to satellite, and likely won't so long as interesting artists continue making their stuff available on-line. Commercial radio sucks so much that I'm tempted to believe it's some sort of malevolent corporate conspiracy or the product of some larger and more insidious socio-economic phenomenon. Whatever it is, I can't wait for it to become something else.

On reform-not-revolution front, I'm happy to note that some chickens Eliot Spitzer released last October appear to be coming home to roost, but I don't think that the courts or even the extraordinary Mr. Spitzer can give us our collective groove back (or the airwaves, for that matter, in the current climate of compulsive deregulation and remarkably accelerated consolidation). Money will continue to drive content (frequently right down to the lowest common denominator) whenever and wherever songs are made to be sold instead of growing out of the simple and compelling fact that something is worth singing about.

Long, long, long before file sharing was a problem for the music industry, music was a fundamental and foundational form of human sharing; sharing information, wisdom, culture, identity, understanding. It still is, and always will be, but the web is rapidly presenting us with the means to abandon corporate content filters in favor of spontaneous, viral dissemination of worthy works directly among the masses themselves. (Ourselves!)

I urge everyone who loves music to check out ccMixter.org, and generally to learn their way around the creative commons IP format. These are fertile fields with enormous potential to enrich both our personal music collections and our collective media environment, but they're only as rich as their inputs. These spaces are being created now on an "if you build it they will come" basis, and I can't wait to see what happens when a critical mass of participants gets out there.

The more we all have to say about what music the media mediate between us, the better. The more each of us has to say about what we're individually exposed to, the better. And for my teeth, the mental environment, muses and music everywhere, the sooner, the better.

PAGING THOMAS FRANK: Yesterday, we had spirited discussion of shopping as socio-economic and cultural field trip. However, I think we've missed the location that must be deemed the essential "shopping as cultural field trip." Ladies and gentlemen--I give you the Bass Pro Shop Outdoor World--the leading tourist attraction in Springfield, Missouri. Yes, it's 280,000 square feet devoted to huntin', fishin', boatin', campin', and other outdoors-y activities that end with "in'." Bass Pro has expanded the franchise to other locales, but the Springfield locale is cultural tourism and reckless surrealism at its best. Next time you're in Springfield, enjoy some fine Cashew Chicken, visit Bass Pro, and then had on down to Lambert's for a hearty dinner and some throwed rolls.

WHAT'S NEXT? PEOPLE PLAYING CATS? The latest of the ongoing flood of Disney movies slouching towards Broadway to be born appears to be Tarzan, with a score by Phil Collins (Me Tarzan, You Sussudio?) and book by David Henry Hwang, who wrote the astoundingly brilliant M. Butterfly as well as the astoundingly dreadful "updating" of the book for Rogers & Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song.

Ordinarily this tidbit of news would hardly register on my radar screen. Although my formerly impressive theatregoing habits were decimated by the birth of Cosmo Girl a couple of years ago, I try to stay plugged into goings-on in the Broadway world. I do, however, tend to ignore the Disney musicals where possible. I was dragged to Beauty and the Beast against my will a number of years ago at my mother's request and found the experience positively painful. Even The Lion King, which is still selling out eight years after opening, thanks to the myriad Asian and European tourists who fill its seats day in and day out, is really only impressive for director Julie Taymor's creation of the African animal kingdom on stage. (Which really is quite magical, but people should feel free to go to sleep right after "Circle of Life" comes to its grand and booming conclusion.) The story itself works better as the animated musical whence it came.

But something like 80% of Broadway theatregoers are non-New Yorkers, and if tourists want to schlep to New York and shell out a hundred bucks a ticket to see a dancing teacup or a flatulent warthog "live" on stage, far be it from me to stand in their way.

So why am I paying any attention to "Tarzan! On Broadway!"? Not because I begrudge Disney another blockbuster musical, and not because I am setting my calendar to remind me of the day when tickets go on sale, but because of a blurb I saw this morning indicating that an actor named Shuler Hensley has been cast as some primate or other in the upcoming Tarzan production.

A few years ago, Hensley won pretty much every award there was to win for his portrayal of Jud Fry in the most recent revival of Oklahoma. I'm not sure I've ever seen a more riveting performance. It was painful and horrible and spellbinding and magnificent. And now he's gonna wear an ape suit in Tarzan. Sigh.

I GIVE THIS IDEA TWO THUMBS UP: Via the Romenesko letters page:

From ROGER EBERT: Re Wired.com's prediction that we will eventually pay for Internet content: the obvious solution would be a simple fee of a penny a page. The technology to do this has existed for years; it would be channeled through credit cards. For most users, such a charge might come to perhaps a dollar a day, and yet the revenue would add up quickly for websites. There would be two webs: FreeWeb and PennyWeb. The beauty of this model is that you would pay for what you actually wanted on a painless daily basis, instead of having to pay large sums for annual subscriptions. Even sites that can currently command premium fees, like Wall Street Journal, might find they would make more money if everyone could drop in for a ten-cent visit.

Once microtransactions become economically viable, this will be the way to go. There's nothing wrong with paying for content to ensure its profitability, and neither the New York Times nor TVTattle need give away quality work for free.