the flavor of my kind. finally.

ok, i had this big long post all set about how i'm damn excited that my favorite show, The Amazing Race, kicks off tonight and that i cannot wait to get home and watch it and how, since i got a dvr i refuse to watch commercials and i have no idea what kind of contestants they have. until i thought to myself, DUH self, go look it up online.

MY PEOPLE HAVE FINALLY MADE IT TO REALITY TELEVISION!

ok, ok, i know that's not true. they have an all-asian team on Survivor! (oh yeah, but not south asian.) and i think i flipped through and saw some contestant on America's Next Top Model a few years ago who tried to blow off the pain of being cut by saying something ridiculous like she only really wanted to use it to get into the business side of fashion anyway. yeah, sure, she only said that to save face for the Aunties. and from the previews, i think there's someone from my region on the next season of ANTM, too.

the reason that i'm so unbelievably excited is because i feel it is my duty to put my heart and soul behind anyone who bucks the Auntie patrol. Tony Kanal, M. Night Shyamalan, Parminder Nagra, Sarita Choudhury, Naveen Andrews, Russell Peters and a host of others that i'm sure i'm forgetting that are more than worth mentioning. especially because they don't usually list sculptors, or journalists, or architects, or fashion designers, or professional chefs, or makeup artists, or dancers, or trombonists, or all the other non-approved careers on imdb.com.

these people take on the big job of veering off the accepted path that is medicine/law/computerscience/and-of-course engineering. which is why it took nearly a DECADE to get a southasian on the tv show ER. in that entire hospital, there was not one of my people for that long? not a single ultrasound tech or phlebotomist or orderly. wanna know why? because no indian parent's friend in their right mind would allow them to allow their child to pursue something as risky as acting. i know these people want the best for their kids (read: quickest road to grandchildren), but that just leads to grandkids without role models they can identify with who may form skewed ideas of what it means to be beautiful, successful and loved by the world. (i escaped this particular fate because my parents are all about bollywood music videos. my idea of what a beautiful woman means is to have long luscious hair and run about the trees in the rain. which is another issue in itself.)

anyway, thank you Jerry Bruckheimer and the casting people for Amazing Race 10. i see that not only do you have my peeps, but you have another asian team (the other kind) as well as devout muslims and a person leaping through life despite an injury. and of course some cheerleaders and pageant queens. i'm sure more than one of them is a "/model," so you guys aren't straying too far from the protocol.

so, as if i wouldn't be doing so anyhow, i will be running home every sunday night/monday morning to check up on my team. and i pray that my people don't do something like be nasty to each other or cheat or pick fights or get eliminated right away because i want America-- in its infinite openmindedness-- to think all of us are tough competitors who know how to bring it, fight fair, battle it out and KICK SOME ASS! because, you know, we're, like totally, all the same. which is why we have to support each other.

so vipul and arti, this time it'd better be you coming home with a million dollars. my rep is on the line.




************UPDATE*******
Imagine my dismay when, after having programmed the television and triplechecked that it was set to record, i hurried home to find that it most definitely DID NOT!
maybe it was the heavy storm this evening that blocked the satellite dish, but now that i do a search for the show under many different variations, nothing comes up. damn you, DirecTV!

please don't ruin the ending. maybe if i ask really sweetly, someone very wonderful will hook me up with a copy of the episode.