Tiffany Michelle--is she insane, or just stupid?

I've been catching up on episodes of "The Amazing Race" that I missed last month while I was out east. Last night I watched the one before they get eliminated. (Saw that one just now.) They're in Dubai. They've been having a rough time of it there, and are hoping that the next clue will tell them to go someplace else.

Just before Tiffany opens the envelope, she pauses for a few seconds and reverentially says, "Please, Jesus, let us leave Dubai."

Now, this can't be meant at the most literal level, which would imply that they're being held prisoner and can only leave Dubai if there is divine intervention. They're free to do whatever they want. Under the circumstances, it seems most likely that what she means is this: "Please, Jesus, make this envelope contain an instruction that we fly to another part of the world."

But how nutty is that? The route for the race was obviously planned long in advance. The clue inside the envelope was printed, presumably, before the race even began. Other teams that are ahead of them have already opened their envelopes with identical clues and started working on the task assigned. So she is asking Jesus to magically change what has already been written on the clue. I'm not sure if she expects that, as a result, they will be told to go somewhere else while the other teams continue on in Dubai (because Jesus fell down on the job and didn't grant her wish; maybe she failed to click her heels three times, or burn incense, or sacrifice a goat as a burnt offering, or whatever else one must do to get the proper attention of supernatural beings), or if she thinks that Jesus will not only change the printing on the clue, but also reverse time and make all of the clues say something different than they did when they were created. Perhaps her intention is that Jesus will reverse time all the way back to pre-production meetings so that no option other than having the teams leave Dubai at that point is ever considered.

If she really believes that there is a supernatural being that works this way, and exercises such awesome powers on her specific behalf because she is so special to him, even when the goal is something as trivial and silly as winning a reality TV show, she is genuinely looney.

And logically speaking, if Jesus has that kind of powers and is willing to use them for her benefit because he is so in love with her precious self, wouldn't it have been a whole lot easier just to ask him for a million dollars to begin with, and skip the whole race thing?

Her request is just as shockingly daft, and in precisely the same way, as Jerry Yang asking Jesus to change the cards after the dealer has already shuffled and cut the deck, or Shannon Elizabeth fervently believing that the combined mental efforts of herself and her supporters can accomplish the same thing.

My guess is that if directly confronted with the insanity of her prayer, Michelle would come up with some flimsy explanation, such as that's not really what she expected to have happen. Of course, I'd then want to ask what she did expect to occur as a result. I mean, she's taking a moment away from a race to ask Jesus to do something--what is it, exactly, that she expects him to do, if not just what her words say? If she is really not expecting anything to happen, then it seems to me that she is guilty of having no faith, and/or taking the name of her lord in vain. If I were Jesus, I wouldn't take kindly to being bothered with requests from people who don't really expect me to do anything about them.

I can already hear the protestations coming in via the comments feature: "It's just an expression of her faith. It's not meant to be taken literally." To which I reply: Rubbish. She chose those specific words out of an infinite number of possibilities. I.e., if her thought was simply a more general, "Jesus, we could really use some help to do well on whatever this next task may be," well, words just about like those would have been more suitable, and they are, I assume, within her vocabulary and comprehension. She did not choose to say that. She said, "Please, Jesus, let us leave Dubai," which is not even close to being some vague wish about helping them with whatever the next challenge might be. It is very specific in nature.

So she either meant what she said, and she is insane, or there is a profound disconnect between what she says and what she means, which, to me, says that she is too stupid to select words that at least fall in the general direction of her intended meaning.

Either way, not a very flattering insight into the mind of Tiffany Michelle.

Dumb idea

Last night I watched the season's first installment of "The Amazing Race." I have watched this show most seasons, so I'm not tuning in just because they have a couple of poker players this time around. What can I say? I like it, and "Survivor," and "Big Brother." Sometimes my taste is hopelessly middle class.

Anyway, as most readers already know, Maria Ho and Tiffany Michelle are on it. They came up with a boneheaded idea: They were going to go the whole race without telling anybody about the poker thing. Instead, they cooked up a story that they worked in a Southern California nonprofit that served the homeless, or some such crock. Their idea was that if the other teams thought they were rich and didn't need the money, they would become targets and not get any help or sympathy.

Yeah, right.

As soon as they announced this plan, I knew it was doomed to failure. What's more, the reason it couldn't possibly work was so damned obvious that I am at a loss to understand why they thought the scheme would work. The flaw is this: They have both been on television way, way too much not to get recognized by somebody.

Surely they both have had people recognize them in, say, airports. And surely they have both watched the show in previous seasons enough to know that the contestants spend a lot of time in airports. Are they unable to put two and two together?

Sure enough, in the very first episode, it happens just like that. They ask a random stranger for a bit of help--in an airport, no less--and in addition to helping them, he says, "I know who you are," and outs them, where other teams can overhear.

Well, DUH! Of course that was going to happen. So now in addition to the negative effects that might come from other teams being jealous or resentful of their modest degree of success and fame in poker, they have the added burden of having started off the competition lying to everybody else's face, in a way that was trying to win good-guy points (helping the homeless). In other words, they got caught acting in what others will likely perceive not just as a game strategem akin to bluffing, but in a morally and socially reprehensible manner.

Brilliant, girls. Just brilliant.

I do not foresee this duo going far in the game.

Tiffany Michelle is dead--sort of

On this week's World Series of Poker broadcast, they mentioned that Tiffany Michelle once died on "ER." I hadn't heard this tidbit before, and was curious about it. It was easy to locate the episode from her IMDB page (here), and I ordered the DVD from Netflix. It arrived today.

She plays a 16-year-old who crashed into a telephone pole while riding a motorcycle, came into the ER in full arrest, and couldn't be resuscitated. (Not much acting ability called for in that role. No lines also meant no credit at the end of the show.) I never would have recognized her if not specifically looking for her. But now you can see what she looked like before she had several million in chips sitting in front of her.

Maybe it's just me, but I think I'd rather see her with blood pouring from various wounds than covered in UltimateBet logos.