As the Veto Competition got underway, everyone hustled for the big prize, especially Howie. "I don't trust the Nerd Herd as much as I can pick Maggie up and throw her on her big, fat ass," he said. Ouch! Howie with another funny. Although, it does seem odd that Howie has coined this term "Nerd Herd" when he, in fact, is a self-proclaimed follower of the Jedi lifestyle. Maybe the "Nerdier Herd" would be better.

Well, even though I was fearing an Ivette victory, April actually won the veto, making it the very first (and probably last) time I'll ever cheer for her to win anything (and "cheer" is an overstatement. It was more like a general relief that Ivette lost). Also winning big was the lovely Janelle who focused all her efforts on unlocking her silver veto. Makes sense. She knows she pretty much can't win the big prize. Might as well go for everything else. This, of course, made all The Friendship intensely jealous, especially April, who complained, "Janelle is the luckiest person in this game. It makes me sick. She wins everything." Except HOH this week, jerk. Be thankful you still have a shot at that $500,000.

Anyway, Janelle hopped on over the safe and discovered she had won a trip for two to the Bahamas, courtesy of Travelocity. Oh, and she also won a gnome. This was cool, but not nearly as cool as the time on The Amazing Race when Phil Koegan held a Travelocity gnome up to his teat. That, my friends, was magical.

Janelle announced that she was going to take her mom on the trip, and even though The Friendship was supposedly founded on some sort of moral high ground, that didn't stop Ivette from committing that most Ten Commandment-y of sins: coveting thy neighbor. Ivette threw a near hissy fit, whining that Janelle wins every damn prize. Must I remind you again? Barring some sort of miracle, SHE WON'T WIN THE GAME. So stop moping around and be happy you're in the majority.

Hey, remember America's Choice? With all this activity, I nearly forgot that tonight was the big results show. Just to remind everyone, last week, we launched a small campaign to vote for Janelle, if only to make The Friendship cry. To be honest, I wasn't sure of how successful it would be. It certainly didn't have the same traction as the Save Kaysar movement; hell, I didn't even try to hawk any magnets this time around. So would TVgasm prevail?

"I think almost everyone is voting for Ivette to get it," surmised an absolutely clueless Maggie. Oh, if they could only SEE their popularity polls at CBS.com. Needless to say, I wasn't sure if Janelle would win, but I was pretty positive Ivette would not. Oh, it will be glorious!

Nevertheless, Maggie continued to raise Ivette's hopes: "If it's not you, I think it'll be hard on all of us." EXCELLENT. Okay, I had to admit, I kind of felt bad for Ivette. She was so nervous and excited that she could barely contain her emotions. With her chin slightly quivering and her words soft and brief, we knew that losing this phone call would crush her in ways that we could only imagine. Not even Cappy would be able to lift her spirits.

Later, while the house guests were busy doing things like running on the treadmill and sitting around, a cell phone in the living room began ringing (with the Big Brother theme song ringtone, natch). Janelle answered it and... Hallelujah! It was Michael! We did it again! YES!!!!

Now, unlike the first America's Choice, I'm pretty sure TVgasm was the only place that organized a Vote For Janelle campaign; so in the interest of self-promotion based on no empirical data, I'll just go out on a limb and say this was a true TVgasm victory. And by all means, if anyone's seen other Janelle campaigns, please tell us. We're more than happy to share the glory.

Well.

Well, well, well.

I'll just say that the next five minutes of Big Brother were sublime. And before I rehash them, let me just say that when TVgasm encourages people to act in a certain way, we know what we're doing. We know what will create good TV, and if there was ever any doubt, look no further than this beautiful segment.

You see, the point of our little campaign was to quite simply make The Friendship cry. That's all we wanted. Sure, it was a little more vindictive and mean than what we normally do, but well, all's fair in Big Brother season. With Janelle and Howie and James most likely on the outs in the coming weeks, our triumphs over The Friendship will be few and far between, which is why we here at TVgasm pounced at the opportunity to score this rare victory. Having Janelle not only win the America's Choice but also use it to chat with Michael would simply be a slap in the face of La Herd Du Nerd, and personally, the way it all played out was far better than anything I could have imagined.

As Janelle babbled about inane things with Michael ("Did Britney Spears have her baby?"), The Friendship looked only with fake smiles, barely concealing their jealousy and disappointment. Ivette, for one, looked absolutely destroyed. "A lot of the conversation existed of things that were not very intellectual," complained Maggie. Yes, I too enjoy intellectual things. You know, like properly using "consisted' instead of "existed." And WTF was Maggie talking about anyway? Was she expecting Janelle to discuss Nietzsche or something? I guarantee that had Maggie won the call, she would have spent the entire time yapping away about her stupid turtle collection.

She's gonna lose it. Wait for it... Wait for it...

And then the commentary came.

Posted by B-side on August 31, 2005 4:08 AM