A Baby Story

You know what I hate about TLC A Baby Story? It all about the drama. Perhaps it's the fact that they put me on a table, cut me open and called it a party that I didn't experience this sort of dramatic birth... I don't know.

One other thing to note (and I can't really take credit for this, my BIL's brother pointed it out) every other kid is named Mia or Ava.

Dear Lord, tell me why this woman has her newborn in a pink tutu? My child hasn't worn anything but footie PJs for the last 2 weeks. Does it make a difference that they're nice PJs?

A post about nothing...

I'm aware, I suck.  However, the blame for my lackluster blogging can be squarely laid on my unborn child.  Apparently pregnancy shrinks your brain by 6-8% depending on which website you read.  See!  It's not just me forgetting things, it's a medical condition.

PS: I want to smack the people who told me this was fun.  It's not fun. It sucks.  Not only am I fat now, but apparently becoming more stupid as the days go by.

My lack of creativity means all I can manage is a pile of random crap.  Sorry, that's just how it goes.

I like to watch TV while I eat breakfast.  Before I was "in the family way", I would alternate between news programs.  I have now discovered that reruns of Saved by the Bell are on.  I prefer to watch this.  I think it's an appropriate amount of entertainment for my smaller brain. (You can't really expect me to consume and retain all the fancy informations on BBC World News?)

Speaking of Saved by the Bell...Mark-Paul Gosselaar. New series this fall.  Seriously, I can't be expected to not watch courtroom dramas.  In fact, there are quite a few garbage series this fall that yours truly will be adding to the DVR.  Hello? Christian Slater playing a psychotic - love it. It's sort of like a schizophrenic Dexter.  And a shameful admission - Debra Messing in the Starter Wife series.  Yes, I watched the mini series - shut up.

To take a step lower (and you thought it wasn't possible), I actually went out to YouTube to listen to Miley Cyrus music.  How on earth did I end up at that point you ask?  It all started innocently enough.  I was reading a blog by this psychiatrist who was all worked up over Katy Perry and I thought to myself - "who the hell is Katy Perry?".  (I also thought "Oh dear god, I'm getting old. Why don't I know about this person??")  I read, I listened and I purchased on iTunes. What can I say, it's a catchy little tune.  I still can't understand why everyone is worked up over this chick - didn't Jill Sobule sing about being bi-curious in the 90's?  

Then I started following links to other crap and I ended up wondering what Miley Cyrus actually sounded like. I've heard her speak and she sounds like she lives under a rock somewhere in the deep south. I had high hopes for her music.  (As I mentioned, I am capable of deep thought these days) As it turns out, she kinds of sounds like a man and not in a good way.  If you dare - it may make your ears bleed.

Then I noticed that that the crappy trio known as the Jonas Brothers are the #1 song on iTunes.  Who is out there buying this crap? 12 year olds?  Do they have credit cards? 

I have to go clean my house now.  Thankfully my boss gave me a half day the other day so I'm halfway there.  It's curious, my best hours are between 9-5 these days.  That doesn't bode well for my domestic duties.  So the house is a bon-a-fide disaster and I can't seem to give a crap.  Lucky for me the other half wouldn't notice if he was standing in 3 feet of garbage anyway.  

"Belize with Bill" and Other International Tragedies

It's been an interesting week. The first thing I would like to bring to everyone's attention is my work husband's neighbor. I would suggest you actually go to the site and experience it for yourself.

http://www.belizewithbill.com/.

As the URL suggests, Bill is looking for someone who will go to Belize with him. Presumably he is interested in females. However the most important thing seems to be that said female will have sex with him and pay for some or all of her own expenses. Should you be interested in taking a little vaca with Bill, there's an application on the site where you will fill out insightful questions - such as, "If Bill is paying your way, why should he?". So many answers, so little time.

I mean let's be honest here - this is straight up solicitation. What kind of female would pimp herself out for a vacation? And if it were me, I would like to know why Bill thinks he's interesting or good enough in the sack to keep someone trapped in a foreign country for a week - quite honestly by day 4 you're going to be a bit sore and you'll likely start to think about how much laundry and work you have waiting for you at home.

Happy hunting Bill!

On a lighter note but perhaps just as psychotic, the Russians won the Eurovision song contest. My husband forced me to watch it for several reasons.

1. The guy was accompanied by some dude playing a Stradivari (the last time one was sold at auction it went for more than $3.5M - Yes! Fantastic choice for reality television! )
2. He also had an Olympic ice dancer swirling away on a patch of ice the size of my kitchen
3. The Russians spent over $15M on the production of this one song
4. The song was produced by Timbaland & written by some dude who works out of Philadelphia.

It's a new level of awesome. And by awesome I mean - completely ridiculous. You have to check this out for yourself. (I was particularly moved by the end when his shirt flies open and the three of them reach out, while kneeling on the ice patch, and tell you that you have to believe. *sniff, sniff* So moving.)

My Grandmother's Special Brand of Torture: Lawrence Welk

I would like to know who thought it was a good idea to close all available shopping on Easter. I have nowhere to go today and thus am stuck on the couch with my grandmother who will only watch reruns of the Lawrence Welk show. Not just any rerun, the Easter special. My parent's say she isn't aware. I think this is all part of her covert plan. I could tell she was just waiting for the remote to be left unattended to make her move. No sooner had this happened and there we were, Lawrence Welk.

This particular show was from the early 80's and as far as I could tell it seemed to be a lot of men with "Reno 911" style mustaches playing acoustic guitars. I might have said that was the highlight, but I think it actually might have been a close second to the dudes in baby blue tuxedos. I never thought I would say this, but I'm sad that the game show network was taken out of the channel line up. At least that was slightly more tolerable.

She's enthralled, tapping her foot, singing along. I wonder if she knows that Lawrence Welk is dead. My money is on no. Enter the happy singing people in pastel with parasols and men in top hats doing the foxtrot…

I’ve decided that PBS is evil. How else can you explain this programming? About that point I was starting to have delusions of a hostile take over of the remote control. Of course I could never do that because I'm really not that mean.

Then enters a man in a bad hair piece, sweating profusely, singing about being nailed to a cross…strangely he sounds a bit like Josh Grobin. I started praying that she would fall asleep so I could change the channel.

It's was clear at that point that it wasn't a rerun but some sort of montage flashback sort of deal with a lady named Ralna English who sang gospel music on the original show with her husband. She is now divorced but came back to sing a song about Mary…in what appeared to be a sky blue stretch polyester pants suit. The camera cut between her in the jumpsuit and renaissance paintings of Mary & Jesus.

Nowhere to go but up from there. Wait, I was wrong…giant super duet – two dudes with mutton chop side burns and two chicks in lemon yellow off the shoulder chiffon…all grinning manically while singing "Put a Little Love in your Heart".

And the last thing I saw before admitting defeat and leaving the room, a big dude with a gold pinky ring playing the organ. Nothing says Easter like a little bling.

And people call reality television terrifying and mind numbing. I'll take Brett Michaels any day over this. Don't believe me? Check this out and I think you may change your mind: www.welkgirls.com

My Shameful Addiction

Pills? No.
Sex? No
Booze? No...

It's Rock of Love.

I realize this is ridiculous. Of all the reality television out there this is close to the most horrifying. That's a respectable achievement when you start to think about all the bad shows out there. I blame my husband. During season one, he added it to the DVR. He forced me to watch it the same way I force him to watch Dexter. After awhile I got into it and started to look forward to what crazy hi-jinx and mayhem the pack of sluts would take part in week after week.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, the basic series of events is as follows:

Brett Michaels – Lead Singer born: ‘63
Glam Metal Band Poison is popular: ’87-’92 (see photo of strange man in leather with too much hair spray)
Glam Metal Band Poison not popular: ’93 – present
Brett Michaels starts looking for his “Rock of Love” – ‘07
Brett Michaels gets dumped by his first "Rock of Love" - '07
Brett Michaels looks for his “Rock of Love” again – ‘08

From what I could gather, last season was pretty low budget. The girls didn't appear to know who they were competing to date. Some of them were so young they didn't know what Poison actually sang. Most importantly, it didn't get really dirty for at least a few episodes. The skank factor had a gradual incline. I had a chance to become invested in the story line; it became more than an exercise in tolerating it weekly because my husband wanted to watch girl fights. (Did I seriously just say that Rock of Love had a story line? God help me.)

Anyway, I can't say the same thing for season two. Immediately it was like Strippers R Us. He hooked up with approximately 23 out of 25 women in the first few hours. I know, you're thinking, "Only 23? What happened to the other two?". One passed out drunk and the other had moral standards (despite the fact that she poses in Playboy). I totally get that - don't you?

So here is the big shocker of season two - one of the ladies is Megan from Beauty and the Geek (pictured at left with her geek, Scooter). How does that work exactly? Is there a network of reality TV stars with fake boobs that just bounce from one show to the next? She just won $250K on the last show. I think 100% of that prize money went directly into her lips in the form of collagen.

Needless to say I may just watch until Megan gets booted, she's dumb and kind of funny. And if not for that reason, what's more fun than watching a pasty, bloated, 40 something washed up ex-rocker with type 1 diabetes suck face with 20 year old strippers? Exactly, I thought you might agree.

The Sugarhill Gang takes over City Hall

Well...it was day three of out new Mayor's term in office. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm encouraged that he knows all the words to Rapper's Delight; it makes me think that perhaps he's not the straight laced geek he sometimes appears to be. This sort of reminds me of a friend of mine from college who had a thing for singing the Humpty Dance. I'm not sure who is more embarrassing. I don't think there's any footage of my friend so we'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he wins.



I wonder if the Mayor had a nickname in college. With a last name like Nutter I'm going to guess it was unavoidable. If my friend, the Jersey Canuck, were here I think she might call him Nutsack. (She has thing for incorporating genitalia references into all proper nouns.) I think I'll reserve the official nicknaming for his next appearance on YouTube.

Here's another little piece of Philadelphia news. They're doing a reality series on A&E called Parking Wars about the Philadelphia Parking Authority. You can also watch the first episode on the site. It's the same principle as Airline. You watch people with awful jobs deal with awful people and someone edits it so that you find the people withe awful jobs endearing and you wonder where they found these awful people. Needless to say, Philadelphia has its share of lunatics so I assume we're ripe for the pickin' when it comes to irate awful people.

The real gem is not the show but the Q&A with the actual employees. They ask them some basic questions about how they got the job and what makes someone successful at the job. Dear lord, terrifying... Here are some highlights so you don't have to torture yourself:

How did you join the PPA?
"Nobody aspires to do this as a kid, "Oh I wanna grow up to be a ticket writer." Yeah right! It's not something I aspired to do as a young man. But some days you gotta thank God you got a job to complain about, you know?"

"There's worse jobs in this world than writing people tickets. There's people that clean out toilets. People that scrub floors."

"My father and my mother recommended that I join the parking authority. She's in Lot Six. My father used to be a ticket writer...He told me I could work for the parking authority I just have to control my mouth."

What traits do you need to do the job well?
"You gotta be kind of cold. Feels like you're a two-legged bloodsucker sometimes. But seriously... you gotta be a little different out here."

"You need to really get into their heads and see what they're thinking and react to it in a way where they won't react crazy and do something nutty."

"This is a schoolyard thing here. You see a guy that hates you from the time he sees you pull up. If you look like you're shaky or you look nervous and they're wound up- you don't need to be doing this job. "

The only thing better than the PPA employees is the panorama of Philadelphia citizens behaving like complete lunatics. Something tells me this can't be good for our tourism.

Please, help me change the channel

In my post holiday couch sitting stupor I have discovered a few scary things on TV. Somehow the digital box has ended up on BBC America and I think it might be stuck. It's a bit like a train wreck, I want to look away but I just keep watching. My latest obsession is a show called "How Clean is your House?". The basic principle is exactly what one might think: people with messy, dirty homes go on the show and end up with clean homes. Two ladies called Kim & Aggie run around to these homes wearing fur trimmed rubber gloves (good thing my mother didn't find those for Christmas...) and they hurl insults at the inhabitants to shame them out of their dirty habits. One of the two, I'm not sure which, frequently tells people that she might be sick. They they take swabs from various places in the house to send out to the lab. Oh yea, and everyone has that teary moment at the end where they talk about what a life changing event the cleaning has been. Also, 75% of these people discuss the sole purpose for doing this is to increase their chances of getting laid.

Here are the highlights...

• One woman liked to throw her dirty underpants all over the house. As a result her little swabs showed traces of candida all over the house. NASTY. (I'm sure she'll get plenty of tail after national television broadcasts her little yeast problem.)
• She also had her refrigerator condemned as a biohazard. She was advised that commercial cleaners would never fix what was in there and to just chuck it.
• There was a gentleman who had resorted to eating biscuits and milk in bed because his kitchen was infested with garbage and flies. (Can someone please tell me what the hell is a biscuit? The only kind I know you can find down south smothered in gravy.)
• Then there was the guy who was advised to vacuum his mattress monthly to keep the dust mites down. He was also the same guy who had cobwebs all over his walls.

I also learned some cleaning tips from these two crazy women. Shaving foam is a wonderful cleanser for walls. (who knew?) For those stubborn stains in the toilet - grab some sandpaper (btw, if you need sandpaper in your toilet, you'd better check your ass). I also threw up in my mouth a little throughout most of these shows. This was sort of like torture. Please don't tell me about all the bacteria and fungus that live around me, it's like dumping kerosene on a smoldering fire... I think I need to go clean now. With bleach...

Next up was a little gem called "You Are What You Eat". Another self explanatory title. People eat badly then they get religion. There's this crazy little Scottish woman, Gillian McKeith, who takes the fatties, tracks what they stuff in their mouth for a week (with the help of some friends that are tired of their pal being a big 'ole porker), has them take a dump so she can check out their poo (while hurling insults like: "I can smell your bad poo from outside this door", "I'll bet you leave skid marks in the bowl when you take a poo", and my personal favorite, "a good poo should hit the water while it's still coming out of you") and then she buys them a gym membership. She does all this in a very shrill squealing voice. People are also terrified of her as well which is fun because sometimes she makes them cry.

• One woman broke down in tears when it was explained to her that she was killing her chubby little children with sugar. (duh...) They pulled together how much sugar she was feeding her little rolly polly's in a week - it was so heavy that the kids couldn't even hold the bowls.
• Then there was a big fatty who liked to eat crisps (Again, a little help here, what is a crisp? Do we have those in this country?) - she cried when she cheated and ate crisps. It was a blubbering mess.
• The candy lady was especially freakish. She consumed more candy in a week than I've purchased in 10 Halloweens. - 14 Liters of Diet Soda and not a single ounce of water.
• The guinea pigs in one house ate better than the children

How is it these people are always shocked when someone tells them that it's bad to eat a bunch of crap? Is this revolutionary or are people just stupid?

However the single funniest thing about BBC America is that they run these sort of public service announcement type commercials suggesting you should put on your closed captioning to understand what the hell everyone is saying. This is especially necessary when watching Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares. My husband has begun running around the house yelling "Bollocks!" in a very strange affected English accent. This is second only to his imitation of the Irish guy at work.

Excuse me now. I'm off, it's time for Coupling....

Mmmbop, ba duba dop, Ba du bop, ba duba dop

So I'm doing my favorite Sunday activity, sitting on the couch. This is the primary reason why I am hesitant to have children...I suspect it may interfere with couch time. It's not just the sitting, you need to watch TV too and more specifically, it has to be bad TV. TLC qualifies or E! or VH1 or my latest obsession, the Biography channel. This is mindless entertainment at its best. This is the reason for this post.

I am watching "Child Stars III: Teen Rockers". Other than the obvious question of "Why on earth would you subject yourself to that?" one has to ask - "Are there really two parts before that, how many teen rockers are there?". So first they profile JoJo whom I will admit to liking quite a bit. I didn't know she was 13 when I heard her music. Seeing her requires a little suspension of disbelief as she's wailing away about some man wronging her but regardless she has a tremendous voice. So I was excited to learn who the next Teen Rocker would be in this fantastic series.

Am I the only person who has never heard of this band Smoosh? Prepubescent sisters from Seattle who have now put out record number 2. One sister plays the drums and the other plays keyboard. They have some hippie crunchy parents and a few siblings and they live in Seattle.

This is when it hits me. We all know at some point we are no longer in the know about certain things. Was I not looking when this happened to me? So I go out to youtube to see what all the fuss is about.

I found the following link. The song isn't too bad if you don't watch. It's a little whinny but makes you think, "oh that's kind of cute". Cute in the way Hanson was cute before they started to like girls.

Smoosh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqvdV4XFMVw
Hanson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk8Yo4pzhWs

Ok, so watch them both back to back. Is any else confused about which band is which? If those Smoosh girls called up another sister to play guitar they could be Hanson. Both groups are doing "stuff" they like - the girls play soccer, the guys do the pseudo surfer thing. Then it cuts back to them playing music. Then it cuts to them running around having fun. Based on extensive research (ok, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration) I have decided that Smoosh is some sort of genetic cloning of Hanson gone awry. I've included a diagram to explain how this is possible.

Did anyone else see that cinematic gem called Multiplicity? (Oh yes, I am referencing a Michael Keaton movie.) Well if you happened to see it, then you know that with each cloning something degrades. Ok, not scientific enough for you? How about Dolly the sheep. Wasn't it bad enough she was named after Dolly Parton? Poor thing had to suffer being #2 and then a decidedly undignified ending when she was euthanized for poor health.

I bet you're wondering where this post is going. You're thinking to yourself - she's not really going to suggest that Smoosh should be euthanized is she? No, I'm not that mean. Ok, maybe I am but those pre-teen fans get really angry and I don't need to bring bad hate karma to this poor little blog. You draw your own conclusions. I offer the following evidence below that #2 is never good enough.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQcMea5g7B0

(On a side note, I spent quite a bit of my Sunday listening to Mmmbop and giggling to myself. Surprisingly, the older brother got much cuter. I also learned through my extensive research that the Hanson brothers have had enough children between the three of them to start a Partridge Family style act. I'm scared.)