The Bachelorette - featuring The Guy with the Mask

Believe it or not this is the 22nd season of the Bachelor/Bachelorette.  I am a relatively new watcher of this show.  Those darn producers are very tricksy and suck you in by recycling the same people from one season to the next.  I was just going to watch one season to give it a try.  One season.  I watched the Jake season and ended up having to go to the eye doctor to get treatment for damage caused by excessive eye rolling.  If I had a dollar for every time he said he was "falling for" someone, I would have about 3000 dollars.  Not enough money to retire to Florida but enough to buy a nice scooter or a couch or something.  Anyway, after Jake's season ended I found myself watching the first episode of the next season of the Bachelorette "just to see what happens with Ali" and BAM, I'm hooked.  I know it is dumb, I'm not trying to pretend that it's not.  You know you all have those guilty pleasure shows that you secretly watch, so don't judge me.  Ok, you can judge me a little since I have several embarrassing guilty pleasure shows.

My favorite bachelor so far this season, hands down, is Jeff...the guy in the mask.  For those of you that have missed the first 2 episodes, let me fill you in with everything you need to know:  Jeff wants to be judged on his personality instead of his looks so he has decided to wear a mask.  All the time.  Here is my letter to him:

Dear Guy in the Mask,

Bravo to you for trying to make a social statement!  Bra-vo.  We need more 35 year old, reality show contestant/entrepreneur divorcees like you standing up for inner beauty.  I get what you are trying to do.  I also applaud your commitment to the whole thing.  You are not only hiding your face but you are also constantly peering awkwardly over the balcony at everyone.  Nice touch.  I am not so much against the mask in theory.  I am, however, not a fan of the particular mask that you have chosen.  It looks as though you decided on a 1-inch thick, rubber, full-face covering.  Interesting choice.  I assume that you felt as though you might suffocate wearing the full face mask in the California heat so instead of finding a smaller, lighter mask' you decided to just saw off the bottom half of the giant mask.  

Guy in the Mask, just between you and me, you are starting to panic a little bit now aren't you?  There is no way that you planned to wear the mask for this long.  How do you sleep?  How do you shower?  I'm glad the producers of the show included a shot of you sitting on the toilet so that we knew you were in fact ALWAYS wearing the mask.  I'm guessing you had planned to reveal your face in all of its glory to Ashley at the perfect moment.  Unfortunately, just as that "perfect" moment arrived, one of the other dudes interrupted with, "hey man, can I steal Ashley away for a minute?"  You were then left, still masked, sitting on a dark staircase...alone.  Now you have to give her the whole I'm-revealing-the-face-once-and-for-all speech again.

Let me ask you this...what reaction are you hoping to get from Ashley at your big facial reveal?  Have you thought about the awkward position you are putting her in?  Chances are she will be thinking, "oh, neat...a face" but with so much buildup she will feel like she has to say something more exciting that will in no way be genuine.

At least you know that Ashley is keeping you around because she is completely interested in you.  That is why they call it reality TV, because if it wasn't reality the producers would probably make her keep you on the show to boost ratings even though she was zero percent attracted to you.  Good thing that's not the case.

Good luck to you my friend.  Can't wait to see yo' face!

Karen

My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding

10 Things I Learned about Gypsies from watching this show:

1.  Even though English gypsies speak English, they still need subtitles.  The accent that Brad Pitt uses for his role as a gypsy in the movie Snatch is ridiculously accurate.

2.  Cleaning and looking after the house are a woman's job.  (see item 3)  The bride being profiled on the show dropped out of school at the age of 9 to help her mother with the house work.  She was also expected to look after her 8 younger siblings.

3.  Many gypsies live in trailers.  Most of these trailers appear to have approximately 50 square feet of interior space....no not 500...50.  It must take the woman an entire 10 minutes to scrub the trailer from top to bottom each day to keep it clean for her man.

4.  The average marrying age of a gypsy girl is 17.  Many are engaged as early as 14.  And remember, this documentary was not filmed in "Jesus Times" it was filmed in 2011.

5.  Gypsy girls are not allowed to go out in public (and certainly not into a group of boys) alone.  If a boy is interested in a girl he practices what they call "grabbing" (see item 6)

6.  The Rules of Grabbing:
Boy sees girl.
Boy likes girl.
Boy literally pulls girl away from her friends.
Boy asks girl if he can kiss her.
Girl may either say yes or no.
If girl says no boy then exerts physical force on girl (actual arm twisting, pushing, restraining) until girl agrees to let boy kiss girl.

They showed a scene of "grabbing" and I felt like calling the police...especially since the girl in question was 14 years old.

7.  Gypsy girls have very high moral standards (for example: absolutely no drinking or sex before marriage) but nonetheless dress like miniature ladies of the night.  They also dance like tiny strippers.  They showed a scene from a First Communion for a 9 year old and all of the little girls were booty poppin' (that's the second time in less than a week that I have used the term booty poppin) and droppin it like it was hot.  When asked where they learned their moves they said, "from Beyonce".

This is a picture from the show, not a picture of an actual street walker.  Josie here is out on the town having fun with her teenage friends and her mother, who is also named Josie.  All of the girls and the mother are dressed like this.

These girls are all dressed up for their friend's First Communion...yes, seriously.

8. Weddings and First Communions are a BIG BIG deal in the gypsy culture.  And BIG BIG deals call for BIG BIG dresses.  The 9 year old girl who was celebrating her First Communion wore a dress that used 500 yards of material...no not 50...500!  The bride's dress weighed in at 70 pounds.

9.  When it comes to gypsy communion dresses and wedding dresses, cuts and bleeding are normal.  The dresses are so gigantic and heavy that many of the girls end up with cuts on their shoulders and hips from the weight of the material.  One bride had battery packs all over the inside of her dress to power several strands of working lights.  She also had someone following her around with a fire extinguisher just in case.

10.  Last but not least, the "rat tail" hairstyle is perfectly acceptable for gypsy men.

Law & Order

Law & Order creator Dick Wolf started his fourth series on the franchise this year with Law & Order: Los Angeles.  The original L&O started in 1990 but I didn't start watching until about 10 years later.  I have watched L&O Criminal Intent pretty faithfully (through several sets of detectives) but was completely dedicated to Law & Order: SVU since its beginning in 1999.

I fondly remember watching SVU in my college apartment on my futon late at night wondering what kind of danger Benson and Stabler would find themselves in this week. I never missed an episode, literally.  Around 2006 I started to notice that the show was becoming a little outrageous (and not in a good way) but I pushed that thought out of my mind.  How dare I question the plausibility of the situations on my precious evening drama.  With the acclaimed acting skills of Ice-T and levity of Richard Belzer I convinced myself to over look the fact that each of the episodes was exactly like the last.

Finally in 2009 my husband staged a Law & Order: SVU intervention.  He sat me down and told me it was time to give up the show.  He told me that SVU had become so dumb that it was a waste of my time to watch it and I should move on to bigger and better shows.  I made one last ditch effort to convince him (and myself) that it was still a good show.  I said, "let me tell you what exciting things happened on the last episode!"  He said, "Let me guess.  Someone was murdered and one of the detectives took it personally and went on a rogue mission to avenge the death of the victim?  And that same detective took it one step too far and put themselves in a grey moral area and ended up being chastised by the Captain?"  I had to concede and admit that every episode did in fact have the same plot line.  So it was a great 10 year run but I am glad I stopped watching.

Enter 2011 and new show Law & Order Los Angeles!!  The cast is weird: Skeet Ulrich from Scream, Alfred Molina from Spiderman, Terrence Howard from Hustle and Flow, and some dude with a mustache.  Surprisingly, mustache guy turned out to be the most entertaining of them all.  Sadly, L&O Los Angeles was cancelled before they even finished airing the first season.  Oh well.  I still have Law & Order: Criminal Intent which premieres next week welcoming back Vincent D'Onofrio.  (aka the guy from Men In Black, "Edgar, your skin is hanging off your bones")

TLC's Say Yes to the Dress

It seems as though there are 3 distinct types of brides that appear on this show:

1. The Low Self Esteem Bride
2. The I Am Fabulous Bride
3. The Princess Bride

The Low Self Esteem Bride
This one is the most difficult to watch.  This bride thinks she looks terrible in everything and arrives at Kleinfeld having already tried on 100 dresses.  She may be a size 2 or a size 30, it doesn't matter.  Every dress she tries on looks fine to us, the viewer at home, but the bride hates it and thinks she looks huge or her bo-hiney looks flat or her surgery scar is showing etc.  The Low Self Esteem bride usually goes way over the time limit for her appointment and then ends up leaving without buying anything.  The Low Self Esteem Bride is often named Debbie...Debbie Downer! Zing!

The I Am Fabulous Bride
This bride is loud and boisterous and obnoxious.  She usually has an entourage of at least 10 people (who are also loud and obnoxious) and include relatives, friends, co-workers, sorority sisters, wedding planners, gardeners, mail carriers and tax accountants.  Ok, maybe not those last few.  This bride is the opposite of the low self esteem bride in that she thinks EVERYTHING looks good on her.  I am in no way a fashion expert but even I know that if you are an apple shaped person you should not be buying a mermaid style dress.  Another recurring theme for the fabulous bride is that she picks an over the top dress with a lot of "bling" (that is a word from the show, not a word I choose to use in my normal vocabulary).  Only after she has fallen in love with the dress does she bother to look at the price tag and realize it is double her budget.  Ms. Fabulous usually decides to go ahead and buy the dress even though she can't even almost afford it but will of course look fab-u-lous on her wedding day.

The Princess Bride
When a bride meets with a consultant at the beginning of her appointment, one of the first questions is, "what is your price point?"  The Princess Bride almost always looks at her father or mother or grandmother (whoever is planning to pay for the dress) with a pouty lip and big Bambi eyes until the one with the wallet answers the question with my favorite Say Yes to the Dress line of all time: "whatever my baby wants my baby gets".  In other words, there is no price limit as long as the little princess is happy.  The Princess Bride often says she wants to look and feel like a princess on her wedding day.  Why is this term used so much in America?  We don't have princesses other than Disney princesses and I personally do not want to model my wedding dress after Jasmine's belly dancer pant suit from Aladdin but that's just me.  I get that your wedding day is important to you but some of these people get way out of control.  Is it really worth it to spend 10 or 20 or 30 THOUSAND dollars on a dress that you are going to wear for half of a day?  The fathers always say (with a little apprehension in their voice) that they just want their little princess to be happy.  Well it's your fault there Dad that she isn't happy with anything less than the most expensive dress in the store.  Maybe if you had set a few boundaries earlier in life she wouldn't be such a spoiled brat.  Maybe the Dad is just happy to marry her off so that she is on someone else's payroll.

Short Summer Series and SYTYCD

Some people think the summer is a time to take a break from television.  I am not one of these people.  For me summer is a time to watch a lot of very random and often cheesy programs.  For example, the last two summers America was blessed with short term (12 week) murder-mystery series: 2009 was Harper's Island and 2010 was Persons Unknown.  Both of these series were terrible...or terribly awesome.  Lots of implausible plot twists and over the top gory death scenes with a finale that unveils the most unlikely suspect as the killer.  I have been on the lookout for 2011's version of the summer series but have not yet seen anything.  Bummer.

One of my favorite summer shows is So You Think You Can Dance.  I have an extensive dance background myself: I took 1 combo jazz/tap/ballet class at Ms. Melva's school of dance when I was 9.  I feel that this personal experience in dance makes me an expert "at home" judge for the show.  It seems like the contemporary dancers are taking over the show.  This is a style of dance that I don't really appreciate.  During all of the contemporary dancer auditions I find myself saying, "I could do that.  I could do that too.  All she is doing is falling on the floor and holding her arms out toward the judges."  The season premiere of SYTYCD was this week.  The standout audition for me in the premiere was Ieshia Moss.  Ieshia had a unique look which is usually something that is appreciated by the judges.  Unfortunately, her missing front tooth paired with her quadruple stripe eye shadow wasn't enough to send her straight through to Hollywood.  When asked what style of dance she would be performing she replied, "I used to be a stripper so that's where my booty poppin come from."  She then proceeded to do a dance that I WOULD NOT be able to do.
During the second half of the show Tyce Diorio was back on the judges panel.  He says things to the dancers like, "that was dirty and disgusting and sick, you killed it."  The contestants always look a little confused as to whether his comments are a compliment or not.  It turns out that being disgusting and sick is a good quality in the eyes of Tyce...jazz hands!  Spirit fingers!

This Season on TV Overload...

I love TV.  When other little kids wanted to be doctors or policemen when they grew up I wanted to be a professional TV watcher.  My dad reminds me of this quite often and each time he reminds me, he makes sure to point out that Professional TV Watcher is not a real thing.  I think I fully realized my obsession/love for television about 6 years ago.  The new fall season was starting and I was having trouble keeping track of my growing list of shows.  I decided to make a detailed TV watching spreadsheet which displayed start date, time, channel and run time for each show.  The first year I did this my spreadsheet had 25 shows, since that time it has gone up and down with an all time high of 34 shows per week. TiVo/DVR has been a real life saver for me.  (My husband would not agree with this statement)  Being able to fast forward through commercials has allowed me to watch more shows in a shorter amount of time and not really have to choose between 2 shows that air at the same time.  I will admit that there have been seasons in the past where I have had 3 shows airing at the same time and have been forced (my husband would not agree with the word "forced" here) to record 2 while I watch a 3rd show live on a different TV.  Do I realize how insane this sounds?  Yes.  Am I embarrassed?  Yes, well at least sometimes.  Do I hate it when people ask themselves questions and then answer them?  Definitely.

I frequently find myself in conversations with people about TV.  Whenever someone asks, "hey do you watch (insert TV show name here)?"  My answer is usually yes.  I thought this would be a good platform to have some of those conversations over the world wide web rather than in person...since I have no time to talk to people because I am busy watching TV.  Thanks for visiting.  Please leave me comments with your opinions and thoughts on the shows I discuss.  Perhaps if I get enough followers someone will actually hire me to be a professional TV watcher.  Just kidding.