How much do you think my head weighs? February 4, 2011

 

As all my smarty-pants readers know, next Tuesday, February 8, is the day of reckoning. The day I will step on the scale and calculate just how productively I’ve been spending my time and talents.

What? No, not that. As if I would share my weight-loss efforts with you guys. No offense, but mind your own beeswax. I’m allowed to say that because I am a character in a Judy Blume young adult novel.

That right there — my widespread knowledge of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” “Superfudge” and “Blubber” — is something I hope will help me on Tuesday when I log on to the Jeopardy website and take the online test to be considered for an audition to be a contestant on the only game show that matters.

For whatever reason, the rules are fairly convoluted. I can only take the online test on this day, and my results are not revealed to me. Then I wait. If I pass, then my name goes onto the pile with other smarties. If I get the call to go to an audition city, awesome. Either way, I wait for 18 months before I can take the test again.

I don’t want to wait 18 months, people. So obviously I’ve got some work to do. Not on potential subject matter; when it comes to Jeopardy! subjects, it’s like a standardized test. You either know it or you don’t. You win by strategy. You pick your categories and you crush your opponents by ringing in the fastest. In my case, that would be categories related to music, pop culture, television, movies, religion, podcasts (as if), literature, media, pregnancy and cooking.The secondary strategy is also important: If it’s not your best category but you know bits here and there, you read the end of the clue while Alex is reading the beginning of the clue, go with your gut, and ring in. For me this would include politics, U.S. presidents, world leaders, chemistry and those crazy word puzzle categories. If you flat-out stink on certain subjects, just sit quietly unless the answer jumps out at you, such as in opera, physics and math.

So, what I’m really working on are my stories. If I excel on the online test, and the stars align, and I do get called to an audition, then I’d better have my Calvinette charm, poise and confidence ready to go, and I’d better have some good stories. I expect that at the audition, they’re also testing a person’s on-screen presence and potentiality for a witty exchange with Alex. Actually, it doesn’t have to be the greatest story in the world, evidently. This week, one contestant told a “story” about how when she received her college diploma in the mail, she could not immediately figure out how to open it. I … um … that is … so interesting … of course you would pick … that story … to start your first game …

Based on the riveting diploma story, I think I’ve got at least a decent foundation to start with. I figure I’ll need to have at least three good ones in the bank. (Makes me wonder what Diploma Lady’s back-up stories were about … the time she went went shopping and found a good sale on canned peas … AND ALSO REALIZED SHE HAD A COUPON?! Or the time  she fell and hit her head and forgot about everything interesting that ever happened to her?)

Not that I’m terribly interesting, but I have to at least believe I am interesting to get noticed at an audition, right? So my first stab at it will be to go right for the Gross-Out: The time I got Canyon Toe from wearing the wrong socks while hiking the Grand Canyon, and lost five of my toenails. Story No. 2 (the Suck-Up): The first time I felt Little Dude kick inside the womb was while watching Jeopardy. Story No. 3: (the Mishap) The time I started a kitchen fire while trying to make tortilla chips. If I need additional stories, like, in case I win more than two games in a row (you may stop laughing … now), I’ve got some more backups, including the tale of how I acquired my dimple by crashing into a barstool (I was 3, and no, not drunk); and finally, an explanation of what I plan to do with all my winnings, which is to give ten percent to our church’s deficient budget and then use the rest to help pay off the mortgage on our house in Texas, and then, if possible, donate the house and the land to someone deserving.

The other thing I’m working on is my husband. He’s supposed to be building me a little buzzer to help me practice my thumb speed, but he’s as yet to get started on that. In the meantime, I suppose I’ll just have to poke him in the shoulder with my speedy little thumb every time I have an answer for anything.

“Jenn, where’s the big scissors?” Poke. “Where you left it.”

“Have you seen my iPod?” Poke. “Yes, it’s very pretty.”

“Jenn, where are the baby’s socks.” Poke. “Top drawer.” Poke-poke-poke. “That’s for the next three times you ask me.”

Answer: “The number of thumb pokes it will take before the Husband makes me a practice buzzer.” Question. “What is 17, or until I decide to raid the toolbox and make one myself.”

Wish me luck!

Can we all just leave this guy alone for a while? January 12, 2011

My parents thought I was a bit crazy in college when I chose Streetwise for my writing internship. But not only did the job give me some pretty interesting filler for my post-college portfolio, the entire experience was, every single day, eye opening. I dislike describing it as “putting a human face” on homelessness, but I don’t know how else to put it.

For those of you who don’t know, Streetwise is a newspaper sold by homeless men and women in downtown Chicago. They buy each copy for $0.25, and sell it for $1. Say what you want about how annoying it is to be accosted by dudes trying to sell you Streetwise every morning when you’re just trying to pop in and out of Starbucks on your way to work, I’ve heard it all. But I still maintain it’s an amazing organization that offers people the chance to get back on their feet with dignity, and without having to listen to a sermon in exchange for help.

Over the past week, one human, homeless face has been plastered all over the television. Ted Williams, a man who had once trained his voice for a career in radio, was discovered on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, begging for work. Somebody noticed the voice, and for some reason the story exploded. He’s been on television non-stop since then, doing both the interview circuit and getting gigs with professional sports organizations. I’m so glad he got off the streets, but I could not help but have an icky feeling about all of it. Not an ickiness toward Ted, but toward the media. As if there are not a hundred thousand other homeless people still homeless, who once studied an art form or a trade and fell on hard times because of drugs, mental illness or both.

And just as I was starting to form that thought in my head, the tide turned.

It is my own fault for getting caught up in this story. Every morning I feed the baby his oatmeal and applesauce and I try, SO HARD, to keep the TV on children’s programming. But at 7 a.m. I can only take one episode of Blue’s Clues, and sometimes the kid takes about an hour to get through a meal. At some point, I need to hear an adult voice delivering the news. I haven’t had my caffeine yet and I don’t have the patience for the measured delivery of National Public Radio. I just want a quick, peppy injection of the day’s news and I want to see the fabulous Robin Roberts because, I don’t know. I love her and she never looks tired and I imagine she smells good? Is that a good enough reason? And so, I turn on Good Morning America. Even though I find myself yelling at George Stephanopoulos for doing hacky interviews with Charlie Sheen’s hired escort — “George! You went to Oxford! You worked for President Clinton! You are better than this! Snap out of it!”

This morning, the media, not surprisingly, totally turned on this guy. After sticking a camera in his face for the last eight or nine days and congratulating themselves on helping this single person find a job, everyone is now reporting on rumors that poor Ted is drinking again. They’re going back and recutting the footage of his kids, his pleading mother, his admissions to past substance abuse — AS IF IT’S A REAL NEWS STORY.

What GMA and Entertainment Tonight and every other professional with access to a camera and a live feed does not seem to remember is they created the perfect storm for this man to have a relapse. They jolted him into a major life change and expected him to act on his best behavior, with no real social or clinical support. And now the reporters are shocked, SHOCKED, that he’s been questioned by police for arguing too loudly with his daughter at the posh hotel they set him up in. Set him up — that is the whole truth of it. The dude wasn’t even arrested — just harassed by police. Something I’m sure he’s never experience before as a homeless black man in the U.S.

I’m not surprised by any of it, but maybe I’m just surprised at how surprised everyone is. Can y’all just leave him alone now, and let him go to work, get counseling, get comfortable in his new home, before you aim the cameras at him again? Come on people, it’s going to take a while. Leave him be. Lay off.

The one thing we all need to realize when we put a human face on homelessness is that face belongs to someone just like us — an actual, complicated, messy human being.

Resolutions for you January 3, 2011

Moo-Moo Bossy Cow is here to tell you how to live your life. She doesn’t emerge too often, but she’s been watching this blog from the sidelines for some time now, and she is currently pushing me out of my Ikea office chair to put in her two cents. She says she can’t take it anymore. And so, I give you, Moo-Moo Bossy Cow. Let’s hope the Ikea chair made for skinny Swedes can withstand her bovine butt:

1. You people who don’t watch TV? Nobody cares. If you’ve never heard of Dexter or The Bachelor or The Office or even Sesame Street, we’d all like you to shut up about it. In 2011, you should resolve to just keep quiet when the Losties are pining for more Shirtless Sawyer, because nobody is interested in steering the conversation around to your not having/watching television.

2. By the same token, you people watching every permutation of Law & Order, CSI and NCIS? You are screwing up the ratings system. Also, those of you watching Two and a Half Men? Stop it. Stop it right now. It’s because of you that delightful people like Julia Louis-Dreyfuss get their shows cancelled and untalented abusers get rewarded with the biggest paychecks in sitcom history. Resolve to have better taste.

3. Resolve to scoop the cat litter. Every day. You know who you are.

4. Congratulations on buying a new shower curtain. Now, please resolve to leave the shower curtain closed after showering. By opening it, you are trapping moisture inside the folds of the vinyl curtain, and that is what is causing the mold and mildew to build up.

5. RSVP. RSVP. RSVP. Say it with me, people. R-S-V-P. You can do it. You were all raised better than that. I know this is true because I know all of your mothers.

6. Resolve to not damage the psyche of kids. A card that reads “I didn’t know what to buy you for Christmas because I don’t know what your interests are,” is NOT GOOD ENOUGH for a 13-year-old boy. You know who you are. Shame, blisters, and mysterious itching be upon you until you get your head out from betwixt your buttcheeks and figure your shit out.

7. Resolve to make your life suck less by not cutting off your loved ones just because they don’t live up to your exacting yet unspecified standards.

8. Resolve to laugh at your own religion once in a while. It will make you a nicer person to be around. And make you less likely to be, you know, a terrorist. That goes for Christians, too.

9. Not to get too New Age-y, but with everything you choose this year, ask yourself how it makes your life better. Ask, “Does this purchase/chocolate bar/third glass of wine/bit of gossip/nail color/phone call/blog post/tweet/Facebook status update help me reach my goals or help someone else reach their goals in life?”

10. Resolve to edit. Nobody wants to know exactly what your adorable kid is doing every second of every day. Well, that’s not true. Somebody does want to know, but those are the people who really should NOT know. If you know what I mean.

Back to you, Too Many.

– OK, thanks for that. I think. If I had known you were going to take dead aim like that I might not have invited you to guest blog, Moo-Moo. Then again, cows cannot be counted on for subtlety.

Too many causes December 3, 2010

I know, I know. Petitions don’t actually do much more than squat. Also, I know there are tons more causes for me to get fired up about. Like, for instance, just about anything currently getting railroaded through the Senate, things most likely concurrent with issues about which my president is buckling under.

HowEVer, here we have a problem we can easily overcome.

If you still believe in the power of petitions, link here and sign this (I tried to grab the widget but I think my Husband/tech support has disabled javascript on this machine or something).

If you don’t believe in the power of petitions, sign it anyway, or don’t. But if you love me, you will NOT — I repeat NOT — spend one red cent to see any Warner Bros. remake, retool, retread, re-whatever, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that has not been worked on by the original creator, writer, mastermind and — I’ll just say it — demigod, Joss Whedon.

Signing this little petition probably won’t stop any Hollywood dunderhead from serving up such an abomination. Still, I have to wonder what the motivation is. Well, that’s not really much of a mystery, is it? Money. I wonder if any of them realize that none of this money is going to come from true Buffy fans. And really, what kind of a Buffy fan is not a true fan? We are legion, and we are VERY serious about our love of Joss Whedon.

I’ll spare you my rant, but I will refer you here, in which I first wrote about the atrocities coming to Sunnydale.

Seriously, Warner Bros. Just, no. STOP.

Royal pains November 19, 2010

I don’t remember how I got there, but I woke up one morning in 1981, somehow curled up on the plaid brown sofa in my aunt’s basement rec room, the TV blaring the news. Dad must have picked me up out of bed while I was still asleep, and driven my mom and me over to my aunt’s house, as my mom did not drive back in those days. I was eight years old and not so much interested in watching the news as finding out how I’d been transported across town in my pajamas without my consent. Someone could have at least turned the channel to cartoons.

And then I saw it. The Dress. The wedding dress that seemed to go on forever. The pretty English lady from TV was getting married to a real life prince, and here we were. My mom and my aunt, two people who rarely gave a passing glance at any news coverage of the far away noble family, and if they ever did, they might make some comment about not understanding the English fascination with royalty.

But on that early, dark, Midwestern morning, we weren’t judgmental Americans turning up our noses at English ceremony. We were just women. More to the point, we and a hundred million other American women were being simultaneously transported back to our childhoods. For one morning, we all got to be little girls again, for we were literally watching a lady become a princess. A princess! Just like in all the storybooks: marry a prince, become a princess, live happily ever after.

As hindsight is 20/20, I am sure we all proceeded to retroactively declare the marriage of Princess Diana to Prince Charles doomed from the beginning. When it all ended in divorce, we all suddenly remembered how she seemed far too young for him. Or how she was a preschool teacher and not someone used to living in the spotlight or adhering to monarchical protocols day in, day out. Still, she was fun to watch; we all liked her, whatever we thought of the rarified monarchy.

I first heard of Princess Diana’s fatal car wreck the morning after. I was sitting in church in Iowa. During special requests, a young woman stood up and suggested that we pray for England and the royal family. After I pieced together what had happened, I was so stunned I wished I had someone to hold my hand. But I had gone to church alone that morning, and the way the news hit me was totally different than the way it feels when a celebrity whom I admire dies. It was one of those “I’ll never forget where I was” moments.

This week’s news of Prince William’s engagement to Kate Middleton converged at the same time my book club discussed “The other Boleyn Girl” by Philippa Gregory, and so I’ve got the monarchy somewhat on the brain this week. A friend of mine in the club very emphatically pointed out that after so many centuries of chopping off heads and throwing prisoners in towers, there is no real reason for the British people to allow the royal family to continue in the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed. They have no real power, have no real jobs, and yet they live off public taxes, she said. She dismissed the princes’ time spent in the military as cushy and over-publicized. She wondered why anybody should have any fascination with them at all, for what are they other than a bloodline?

She may be right. I can’t pretend to know that much about the monarchy or understand why the British public chooses to maintain it. On the other hand, she reminds me of a conversation I had with a co-worker a few years ago. A sports reporter and a Texas good old boy, he did not understand the point of art. Any art at all. He rarely listened to music, did not understand paintings, and never read books. “What is the point? How would our lives be any different if there was no music and no paintings to look at? It wouldn’t make a bit of difference in the larger scheme of things. Our lives would be exactly the same, so who cares?” Yes, I said, you’re right, but the difference is our lives would be utterly dull and void of any spark at all. That’s kind of how I have come to view the royal family. So, Henry VIII was a heartless, selfish, temperamental jock. King George III was no peach, either. And, as Gregory characterizes it, the royal courtiers could have done with spending more of their time gainfully employed and less time scheming and turning out their 13-year-old daughters to the kings’ “favor.” Still, I’m not so sure these are reasons to chuck the whole thing out the window and turn Buckingham Palace into solely a museum.

In my younger days I used to rail against any and all forms of tradition for tradition’s sake. If a ritual or ceremony was kept up for no other reason than ritual or display, then my stand would be to do away with it. I’ve taken a slightly less strident approach these days. Sometimes, little rituals are nice for their own sake. When the Husband and I were received into the Episcopal Church, the bishop did not NEED to tap us on the cheek — a symbol of centuries past when clergy would welcome new members with an actual slap to knock the devil out of a person — but he did. It’s a nod to tradition. We certainly do not need to burn incense in church anymore — it was originally used to keep flies away from the communion bread and wine — but the scent of sandalwood on high holy days such as Christmas and Easter and All Saint’s Day lets me know it is a special moment, and that the smoke in the air is the same as it’s been on every special day for more than a thousand years, and we’re all a part of that history.

So why should we care about royal weddings and titles and knighthoods and corgis? If nothing else, it tells a story. Maybe it’s not always the perfect Cinderella story, but it is a symbol of a country’s history, and history is messy.

As I see it, we could always do with a little more ceremony and a lot less humdrum.

So long, and thanks for all the tots November 1, 2010

Well, it happened. All Sonic Drive-Ins of NE Indiana are now closed, thanks to the utter lack of advertising, either by corporate headquarters in Oklahoma, or by the absence of any promotional efforts by the local franchisee. It’s not my fault — a girl can only eat so many breakfast burritos.

Aside from the cracks in my soul left behind by the absence of those vanilla-scented onion rings, another sad part of the story is those buildings are pretty distinctive. There’s not much else you can do with an empty Sonic Drive In, besides re-open it as a Sonic Drive-In. Or as a pale shadow of the dying carhop joint serving classic car enthusiasts in Lake County, IN. The probable scenario is all these cute-for-a-fast-food-joint buildings will sit empty for the foreseeable future, just like all the indistinct strip malls-turned to ghost towns by escalating rent combined with crappy sales in this economy, combined with douchey bank managers who won’t give out loans to small businesses to tide them over until we’re fully out of this recession, even though my taxes have been paying for the bonuses for said douchey bank managers for over two years now.

If you think I’m somehow, in my conclusion, going to be able to logically and factually connect the flailing economy to the closings of the world’s greatest fast food restaurant locations in NE Indiana, you haven’t been reading this blog for very long.

Instead, I leave you with this math-related Sonic commercial, which demonstrates how much I understand economics.

 

 

T-Minus 50 minutes until live tweet of Amazing Race October 31, 2010

Tune in to the far right column of Too Many Jennifers or follow me on Twitter for a live tweet of the Amazing Race … because I’m too darn lazy to post a great big recap.

Happy Halloween!

Full disclosure: I’m not getting paid to say this October 26, 2010

Here is one of the happiest places on earth, next to Disney World:

I really should not be eating fast food. In fact, my doctor just reminded me that my triglycerides are a bit high. Not life-changingly high, but enough for the nurse to be instructed to phone me and explain to me how to cook with olive oil instead of grease. Really? Also, I just started counting my Weight Watchers food points again, so I have no business indulging in tots and a cherry lime-ade.

That said, I’m sad to announce as I sit here thinking about darting out for a diet Dr. Pepper and a corn dog, that my favorite fast-food chain is in danger. At least here in the black hole of Northeast Indiana, where they don’t seem to know from good restaurant chains. Note the preponderance of Applebees’s, and the lack of P.F. Changs’s. Four Sonic Drive-Ins in the area are closed, and the last one is gasping and sputtering to stay open.

How could this be? Perhaps the consumers of bland, overly salted Midwestern fare don’t know that Sonic makes the world’s best onion rings. No argument, no debate. Their secret? Vanilla in the batter. I’m totally serious, people. It is amazing. But that’s not even my favorite thing. Most comfort food is tied to a happy memory, and just a few of my most recent happy memories have involved getting up obscenely early to hit the road for a holiday trip to see our family in far-off states. The husband and I don’t even have to ask the question. First stop, two Supersonic breakfast burritos and two large coffees. Most days I excel at picking healthful foods over fatty and salty, but I defy anyone (except maybe vegetarians) to turn their nose up at eggs, cheese, jalapenos, onions, sausage, tomatoes and tots all wrapped up in a hot flour tortilla. It is the perfect kind of breakfast for a long day. It may have something on the order of 15 Weight Watchers food points, but it sticks with you way past lunchtime. Speaking of snobs, you won’t find a bigger coffee snob than me, however Sonic coffee is not bad at all. It’s obviously made fresh with good water, from a pot that’s cleaned obsessively — believe me, I can tell. And, the coffee is never so bloody hot as to compel some old crank to file a lawsuit if she should clumsily spill it on herself.

The best part? You don’t have to sit in a drive-through lane. You can if you want to, but mostly you are encouraged to park your car, turn off your engine, and have your lunch delivered to you by a cheerful carhop, sometimes on rollerskates. It’s adorable, but with or without the skates, it’s a unique opportunity to tip a fast food server.

And why don’t people know about this? Hardly any advertising at all. Just a month ago, we had five Sonics in the area and almost no Sonic commercials on local broadcast television, and zero advertising or coupons in local shoppers and newspapers. On the flip side of that, my entire family lives in the Chicago area, where they see the quirky, witty Sonic commercials every day, yet there are no Sonics in sight. You would think that a company with the sense to hire comedians from the Upright Citizens Brigade to act in its commercials would also have a better handle on marketing.

As with most things I like to complain about, the South got it right. Down in Texas, you can’t swing a dead cat, or a live one, for that matter, without hitting a Sonic. And you can’t watch TV for an hour without seeing one of these.

Seriously, go get yourself some tots, ya cheapskates. Or I might be moving South again sooner than planned.

New face, new feature: recap of ‘Amazing Race’ September 27, 2010

Now that things are in a somewhat predictable pattern of chaos, I’ve decided to take some time off from the television on Monday afternoons, and to blog about television. What? You thought this was going to turn into a mommy blog?

Last night’s season 17 premiere of The Amazing Race, probably the only reality show compelling enough for me to want to recap, had me commenting out loud to no one in particular for the entire 66 minutes. So I thought I’d change that “no one in particular” into “you, specifically.”

Because it’s about the characters, and not so much about the challenges, here are my first impressions as they introduce the teams:

Andie and Jenna: Biological mother with daughter whom she put up for adoption. Nice, sweet, and potentially the most interesting team. I fear their niceness is going to get them steamrolled by leg four of the race.

Brooke and Claire: Loud QVC hosts, mostly likely wanna-be actresses using reality TV as their strategy to get attention in Hollywood. Yawn.

Chad and Stephanie: Dating couple No. 1. Both seem dead behind the eyes.

Connor and Jonathan: Singing guys from Princeton. Love them. Love any excuse for singing.

Gary and Mallory: Cute father/daughter team, this time with a likable pageant queen who’s never had her verbal diarrhea smeared all over the internet for eternity.

Jill and Thomas: Dating couple No. 2. Blah. She’s a stylist, he’s a Notre Dame grad. Probably not their fault that the producers couldn’t highlight anything more interesting than cosmetology school, and getting her to say something inane about AR winners not needing to be college graduates.

Katie and Rachel: Matching snarky blonde bimbos. That’s about it.

Nat and Kat: Gorgeous doctors who proclaim themselves to be nerds. Ladies, it’s cool and all that you performed an emergency heart transplant together, but you are NOT nerds. You look like hot actresses who only play doctors on TV. We nerds deny you entry into the club.

Michael and Kevin: Father/son team. The real nerds.

Nick and Vicki: Tattoos. Motorcycles. Stupid baseball cap with the flattened bill. If that wasn’t bad enough, Nick also likes faux-hawk hairdos and saying things like “one million buck-a-rooskies.” I want to slap him right now.

Ron and Tony: Couple who met while performing The Wiz. Seriously watchable guys, but I’m going to make a prediction right now — and only because I’m a chubby lady who almost died trying to hike the Grand Canyon, so I’m allowed to say it — Ron and Tony are out at the end of this leg. Sorry, Tony. You are lovely, and I have a feeling I would really enjoy having dinner with you and talking about Lost or something, but the extra trunk junk is going to hold you back.

The first leg of the race sends the teams off to England to find Stonehenge, where they receive a clue — “the opposite of noreaster” — which leads them to Eastnor Castle. This is why I’m not on Amazing Race: I totally thought the answer was “southwestern.”

This is the point at which Vicki, she of the “don’t underestimate us because we’re tattooed and stuff,” gives us her first of three amazing quotes of the day: “I had never even heard of Stonehedge (sic), and then I found out it’s a bunch of rocks.”

Along the way, the Angry Americans are already giving us a little preview of their true colors. Though Chad is the first to get bleeped, Rachel gives us two “son-of-a” biscuits, one just because she can’t figure out how to open the hatchback of a Smart car. I’m not going to even try to pick that low-hanging fruit and make a crack about how some cars are too smart for some people. Rachel might prove to be entertaining, at least: Methinks a Sawyer-esque Youtube montage is somewhere in Rachel’s future, either for the swears, or for her propensity to nickname everybody. Before the episode’s end, Rachel has already dubbed the Princeton guys as “Team Glee,” Stephanie “Tinkerbell,” and Mallory “Sunshine.” But Chad gets the mean prize when he shows us immediately that he’s the AR cliche  yelling boyfriend who can’t drive a stick. Meanwhile, Jill and Thomas get lost and, judging by her body language, the hair stylist is going to break up with Mr. Fighting Irish by leg seven of the race.

Speaking of driving standard, Andie of Team Gilmore Girls almost burns up the clutch and gets stuck in London traffic before realizing the car is stuck in reverse. Quite the opposite is Nat, who we learn is a Type 1 diabetic, and pricks her finger to test her blood sugar, while smoothly weaving through London traffic. That’s driving on the left, y’all. That’s just Bad-A.

Somebody needs to come up with a nickname for Nick and Vicki quick, because these two chuckleheads also give us the second most amazing quote of the day. After dodging the peasants’ dirty water bombs while storming the castle, the pair go looking for the flag, which they’ve been told are at the battlements, and they set about asking all the peasant/actors, “Are you a battlement?” Nick, thank you for that. I’m going to use that as my new catchphrase. I’m not sure how to apply it exactly, but I’ll think of something.

The teams then have to balance themselves on ludicrously tiny boats to cross a river, give the flag to a knight, and then complete the first road block, which involves using a ballista, a medieval flinging device, to heave watermelons at suits of armor.

Those stupid capsizing boats make things interesting, finally. Chad yells at Tinkerbell, prompting her to be the first person this season to yell back, “You freaking out is not helping.” A record for AR, I think. Father/daughter Gary and Mallory, aka “Sunshine,” make it across the river with not a drop of water on them. But Michael and Kevin have totally won me over here, because the entire time, Kevin keeps whispering to his father, an immigrant with limited English skills, “I’m so proud of you, Dad.” As predicted, Ron and Tony, already in last place, get completely sunk by the boats. No matter how calm and deliberate and cerebral, there’s no way these two guys can balance out the extra pounds and make it across without taking on water.

The ballista competition makes me totally change my mind about Brooke and Claire. Claire’s mechanism somehow backfires and she takes a watermelon to the melon, at full force, and it breaks. ON HER FACE. But she gets up, wipes off the gook and gets back to work. Eventually she knocks over the armor suit, and although I’m tired of Brook shouting “You got this, sister!” Claire makes up for it by shouting “I made it my bitch!” OK, fine. I like them.

On the perpetually adorable side of things, Mallory is not exactly paying attention to old dad as he completes the roadblock. She’s admiring the court jester, all “I wish I could juggle on top of a ball.” If anyone else said this, I’d barf. Mallory can do this because she’s a cartoon character.

It’s too bad that AR does not give the more intellectual teams extra advantages this early in the race. If so, then Ron and Tony would not have been sadly and predictably eliminated, and we would instead have been rewarded with a proper elimination after watching Vicki answer “London” when Phil asked her “What country are we in?”

On the other hand, I’m looking forward to next week’s episode of Amazing Quotes.

A good man knows how to wear a hat March 25, 2010

I’ve taken a while to weigh in on this, mostly because I generally don’t comment about celebrity gossip in this here little forum of my own making. I do that on facebook.

Also I’ve been mulling over the whole Sandra Bullock/Jesse James thing, trying to figure out why I’m not shocked. I’m sad of course. There’s nothing new I can say about Sandra being a classy lady and a fine actress, even though she has a tendency to do films that ooze huge amount of cheese. Not that I’m immune to it. I admit it: I went to see The Blind Side with my mom, my auntie and my cousin, and I did get a bit misty in places. I’ll also admit I would have gotten choked up whether or not pregnancy hormones were in play. I’m a sucker for the sassy Southern belle archetype.

Anyhoodle, I’ve taken to chucking a few brain cells down the pooper every night by watching a little Entertainment Tonight before Jeopardy comes on (you could say they balance each other out), and they’ve played and replayed and re-replayed the odd snippets of Jesse and Sandra during happier times. For the last week and a half, I couldn’t figure out what was bugging me about him. Aside from the fact that he cheated on his wife for 11 months with a shameless, attention-seeking white supremacist.

I’ve come to this conclusion: don’t trust a man who does not know how to properly wear a baseball cap. Good guys bend the bill until it looks nice and worn in. Not only is the broken-in ball cap a sign that the guy is truly a fan of whatever team his cap is advertising, but it also says, “Hi there, I’m comfortable with the size of the melon God gave me.”

Like this:

Or this:

On the other hand, we have guys who wear baseball caps, or trucker caps, or West Coast Chopper caps or whatever, and refuse to bend the bills. These men have problems. I won’t get into the theory that these un-bent caps are usually coordinated with clothing of the jerkier set, i.e. Affliction T-shirts and Ed Hardy gear. But I will postulate this: a bent bill frames the face, a straight bill does not. Bad guys don’t want anything framing their face. These men are not comfortable with the size and shape of the noggins they were born with, and their hats, with their obnoxiously un-bent bills, are trying to make their heads appear larger and hidden in shadow. These are men who, on some subconscious level, have something to hide.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

And, Exhibit C:

So ladies, before you take the plunge, take a look at how he wears his hat. Even if he doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about himself, his cap will scream volumes. Sadly, a cheater won’t always necessarily be a cap-wearer. But a habitual non-bender of caps will almost certainly be a cheater.