Category Archives: humor

by

Hollywood Armchair Detective Part II

Welcome back to the second half of your Armchair Detective course from Hollywood University. I hope you enjoyed your break, looking cool in the quad, drinking in the campus pub and running up Mom and Dad’s “this is strictly for emergencies” credit card. If you’re a transfer student and missed the first part of the course, please feel free to take notes from Hollywood Armchair Detective Part I.

Otherwise it’s time to get back down to business. Crime waits for no one.

  • Long, salon-styled hair should be worn down and will absolutely not contaminate a crime scene. I might leave giant tumble weeds of hair everywhere I go, but crime scene investigators have super follicles that never release their grip on their over-processed charges.  And when you think about it, who would want to put their hair up in a bun or unattractive shower cap thingy when they took the time to blow dry and style their hair? The fact that they do their hair at all is especially impressive when you think about their exhausting work schedules and the amount of personal time they spend solving crime, as well as being shot at, kidnapped and buried alive. Sometimes I don’t even take a shower and I can’t remember the last time I was buried alive.

Crime scenes are a dime a dozen but hair like this takes work. (image via dreamstime)

  • The obvious suspect is never the guilty party. If there’s a guy covered in blood, standing over the body of a person he hated, with a knife in his hand, you can rest assured that he didn’t do it. More likely, he was returning home from his job as a sous chef, when he slipped, fell, rolled in the blood and then stood over the corpse of his enemy, trying to remember if he filed his taxes. However, if one of your suspects has a really good agent and has been seen on television or in commercials, they are most certainly your killer.

Not your guy. However, the nice neighbor was on Southland and in a Doritos commercial, so she's definitely guilty. (image via dreamstime)

  • When in a stand-off, an experienced police officer will let a volatile criminal wave a gun around without shooting them. In fact, said officer will even give up his/her own weapon in the interest of a peaceful resolution.  And if for some reason the criminal has to be killed because they were about to shoot the detective or Little Orphan Annie, the detective will cry and lament over the lost life. You see, police officers love all gangsters, pedophiles and sociopathic killers and are optimistic about our justice system and its ability to rehabilitate criminals. They trust that criminals won’t get off because of clever attorneys or be paroled early due to a lax parole board. This unbridled optimism is impressive but perhaps not practical when you think of all the poor lab technicians who will be shot at, kidnapped and buried alive by the sociopaths at a later date.

"I really appreciate you not shooting me. Of course now I'm going to shank a guard, escape and bury a lab technician." (image via dreamstime)

Higher ranked officers do all of the grunt work. It’s quite common for an entire task force to be made of Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains and Commanders. They interview suspects, canvas the neighborhood, kick down doors, get the coffee, wax the police car. They even train new recruits. And then apparently the new recruits are shoved into a closet until they earn a rank prestigious enough to be seen on the city streets or they are promoted right to Sergeant or they spend their time cleaning the toilets. I’m not entirely sure what happens to them but the important thing to remember here is that the upper echelon are not slackers. So the next time you want to file a loud music complaint or fight a traffic ticket, ask for the Chief. He’ll love taking your report.

Maybe higher ranked officers do all the work because they take such nice pictures (image via screenrant)

Officers can run around with their finger on the trigger of their gun without accidentally shooting off their toe. Probably because they don’t have a round in the chamber. Why be prepared to shoot your weapon when it would rob everyone of hearing that really cool racking sound and seeing you look like LL Cool J in SWAT? And you don’t really need to be ready to shoot your weapon at all, since you’re just going to give it up when the first criminal asks you to anyway.

If you look at this picture and listen carefully you can hear a firearms instructor cry. (image via dreamstime)

Congratulations! You’ve officially earned your MAD (Masters in Armchair Detectivery). Feel free to begin solving mysteries with the feeling of self-importance that comes from earning a degree about which nobody cares and that will never earn you any money.

I know that feeling well.

by

Delicate Balance

I live my life in a delicate balance. Most days I can almost manage to handle all of my responsibilities without forgetting a kid on the side of the road or driving off with my purse on the roof of my car, but it’s touch and go. One little extra thing thrown unexpectedly into the mix could cause the whole construction to collapse.

So I’m heavily scheduled this week.  It’s the week before Riley’s birthday. It’s also the week before Conor’s big preschool fundraiser. Today I needed to help set up for the fundraiser and take care of all the things that need to be handled before Riley’s birthday and pending slumber party. Like moving her out of the room she shares with her brother and into the playroom. And then figuring out what to do with the playroom. And giggling 8-year-old girls. And a 4-year-old boy who is tired of being ignored by giggling 8-year-old girls.

My To Do List read:

  1. Tie Tulle To 144 Folding Chairs
  2. Play Musical Bedrooms
  3. Handle Slumber Party Bidness
  4. Everything Else (drop offs, pick ups, homework, meals, baths, creating world peace, etc.)

Then I started my period. With a vengeance. Crap! But I’m 42 years old, I can function while hemorrhaging.

So I altered my To Do List slightly:

  1. Menstruate
  2. Tie Tulle To 144 Folding Chairs
  3. Play Musical Bedrooms
  4. Handle Slumber Party Bidness
  5. Everything Else (drop offs, pick ups, homework, meals, baths, creating world peace, etc.)

Only I forgot to put Conor in a Pull Up last night before bed.

This shouldn’t have been a big deal since he’s been such a rock star about waking up in the middle of the night to go potty on his own. However, when Riley stumbled into the kitchen this morning, complaining that their bedroom smelled so foul that she had to hold her breath, I knew that Conor had gone from rock star to Keith Richards and just urinated right where he’d passed out. He was very thorough. Their bedroom smelled like the stairwell of a parking garage in downtown Detroit.

My bad.

I revised my To Do List.

  1. Clean Everything in a 10 Mile Radius.
  2. Menstruate
  3. Tie Tulle To 144 Folding Chairs
  4. Play Musical Bedrooms
  5. Handle Slumber Party Bidness
  6. Everything Else (blah, blah, blah)

Then Hubs called with a directive, which went a little something like this.

Get your iPhone and activate the Find My Phone application. It’s free. Or not, but you should pay whatever it costs. It’s probably right there under your nose. Or not, but do not rest until you’ve found it. Do this immediately. It’s imperative. Because, (and this is important, so pay attention) if you are robbed of your phone or worse, kidnapped by Mexican drug lords, who remove your battery so that it can’t be traced, the Find My Phone application will enable you and your phone to be traced and found before you both suffocate in the trunk of a car buried in a landfill. Laundry, furniture and even menstruation can wait, but oxygen is crucial. Your brain will die without oxygen! Do it now! Only you can save your and/or your phone’s lives!

I've got to admit that I look cuter suffocating in the trunk of a car than I expected.

I couldn’t argue with him because he was right. My brain would die without oxygen. And so I had to change my To Do List again.

  1. SAVE MY LIFE!!!! SCREW EVERYTHING ELSE!!!!!!!!!!!

By the way, I think I left one of the kids on the side of the road and my purse on top of my car, so if anyone sees them, please return them to me, okay? Thanks.

**Addendum: I stopped for gas, but they couldn’t process my debit card because they were unable to reach their satellite. If they had activated the Find My Satellite application, they wouldn’t have had that problem. For all they knew, their satellite was suffocating in the trunk of a buried car. People need to listen to Hubs.

by

Bloggess Envy

I was having an argument with myself this morning. My Conscience and Ugly Thoughts were going at it like alley cats. This isn’t an unusual occurrence. Sometimes I need couples counseling for the interior of my skull.

A self-portrait of the Bloggess, also known as...

A self-portrait of the Bloggess, also known as Jenny Lawson, an Internet blogger. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You see, I discovered the humorist/blogger, The Bloggess, who is brilliant! She can drop f-bombs and talk about baby zombies and dead kitten mittens for the homeless with such finesse that even Stephanie Meyer stopped writing about sparkly vampires long enough to fly her Twigh-self to one of the Bloggess’s book signings.

Stephanie My-Characters-Wait-Until-Marriage-To-Have-Sex Meyer!

That is talent. In the hands of a lesser writer those subjects would just be offensive and alienate God-fearing people, such as Ms. Meyer.

Ugly Thoughts immediately reared its unattractive little head and said, “you need to loosen up and use more f-bombs. Make your writing more edgy,” to which My Conscience responded,

“yes, but the f-bombs aren’t what make her funny. You’re just looking for a short cut to funny, which is a cop out.”

“Shut up! You’re so judgmental!” Ugly Thoughts replied.

“That’s my job.”

“I hope you get laid off.”

I had to give Ugly Thoughts a time-out so it could think about cooperating and playing nice with others while I read some more of the Bloggess’s posts. As I read, I discovered that the Bloggess battles rheumatoid arthritis and takes copious amounts of Xanax for anxiety. These are both serious afflictions, My Conscience reminded me, deserving of some empathy (’cause that’s what civilized folk feel) and also admiration due to the fact that she can carve quite a bit of humor out of her situation.

Ugly Thoughts emerged from its time out and said wistfully, “If only you had a debilitating disease and took more meds, you’d be funnier,” to which My Conscience retorted,

“Don’t wish for a debilitating disease. No one wishes for a debilitating disease but a complete a-hole.”

“Asshole! You can’t even say asshole! That’s why you’re not funny!”

And then My Conscience and Ugly Thoughts got into a fist fight and I had to break it up.

It’s a full-time job dealing with those two. I barely have time to raise my children.

So then I wrote about my inner struggle on Facebook, which I use in place of therapy, only I misspelled debilitating as depilitating, which restarted the bickering.

“You can’t even spell your inappropriate thoughts correctly, which just goes to show you how wrong they are,” said My Conscience.

“Pipe down, it was funny.”

“It was funny until you misspelled it. ‘Depilitating’ disease. Now it’s just tragic.”

“Heh heh heh. Depilitating. Like depilatory.”

“What is that, a disease that makes your leg hair fall out?”

“Yeah, I wish I had that disease!”

And then they went off to share a beer and bond again.

“No actually it was the morning and drinking beer would’ve been inappropriate.”

“Suck it! I’ll ‘inappropriate’ you in the head!”

ANYWAY, that is why envy is dangerous. So is mental illness. But you can’t medicate envy, so avoid it even more.

 

***In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I’ve read all of the sparkly vampire books and may have even picked a team but that’s a-whole-nother ball of shame.

 

Gallery by

Saturday With The Redicans

This gallery contains 10 photos.

It was a lovely Saturday. We kidnapped Riley’s best friend, Isabelle, and took her into the wilderness wearing a dress and flip flops. ‘Cause that’s how we roll. You just never know when we’re going to go rogue. You gots to be ready. The kids brought their pets along for our adventure. Animals love to […]

by

Hollywood Armchair Detective Part I

I have a guilty pleasure: dramatized police procedurals.  Love them! I love mystery and witty banter and forensic stuff. I love trying to figure out who did it. And I don’t mean to brag but I’m one heck of an armchair detective. It’s a gift really.

However, being married to a cop has almost ruined it all for me. See, Hubs is a slave to silly things like occupational accuracy and the laws of physics. These shows are painful for him to watch and his pain sucks the marrow out of my enjoyment. As a result, I mostly watch these shows on my own, although occasionally I will put one of them on while Hubs is in the room just so that I can hear him groan and leave the room like he’s about to pass a kidney stone.

Hubs doesn’t know what he’s missing. I learn so much watching these shows. If Hollywood hadn’t had the fantastic notion of chronicling the goings on of abnormally attractive detectives, coroners and lab technicians, I would still be in the dark. I’m passing this knowledge on to you because I’m a giver. Like Typhoid Mary.

Because Hollywood has taught me so much, I’ve split this post into two parts so as not to overwhelm. In the words of Sir Francis Bacon, knowledge is power and too much power given all at once can make your head explode (I added the last part.) Here is the first generous helping of Hollywood knowledge. Use it wisely.

  • Coroners and lab technicians spend their days diligently solving crime and apprehending criminals in expensive designer clothes. I thought they mostly did autopsies and processed DNA but I was so wrong. I also had no idea that public servants and government workers made boat loads of cash and had incredible cutting edge tastes in fashion. That is until Hollywood educated me. Now I know that standing on the unforgivingly hard floors of morgues and labs just feels better in stilettos.

She wears the same shoes to cut up dead bodies (image via dreamstime)

  • Good looking coroners like to hang out with good-looking detectives. And when they do, hi-jinx and crime solving ensue. I don’t know why Hubs never invites coroners over for dinners and family cookouts. Then again, I don’t think I want Hubs spending all of his time with a hot coroner. Watching Hubs exchange witty banter and solving murders with some good-looking smarty-pants just might make me want to kick a coroner’s @ss. If Hubs is going to take some unarmed chica in impractical shoes to a dangerous crime scene, it’s going to be me.

She best stay away from my husband's crime scenes! (image via dreamstime)

  • Detectives often cry in the interview room while divulging painful personal facts to hardened criminals in order to obtain a confession. This strategy always works, probably because hardened criminals are notoriously empathetic, which makes total sense when you think about the painful childhoods the criminals must have had. What allows this technique to work so well is that criminals hardly ever ask for a lawyer and when they do, the lawyers sit silently in dismay while the detectives manipulate the hardened criminals into a confession. Nobody wants to interrupt a hot, crying detective. It’s just not done. Hubs seems to be ignoring my suggestion that he cry more at work, which might be why he’s not a detective.

This detective cried at least once an episode (image via dreamstime)

  • Crime labs investigate every death with the same amount of time and resources. Vagrants who seemingly died of natural causes get the same exhaustive efforts that high-profile murders do. And they are all investigated with state of the art equipment not seen outside of secret squirrel government agencies. Crime labs can be this thorough because they never have a backlog of lab work to catch up on. Nor do they have bureaucrats breathing down their necks about overtime hours and the super fancy hologram machine they used to recreate an image of the vagrant’s butt. This is very good news for the residents of Vegas, New York and Miami, because it means that there is hardly any crime and the city governments have plenty of money. So head on down to City Hall to get your free handout and don’t be afraid to carry it around in an open fanny pack.

*I am kidding. In no way do I condone the use of fanny packs.

"Oh sure, now you tell me." (image via dreamstime)

 

There you have it. You are half way to earning your Masters in Armchair Detectivery from Hollywood University. You should totally hit the campus pub. You’ve earned it.

by

Toe Up

As those of you who have been reading this blog already know, I have a broken toe earned from a fun-filled date night at REI (see titillating details here).  A broken toe isn’t too bad, as far as injuries go. I broke one of the little toes and word has it that those are practically expendable. It’s more of an annoyance injury.

That being the case, I thought I’d make a list of the annoying inconveniences of having a broken toe, you know, just in case I’ve glamorized it and you are feeling compelled to run right out and get one for yourself. I even put my thoughts into bullet points in the event that I’m called upon to give a Power Point presentation on the subject in order to receive government grant money for my research.

It could happen.

The government has been known to spend money on things such as a study proving that strippers make more tips during ovulation and a study on the outcomes of concurrent and separate uses of malt liquor and marijuana. (They spent $389,357 on the latter. It didn’t cost me nearly that much to complete the same study in high school and not a drop of it came from the government. You’re welcome, tax payers!) I think our government is primed to look into the effects of broken toes on 40-something mothers.

So here is my carefully researched and thought-provoking presentation (lights, please!):

Effects of Fractured Metatarsals On Female Homo sapiens or A Girl’s Eye View Into Things That Suck About A Broken Toe

  • Taping is hard. It looks so easy in the Rocky movies, but it’s a skill set that I apparently don’t possess. This probably won’t surprise those who’ve read this post. My toes look better than my Christmas presents but I have to wrap my toes after the kids go to sleep as there is some cussing involved.
  • My toes are tired of being strapped together. They’re becoming claustrophobic and co-dependent. They need time apart to remember who they are as individuals.

Their desperation is palpable.

  • Tape attracts dirt and dirty tape does not look pretty in sandals. ‘Nuff said.
  • Walking through the living room barefoot after turning off the lights is SCARY and not because I’m afraid of clowns hiding under the couch. The kids like to rearrange the furniture and my toe feels so vulnerable in the dark, like a baby bunny.

"You wouldn't let that mean old chair leg hurt me, would you?" (image via dreamstime)

  • Tennis shoes don’t go with everything, despite what my mother told me. I suspect she was merely trying to get out of purchasing a second pair of super market shoes with that claim.
  • My impractical high-heeled shoes miss me. I think I heard my boots crying softly in the corner last night. And my platforms are clearly depressed.

They're starting a support group. Do you sense their loneliness?

  • You can’t walk sexily with a gimpy foot. I mean, if I had cause to walk sexily and could remember how, I’m pretty sure that it would hurt.
  • My Barre workout is extra challenging. It’s hard to pretend that I’m a prima ballerina when one foot won’t point. It’s ugly. Then I overcompensate with the other foot and end up with cramping toes. Also ugly. However, I think my taped toes led the teacher to assume that I was a dancer, which is cool.

Or maybe it was the fact that I came dressed like this (image via flickr and tibchris)

  • Bedtime comfort is compromised. Covers are deceptively heavy. Especially at the bottom of the bed where they are tucked in. If I don’t tuck the covers in, I wake halfway through the night with icicle toes and a bedspread turban. And I like to sleep on my back to prevent puffy eyes and face creases so that I don’t look like a disheveled alcoholic when I drop my daughter off for school. So I’m left sleeping with a ballerina turnout, which would be more comfortable if I were an actual ballerina.
  • Children aren’t gentle with their love. Mine think of Hubs and I as parental jungle gyms. This isn’t normally a problem because I’m pretty durable as far as mommies go. But lately I find that when they run toward me to give me a hug, I flinch and assume an awkward protective posture like I have a nervous disorder.

Ahem. So in closing, I believe the evidence I’ve amassed can only point to one conclusion: it is better for females, especially those of child-bearing years, to have unbroken toes rather than broken ones. Please send government checks to Fathead University, Department of Research c/o Kelly. Thank you.

Image by

Spell Check

I smell trouble for this business.

On the upside, they’re making a product that people want. If they were making “Sofas U Loathe” or “Sofas About Which U Feel Ambivalent” they would really be in trouble. But they’re making Sofas U Love. It says so right there on their sign. And who doesn’t want to love their sofa?

Hubs loves our sofa so much that he’s made a butt imprint in his favorite spot. Conor has lovingly smeared it with all kinds of substances to show his devotion. Our sofa is an integral part of our family.

However, the first hint of trouble lies in the fact that they didn’t spell out “you”, opting instead for the alphabet letter with the same sound.  This seems clever until it’s sitting next to the big sign printed with the word “CLEARENCE”. Now they kind of look like ignorant sofa makers. And don’t you want a smart sofa on which to place your fanny while you’re staring blankly at your boob tube?

Now I’m no spelling genius. I’ll admit to relying heavily on Spell Check. But wouldn’t you think that if you were going to the expense of having two giant signs made, you would double-check the spelling? Sure they only missed one word out of five, which is an 80% success rate, if you’re a glass half full person. However, I feel the need to step into my role as Captain Buzz Kill and point out that the word they misspelled is the biggest, most eye-catching word on the sign. Though spelling isn’t a required skill when building a sofa, attention to detail is and they’ve got two giant details hanging from their store which seem to have escaped attention.

Things don’t look good for this business, UNLESS…

…They’re going for the sympathy factor. Sort of a “We’re struggling so hard that we’ve lost the will to spell” slant. Or even: “We need to sell some sofas in order to afford to educate ourselves.” If that’s their angle, I take back everything I’ve said here. They’re marketing GENIUSES! The Grifters of Furniture Design. Bleeding heart liberals like myself will rush to buy up their sofas in the name of giving back to the community, while furnishing our eco-friendly, equality loving homes. Sales will go through the roof. They’ll be able to afford a luxurious second home in a tropical local and fill it with expensive misspelled signs.

Well played, sirs. Well played.

by

Liar, Liar Easter Bunny On Fire

"Easter bunny, are you real?" "Sure, kid. Now get in my van." (image via dreamstime)

Last year while walking down to school, my daughter, Riley and I were talking about inconsequential things, as we usually did in the morning, when without warning, she segued into:

 

“Debbie told me there’s no Tooth Fairy. Debbie’s brother told her that it’s really our parents only you will never ever ever admit it. Are you the Tooth Fairy?”

 

“Uh…”

 

Keep in mind that I was still in the sweatpants in which I’d slept, my hair unbrushed and thrown into a sloppy ponytail. I might have been prepared for discussions about breakfast cereal at that hour, but I was totally and completely unprepared for a discussion entailing the loss of childhood fantasy. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I would be having the conversation with my innocent, fairy-loving daughter in the first grade so I was caught flat-footed between my commitment to honesty and my love of childhood innocence.

 

Why didn’t Riley want to discuss something easy, like where babies come from? I’d spent numerous hours preparing for that question. I would’ve hit that one out of the park. But Debbie Downer had stolen my opportunity for parental success.

Waa Waa. (image via Wikipedia)

 

 

Who was this Debbie? And why was she heading a massive conspiracy aimed at undermining  my parental acuity? I felt the powerful urge to kick her first grade butt. She was ruining my morning.

 

Thanks to Debbie, I was under the gun with no time to Facebook my friends and set up some sort of parental poll regarding effective ways of navigating this crisis. I had to handle it on my own. Like an adult. I need to be warned before I’m asked to do that. Or at least caffeinated.

 

I longed desperately for someone to run out of their house at that moment and yell “I have something really important that precludes all deep family conversations!” but our neighbors were seemingly oblivious to my predicament. Unlike dogs, my neighbors can’t smell fear and desperation. I scrambled to buy myself some time while I wrestled with my moral dilemma.

*Hey do you smell that? Smells like a cornered rabbit." "Mmm, cornered rabbit is my favorite."

 

“Wow. Really? She said that? Huh. What’s Debbie’s deal? She sounds like a very unhappy and possibly unstable girl. And what’s up with her brother?” (When in doubt, undercut the credibility of the source.) “Can you imagine me in a tooth fairy get-up flying around, and getting stuck in your hair while trying to wrestle your tooth out from under your pillow?” (Then deflect with humor.)

 

I added a visual demonstration of myself as a fairy struggling through Riley’s hair to sell the absurdity of the thought but Riley was unswayed by my comedic genius.

 

“Are you the Tooth Fairy, Mom?”

 

In that moment I was reminded of a conversation I’d had as a child with my own mother about Santa’s existence. A boy in my school had unloaded the “Santa is actually your parents” bomb on the whole 4th grade class and I felt the need to get reassurance from my mom. Her answer: “The spirit of Santa is real.” Not the definitive answer I wanted. I asked her about 50 more times and received the same answer on loop. I desperately wanted my mom to tell me outright that Santa was real. I looked into my daughter’s trusting blue eyes and remembered my own desire to keep believing.

"I'm what you call a Christmas poltergeist." (image via dreamstime)

 

“No, I’m not the Tooth Fairy, Sweetie.”

 

There it was. Bald faced lie.

 

I felt the weight of guilt crushing my skull and I realized that my mom probably had the right approach. She didn’t lie. She gave a nebulous answer that, while unsatisfying, did afford me the opportunity to decide for myself whether or not I was ready to let go of my childhood fantasies.

I hate it when my moments of clarity come just after I actually need them. It’s seriously inconvenient.

 

I tried to make up for my misgivings and feelings of guilt with a long, rambling speech about how different people believe different things and some people just don’t believe in magic and magic is important in childhood…yadda, yadda, yadda. I can’t remember the whole speech but frankly it was embarrassing. I think I included a whole theological discourse on the differences between Paganism and Christianity. I was in the midst of a shame spiral and could not stop talking. By the time we got to Riley’s school her ears were bleeding from my verbal onslaught. She ran onto the school grounds screaming “Please stop the madness!”

 

That last part might have happened only in my imagination.

 

Flash forward to this year’s Easter. The kids discovered their Easter baskets, which I had packed full of things specific to each of their tastes and needs. Riley pulled out a box of Altoids from her basket and said with a disturbing lack of incredulity,

 

“The Easter bunny must know I like mints.”

 

Translation: I’m onto you and your little bag of tricks, you bald-faced liar.

"My mom's a big fat fibber."

 

Cue shame spiral. Somebody please get me a muzzle.

 

by

Warning Gotye May Cause Emotional Trauma In 7 Year Olds

Gotye – Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra) – official video – YouTube.

We heard this song in the car on a family road trip. We were all in a fantastic mood but this song made my daughter, Riley, sob and then launched her into a depression that lasted 90 miles over the lyrics “I don’t even need your love.”  Hubs, who doesn’t understand moody, Indie Pop love-gone-wrong songs anyway, was completely baffled by her reaction. Luckily, with my extensive adolescent experience in crying to 80’s love songs I was able to jump in and navigate my sensitive girl’s emotions. Since then every time she brings the song up my 4-year-old son, Conor, softly sings the back up lyrics “somebody. Somebody that I used to know” on a loop as if to illustrate her emotional pain.

In preparation for the kids’ teen years I’m going to build Hubs a sound proof room, stocked with AC/DC and a punching bag, so that he can escape all of the emoting in the rest of the house. We’re a sensitive bunch.

by

Reality Bites

Last night Hubs and I were sitting on the couch, basking in the glow of suburban satisfaction when Hubs, in the midst of his nightly tour of cable channels, chanced upon a show called Repo Games. The premise of this show is that a repo team and a television crew come to people’s homes and give them an opportunity to win back their nearly repossessed vehicles by playing a trivia game. From the five minutes I saw, which clearly makes me an expert, it appears as though the people are carefully selected for their probable inability to answer any trivia at all unrelated to soap operas and Nascar. I watched in horror as a man, who didn’t want his treasured truck repossessed, grabbed what looked suspiciously like an Uzi replica and pointed it at the repo man. After a tense stand-off full of manufactured danger, the fake-gun-wielding genius informed the repo man with an air of bravado that he only intended to maim the repo man so as to avoid jail time.

I'm pretty sure the right to bear fake-arms in the defense of property you don't actually own is covered under the 28th amendment. (image via dreamstime)

If this had been a scene from Reno 911 I would’ve slapped my knee and howled with laughter. However, when executed with real people, I had to run from the room and rinse the horror from my eyes. I can only enjoy a scene like that when it’s completely scripted (and I mean the type of scripted where the writer gets a screen credit.) Then I can laugh while still secretly harboring the belief that real life people aren’t actually that stupid, a belief that I harbor in the same sacred place as my belief that I still look 21. And that is a sacred place indeed.

"Yes it is, honey. Yes it is." (image via Steve Rhodes)

There seems to be a phenomenon that causes people to do really stupid and sometimes painful things on camera for the purpose of gaining a little notoriety after which a very large section of society lines up eagerly to watch the fruits of their labor. I understand this phenomenon about as much as I understand crop circles. I’ve heard the argument that watching people behave poorly makes viewers feel better about themselves–“I’m not that stupid” “I’m not that alcoholic,” “my mullet looks better than that.” (and by the way, it totally does). I’ve also heard that sometimes people use the extremes shown in these programs to inspire themselves to alter their not-quite-as-extreme-but-similar behavior. And these sound like reasonable ideas, which would mean that I’m unreasonable, something my father suggested many times growing up.

"You do strike me as unreasonable." (image via flickr and Indiepics!)

Be that as it may, watching some teenager take off his own nipple with a weed whacker and then chug a beer doesn’t make me feel better about myself. It does make me feel like locking my children in the closet until their thirties and abandoning all lawn care. Likewise, watching hoarders doesn’t make me want to clean my living room. Instead it leaves me with a strong desire to douse all of my possessions with gasoline, set them on fire and move to the Blue Ridge Mountains where I would live off of bear meat. Incidentally a bear would never take off his own nipple with a weed whacker or live under a pile of old garbage, which puts them ahead of us on the evolutionary scale.

"It's true. I don't even own a weed whacker. And I recycle." (image via dreamstime)

I could climb up on my high horse and declare that we shouldn’t reward people who behave badly with fame and fortune, but I got rid of the nag due to the fact that it kept leaving really big piles of horse poo in my living room. And also it would be a little hypocritical to wax moralistic since I enjoy comedians like Chelsea Handler, who revels in her own bad behavior and love of vodka.  Does Chelsea not offend me because she has the ability to craft her antics into amusing anecdotes (and also because we’re on a first name basis)? Probably. I feel okay padding her pockets because she is in on the joke. In fact, she wrote the joke. And the joke is funny. Unlike the guy with the toy Uzi who is the last to know that he is a horse’s arse.

Chelsea Handler: a hot mess but funny. And that makes it okay.

If I’m going to watch something unscripted, I want to see people doing amazing and inspiring things–things that make me want to go out and chest bump some random guy outside of a Starbucks in a celebratory salute to the awesomeness of the human race. For instance, I saw a story on Bethany Hamilton, the girl whose arm was mistaken for a cocktail weenie by a shark. She came back to surf competitively with one arm. With one arm, people!  And the girl has a great attitude. I became surly and nihilistic when I couldn’t find the breadcrumbs in my freezer last night. If I tune in to any television show involving Navy SEALs, I start to think I can eat bugs, suture my own wounds and rescue hostages from African warlords. Television like this makes me want to challenge myself–be a better human being and less of a whiner. God hates a whiner. So do Navy SEALs.

I like to wear this outfit when I walk my daughter to school. (image via flickr and Jamiecat)

I need to focus on one-armed surfers and Navy SEALs so that I can continue to have faith in my fellow man, because living in the Blue Ridge mountains removed from society is probably a really bad idea. I’m pretty sure I’d make a terrible hunter, I don’t know how to prepare bear meat anyway, I’m not into log cabin chic and I’d never be able to find impractical high-heeled boots or another Chelsea Handler book.  So I guess I’m left with no other feasible solution other than setting our television on fire, throwing it out the window and camping out in the Inspirational Biography section of Barnes & Noble.

See Dad, I can be reasonable.