Category — reality TV

And because of this temporary (It’s temporary, right? I mean, I’ll make friends, right?) setback, my television viewing has gone waaay up and my standards have gone waaay down.

Which brings me to something I cannot hold in any longer.

WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH NICK ARROJO?

You ladies know who I’m talking about – he’s the creepy, oily, little, leprechaun hair stylist on What Not to Wear.

Not only is he strangely smarmy and unreasonably self-confident, he’s terrible at what he does. He gives the same fucking mom bob to every single lady in each episode and Dane and I have taken to pausing the show, just to prolong the moment when he will say, “In order to make a change, you’re going to have to lose some length.” And then we erupt into yelling at the tv screen, “Again?!!! What do you have against long hair, Arrojo??? Who the hell do you think you are?!” He’s as bad, if not worse, than that Jonathan Antin guy from Blow Out – stupid shaggy long layers.

And when he’s done chopping off their hair and making them all look as unfeminine as possible, he leaves the room, happy to have made another woman into what I can only believe to be a mirror image of his own long lost mother back in Cucallhainomaraland scrubbing potatoes and peeling the shamrocks or whatever.

I hate that guy so very, very much. It BURNS.

And don’t even get me started on Stacy and Clinton and their obsession with corporate wear for everyone. What is so awesome about an ugly blazer and some wool trousers that they just can’t get enough of? What? I ask you?

I have got to get out of the house.

( I am so going to get sued for that headline.)

I don’t believe I’ve told you guys about our love, here at The Hesselbee Houselhold, for MTV’s The Paper.

I was not on the newspaper in High School because I was laboring under the mistaken impression that I was destined for The Stage. Even though I can’t sing. And my teeth are a little crooked. And I have stage fright. But whatever, I was gonna be a STAR.

After High School I went to hundreds of several different colleges up and down the West Coast – was a journalism major at most of them – but then realized that I really just wanted to read Henry James novels in the privacy of my own apartment and journalists have to actually go out into the world and talk to people which is TERRIFYING.

So I changed majors.

And never actually graduated – which is neither here nor there, just putting it out there – but by GOD, I read the shit out of some Stendhal and Diderot. Just, oh, THE SHIT out of them.

Cut to several decades later and I’m freelancing for the Mercury and thinking seriously about freelancing for other people except I keep getting distracted by margaritas and karaoke and bowling but whatever, I’m thinking about it and I find myself wondering (a little, mostly when I’m working out at the gym and I don’t know why that is but suck it people because at the gym is where I wonder) what life at The Mercury offices is like on a daily basis.

And I can only imagine it must be like The Paper, with all the shenanigans and hijinkery and backstabbing and cliquishness and…ok, I don’t know. Maybe just the first part.

The Portland Mercury; Like this or NOT LIKE THIS AT ALL?

And here we have the heroine of The Paper, Amanda Lorber- probably wiser than any old wise black woman Stephen King could ever come up with.

And I know I just split my infinitive or dangled my participle or something there but I do not have Amanda Lorber here to help me with these things, okay?

Lorber: Enough emotional maturity to kill a small horse

And to prove it here is a letter she wrote in response to a Columbia University Journalist who was talking smack about her and rather than call him a cockdick* (which is how I tend to respond to insults – also sobbing. A lot of sobbing) she used her words to retaliate.

I think she must be some kind of God or something.

*She. The journalist was a She. Sooo…a cockvagina, maybe.

Her name is ZZ Top and her interests include frolicking, ear infections, food on the floor, and foreign policy. She also plays a mean game of Wist.

I’ve been told she’s a democrat but when she thinks I’m not listening she talks shit about Barack Obama. And I’m pretty sure she was spelling out Fuck Taxes! with her pee in Jamison Park this afternoon.

She likes to watch The Shield and The Real World: Sydney and she hates Hoda from the Today Show. (Who doesn’t?)

She has a lot of class. Just a shit ton of it. She ALWAYS insists on the best table at the finest of restaurants and never leaves the house without underpants.

She wants to join the Girl Scouts of America and “fight discrimination from within” but I suspect that’s more about the cookies than the gays.

And when she’s worried or nervous she gets a little gassy. Because she’s a lady.

My review of First Sunday came out today! Yay for me!

Erik edited the hell out of it (in a good way) and it makes much more sense now. I have a tendency to overparenthesize and also maybe make words up.

Oh! ANNNNND…I thought Chi McBride was Charles Durning right up until about 8 o’clock last night. If I worked at The Daily Planet, Mr. White would SO have fired my ass.

But I don’t so he didn’t.

I just came back from Whole Foods and Powells. I bought that French Women Aren’t Fat Like You Are Fatty McAmerican book. Maybe I bought it for my mom, YOU DON”T KNOW. Don’t judge me.

I also bought the new Vanity Fair with Harrison Ford and Shia LaBoeuf on the cover to hide the fact that I was buying the lamest Oprah Book Club Today Show Segment thing ever and I was reeeeallly hoping a lady would ring me up. Instead, some Art School jerk was my cashier. He probably doesn’t even work at Powell’s. I think he just had a break between digital filmmaking and screenprint design so he jumped behind the counter to ruin my day. I haven’t been so embarrassed since I had to return panties to Urban Outfitters. Because they were too SMALL.

Meh.

But I made an excellent tuna salad with about 50 million vegetables in it. I’m going to call it The Dane Salad. Right?

I’ve read a little of the French lady book and I have one problem. I can’t take the stairs up to our apartment (frenchy exercise) in our building unless I first take the elevator up to the second floor. It’s some kind of post 9/11 rule to keep dumb people from running back upstairs to get their iphones if we’re attacked by terrorists. Well, you know what America? The terrorists won’t need to attack us because we’ll be so fat from not taking the stairs that we’ll die of a collective massive coronary in the middle of watching American Gladiators. With one hand in a bucket of nacho cheese sauce and the other on the remote. Screw you Burlington Tower! Or should I say, Fattington Tower?

I’m watching Andrew Zimmern systematically destroy everything that was ever good and holy about Anthony Bourdain. He just forced Bourdain to pretend he didn’t know what a spork was….using only his checkbook.

I just…I mean…does Anthony Bourdain really need the money? Is that why he’s doing this? Is So You Think You Can Dance next? Will he be a judge on America’s Next Top Model? Does he have a blog that he only fitfully updates?

Oooh, I’m a rock ‘n roll chef. Oooooh I’m punk rock. Oooooh I only eat foods that have been filtered through the pure science of ethnicity and the Larousse Gastronomique.

I SOLD MY SOUL TO RACHEL RAY FOR A LOFT IN MANHATTAN AND A PASSAT WAGON.

I’m very disappointed in people today.