Monday, January 3, 2011

Blogging The Bachelor, Season 35

God help me. Now for the record, I've not gotten ABC for the last 13 years, so my exposure [cough] to Der Bach has been limited at best. But a dear friend named skitch swore by "The Rose Ceremony". Well Dan Brown he ain't.

Episode 1: Cattle Call. Every rose has it's psychotic. Man, it's like Schindler's List over there by the pool. I thought I had low self-esteem. I kept waiting for Snookie to burst out of a shrub and do a half-gainer into the hot tub just to lighten the mood.

The guy's a major league skeezoid. He's been through 3 years of extensive therapy to prove that he can go on national television and fall in love with someone he's known for about 42.5 minutes who's known him for 42.4 minutes, who's insanely crazy. For heaven's sake, where have all the Mary Dashwood's gone?

"I just want to find that... that... crazy love, ya know?!" I do, and I've got some pretty good news.

To Do List: check wood fuel supply, take down tree in east pasture for 2011 winter, cook down last night's roast chicken for stock and lard, projectile vomit for 2 hours while ABC documents humanity's slow decline into a soul-less generational self-absorbed narcistic vapidity.

(still getting used to the keyboard on this piece 'o crap mini-pc with no spellcheck. oops!)

I.e., yeah, I'm hooked. Rats.

19 comments:

Michael said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rundeep said...

Watched Round Midnight for the first time in a long time. Damn, Dexter Gordon. Awesome. Goodlookin' too. After you sell your first crop of rutabagas (or whatever), get a new fancified Blue Ray player with Internet access. Cost around $125 or so. Then you can stream every show you ever wanted to see (old, of course) for $8 a month from Netflix. It'll help with those long winters.... (Been thinking about you. Mom's got uterine cancer, surgery went well, pathology didn't. Fortunately, the one valuable connection I have is that my neighbor was the CMO and CEO of a cancer center located nearby. She starts chemo on Monday. It's all quite complicated -- your advice to make your children hate you doesn't seem to work when the chips are down. )

topazz said...

OMG, if this keeps up what with The Bachelor and Lifetime's Craig's List Killer Movie, I'm going to turn into Totie Fields. My three sisters and I made fat-laden hors doeuvres watched it with all of our home from college daughters (Overload: both shows aired at the same time) And to think I thought Craig's List was all about used end tables and stuff. How about that limp penis of a bachelor and those 30 psychotic women (esp the vampire and that other one who sang) and what passes for intimacy these days. Do you think that one woman was going commando? (the one who did the high kicks as she got out of the limo) Oh, and: "I want that First Impression Rose and I'm going to kill these other motherfucker to get it "

Penal-Colony said...

We're definitely behind on all the shows, what with being an outpost & whatnot. They say the Broadwalk Empire is coming soon. I will watch that. Otherwise, I'm pleading the Clueless Amendment.

Run, sorry to read about your mum.

Best to all you guys. [Hi 'T']

Keifus said...

I caught the Biggest Loser for the first time ever yesterday. (Rulon Gardner is on it--you may remember him as the wrestler that inexplicably beat Ivan Drago in the 2000 Olympics--he weighs in at a quarter ton these days.) I find I have much to say about the show, and only some of it is positive, despite its overbearing attempt to be uplifting. A lot of it is funny (at least when I talk to myself about it).

Geez rd, sorry to hear about your mom. Best to her.

David Marlow said...

rundeep, if I may share with you what I've been going through these nearly 2 years. Regret and guilt. Regret that I didn't stay by her bedside that entire week, and guilt that I hadn't visited her nearly as much as she deserved those last 5 years. I'll never forgive myself for as long as I live, though she would say that there's nothing to forgive. But that's mine to bear; that's what took me down for the months of august and september. This probably isn't comforting, but... her life was to me eternal. I thought. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't know what I'm trying to say. Make sure to use the support of your own family. And rest assured you're in my thoughts.

topazz, I suspect you guys aren't exactly the target audience, since y'all are clearly not insane retards. But I suspect there are going to be some spectacular psychotically insane meltdowns this season.

PC, I'm behind on Mad Men, since I let my prescription to Netflix lapse. But I need to squeeze it into the budget because there are about 2 dozen movies I must see.

Keif, I go back all the way to TBL'a first season. And, if I'm not mistaken, the one who first coined the phrase, "The scale that can be seen from outer space." But Bachelor, believe it or not, is one of the cruelest reality shows ever, and that's saying something.

rundeep said...

Thanks all, especially switters. Honey, your Mom didn't mind that you weren't with her, she worried that you weren't where you were happiest. Trust me, I know these things. As to my situation, well, at a minimum my Mom will be living with me for about 18 weeks. She's been magnificent through this, I must admit; without an ounce of self-pity or whining and with a very positive and determined attitude. She's been so busy at that, she's forgotten to critcize me regularly, and that makes us all so very happy. If we get nothing more than that over the next 6 months, we will have achieved an enormous amount.

David Marlow said...

did i mention that microsoft blows? i don't know you, you don't know me, but you do. just know that you matter to me, and that you all have no less than saved my life, literally. that's meaningful. you all have helped me. i went through hell with mom. so what can i do to make it a bit easier for you?

David Marlow said...

ps, what i tell my nieces, for no other reason than to be useful to you, thinking austen: "she was an ignorant little farm girl from iowa, who was 10 times smarter than all of us combined."

topazz said...

My sister-in-law lost her mother this past July - her mom was only 68, active and vibrant, a wonderful grandmother and just a real workhorse kind of a woman. She'd waged an off and on 13 year battle with cancer but even so, her death was unexpected and very sudden. I wanted to tell you ZB, that a few days after she died I showed my s-i-law the patrick kavanaugh poem you posted for switters after his mother died: "In Memory of My Mother" - she was so moved by it and connected so strongly with it that she considered having it included on the back of the Mass card they handed out at the funeral. It ended up being too late to do that, the cards had already been printed up. Still, reading it brought a profound kind of comfort to her. So thank you for that.

rundeep said...

Oh, no need to do anything for me. You already have, by beating grief into plowshares -- it's inspiring to see you deal. The bottom line is that we end up having to mark our own age by the decline of our parents. And so facing their end of life is really like facing our own. lt's practice for learning to deal with mortality with grace, in every sense of that word.

Penal-Colony said...

Seamus Heaney has written some exquisite sonnets I.M. of his mother. The sequence is called 'Clearances'. Here are two:

The cool that came off the sheets just off the line
Made me think the damp must still be in them
But when I took my corners of the linen
And pulled against her, first straight down the hem
And then diagonally, then flapped and shook
The fabric like a sail in a cross-wind,
They made a dried-out undulating thwack.
So we'd stretch and fold and end up hand to hand
For a split second as if nothing had happened
For nothing had that had not always happened
Beforehand, day by day, just touch and go,
Coming close again by holding back
In moves where I was x and she was o
Inscribed in sheets she'd sewn from ripped-out flour sacks.

~~~

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives--
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

~~~

Best to you.

twif said...

OT: switters, your secret is out.


bb word: herche = herseys for francophiles

Michael said...

Very sorry to read that Maria. My family is at that stage with my mom. Hope things go as well as they can go for both her and yourself.

Swit- My Leif Garrett joke seemed a bit out of place after I read RD's reply, in case you were wondering...

Also, if you haven't got cable hooked up yet, Patton O is on Jon Stewart's show tonight. They'll post the video tomorrow on the main site so people like you and I can watch. (find link at Loop if you're stopping by)

David Marlow said...

twif, nice to know you're still on my damn case. My best to 'seph.

Michael, thanks for the excellent headsup. He's still kind of my hero, though his 3rd album seemed a little too mellow. I expect the 4th won't take many prisoners. May need your help salvaging 100 year old toungue (sp?) and groove oak flooring.

That you, John? Your taste in poetry will be legendary (sp?), though you are Irish, for goodness sakes. Very glad to see you. "(thank you, [g]od)"

topazz said...

It never fails to amaze me when someone is able to capture something in such an utterly perfect way, with mere words. Those were so beautiful, John. As was the image of moonpie asleep inside the old sheepskin coat that switters conjured up for all of us

bright said...

Thanks for posting those poems, John.

topazz said...

Okay, I keep checking here to see if you're going to blog last night's show. I never watched this show before last week (and then again last night) although last night I just couldn't stomach it anymore after the first half hour. I'm stunned by it; by the fact that there are actually seemingly intelligent women who would offer themselves up like this. But it isn't just the setting women back fifty years part of it, its the whole idea that intimacy can be achieved in a heartbeat. I wonder if that aspect of the show's premise is so widely accepted now (where it might not have been ten years ago) because the internet sort of blew away all the rules wrt interpersonal relationships in general?

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