Arianna Georgi

A friend of mine recently introduced me to a show called American Pickers.  It’s basically the TV love child of Antiques Roadshow and Hoarders.  In it, two guys travel around looking for antiques (this is called picking) which they then buy from hillbillies and sell for what seems to be an average of about 50 dollar profit.  I am not sure how this financial model works for them, but apparently it does.

In every episode that I have seen, (three), this search leads the pickers to an old man’s house.  The old man’s house has about 15 outbuilding structures that are in varying states of decay.  If I came to this house, I would get the heck away from it since it is the sort of place I would assume I would be serial killed or captured and made to live in the basement as a pet for years by mutant mountain people.  And the only man looks like this:

It doesn’t matter which episode it is, because every single one features this old man.  Seriously.  I watched a marathon of this show on a plane, while I was working, and I thought I fell asleep for a while because this guy was in every episode.

The show basically glorifies hoarders by making them seem like super savvy collectors of junk.  The Pickers go nuts running around the barns, or water closets, or basements or whatever looking at pile and piles of creepy hoarder junk.  Then the following exchange inevitably occurs:

Picker: Do you have any interest in selling this (holds up rusty watering can)

Old Man Pictured Above: No, not that.  I’m not ready to part with that yet.

(Cut to picker talking to camera)

Picker: He has sooooooo much amazing stuff.  Hopefully one day he will sell that rusty watering can to me.

All over the country, hoarders are gleefully screaming “I told you so!” from between their 50 foot high piles of Life magazine and old milk cartons.  I actually think this might be part of an evil plot between A&E (Hoarders) and Lifetime (Pickers) to keep both supplied with show material.

The best thing to come out of me watching this show is that I now have a new and highly effective drinking game.  I had only heard the word “picker” a few times before in my life (garbage picker, etc) but that lifetime total tripled while I was watching this.  These two guys can not seem to stop saying it.

“This is a pickers playground!”

“That’s like a pickers dream come true!”

“The first rule of picking is blah blah.”

I think these guys sort of made this word up (History Channel Disagrees)- but either way they are doing an excellent job of branding it.  You should probably not play the game with hard alcohol.

Anyway, given a choice in bad reality TV, I will probably stick with Patty Stager, but I do appreciate why some people (probably old people) might enjoy American Pickers.  At the intersection of hoarding, home invasion, and antiques, everyone comes out a winner.

(American Pickers Airs On Lifetime and I Guess Also History Channel)

Tags: American Pickers, Lifetime TV for Women, TV

A while ago I was at Target and wound up in an aisle full of piñatas.   I was looking for hand soap, but I quickly forgot about that and then got into an intense internal debate about if I should buy one.  I have been trying to be frugal ever since my cat cost me 2500 dollars, but the piñatas seemed like a smart buy.  I was going to Joe’s house later and I felt like a piñata would just really add an extra layer of excitement to the evening.  “Oh I brought a pinata with me!” I would say and everyone would be delighted.  We would spend hours bashing holes in his wall as we attempted to get at the delicious stale candy.  In the end, however, I decided against a piñata.  Pinatas are for special occasions I told myself.  You need to wait.

I have regretted not buying a piñata ever since.

I am going to attempt to rectify this grave mistake at an upcoming fiesta I am hosting.  This means that I have spent a lot of time online reviewing possible piñatas:

This is a ridiculous Pinata

I am very unclear on what is happening with this piñata.  It looks half piñata, half picture my brother drew in 2^nd grade.  Also, the caption features this phrase:  Our Pirate Giant Pinata features the angry captain of the ship in traditional pirate clothing. Uh, okay.  I guess it is better than this:

Terrifying Pinata of Nightmares

In the end, I decided on this piñata, which as my good friend Nathan described as “a gay sombrero”

One of the most baffling things I have to be true about piñatas is that most of them are in the form of smiling, happy animals (burros, perros, etc).  This is very strange to me.  “Hey kids, look at the this smiling dog!  Now bash it open.”  We really should be teaching children NOT to hurt animals and the piñata just sends the wrong message.  My piñata will be not in the form of a sentient creature, because I don’t think I could handle bashing the smiling eyes of a burro in.

For my party, I am considering filling the piñata with something horrible because I think that would be hilarious.  Imagine if you spent a bunch of time trying to break a piñata and it was full of overdue bills?  Or broken glass?  Or spiders?  I probably won’t do this because I do want a bunch of spiders at my house, but if I ever have a backyard I will do this for sure.

Tags: fiestas, pinatas, pirates

There is something that occurs in Maxim Magazine interviews that I like to call “Hot Girl Trying to be Even Hotter By Making Stuff Up Syndrome” (or HGTEHBMSUS for short).  Basically it occurs when a girl who is already ridiculously hot and famous in an incredibly obscure way (Brazil’s Number 1 Thong Model!) then gives an interview to Maxim magazine so that the men that purchase it have something to point to when they are trying to convince their girlfriends that they aren’t just looking at Thong Models.  In this interview, the Hot Girl in question will make a variety of incredibly unbelievable statements that she obviously thinks will make most men find her even hotter.  “There’s nothing I love more than giving my boyfriend a massage while he watches his favorite sports team and eats chicken wings,” the model will say (Maxim will then put this quote in bold on top of a photo of said model licking a popsicle).   “I also really like wearing lingerie around the house while I clean, drink beers, and fantasize about that hot drunken night my college roommate and I had in Cabo” she’ll add.  HGTEHBMSUS is basically the magazine equivalent of kissing your sobriety sister at a Frat party to get guys.  Completely false, manipulative, and embarrassing for everyone involved and anyone that actually falls for it.  So far, I had only seen it in Maxim magazine, but today HGTEHBMSUS hit a whole new level, it spread to GQ.

Megan Fox, last seen pretending to be the world’s most unrealistic 16 year old (even Michael Bay should be ashamed) in Transformers opened up to GQ about a lesbian affair she had when she was 18.  It is safe to bet this was a hard decision for Megan Fox, but one she felt she had to make because it was a question being brutally honest with her adoring fan base (also one that had NOTHING to do whatsoever with the upcoming Transformers 2 and Fox’s movie “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People” which opens October 3^rd).   From CNN:

Megan Fox has nothing to hide.

The candid 22-year-old “Transformers” star, who’s currently engaged to actor Brian Austin Green, opened up to GQ about her love life, telling the magazine she was once in love with a female stripper. Fox, who appears on the October cover in a black bikini, said she was in the relationship when she was 18 and first living in Los Angeles alone.

“Well, that year my boyfriend broke up with me, and I decided – oh man, sorry, mommy! – that I was in love with this girl that worked at the Body Shop,” said Fox. “I decided that I was going to get her to love me back, and I went out of my way to create a relationship with this girl, a stripper named Nikita.”

Fox said Nikita would do “these beautiful slow dances to Aerosmith ballads.” The actress also said she would bring the Russian stripper gifts and try to inspire her to quit her line of work.

Fox’s publicist, Dominique Appel, confirmed the contents of the GQ report Monday.

Despite the brief relationship with a woman, Fox said she does not identify herself as gay.

“Look, I’m not a lesbian,” said Fox. “I just think that all humans are born with the ability to be attracted to both sexes. I mean, I could see myself in a relationship with a girl – Olivia Wilde is so sexy she makes me want to strangle a mountain ox with my bare hands. She’s mesmerizing. And lately I’ve been obsessed with Jenna Jameson, but … oh boy.”

Wow, Megan Fox, really?  You just so happened to have had a hot lesbian affair that happens to sound exactly it was ripped from the dreams of the average 14 year old boy (your target audience)?  If Megan Fox was going to make up some bisexuality to make herself more interesting you would think she would AT LEAST be a little bit more subtle about it rather than going all out and throwing in a strip club, a Russian stripper named Nikita (Hannah, is that even really a Russian name???), AND Aerosmith ballads.  I mean, come on Megan Fox, did you guys also sometimes ride sweet fourwheelers together while you were wearing bikinis and drinking Steel Reserve?  Did you have a day job where you were a librarian, but you know, a really sexy one? 

Megan Fox then goes on to even further destroy any credibility by listing as her two celebrity crushes  Olivia Wilde (who plays a bisexual on House and has also frequented Maxim’s “Hot Lists”) and Jenna Jameson (she wasn’t even trying with that one). I like how Megan Fox, (much like the Katie Perty song “I Kissed a Girl”) is quick to point out that she isn’t actually gay (average 14 year old boy you still have a chance!) she just likes women when in the most titillating possible scenarios.  In fact, maybe Megan Fox and Katie Perry can get together and discuss how they like kissing super hot girls (Katie Perry claims her inspiration was Scarlett Johansson), but they hope their boyfriends are cool with it because they totally have boyfriends are not actually real lesbians. 

Someone needs to call Nikita for a comment.

Tags: completely BS publicity stunts, HGTEHBMSUS, Maxim Magazine, Megan Fix, Scarlett Johansson

 Some guys I know check CNN every three or four minutes to get the latest updates on the election, or hurricanes devastating Florida, or how a kitten in Tennessee got trapped in a well, or whatever else CNN posts in their top headlines.  I rarely check it, but when I do I am always impressed by the completely bizarre things they chose to list.  For instance, when I checked it yesterday, among the top headlines were “Town bans ‘SeXXXercise’ pole dancing” and ‘Porn mode’ allows secret Web surfing” (a headline that included video).  I am sure, in the entire country, these are probably the most newsworthy things going on, but it still sometimes seems like CNN does favor the porn/pole dancing news.  Anyway, the headline that caught my eye the other day was unrelated to strippers, kittens, or pole dancing, but did have the word “murder” in it (always good).  It read “Police Say Heart Transplant Teen Plotted Murder.”  I will paste the article link below, but basically, some teenager in Minnesota (a state that seems (to me) to produce more than their fair share of serial killers) who 4 years ago got a heart transplant is now being investigated for plotting to murder his neighbor.  There are quite a few interesting elements to this story, among them the debate about whether or not it’s all of the crazy meds the teen is on that are causing him to act nuts, the fact that the neighbors seem to have all turned their houses into Home Alone style traps to stop attempts on their life (including one neighbor that has “10-foot-long 2 by 4 barricades” in front of his door”) and the boy’s lawyer’s quote “This is a very unique case, and frankly, I don’t know the ramifications of anything yet”(which seems to me just sloppy lawyering).  Anyway, I read the story, found it interesting, felt slightly dirty for being interested in the suffering of some random people in Minnesota.  Then, I scrolled too far.  Apparently, CNN.com now has a section where readers can post comments.  With a story like this, you would think there would not really be that many comments to make.  It’s not politically charged and it sucks for everyone involved… what further is there to say about it?  Anyway, this assumption was wrong. Apparently people across the country have opinions about this story.  They have opinions and they want them heard.  RosieCee for instance, observed that:

“It would be important to know which medication the doctor thought was necessary to discontinue with this 18 year old.

The article states that he was on antidepressants. According to the Physicians Desk Reference, antidepressants can cause mania, psychosis, hostility, agitation, etc.”

 I don’t have my own copy of the Physicians Desk Reference, so I found this very informative.  I suppose I could go to WebMd and figure out similar things, but I’m too lazy, so this comment pretty much covered it for me.  Then Legal Eagle weighed in with the stirring and chilling thought:

“What happens a few years down the road when he actually pulls it off?” 

I had to stop and think about that one.  But the best comment of all came from Russ who just may have solved the case.  He posted this gem:

“Doesn’t this bring to mind the theory that organ transplant patients sometimes take on the latent traits of the donor? Who was the donor and what was their background? It’s just a theory, but transplant patients have often discussed feeling ‘different’ after an organ transplant, having different urges or cravings.

It would be interesting to find out who the donor heart came from…”

Now while I have heard the term “cellular memory” before (mainly in low budget horror movies), I am pretty sure there is no actual evidence that backs this claim up.  Russ probably just saw Jessica Alba’s The Eye and thinks he’s on to something.  “Wait a sec, he said,” reading this article, “this seems an awful lot like that movie with that hot chick from Fantastic Four I just saw.  That heart probably came from a serial killer!  I think I’ve figured out what the problem is over there in Minnesota… now the only problem is, how do I tell the authorities?”  Russ then decided to go on CNN and post his idea, hoping that maybe one of the investigators of the case would see it and look into the theory that the boy got some sort of serial killer heart.  Mainly, I like the way Russ posts his comment.  You can tell he thought long and hard and felt he was possible going out on a limb with the whole thing “It’s just a theory…” he says in case we get confused and think he is going to put real, factual solution to this problem on the page.  “It would be interesting to find out who the donor heart came from…” he concludes with ellipses that bring to mind a detective sitting there with a pipe and single eyebrow raised.  “Very interesting…” I can see him concluding while giving everyone in the room a knowing look. 

Anyway, I found the whole thing fairly ridiculous, but I guess there is a chance Russ could be right.  If so, we really should stop giving people serial killer hearts.

Story from CNN.com.

Tags: cellular memory, cnn, Jessica Alba

 I belong to 24 hour fitness because I joined when I first moved back here with the misguided notion that I might get a trainer.  And I belong to the Frog’s down the street because my work offered me a really nice cheap membership and I was already swimming in the pool once or twice a week to get ready for my first triathlon.  On top of that, I live in sunny San Diego, which means the outside is essentially one big gym.  Also, I have a gym at my apartment complex.  This means, that a ridiculous variety of gyms and fitness activities are at my finger tips whenever I decide to work out but, of course, I generally work in my apartment complex’s gym since it is the closest (and worst).

I am not even really sure it is fair to call my apartment complex’s gym, and “gym.”  It’s actually more of an unventilated room with a TV, a bike, an elliptical trainer, and weight machine.  It has little to no lighting, and smells pretty terrible.  If there’s an exercise room in hell, it probably looks slightly nicer than this and at least has a water machine.  Anyway, there is pretty much no reason you would work out there (especially if you belong to like 5 other gyms) unless you are incredibly lazy or, you have something to hide.

Let’s call it the Curves effect.  Curves is a nice idea and all, but the blacked out windows and “no men allowed” policy means that at least some of the women going there are going because they really don’t want anyone to see them.  The gym at my complex is similar, and since it has very little traffic it attracts a large number of people whose bizarre and/or obsessive compulsive behavior would be noted and probably mocked at 24 hour fitness or Frogs.  A few examples:

1. Guy that wears a large fishing hat and walks on the treadmill at a pace of about 1.2 mph for 3 hours every day while reading mystery novels.

2. Obsessed with stair-stepper in an unhealthy way girl- who works for hours on the stair-stepper, all the while looking utterly miserable and watching Food Network (probably just to torture herself). Since I started living here, I personally have seen her lose about 15 pounds.

3. Crazy southern man with a bowl hair cut that is incredibly ripped and lifts weights for hours in the gym while making various screaming noises.

Now, it’s that last one that really was at the source of this post.  I don’t know what crazy southern man’s deal is, but I like to make up various back stories about him in my head while I exercise to pass the time.  He’s in the gym constantly, and he looks exactly how I would picture a serial killer to look while working out.  He wears black jeans, no shirt, and has glossy black hair in a bowl cut ala Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men.  He makes terrifying noises while he lifts weights and then will ask me in a quiet Southern voice if it’s okay that he wants to change the TV to FoxNews.  Occasionally a Lolita-like girl of indeterminate age (I don’t want to know what’s going on there), shows up and mocks him for a while he exercises which he largely seems to ignore.  In short, he’s completely bizarre and would never cut it at a normal gym. 

Crazy Southern Weightlifter is so weird that sometimes I have to wonder if he’s not even a real person, but instead some sort of bizarre social experiment put in the gym to amaze and confound me.  Seriously, how does someone like this exsist?  What is the deal wih the bowl cut?  Why does he scream like that?  While my gym is semi-disgusting, smelly, and dark, it does give me questions like this to ponder while I sweat, which just may make it better than all the other gyms I have at my disposal combined.