Arianna Georgi

We threw Nathan a b-day party with our favorite things.  It’s Always Sunny Season Premiere, Scotch, Meatballs, Beer.  Here’s how you too can have this much fun…

Step 1.  Evite:

Step 2:  The Details:

“Your finest Jelly Beans… Raw”

“Pears weird me out. Where do you start? The top? The bottom? It’s a weird looking thing”

Step 3:  Are you taking me to a spaghetti day?

“What’s your spaghetti policy?”

Step 4: Urinal Cakes

“I happen to think this bathroom is pristine because I work very hard cleaning it. In fact it’s so clean, I would say you could eat out of these urinals.”

Step 5:

Happy People

Tags: evite, It's Always Sunny, jelly beans, meatballs, pears, urine cakes, ziplocs

Wednesday has Hellcats going for it, but Tuesday has its own brand of magic in the form of a show called Millionaire Matchmaker and Patti Stanger.   The premise of Millionaire Matchmaker is simple.   Guys with a lot of money have a really hard time finding attractive women to date them (FACT), and will shell out big bucks to have a super bossy woman in a sequined shirt yell at them.   What makes Patti so qualified to yell at them (and wear sequins)?   The credits inform us that she is a third generation matchmaker, with a “very high success rate.”  I am not sure what either of these things mean, but the dating successes must occur NOT on TV since no one on this show every seems to like each other (that would not be as exciting for the viewers at home!)

On each episode of Millionaire Matchmaker, Patti starts by having her loyal assistants present her with the videos of the two millionaires.  Most of the time these are guys, but sometimes they are women (to which Patti hisses “I hate millionaireresses”).  Sometimes they are gay (In this case Patti screams “I love the gays!).  Although this is her job, Patti is generally highly annoyed the videos.  She rolls her eyes and makes rude comments.  She picks one character trait for each person and then harps relentlessly on it (he has a Peter Pan Complex!)  Patti then sums up by saying that although Lance seems like he’s only into 20 year old strippers, she’ll try to help him because she believes everyone deserves love.

From there, we get to watch Patti audition dates and matchmake.  In the new season, the show has (wisely), relegated the actual dates to the last ten minutes or so, which gives us more time to watch Patti insult line-ups of potential dates and make comments involving the word “penis.”  (In fact, I have gotten very drunk several times playing a drinking game where I do a shot every time she says this.  I really don’t think there is a single episode where Patti does not mention pensises.  It’s all part of the charm!)

Today, I finally got around to watching the episode of Millionaire Matchmaker from last Tuesday.  It was pretty much exactly like the above description.  Patti instantly picked things about the two millionaires she could mention over and over.  For Jordan, a 31 year old very short man, Patti diagnosed ADD.

(You can also play a drinking game where you drink every time Patti says the phrase associated with her snap judgment.   ADD was probably mentioned about 30 times in this particular episode.)

Leah, the other millionaire, had “masculine energy.”  Masculine energy was summed up as follows:  if a man is opening a jar and can’t handle it, you may ask him if he needs to help.  If he then asks for your help, you can touch the jar.  You are not allowed to grab the jar from him and open it yourself.  This is masculine energy.

(Nothing was mentioned about what my theoretical reaction would be: getting bored watching someone opening a jar and going into the other room to read).

Leah and Jordan were diagnosed by a body language expert, did some speed dating in a weird bar pretending to be a carnival, and were described repeatedly as masculine and ADD.

I need to go finish cooking dinner but I will just sum up by stating that if all of this has not completely convinced you that you should watch Millionaire Matchmaker or maybe go on it as a contestant, then I am not sure what to say.  Like most good TV it’s ridiculous, pointless, and sort of insulting to me as a woman.  It has earned a weekly spot on the DVR.

Tags: ADD, DVR, Masculine Energy, Millionaire Matchmaker, TV

Reasons:
1. They have horrible screaming fights like every day. It seriously sounds like Jerry Springer.
2. They watch sports at high volume all day on weekend.
3. They sweep their cat litter and hair onto my porch.
4. They have terrible taste in TV. During the weekdays they watch sitcoms I would never watch. I watch a lot of TV, but even I am snobby sometimes.
To be honest, at this point I have created an elaborate back-story for my neighbors that makes me hate them even more. She is a nurse at a local hospital- one who is rude to patients and won’t give anyone extra apple juice. I have decided this mainly because she appears to work strange hours.
He is getting his Masters in pharmacology and does a lot of online gaming. I know this is half true.
Anyway, this is sort of a cop-out entry to appease Analise, but I really do hate them.

Tags: making stuff up about people you don't know, neighbors, Stupid TV

When I was in college I didn’t buy my cigarettes at the corner deli.  I regularly went to the corner deli for toilet paper, beer, pints of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, and stale fried rice at 3 in the morning; but not cigarettes.  Why was this?  Because I couldn’t stand the thought of the sweet looking man who at the counter and his awkward 13-year old mustached son knowing I smoked.  I smoked two packs a day and New York is very cold in the winter, but still I made the trek to the “other deli” the one that smelled like onions and was manned by a very unfriendly woman who wouldn’t make eye contact.  I just couldn’t deal with the idea of the man and his son, at home, saying things like “she looked so sweet” or “who knew” (probably not in English, but you get the idea). 

I don’t smoke anymore, but I am still consistently shocked by the lengths I go to just to prove to strangers, (who could probably care less), that I have a strong moral character and don’t suck.  At the gym, I often force myself to watch CNN.   The gym TVs have cable and there is a full range of Kardashian and Jersey Shore-related TV to tempt me, but I can’t stand the thought that other gyms goers would know  I watch that stuff. 

“Look at her,” they would think haughtily while they watch KPBS, “rotting her mind with reality TV!” 

A similar thing occurs at the doctor’s office, where although I would love to read about the latest Teen Mom crisis in US Weekly, I read National Geographic. 

“Look at her!”  I imagine the doctor saying to the nurses, “a young woman reading National Geographic!  What uncommon class!”

The list goes on and on.  I don’t buy beer at the pharmacy when I pick up my (very routine) prescription (because the pharmacist would judge), I have a hard time reading the junk chick-lit novels I want on planes (because people would assume that’s what I always read), I force myself to order the more adventurous dish over the typical one (because I’m that kind of girl).  I strive to impress people who probably don’t even give me a second glance.  And what does it get me?  An hour of bored elliptical machine, ignorance about the lives of teen moms, and no beer!  Not to mention walks through the snow and rain…. 

Anyway, my New Year’s Resolution this year (yes, it is only November, I’m a planner, I plan a few months ahead) is to stop over-thinking.  Not just this, but work, friends, and everything.  I’m going to relax and go with it.  And if the guy next to me on the plan thinks I am ditz because I have the latest Twightlight novel, I guess that’s just how it goes.

Last week, feeling sort of blue, I mixed a martini, climbed into my sleeping bag and settled on the couch to wait it out.  This being the tail end of the summer, there was very little for me zone out to on TV and even MTV, which I can normally trust for some mindless show about some fat and socially inept kid being “made” into a break dancer, was showing a marathon of The Hills, pretty much the only reality TV show I refuse to watch.  Anyway, I found myself stuck with TBS, whose new motto seems to be “very funny” (I guess got TNT got the drama, so funny was all that was left). 

“Very Funny” apparently means lots of episodes of Friends, an association I did not necessarily agree with right off the bat (actually I still don’t agree with it).  The thing is, I haven’t watched Friends since college, when I had the world’s worst roommate (if anyone wants I will write about it, but the story is short on the humor and heavy on the seriously annoying).   The World’s Worst roommate had a rainman-like obsession with Friends and in addition to owning all of the seasons on VHS (or was it DVD at that point… how old am I?) talked about them almost constantly like they were real people.  “Monica is SOOOO into cleaning,” she would tell me, looking up as I walked in, interrupting her eating cheese doodle and watching Friends time (which was all the time as far as I could tell).  “Oh, okay.” I would respond.  Her complete love of Friends, combined with her pure horribleness ruined the entire show for me and automatically made me suspicious from there on out of anyone that said they liked it (which at the time was about 99% of America).  Anyway, I haven’t watched it since, and last week, when I heard the familiar Friends theme song, I suffered a small but significant shudder like former water torture victims gets when someone turns on the sink.  But before I could change the channel I was sucked into watching.  And then, something happened.  The Friends won me back over. 

In my defense, Friends is very colorful.  I mean seriously, they all wear bright colors and adorable outfits.  Also, like every single set piece is some shade of late 90s vibrant pastel, the kind of colors that call out “Hey, you on the couch, don’t be so sad!  Look at these oversized colorful mugs Monica has, and Rachel’s mesmerizing hair, and Chandler’s sweater vest.  Everything is going to be okay!”  In addition, there is something spellbinding about the laugh track to that show and how dependable the “ohhhs and ahhs” and canned laughter are.  The characters are dependable too.  Pretty much they can all be summed up in a few words.  Monica: likes to cook and is anal.  Joey: dumb, likes food.  Chandler: funny.  And so on.  Since the characters are so easy to grasp and it doesn’t take years of watching and analyzing to understand all their subtleties and nuances, you can just sort of flip it on and go with it.  For instance, the episode I watched happened to be about Thanksgiving.  In it all of these elements worked perfectly.  Joey really likes to eat, so he was excited about the turkey.  Monica was cooking the turkey and being anal.  Chandler made a bunch of funny comments.  No wonder people in other countries like to watch the Friends.  Even if my understanding of the English language was very low, as long as I got the basic elements of show and characters, the bright colors and laugh track could carry the rest. 

So when you are lying on the couch drinking alone and being incredibly depressed in a sleeping bag, Friends is an ideal show to watch.  The colors are distracting, everyone behaves predictably (for instance, when Joey walks into a room there’s a 95% chance he’ll say “how you doing” ).  The most stressful things that seem to happen to any of them is that they have silly long term crushes on each other that they keep secret for one reason or another.  I owe Jennifer Aniston and the rest of the crew a sincere apology for the years I spent making statements like “that show is tailor-made for idiots.”  I still think the show is for idiots, but I guess sometimes that’s not such a bad thing. 

Tags: friends, martinis