I Coulda Been A Star, Ma!

It’s like watching a train wreck. You just can’t look away, even though you know that what you’re about to lay witness to will more than likely (if there is any shred of humanity left in you, that is) make your stomach turn and yearn for the phone call to Ralph on the big white telephone. Yes, I’m talking about reality TV stars, mainly Dave Hestor and Alex Debogorski from Storage Wars and Ice Road Truckers, respectively (no respect intended, though).

Ralph, the big white telephone

You know that when you hear Dave start with his “yuuup” and “I’m so great, my competitors are all idiots and amateurs” and “everything I touch turns to gold” (actual quotes from the show), you will throw whatever is in your hand at the TV, and worry about replacing it tomorrow. Maybe from a pawnshop. When you hear Alex start with his brain curdling laughs, of which he is always the architect of the joke and the only one laughing, you cringe and wonder why they don’t show more reruns of The Brady Bunch instead. But you keep watching for the little guys. And the cute girls. Hmmm, Lisa in that big truck, so sexy!

Stop! Idiot!

Do the people that watch “Storage Wars” not realize that they are paying preposterous prices for whatever they buy when they shop at Dave Hestor’s pawn shop, second hand store or his new auction house? He says on the show that he’ll  list that $10 side table for $120 at his store, and he’s actually successful? Some people will do anything to get onto TV, which is evident with the number of people who show up at these auctions and never make one single bid. But to buy overpriced merchandise just to get close to one of TVs most obnoxious characters (I just can’t refer to this dork as a star) is about as low as Snooki would go. And, that’s real low.

Yuuup! Kill Me Now!

What’s wrong with people these days?

Nooope!

How does someone like Dave Hestor or Alex Devogorski become a TV star? How do they ever cash a paycheck from the bowels of Hollywood? Paris Hilton I could almost understand; the way I almost understood why Santa Clause could come into our highrise, 22nd floor apartment, or the way I could almost understand people saying that they were abducted by aliens and subjected to anal probes.

What’s with all the anal probe obsessions? Everyone who claims that they were abducted by aliens confesses to being probed anally. And, no, that’s not yearly! Could being “abducted by aliens” be code for “coming out of the closet”? For universal justice, why doesn’t Dave Hestor get abducted by aliens? Or, was he? Or, is he one of the abductors, sent here to annoy us to death so that when they do come to colonize Earth, there will be far fewer people here to fight against.

I tell you, there’s just no justice these days.

The All-American Case of Blind Justice

What’s wrong with people these days?

Am I Bad? A Sadist?

I don’t know about you, but I watch these shows hoping to see Dave take a major loss, like when he thought he had an original Stradivarius violin (it was, but it was a popular student model, worth a couple hundred bucks, a tad shy of the millions he was expecting and salivating about to the cameraman), or to hopefully see someone finally lose their tempers enough to plow him a few (won’t take much more than what he normally spews). I even hope to see Alex be the first driver to, on film, break through the ice and laugh all the way to the bottom of some frigid lake in northern Alaska.

Okay, I know. I’m a romantic.

When Dave dropped that valuable, intricate and ancient Chinese herb box getting out of his truck, telling the cameraman that he was sure it was invaluable, I almost whooped with pleasure!

Where am I going with this?

Funny you should ask. I was starting to winder that myself. I get that they might run a couple of marathon showings of a popular TV show, but showing every single episode, one after the other, 2 or 3 times a week? It’s become the Storage Unit equivalent of Law & Order. And now with Storage Wars Texas and Haulage Wars, Lady Hoggers, Wild Hoggers, Hog Diggitty Doggers, they’re getting out of control. Just like Kate Plus 8, or those horny little Duggars in 19 Kids and Counting, those randy little Little People and the out-of-control Gypsy Wedding shows, you would think that rock bottom had been found within the realm of reality TV…

Think Again

Yes, Virginia, we have no shoes. It seems that pedophilia is in fashion these days on the reality TV circuit. With the barfable (another new word! I’m telling you, I’ll have my own dictionary by 2013!) Toddlers and Tiaras, we see a bunch of out of shape and mostly very homely mothers with their kids, getting the wee ones ready for beauty pageants. From age 7 days to over 20 years, they strut their stuff like they were trying out for a photo shoot in Playboy. These parents torture their kids, turn them into miniature street walkers all in the hopes of winning a trophy, and maybe even a thousand bucks (if they finish first overall, over all age groups).

One night I was watching it with my ex, and there was a 23-year old Texas blonde bombshell registered, along with about 40 girls under 10. She was rather vacant, stupid, creepy. She won. 4-yr. old girls cried. She took home $3,000 and lost about $25,000 worth of dignity (she had just purchased $20,000 worth the previous week). She cried in victory (vacancy?). She even gave a thank you victory speech, telling the oh-so understanding children that they, too, could be a bimbo. If only they tried hard enough.

And the weiner is...

Dreams Can Come True!

You just have to be in the right place at the right time for your dream of being on TV to come true. Or, you could fill your house with garbage, bugs and buried, dead cats and be on Hoarders. Or, you could be extremely frugal, and if you are able to use coupons to buy $1500 worth of groceries and pay only $23 total, they will make a 1/2 hour show all about you on your coupon-fantastic shopping trip (much like a Captain Fantastic acid trip). In Canada, that $1500 shopping trip would, by the way, garner $225 in sales taxes, turning their $23 total into a $248 total – that’s why you’ll never see an Extreme Coupon Canada show.

But, if you live in the right city, have some time to spare and can hang out at storage unit auctions long enough, you too could be on TV! And if you do, I’ll pay you to kneecap Dave Hestor! I’ll double your money if you take out his vocal cords. Hey, you could even be a superhero, a congressional medal of honor winner for doing so – you would be saving your country!

Yes, America! Dreams still do come true. Just not mine about Dave catching a ride with Alex, and dropping down into the middle of Great Slave Lake (the biggest and deepest fresh water lake in North America that’s not part of the Great Lakes).

What’s wrong with people these days?

What’s wrong with me these days?

Too much wrong with society these days!

Marriage, Anyone?

There must be a good reason that men aren’t marrying at young ages anymore. Sure, the majority of the girls out there would rather get married young, so that they can be closer in age to their children, giving themselves a much better chance at playing with their grandchildren and great-grandchildren while they can still walk, talk and play.

Love and Marriage.

Men, on the other hand, have seen too much, either in reality or on TV. More than 1/2 of all marriages end in divorce, and a lot of women are getting caught cheating lately, either because they’ve become jaded and lost or their partners have changed. Men just don’t handle being dumped or cheated on very well. We cry, we throw things, we eat tubs of ice cream. We may even watch old reruns of Gunsmoke, marathons of Storage Wars, Criminal Minds and Law & Order.  Or, sometimes we do watch the odd football game with our mates and a few cases of ice cold beer. Please don’t hold that against us, it’s in our genes.

It’s third and nine at the ten-yard line…

There’s surely no shortage of beautiful women out there, and some of them are even nice girls. The problem a lot of men have with this is that they associate beautiful women with strippers, porn stars and hookers, or just above their status (as in, “she’s way too hot for me!”). Hey, don’t blame us, we were brought up in the age of the internet, where beautiful women make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year stripping in front of their laptops. Then there’s the sex-trade workers. There’s more women in the sex trade than there are pro sports players and amateurs combined. And since we usually root for the little guy, the long-shot or the downtrodden, guess which we pick? Football over women? Yeah, it happens every Sunday in most American households that have a mom and dad, 2 and a third kids and a 65 inch LED high definition surround sound home theater system.

The New Marriage.

Aside from facing a lifetime of being jealous and paying private investigators more than their weekend hookers, men are also more than ever facing their ultimate demise on top of worrying about whether or not they are being cheated on by their lovely, young wives. Our society has proven so much in the past century, on top of traveling into space (where, by the way, we realized that space was really big. We dreamed of space, we watched Star Trek and Star Wars and we wanted to fly scout ships to Alpha Centauri lll) we have wars and weapons races. Men have realized that life is short, and it shouldn’t be spent with someone who will most likely either crush your heart or catch you cheating on them. Woops, there goes the divorce settlement!

Why Get Married When…

Single men get to play with video games all night long, we have really big dogs and fast, 2-seat sports cars, fishing boats and cottages. You see, we realized that marriage is very expensive, and living alone we get to do whatever we want, whenever we want to do it and with whomever we want to do it with (as long as they are not overly intoxicated or drugged, and all are consenting adults). Our paychecks are ours, as small as they have become relative to the cost of things, and, well, mom did say that there were plenty of fish in the sea. She just didn’t mention that they were running out of fresh fish at the market, with so many women joining us in not wanting to marry young, the number of eligible bachelorettes has plummeted.

The New Marriage, Pt ll ?

Upon realizing that most married couples end up having scheduled sex, if it happens, men decided that maybe life would be better with girlfriends. Hey, it worked in high school and college. But then again, maybe those young, nubile and overtly sexy young women were just playing us along back then, making us think that yes, we were that good in bed! That yes, they did hang on our every word. That yes, they did worship the ground we walked on. Truth be told, they were just sizing us up, seeing how likely we were to be owning our own homes by the age of 25, 30 maximum. Those nights when we showed up at the houses that they were babysitting at? Casual, animalistic, acrobatic sex? Yes! But also probably trying to see how we’d likely be with kids. Conniving little things.

But, what about the kids?

It used to be that people stayed in loveless marriages so that their children wouldn’t be adversely affected. For the many millions of us who grew up in families where our parents didn’t so much as hold hands and their talking was most often in the form of fighting all the time, we didn’t see the advantage of being in a marriage just to have kids. So, what then? There’s always adoption. Or, better yet, we can get married to a really beautiful and fertile young woman, have kids early in the marriage and then catch them cheating on us while we’re at the weekend cottage, fishing and watching sports with our buddies. Instant divorce and most likely get the kids at least 1/2 of the time, if not all. Men who want to have kids usually have to marry to get them, whereas women don’t have this restriction.

The New Marriage, Pt lll ?

The Moral of The Story?

Not much, just venting. I grew up in a family that stayed together for the kids, and it can be more harmful than getting divorced. However, in many cases the wife was (not is!) the homemaker, the husband the breadwinner. Upon divorce, the husband had to pay his wife 1/2 of his income. Good deal if you can get it. It should have stayed that way…

Now, a lot of men are seeing the benefits of not being married when young, when concentrating on their careers no matter where they have to move to become successful and earn a good salary. Mix that up with the number of vibrant, smart and successful women who are putting marriage off for the same reasons, and there’s a whole lot fewer marriage-ready young people these days. After turning 30, most people have settled into their lifestyle and many are quite contempt. Thus, there`s a whole lot of people in their 30`s and 40`s who are just now thinking about getting married. Things have started to settle and move south, know what I mean?

Is this the death of marriage?

Okay, men, now’s our time! Women have never been so strong, so vibrant, so smart, so sexy and so successful. There’s never been a better time to marry a rich gal who works 90 hours a week at corporate HQ. Get married, have kids then get caught cheating on her after the second son is born, and live at the cottage on half of her income for the rest of our lives.

Sweet.

And, they went and changed these laws?

What’s wrong with society these days?

Marriage anyone? No thanks, we’re already married. To our smart phones, TVs, cottages and game systems.