Portland, my spiritual homeland
Actually, I don't have time to write about the genius of Portland and how I am going to move there as soon as possible with my illegitimate baby and my beloved dogs and cat, but I do have time to share Carol's musings on You are so loveless that I actually had time to write this up. Bitches.
First, the shameful revelation: I have been secretly watching Fox's
"Trading
Spouses" for months. It's dreadful, but it's trashy, and, more
importantly,
there is absolutely nothing decent on television during its time slot.
Anyway,
you should all be glad that I do these horrible things for you, because
now I
can tell you about it.
Brilliant.
First, I have to explain "Trading Spouses." It's a rip-off of ABC's
"Wife
Swap," but Fox got the show out before "Wife Swap" even aired, so the
viewing
public (i.e., me) got used to the utter crap of "Trading Spouses"
before ABC's
marginally higher-concept, substantially higher production values "Wife
Swap"
came along, and, really, for something like this, perhaps low-quality
crap is
the way to go. So, essentially, families switch moms for a week. The
two
families are always very different: frequently different races, very
different
social backgrounds ("We eat leftover pizza for breakfast while our dogs
lick
our feet!" "We eat sprouts and drink wheat germ smoothies while
meditating!"),
and different family styles ("We hug all the time!" "I would rather die
than
hug my sister!"). Intriguingly, one mom is always the obvious winner:
The good
mom comes into the strange family, briefly horrifies everyone by
demanding that
they, say, throw raw eggs at each other as a party, and then wins
everyone over
with her love and affection until they realize that their real mom is
worthless
crap and their dad would actually be a nicer person if their real crap
mom
didn't make him do all the cooking and cleaning after working 18 hours
in a
factory. The crap mom meets the strange family, bitches about
decor/clothing/lack of bathrooms/etc., annoys the kids by forcing them
to wear
make up or not go to soccer practice, and then goes home to her family,
who's
like, "Oh no, crap mom, things are going to change around here," and
then the
crap mom has to pretend that her family missed her and that she really
doesn't
mind that the nice mom came in and showed her up as the worthless, mean
woman
she really is.
So anyway, last night, for the first time, we had religious
differences! One
mom was a horse-owning Jew from Maryland (not that this is a specific
type that
I'm aware of), and the other was Bible-study-teaching born-again
Christian from
California (was not aware California had whole enclaves of such people,
but
apparently it does somewhere). So you naturally assume that the
born-again
Christian is going to be the crap mom, because you think she's going to
come in
and make the Jews all pray to "our savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord." But
you're
wrong! The Jewish mom shows up and immediately starts bitching about
the heat
in California (dumbass), the color of the house paint, and the fact
that the
family's friends are all Christian (I swear, I knew one Jew in
California;
California is not exactly filled with Jews), and then refuses the
born-again
Christian husband's nice offer that they both go to synagogue and
church. She
then glares angrily at the world. This is all interspersed with shots
of the
born-again mom wandering through the new family's house, saying how
lovely it
all is and isn't this so exciting and aren't the daughters beautiful.
Aha, you think, the Jewish mom is the crap mom and the born-again
Christian mom
is the good mom, good, let's have some popcorn and watch the carnage.
But then
the born-again mom corners the new dad with a Baby Ruth bar and tells
him that
he should talk to his daughters about abstinence by using this Baby
Ruth bar
and passing it around and manhandling it and showing what becomes of
your
purity when you pass it around to a lot of different people. Then she
suggests
that he kind of mash the bar and get it all nasty, which is just gross
on many
levels if the bar represents his daughters' purity. And then, just in
case you
missed the point that born-again mom is NOT the good mom but is in fact
the
nice-but-completely-fucking-insane-and-insecure mom, the family takes
her to
Washington, D.C., where, instead of going to museums or government
buildings or
historical sites, she drags them from street vendor to street vendor
buying
every Bush-Cheney item she can get her hands on. AND THEN, when she
gets home,
she gets all upset that crap mom replaced her fake flowers with real
flowers
and she insists on putting the real flowers outside, because real
flowers
obviously freak her the fuck out. And then says the house smells. And
then
nearly has a heart attack because the salt and pepper shakers are in
the wrong
spot. And that is why "Trading Spouses" is some of the best crap
television around.
First, the shameful revelation: I have been secretly watching Fox's
"Trading
Spouses" for months. It's dreadful, but it's trashy, and, more
importantly,
there is absolutely nothing decent on television during its time slot.
Anyway,
you should all be glad that I do these horrible things for you, because
now I
can tell you about it.
Brilliant.
First, I have to explain "Trading Spouses." It's a rip-off of ABC's
"Wife
Swap," but Fox got the show out before "Wife Swap" even aired, so the
viewing
public (i.e., me) got used to the utter crap of "Trading Spouses"
before ABC's
marginally higher-concept, substantially higher production values "Wife
Swap"
came along, and, really, for something like this, perhaps low-quality
crap is
the way to go. So, essentially, families switch moms for a week. The
two
families are always very different: frequently different races, very
different
social backgrounds ("We eat leftover pizza for breakfast while our dogs
lick
our feet!" "We eat sprouts and drink wheat germ smoothies while
meditating!"),
and different family styles ("We hug all the time!" "I would rather die
than
hug my sister!"). Intriguingly, one mom is always the obvious winner:
The good
mom comes into the strange family, briefly horrifies everyone by
demanding that
they, say, throw raw eggs at each other as a party, and then wins
everyone over
with her love and affection until they realize that their real mom is
worthless
crap and their dad would actually be a nicer person if their real crap
mom
didn't make him do all the cooking and cleaning after working 18 hours
in a
factory. The crap mom meets the strange family, bitches about
decor/clothing/lack of bathrooms/etc., annoys the kids by forcing them
to wear
make up or not go to soccer practice, and then goes home to her family,
who's
like, "Oh no, crap mom, things are going to change around here," and
then the
crap mom has to pretend that her family missed her and that she really
doesn't
mind that the nice mom came in and showed her up as the worthless, mean
woman
she really is.
So anyway, last night, for the first time, we had religious
differences! One
mom was a horse-owning Jew from Maryland (not that this is a specific
type that
I'm aware of), and the other was Bible-study-teaching born-again
Christian from
California (was not aware California had whole enclaves of such people,
but
apparently it does somewhere). So you naturally assume that the
born-again
Christian is going to be the crap mom, because you think she's going to
come in
and make the Jews all pray to "our savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord." But
you're
wrong! The Jewish mom shows up and immediately starts bitching about
the heat
in California (dumbass), the color of the house paint, and the fact
that the
family's friends are all Christian (I swear, I knew one Jew in
California;
California is not exactly filled with Jews), and then refuses the
born-again
Christian husband's nice offer that they both go to synagogue and
church. She
then glares angrily at the world. This is all interspersed with shots
of the
born-again mom wandering through the new family's house, saying how
lovely it
all is and isn't this so exciting and aren't the daughters beautiful.
Aha, you think, the Jewish mom is the crap mom and the born-again
Christian mom
is the good mom, good, let's have some popcorn and watch the carnage.
But then
the born-again mom corners the new dad with a Baby Ruth bar and tells
him that
he should talk to his daughters about abstinence by using this Baby
Ruth bar
and passing it around and manhandling it and showing what becomes of
your
purity when you pass it around to a lot of different people. Then she
suggests
that he kind of mash the bar and get it all nasty, which is just gross
on many
levels if the bar represents his daughters' purity. And then, just in
case you
missed the point that born-again mom is NOT the good mom but is in fact
the
nice-but-completely-fucking-insane-and-insecure mom, the family takes
her to
Washington, D.C., where, instead of going to museums or government
buildings or
historical sites, she drags them from street vendor to street vendor
buying
every Bush-Cheney item she can get her hands on. AND THEN, when she
gets home,
she gets all upset that crap mom replaced her fake flowers with real
flowers
and she insists on putting the real flowers outside, because real
flowers
obviously freak her the fuck out. And then says the house smells. And
then
nearly has a heart attack because the salt and pepper shakers are in
the wrong
spot. And that is why "Trading Spouses" is some of the best crap
television around.