And then…

Then…

I don’t even know.   It all came rushing back to me, all those diets I was always on when I was in my late teens and how they just bloody don’t work, do they?   In the second week, NOT CHEATING EVEN ONE TIME, I gained three pounds.   In the third week, this week, I stabilized.   Today I ate a cookie.   I mean, COME ON.   I can weigh the same AND eat cookies.   I’ve been eating a cookie every day for my entire adult life and have weighed the same.   A cookie does not change things.

But…

I’m sure not going to weigh myself tomorrow.    Have I mentioned how much I hate scales?  I do.   I hate them.   You should throw yours out.   I can’t.   I mean, I HAVE.   But then I have to buy a new one, so that’s just environmentally unfriendly.    Instead of worrying about the number, I am trying on my clothes which should be magically becoming larger than I am, yet this is not working.

Honestly, how vapid do I sound?   I should stop typing.   And I’m still doing it.    Maybe I’ll delete this later!   Yes, that’s it.   Then I will perform magical blog hypnosis so you all forget that time that I went on a diet and WOULD.  NOT.  SHUT.   UP.   ABOUT.   IT.

On the plus side, I have been working out every single day except for today when I was GOING to work out but then I had to tidy the house and then I ate a HUGE dinner and oops, that wasn’t on my diet either, and then I was too tired to work out and it’s unbelievable how bloated I feel and probably I GAINED THAT TWO POUNDS BACK ANYWAY.

Oh, lawd.   No more dieting for me.   Yet I’m not going to buy bigger pants.   I refuse.    So I guess I’ll keep trying.   But I won’t use the word “diet”.   I think that the word “diet” actually creates a backlash inside your fat cells that causes them to multiply like the zombie rabbits at UVic, which is to say, “quickly”.   And now I’m turning into the kind of person who blogs about weight loss AND The Bachelorette and yes, OK, fine, I DID tape Bachelor Pad but I haven’t watched it yet and I’m not going to blog it, I’m going to start blogging about more intelligent things, like poetry and Moby Dick, even though I loathed Moby Dick.  I thought it was desperately in need of a good editor.

Much like me.

In unrelated news, I have a new website over in the part of my world where I frolic around outside of the shallow end and use better metaphors than I do here.    It’s at karenrivers.com.   Check it out and let me know what you think.   I call it “seventies groovy disco chick roller skates writer site”.    Or something like that.

Actually, I mostly just call it “home”.

So here I am and I DID watch the show but it was late at night and I had to fast forward through the parts with Ali’s family because they were so painfully uninteresting and I really just wanted someone to push someone else into the water — and OH THE WATER — how much do I want to go to Bora Bora?  HOW MUCH?   SO MUCH.   Dear Tourism Board of Bora Bora:  I will blog EVERY SECOND OF MY STAY ON YOUR ISLAND if you send me tickets and provide me with food and lodging.   And babysitting.   Please, Bora Bora.   PLEASE.   Yours sincerely, Karen.

Where was I?  Where am I?  Oh, that’s right, on my couch, preparing for the hellfires of camping (actually there’s a fire ban, so there won’t be any fires, but let’s just pretend for the sake of dramatic argument, mkay?) and blogging the finale of The Bachelorette.   You know how in war movies, the soldiers are always dragging themselves through the dirt under low-slung barbed wire (why don’t they go AROUND?)?  That’s how I feel writing this recap.  But why?  I don’t know.   Crawl, crawl, crawl.   [spits dirt out of mouth] [sighs]

So Chris and Roberto and Ali went to Bora Bora which is beautiful but isn’t it also in Tahiti where they already were?  I got confused and spent the first fifteen minutes pondering why they didn’t just say they went elsewhere in Tahiti, then I lost interest.   Ali and Roberto are up first and they have a prolonged date with sand and kissing and Roberto stuttering about opening up and walls coming down and maybe falling in love and being a better man (THANKS FOR THAT, JACK NICHOLSON!) (seriously, that movie provided more lines for people-unable-to-come-up-with-their-own than even that dumb Tom Cruise “You complete me!” nonsense).   (Hey, maybe people fall into one of two camps, they either “want to be a better man” or they are all “You complete me!”  Probably an entire personality test could be built around this, but not by me.  Because I am lazy.   And I have a headache.)   OK, now I’ve lost track of that sentence.   No matter, it RAINS and it’s a MIRACLE!   Except they are in the tropics where it rains all the time and there’s a name for this but I’ve forgotten what it is, but yeah, it was RAIN.   The fact that they were so enraptured by the rain caused me to conclude that indeed ROBERTO IS THE WINNER!

Which proved to be right because even after the awkward WASP-y meeting with Ali’s parents in which they pretended to be happy that Ali was going to pick Roberto by practicing their awkward Spanish on him, it was pretty obvious that Ali had already chosen.

Made more obvious by the fact that she showed up at Chris’ place and dumped him resoundingly, so startling him that he actually imploded.   Or, he was happy, because now he gets to be The Bachelor!   Either way, there was a RAINBOW which means that his mom is happy OR it means that much like there is frequently rain in the tropics, there is also frequently rainbows.   In any event, who am I to be cynical about the symbolism of rainbows?   ‘zactly.

Why I typed ‘zactly instead of EXACTLY remains a mystery.  If I didn’t have any mysteries, you’d probably stop reading and then I might cease entirely to exist!   Poof!   GONE.   JUST LIKE MY ENTIRE MEMORY OF WATCHING THIS SEASON OF THE BACHELORETTE.

So who’s watching Bachelor Pad?   I would rather have my appendix removed via my left nostril, but hey, I probably will.   Because this diet isn’t really working out and almost certainly the violent nausea that I’ll experience when douchebag Wes professes his love for Gi(n)a will cure any last vestiges of needing to eat that I might have in the future.

Happy weekend, peeps!    See you next week.   Maybe.   If I can get through all this barbed wire, that is.

So I don’t have much to say about it.

But seriously, ABC, you couldn’t get Frank and Justin to show up?    You disappoint me, giant American network.    You disappoint me.

As it turns out, I don’t have ANYTHING to say about it.   Sorry.   It’s hard to type when I’m yawning.

Because FRANK, Frank pretended to be SO IN LOVE with Ali that if the producers didn’t fly in some meds for him, stat, he threatened to melt right off the screen because his GIRLFRIEND was with the other menz!   As it turns out, he meant his girlfriend Nicole back in Chicago and he was worried that she was tramping it up as much as he was.   Honestly, I don’t care.   Be in love with whoever, even if whoever seems to be a fifteen year old girl with no ability to smile.    WHATEVS.    But don’t smarm and sweat all over my screen while gnawing out your own tooth about how much you love LOVE lurve LUUUURRVVEEEE Ali because even though I’m tired of Ali and her yellow hair, it’s just altogether too much and so CONGRATULATIONS FRANK!

I’ll have a little statue made up.   You know, of a golden douchebag.   Just for you.   With an extra honour of BIGGEST HYPOCRITE OF THE SERIES because wasn’t it you, Shiny Frank, who was getting all in a twist about how Justin was ten kinds of evil for daring to have a relationship before coming on the show that maybe wasn’t entirely over?  FRANK?  I’M TALKING TO YOU, FRANK.    Hypocrisy IS the root of all evil.   Trust me.   I KNOW THESE THINGS.   Which makes you, Frank, evil.    And a hypocrite!   AND A DOUCHE BAG!   Triple win!

Now that’s out of my system, I will say that Tahiti is absolutely STUNNING and OMGZ I WANT TO GO THERE.   While we were watching, Mr.  Spuddle got tired of hearing me gasp every time I saw another thatched straw hut perched on a perfect turquoise sea and so he suggested I go there and write a book.   I’m not entirely sure what he meant by that.   Maybe he’s trying to get rid of me!   He sees an opening with Ali now that Frank has sweated his way back into a puddle on the ground, much like the Wicked Witch of the West!   He’s going to leave me for Ali!   But still… tempting.  On the other hand, I can’t afford it!  And I have several thousand children to care for!  And I don’t think for a second he was suggesting that I go to Tahiti ALONE!   I’d have the kids!  And they’d fall right into that turquoise sea on an hourly basis and probably be eaten by sharks!   So I wouldn’t get much writing done and eventually we’d go broke and die!   So maybe not, Mr. Spuddle, but thank you for offering.

So blah blah blah, anyway.   If this was the sordid sex episode, they really downplayed it because honestly I forgot that it was until it was over.   Ali and Roberto did a lot of wading around while fully dressed which did actually make me start to associate Tahiti with the word “chafing”.   But it was all very pretty and Roberto is trying VERY HARD to balance his dimpled-all-American-good-guy image with his I’m-auditioning-to-be-The-Bachelor  image.   Don’t worry, Roberto, she won’t pick you even though she DOES totally like you better.   She’s going to pick Chris because she loves his family and he’s much more of a sure thing.   SHE DOES NOT WANT TO BE HURT.  People who do not want to be hurt always end up with people they don’t actually love because it is safer.   The guy with the dead mother who reveres love above all other things?   Or the hot guy who likes being on TV and whose family thinks he deserves — nay, OWES IT TO THE WORLD — to be a star?   Er, kind of a no-brainer, unless you factor in lust, and Our Ali is just burned enough now by Frank The Moist Faced Deceiver that she’s going to go with the safe bet.    I bet.   If I were going to bet.   Which I’m not.    Because I am almost always wrong when it comes to guessing the finale except for that time when I guessed correctly that Reid was going to reappear.    Hey, maybe FRANK will reappear, too!   Hopefully Nicole will come to her senses and realize that the sweaty guy who actually didn’t once mention his great love for her all season who lives in his parents’ basement is not the shiny prize he appears to be on the surface.  Nah, that won’t happen.   What am I saying?   They’ll get married and live happily ever after!   At least she has an apartment!  AND HE COMPLETES HER!  And she’s just young enough to steal all her romantic dialogue from corny movies!   AND ALI DOESN’T EVEN HAVE AN APARTMENT!    You win, Nicole.  NICELY PLAYED.

Next up, Chris.   I’m starting to think that as cute as Chris is and as much as I’m touched by his incessant mentioning of his dead mother, he may not be mentally intact.   He spends a lot of time staring and mumbling and just generally not appearing to be a firecracker of any sort, not that I even know what I mean by that.    He and Ali go somewhere on a boat and find a pearl in a shell which makes Ali go semi-crazed with joy and they proceed to go on a pearl frenzy and you just KNOW that those pearls are going to feature in some sort of new setting in a future episode.   I don’t know what else happens.   They have dinner and they go back to the SURPRISING FANTASY SUITE!  I really really need the producers to word that card differently in the future.   It’s IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to pretend to be surprised by it, and yet every season, the fake surprise takes me by surprise, only my fake surprise is fake, too, so it’s like a massive fake surprise about the fake surprise!   Fake surprises, FTW!

Chris Harrison at this point is exhausted because of all the free counselling he’s had to provide both to Ali and to Frank and he’s mentally negotiating a higher salary for episodes in which he has to pretend to care and at one point, I swear he actually rolls his eyes because this is NOT the most important decision you will ever make in YOUR LIFE it’s just the first step towards another relationship that will fail before you go on to meet someone NOT ON TV and continue on with your life, hoping that a good dose of hypnosis will blank out most of your memories of ABC’s entire roster of shows.

So they have  a rose ceremony anyway and I’m concerned that I wasn’t paying enough attention to comprehend WHY they were and Ali babbled about Frank’s unfinished business which made it sound like he was wanted on racketeering charges (I just like saying “racketeering”) and Roberto and Chris laughed uncomfortably because neither knew if they were supposed to care and HOLY SHIT ONE OF THEM IS EXPECTED TO PROPOSE TO HER IN ONLY TWO WEEKS TIME.   Awkward!

Next week, the stupid MEN TELL ALL episode in which Chris Harrison has to ask probing questions and really rethinks his choice of careers because Pretending To Care Deeply about these people is starting to wear on his every last nerve.

PS – Dear ABC:  You dragged out the Frank stuff for about 45 minutes too long.   FYI.   Love, A Caring Fan.

I?  Have.  Gained!  Ten*  POUNDS.

I weighed myself this morning because my pants wouldn’t button and I thought, Gee, nothing will help my ailing self esteem and poor mood more than getting on the scale and getting punched in the head with a series of numbers I DO NOT WANT TO SEE.

It’s true.  After many many years of weighing exactly the same amount, more years than I can count, even getting pregnant and then having babies, I have weighed the same.  Exact.   Amount.   Well, actually in university I gained that old freshman forty.   Fifteen?  NO, FORTY.   But then I lost that by working out obsessively and treating my body horrifically.   And  obviously not while I WAS pregnant, I gained forty or so pounds with each pregnancy, but don’t hate me — it just came off when the babies were born in a couple of months time and fine, I was that person that you hate.   Or not, because even though I’m thin-ish (or was, HAHA), I was in terrible shape.   Not for all of those years, but most of them.   Since having kids, anyway, because I never exercise.   I don’t.   I admit it.  I can’t seem to find a gym with childcare, but now I have and I’m not going to join until September because of the way my childcare works in the summer, etc.   Excuses!  I haz them!   But I have gym equipment in the basement, and damn it, I am going to use it.

For thirty minutes.

Every day.

Even if it is midnight before I can fit it in.

I am posting this because I want to be accountable but not really.   Like I don’t want you to say, “NICE WORK ON THAT BOX OF CHOCOLATE COOKIES!”   Because that is the kind of help that I resent even when I’ve asked for it.   I just want you to know that indeed, my pants are too tight and this tightness of the pants is making me grouchy and when I’m grouchy, I suck.    It’s true, I do.   I’m a horrible grouchy person.   I do not wear “grouchy” lightly.   Poor Ali.   I mean, I’m probably not going to be super nice about The Bachelorette tonight.    SORRY.

So here’s the thing.   I AM ON A DIET.   I am!  No more crappy food.   I swear.   I promise.   I VOW to you my audience of People Who Watch The Bachelorette.   I will stop eating Doritos and drinking wine every day like it’s a health tonic.  I will stop eating toast for breakfast and cheesetoast for lunch and garlic toast for dinner.   I hereby do solemnly declare that by the time school goes back and I can start going to the gym, I will weigh that same magicky number that I’ve always weighed.

And then I will get fit.

I may even take a vitamin pill.   Even though I think they’re stupid.

Because!   I!   Am!   Forty!

And I don’t want to just give up entirely and let my body slide slowly to the ground, which it is in danger of doing, I swear, I look like a skeleton wearing a fat suit that is made of some kind of heavy gel such that although my head and neck and shoulders are thin, as you move down towards the ankles, I just become wider, much like a pyramid of some sort.   It ain’t pretty.   And I ain’t wearing it anymore.

Besides, I have spent years buying expensive designer jeans for next to nothing on eBay and who wants to duplicate that kind of work?

Why am I telling you this?

Who are you anyway?

TELL ME.

And I will tell you, every Monday morning, how I’m doing.   Even if how I’m doing is CRAPPILY and GROUCHILY and filled with the horror of the MUFFIN TOP.

If I haven’t already mentioned it a million times, I’d like to advise you that I seriously couldn’t care any less about this season of The Bachelorette and yet, OK, yes, FINE, I did buy US Magazine yesterday because the headline suggested that Ali and Roberto ALREADY KNEW EACH OTHER!  Gasp!  I haven’t read it yet but just by purchasing the magazine, I’m giving myself away.   Obviously I care DEEPLY about Ali’s quest for love!   Yay!  A reason to live!   Kill me, Kirk’s Dad, KILLLLLMEEEEE.   What?   Who?   What am I saying?   I must get another coffee.   You know, I boycotted Starbucks years ago due to the documentary movie Black Gold but Starbucks head office assures me that they no longer ritually abuse Ethiopian coffee farmer’s babies, so I don’t know.   I’m here.   Every sip makes me hate myself a little more.  But it’s next door to where the kids are at camp!  I can maximize my “work” time!  If by “work”, I mean “blogging about Kirk’s dad”!   Who have I become?  I HAVE A BOOK TO WRITE.

Anywho, Ali was off on the hometown visits, and correct me if I’m wrong, but Roberto doesn’t play ball anymore, right?  He sells insurance?   So I think they are maybe overplaying the whole baseball thing and on Roberto’s upcoming season of The Bachelor they will probably force him to don his uniform at least once every episode and we’ll all collectively roll our eyes so hard that there will be a rush of eye injuries to local emergency rooms that no one will be able to explain.   Except we will know.   WE WILL KNOW.    Roberto’s family love him, which is fine, they should, everyone’s family should love them, but they really have an inflated idea of what Roberto needs.   Like his father all but shook him and said, “She is not good enough for you!”  Which made me bristle defensively and then I remembered that I don’t much like Ali either.  But still, what’s so great about Roberto?   Yes, he has a dimple and yes, he played ball, but this does not make a marketing rep for Facebook below him.   She has a dimple also!  I mean, come on.   Does he still live at home?  It wasn’t mentioned but it suddenly occurred to me that ALL of these men live at home still and then I had a panic attack for no reason and had to breathe into a paper bag.   Maybe it was from laughing so hard.

Ali and Roberto do a bunch of romping merrily for the camera in baseball duds and then, whatever, suddenly she’s in Wisconsin or something and there is Kirk and whatever else happened on this episode, that taxidermy thing really stole the show.   Stole it.   There was some stuff about Chris being sad on Cape Cod in a darling little house that Ali fell in love with and then decided she loved Chris after all because EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US wanted to marry that entire family with all their belief in love and matching bracelets and miles of sandy, foggy beaches and humping whales and whatnot.    But all this was lost in the collective gasp of horror that resounded from every corner of the globe when ALI WENT TO KIRK’S DAD’S BASEMENT.

Question:   Where does Kirk’s dad get the bodies to stuff?   Does he buy them?   Or does he kill them himself?   If you live in Wisconsin, I guess you have to ask yourself:  IS YOUR PET SAFE?    Seriously, that guy is … and also, on a non-related but also related note, he has really messed up ideas about love.   What is all this thinking with your head and ignoring your heart?   He made marriage sound like a business arrangement that was depressing but necessary.   Wow, way to sell it, Kirk’s Dad!   I bet Kirk’s Step Mom is really feeling the love now.   I know I was.   Bye bye, Kirk.

Next up, Frank!    And guess what?  Frank is overthinking things, hyperventilating, and gnawing out his own teeth!  Also, I see he took my advice and bought the JCrew white scoopneck T.   It goes with everything, Frank, it really does!   Except you do know it’s a girl’s shirt, right?   I’m just saying.   Anyway, Frank’s family miss him SO MUCH except doesn’t he live in their basement?  So right before he met Ali on the pier, was he not IN THEIR BASEMENT DONNING HIS SCOOPNECK?   So why do they pretend they haven’t seen him for six weeks?   Does not compute.   But what does compute is that Frank is losing the plot.   Losing.   Losing.   Losing.   Lost.   So although I’m willing to bet that Ali would have picked Frank, had she had the choice, I’m betting that the choice will be removed when Frank overthinks so much that his brain actually implodes through the black hole where his tooth formerly resided.

Next week, the sordid sex week!   I can’t decide which of these two weeks makes me more uncomfortable.   The family week is always painful but the sex week, well, just awkward and embarrassing to watch.   See you then!   Tahiti, FTW!

So there we are in Portugal and once again the best part of the show is the part where the cameras pan Lisbon and the architecture looks nice and we all ponder why we aren’t just watching a documentary travel show about Portugal and then we realize that hey, this IS sort of a documentary travel show about Portugal!  And then we congratulate ourselves for being all smart and educated and stuff!   And then the DATE CARD arrives and we realize that this may just be the most boring episode of The Bachelorette EVER because even the date card delivery is just a lacklustre envelope sitting on the front hall table, looking depressed!   I think the first card went to Roberto but I wasn’t paying that much attention.   Oh, it definitely was.   I found it hard to focus on this show because my eyes kept slamming up against the Boringness and insisting that instead I look away and contemplate exactly how our single house plant has stayed alive all these years in spite of the fact we rarely water it and the kids swing on it.   It’s a big plant.   Where was I?   Oh, right, Portugal, where Ali and Roberto are proving how fun they are by taking wacky photos of each other in the street, which — in my experience — never happens in real life, unless you are very urgently trying to add some “fun” snaps of yourself to your facebook page and also, you are sixteen.   Then they have more fun by making out and dancing and Ali tries not to look shocked that someone as good-looking as Roberto is dry-humping her in the street.    Then they eat and point out that neither can cook so if they end up together, both will be very skinny from never eating or very bloated from eating too much fast food or they will break up because Roberto will go home for every meal so his mother can cook him something Spanish.  Random!  Isn’t he Puerto Rican?   Why wouldn’t she cook something Puerto Rican?   Not that being Puerto Rican necessarily removes your ability to cook from other cultures, it just struck me as odd or maybe I was just desperately searching for something to be amused by because it nothing else was happening at all that was even somewhat entertaining, which that wasn’t, so go ahead and stop reading now.

Next up, Frantic Frank and Ty have a two-on-one, which makes Frank sweat nervously and palpitate because apparently TY is his biggest competition.  Has he ever heard Ty talk?    He is insane if he believes that Ali is after a guy who is “tickled” when women have ambitions.   What does Ty do again apart from sit around and strum his guitar mournfully?  Does he have a job?  Or any amusing ambitions himself?   Ali is clearly not into the date or the show at all and I can’t help but wonder what is up with her, did one of the producers tell her she looked fat?  Because she looked like I look on days when I’m filled with self-loathing and angst, much like yesterday, when I’m surprised I didn’t just leap across the counter of The Source, where the sneering salesman smugly judged me for calling one of my kids “whatever your name is”.   Judge much?   I HATE YOU.   What?   Where am I?   I just wanted a power adapter and because I couldn’t remember the word “adapter” because the kids were climbing the flat screen TVs and I was flustered, apparently I was filed under the category “customer who wants me to sell them an iPhone even though what they want is a POWER ADAPTER AND THEY ALREADY HAVE AN IPHONE.”   Wow, I have no idea what I am talking about.

Next up, a date with Kirk!   Ali looks ready to cry and run from the room but he obliviously soldiers on and ALL SHE WANTS IS A POWER ADAPTER.   Oh, wait, that was me, at The Source.   Whatever.   I don’t know what she and Kirk talk about because the producers decide to fast forward through their date entirely so that they can give us even more of Jake and Vienna bickering nastily.    Good call!  If by “good call”, I mean, “I’m seriously never watching this show again!”   But I probably will anyway!

Let’s not forget Chris from Cape Cod, who has a dead mother and cannot get through a single scene without mentioning it forty times and I’m starting to wonder if he wouldn’t be better off in a therapeutic retreat than on a sordid dating reality TV show.   If by “starting to wonder”, I mean “SOMEONE HELP THAT KID”.   I feel bad for him, I do.   He loved his mom and I guess he didn’t know that when he came on the show that the producers were going to take his fresh wound and continually squeeze it until nothing was left.   I hope Ali cuts him soon so that he can be free of the tyranny of cable TV exploitation.   Seriously.   I am not always kidding.   He gives Ali, who is feeling no connection with Chris as she’s just told us, a tennis bracelet like his mom and sister wore all the time, which depresses the hell out of me and I cry for the rest of the show, but only inside my head, because if I was crying out loud, I wouldn’t be able to hear Jake and Vienna’s embarrassing spat.

At the Rose Ceremony, which feels rushed and silly, because it is, Ali dismisses Ty and then a giant Electrolux reaches down from the sky and sucks him back through the space-time continuum to 1950 where a nice pot roast and martini are waiting for him.

And THEN, what we’ve all been waiting for!   Chris Harrison actually does some work!  If by “work”, I mean, “he is forced to stray from his usual ten lines that he spouts on every program!”   In an effort to look like a hard-hitting journalist, Chris asks Jake and Vienna some tough questions!   Except they aren’t that tough!  And I hope Jake kept that job at American Airlines or wherever because he’s gonna need it!   Celebs can only get away with being deranged (see: Tom Cruise) when they are already major movie stars!  Jake, who has been on three shows now if you count whatever he was filming during the WEEKEND OF THE BREAKUP, is scuppered.   Sorry, Jake.    You blew it.   See, America wants you to grin and crinkle your eyes at them, but ALSO they want you to be human!  (And a pilot!) And not an ice-cold, controlling, irrational, abusive, actor-wannabe jerk!   So, too bad.   Better luck next time on your next reality TV series, “Dancing With The People Who Blew Their Career By Making America’s Skin Collectively Crawl”!   I don’t have much to say about Vienna except that I doubt she’s a particularly good actress and I completely believe her about the dresser and the measuring tape.    Vienna, go back to Florida!  Save yourself!   Or whatever!   I don’t much care!    But I do agree that Jake is not good boyfriend material!   Because he’s a psychopath!   I am overusing exclamation points again!      Next week, hometown dates!   I think!    See you then!

And yes, Wes IS a douchebag!   (Second highest hit rate from the exact phrase, “Wes is a douchebag”.   Hi Wes!)

But then again, so is Justin!   But tell the truth, America, isn’t it TRUE that you want at least one person on this show to be a douchebag?  I remember early seasons of this trainwreck in which a bunch of overly earnest love-hunters tried desperately to Fall in Love and it was so boring, it was, it really really was.   Especially season 1, remember that?  OH MAN, WHAT A BORE.   Also, wasn’t that guy gay?   What?   I don’t know.   I don’t even remember his name.   YES, I DO.  It was Alex.   Oh, Alex.   What sweet memories!   Except I don’t remember a single thing about your season except that you were gay and it was boring.

So  I think one day the producers were sitting around a long boardroom table drinking tepid coffee out of styrofoam cups when suddenly, Producer Joe was STRUCK BY INSPIRATION!   And he leapt from his chair!  And ONTO THE TABLE!   Which broke!   Landing Producer Joe in the hospital in traction!  With two broken vertebrae and a coffee burn!  But even this did not kill the glory of his inspired idea!

And that idea?  Take a search for love!  And ADD A DOUCHEBAG!

And POOF!   A WINNING FORMULA WAS BORN!!!!!!

So anyway, this season’s douchebag, Justin, blah blah blah OH JUST KILL ME, I’M SO OVER THIS STORYLINE.   Do I have to?   Yes?  OK, fine, he already shockingly HAS A GIRLFRIEND.   You know, I’d like to interrupt myself here and suggest that if any of these 20 or 30something relatively good-looking guys do NOT have a girlfriend or two, I’m a tad worried about why not.   Like Justin said (either on this show or one of the eleventy billion other interview shows he’s been on), having a girlfriend does not necessarily make you in an EXCLUSIVE RELATIONSHIP YOU BASTARD CHEATERPANTS.   Which is true except he’s really glossing over the part where he proposed to this girlfriend on her voicemail and she so severely lacked character that she sold this tape to ABC for $4000.   So COME ON.   Who comes out of this looking worse?   (Answer:  Jessica).  Justin was on the show to become more well known.   WHAT A JERK!   Except they planned it together and hey… wait a sec… how do Jessica and Jessie know each other?   Was JESSIE the evil mastermind behind the plot?   Is it a CANADIAN thing?  Because she strikes me as that type of girl, really, the one who makes things happen and then pulls the puppet strings.

Ha ha ha.  I kid.  She seems like someone who would be challenged by a stop light!   But, you know, she’s Canadian, so naturally she knows Justin and Jessica.   Oh, wait, I’M Canadian and I DON’T KNOW THESE PEOPLE!   Theory blown!

In any event,  I guarantee that when this season is flushed down the toilet of Shows We Will Forget Ever Watching, we will remember Justin.   We also remember Wes, but Wes screwed up:  He’s a country singer.  And in order to be a famous country singer, you have to sell yourself as a nice guy who is good with puppies and children and the elderly and he went the DOUCEHBAG route.   Mistake!   We remember him for all the wrong reasons!  (Drink!)

But JUSTIN is a bad boy wrestler and he was selling himself as a douchebag and HELLO NOW WE ALL KNOW WHO HE IS AND SO….

Conclusion:  Justin ain’t no dummy.

And Ali, GIVE ME A BREAK.   For one thing, I’m getting wrist strain from hitting the caps lock button so much, but the eye-goggling and hurt feelings and manufactured rage was enough to make me want to commit a crime.  Not a major one.  Maybe just a small one, like trespassing on my neighbour’s lawn or parking my camper on my own driveway for one hour longer than permitted by my municipal bylaws.

My favourite scene of this entire season was the one where Justin hopped frantically through the Turkish garden in a desperate and misguided attempt to escape.  It reminded me of Steve McQueen in The Great Escape when he got stuck under the fence on his motorbike and then got shot and seriously, I could cry about that again now even though I haven’t seen that film in twenty years at least.   SO SAD.

OK, where was I?   Right, OK, TURKEY.   Fine.   Turkey looks AWESOME.   Of all the places that I’ve seen on this show, Turkey is definitely the one I’d most like to visit for real, so congratulations Turkey!   Although I doubt Turkey was involved for the Right Reasons.   I mean, think about it.   Does TURKEY care about Ali’s quest for love or do they just want to be on TV?    That’s what I thought.   Everyone drink!

So Turkey broke all of its centuries-old rules and allowed Ali to smut up their men’s bath.  That bath was FANTASTIC.   I would love to go there!  But I am not a man!   Anyone have a penis I can borrow?  Because I’m not likely to get in through the loophole of “being on a smutty reality TV dating show”.   Oh wellz, much of the rest of Turkey also looked good to me.   ME WANT TO GO TO TURKEY PLEASE.   Maybe the Turkish tourism board could sponsor my blog tour of their nation!   Please write to them and ask!   Thank you!   In my real life, I never use exclamation points!

So Ty and Ali did the ugly-bump-a-thon in a steam room and then later he explained that he thought women shouldn’t work outside the home and Ali had a stroke that caused her to forget that she LIKED her job at Facebook SO MUCH and she gave up EVERYTHING TO BE ON THE SHOW and by EVERYTHING, she means her JOB, although one could argue that being The Bachelorette IS a job and one that pays a lot better than being a marketing schlep at Facebook!   What was I talking about?  I need more coffee.   So she gives Ty the rose even though it makes no sense and who cares?   No one!   The end!

Oh, not the end, because next up is some Olive Oil Wrestling!   Kicking Justin off the show prior to this was just disappointing.   I mean, come on.   He would have won!  He would have had one-on-one time with Ali for the first time ever!   He may have FALLEN IN LOVE WITH HER DRUNKEN, OVERLY WIDE EYES!   My kids are bugging me!  How can I write about The Bachelorette when short people are shouting at me!

So Craig — in an impressive feat of desperation vs. actual strength — wins the one on one time and forgets to frantically make out with Ali like she’s suffocating and he’s delivering mouth-to-mouth and as such, she can only view him as a “friend” and he believes they have a magical connection and I believe he’s going home so I stop caring.    Next up, Frank gets a one on one.   Do they have no valium in Turkey?  Someone medicate this kid!   He’s so tightly wound at this point that I’m sort of scared that he’s going to sproing right out of the TV and onto the living room rug.    He’s gonna lose it, mark my words!   But we all know this because ABC decided to preview all their own spoilers!   Take that, Reality Steve!   Except, wha?  Why did they just tell us every marginally dramatic thing that was going to happen?  Is Producer Joe in the hospital again?  Colour me confused!

Tune in next week, for a look at Jake aimin’ to punch Vienna in the teeth!  I guess he took a page out of the Mel Gibson Handbook For Men!   And I, for one, CANNOT WAIT.

See you then, tater tots!

What was I saying?  Oh, right, we’re meant to be talking about Ali and her quest for “love”.   You know that song “Looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces….”  Sing it with me!   Then, instead of a blog post, we can just have a sing along and then fall about laughing because we’re such bad singers!   And then maybe we’ll go to Iceland!   Except we won’t go to Iceland, who are we kidding?   I’ve heard it’s very expensive and I don’t like to be cold, but on the other hand, they have pixies or gnomes or something that live in the ice and I do totally appreciate a culture that gets behind its imaginary creatures to such an extent.   I notice the Icelandic tourist board did not highlight that in this travel reel, but whatevs.   We all know the elves are there and that’s a much cooler quality than those small swimming Bjorks that Kirk and Ali fed bread to on their date.   Isn’t it bad to feed birds bread?  Doesn’t it bloat their bellies, giving them the illusion that they’re full when really the bread has no food value so it causes them to actually slowly starve to death?   I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m just talking because I’m trying to avoid the part where I have to talk about the love poems.

OK, fine, there are LOVE POEMS, OK?  They are the worst poems penned in the history of the world and being forced to watch them being read out loud was as entertaining as when you’ve cut yourself open horribly by accident with a bagel slicer and have to endure the slow stitching together of your flesh.   Gack!  That sentence made me gag.  MUCH LIKE THE LOVE POEMS.   Seriously, Frank, when writing a love poem to a chick, you don’t include a stanza about how you used to travel the world with your former-girlfriend.   DUH.

So Kirk “wins” the one-on-one, which was Ali’s choice and not at all produced.   Or was it?  I WONDER WHO HAD HELP WITH HIS POEM.   Gee, I don’t know.   Regardless, he won and he used to live in a mouldy house and it made his arm hair fall out which is weird because just the other day, I noticed that my arm hair was decidedly thinning.   Also, he went numb on his left side and WAIT A MINUTE, my left leg is numb right now.   I don’t know what else he said because I stopped listening to the symptom list.  I didn’t need to listen!  HE HAS WHAT I HAVE!   It’s the mould!  This house is killing me!   WE HAVE TO MOVE!   Someone call Mr. Spuddle and tell him!   I felt like Kirk left out most of his story.   There is more to that tale, I’m SURE of it.   An embarrassing part.  Because getting sick from mould spores is not a story you have to feel self-conscious about.   What’s up, really, Kirk?   TELL US.   Oh, never mind, I actually don’t care that much.   Ali likes Kirk and they get matching sweaters after rudely making fun of most of the stock in the store and then they make out and his story makes her want to be a better man, which she totally stole from Jack Nicholson in that movie where Helen Hunt was a waitress and he was a writer and curmudgeon.  Is it possible to write the word “curmudgeon” without thinking about pigeons?   I think not.

Next up, a group date!  Everyone is happy to be on the group date because no one wants to be on the two on one date, cleverly deducing that their odds of getting to travel to another European hotspot are going to be greatly reduced when they have a fifty percent chance of being eliminated.   Captain Obvious and his first lieutenant N.O.Kidding got together and produced this segment, cleverly pitting Rated-R against Krasey.  The psychological warfare that goes on in this segment is the stuff of novels!   Really short, bad novels that no one reads and/or likes!

Moving on.   Some tiny horses have been procured and Ty takes to them like any good Southerner.   No, I don’t know what this means.   Does everyone from the South ride horses?  Because I spent a week in Atlanta once and I never saw a single horse.    He is trying so hard to be helpful that for some reason I hope that his horse turns around and bites him with his big horsey teeth and then he pops like a giant helium balloon and makes that farting noise that they make as he shoots off into the stratosphere.   Chris L also jumps on the sucking-up-to-Ali bandwagon, which actually makes sense because this is the POINT OF THE SHOW, a memo that whoever else is on the date decided to ignore.   The other contestants fade to black and Chris N spends some time mumbling and looking like he’s never seen sunlight before and Frank decides that being sullen is going to be his ticket to ride (off into the sunset with Ali!  Happily Ever After!) and Craig just tries to maintain his dignity after the guide gives him a large, ornery St. Bernard to ride in lieu of an actual pony.

I’ll cut to the chase and just say that going into that subterranean cave looks about as much fun as going through someone’s rat infested crawl space looking for dead bodies amongst the blankets of cobwebs.   After that “exciting adventure”, they are off to a spa!  Of some kind!  Where Ali whips off her survival suit to reveal enough skin that four of the men drop in a dead faint!   She put on a LOT of makeup during the drive over from the cave and I’m interested to see how it holds up in all that steam!  Wow!  It stays on!  Then there is a bunch of steamy making out or something!  I don’t know what!   Because I stopped caring and/or buying into any of this in Season Four!    These people are just hoping to be the next Bachelor themselves!  They are dreading the idea of being the one Ali chooses!   I am overusing exclamation points to make it seem like I am saying something exciting!

Meanwhile, back at the OK Corral, Justin is getting rid of his crutches (uh, Justin, someone could probably have used those, I don’t think that the garbage was the right place for them) in what is meant to be some sort of parallel to Krasey getting a creepy tattoo.   That part was lost on me.   Mostly I was wondering when Justin changed from a guy who seemed sort of sweet to a guy who seemed like a manic, self-promoting, smug wanker.   Then I stopped caring.   Justin and Krasey exchange the clever barbs of stupid people, which is to say blunt barbs that resemble actual barbs in zero ways, and Krasey jabbers on about his heart and Ali’s heart and being a man and then I not only stopped caring but decided to move to Vanu Aatu and get as far away from network TV as possible and disavow ABC.   Then I remembered that I love this craptacular trainwreck of hilarity, so I undisavowed that.   All that disavowing and stuff made me hungry but I’ve gained 7.5 pounds in the last two weeks so instead of eating chocolate coated cookies and a coke float, as per usual, I ate some popcorn.   It wasn’t at all satisfying.   Then I ate the bag, which was more satisfying.   Then I remembered how whenever I try to lose weight, I usually gain weight, and then I got depressed and ate a pound of butter.    Who needs pants anyway?   The fact that none of my pants fit shouldn’t affect my life as I rarely change out of my pyjamas.   Envy me.   THE GLAMOUR.

So Ali takes Krasey and Justin on her helicopter to look at her volcano on her mountain or whatever and then they are standing around in some sort of icy location and Ali mumbles into her scarf in a depressed way that Justin is getting the rose and Krasey kills himself by throwing himself into Eyiefllingsliegiowuekawak which then proceeds to erupt and spew ash so far into the sky that Krasey is sent back to his own planet, Kraseyland, where the aliens walk around with their hands cupped gently around their hearts to protect them from the slings and arrows of normalcy that might otherwise turn them into, you know, NORMAL PEOPLE.   Nothing further happens with Ali and Justin and Ali really really needs a drink because if nothing else, this show has turned her into a girl who needs at least eight glasses of chardonnay to get through a day.

Which brings us to the rose ceremony/cocktail party.   For the love of Hannah, is it over yet?  No?  Yes?  Wait, the awkward has not died because Chris N is about to speak.   He’s going to tell us something about him that no one knows!   Wait for it!   He… likes MEXICAN FOOD!   REALLY A LOT!   Is that code for something?   Because if not, then double-yew, tea, EFF?    Shockingly, he doesn’t get a rose.   Bye Chris N, we hardly knew ye.   Next week, due to a ratings slump, SOMEONE HAS A GIRLFRIEND.   Except it’s so obviously Justin that as a nation of crappy TV viewers, we collectively don’t give a tinker’s damn.

See you next week!

But back to reality, which is to say reality TV, which — this week — included a head cold because what is more real than dating with a head cold?   THAT, peeps, is a true indicator of love, much like rapelling down a building, bungee jumping, and photoshoots for InStyle magazine are a true indicator of love.   It’s all the same!  EVERYTHING IS A METAPHOR FOR LOVE!   And Ali has a cold!   But before the cold descends and transforms our heroine from — you know how when you’re talking to someone on the phone and you realize their voice is different than usual and slightly forced and they’re oddly repeating what you say so you realize that they are not alone? — she’s like that times 1000000, which I guess is fair enough because millions of people are overhearing her conversation.   ANYWAY, transforms her from that forced, weird Ali into a coughing, forced, weird, Ali.  That’s what I was going to say, BEFORE that — is any of this even grammatically correct?  I feel like maybe I had a stroke in my sleep without my knowledge because none of this sounds right — Ali has a one on one date with the Krasey.

Oh, but first they all went to New York so they could be sequestered in yet another “loft” apartment.  Are they not allowed to leave at all?  Because “travelling the world” is a lot more glamorous when you are allowed out of your room.    They’re sort of like her prisoners and you know how prisoners are always falling in love with each other, I guess that explains why they all “fall in love” with Ali, because they are allowed NO OTHER HUMAN CONTACT.   I mean, they went to the Lion King and had to sit in the lobby.   WTF?   Do they have a communicable disease?   Because I didn’t know that sordid dating reality TV show cooties were contagious.   My bad.   So now I’m working on a theory that this show works (ha ha ha ha) because it recreates the Stockholm Syndrome and Ali is like the captor because she comes to pick them up and maybe she also brings their food and shouts abusively at them when the cameras aren’t rolling.   Of course, Chris Harrison is there, too, so I guess it’s reasonable to assume that while most of the hostages will fall in love with Ali, a small percentage may come out with “I HEART CHRIS HARRISON” tattoos, which they are allowed to get because apparently being tattooed is the only reason why they are allowed to go into the outside world.

Speaking of which, oh my holy balls of Moses, what was UP with that tattoo?  But I’m getting ahead of myself and making no sense, so feel free to submit this post to my physician as evidence of when I lost my ability to think clearly and began rambling incoherently.

Can we get back to the recap?  OK.   Fine.   Ali has a one on one date with Krasey in which the following things happen:  a helicopter ride, a picnic outside because no restaurant in NYC would stoop to have their shop featured on The Bache-whore-ette, the single most awkward serenade in TV history, and a bunch of nonsense about hearts.    Apparently even the Museum of Natural History was loathe to be associated with this program, but reluctantly agreed to allow Ali and Krasey to scamper through their hallowed halls, but only if the lights remained off.   Mysteriously, they also provided a platform-bed that was covered with white shag carpet.   White shag carpet?  For real?    But where is the disco ball?  I mean, if there’s going to be a shagadelic platform bed, I want a disco ball.  Or, you know, LIGHTS.   I’m not really clear what happened next, there was a rose but Ali didn’t want to give it to Krasey.  On the other hand, the producers want her to keep him because they know she’s dropping Wee Willie Weatherman like a bad habit.   So they compromise and Ali doesn’t give him the rose.   ALI, HE IS NOT YOUR HUSBAND.    You know it, we know it, he doesn’t know it, but that’s because he is severely delusional and probably could stand some of that medication that they advertise on late night TV which features frolicking in fields and puppies and overly smiley people with good teeth.

Back at the prison chambers, I have no idea what the men or doing, nor do I care.

Up next, a group date!   What awkward product placement and performances will this “date” require?   AH HA.  I never in a million years would have guessed “Broadway musical” but there it is, a painfully awkward audition for the Lion King, which I saw in Toronto years and years ago, you know, when it was popular, and it was actually really fantastic.   The men are forced to sing and dance in spandex, and then the producer and choreographer kill themselves.   After they’re dead, somehow Ali and Roberto take to the stage, encrusted with leaves.   When I saw the show, they did not suspend any reality TV stars over the action but maybe they are trying some kind of new marketing gimmick suggested by the PR firm of Sordid Sordid and Desperate.    Then, of course, there’s the “wrap party” which again involves only Ali and the men, who are perhaps actually under house-arrest and fulfilling the terms of their parole by agreeing to be on this show and completely sequestered from society for a painful period of time.   I don’t know what happens on this group date, but I do know that Frank is about to get Ali’s head cold in a major way and I’m betting that Chris L. is not going to be bringing him any soup.    Somehow Kirk ends up tucking Ali into bed and thankfully that’s the end of that and no one got a rose, but Kirk got to get into bed with Ali which is probably better than a rose when you’ve been sleeping with a dozen or so hostile man-folk for several weeks.

Next up, a one-on-one with Chris L. but Ali is too sick to participate so he brings her soup and flowers and I drift off into a coma induced by the fact that actually watching Ali sniffle heroically like she’s overcome terminal cancer to hike the Himalayas in order to save a baby in a burning building is making me tired.   Somehow when I was having a conversation with Mr. Spuddle about where I will appear after I’m dead (not in a rainbow, peeps, too crowded in there), they end up going and gorging on seafood in a restaurant that is closed to the public because of the aforementioned sordid reality dating TV cooties and then they are canoodling under the stars to the dulcet tones of someone I’ve never heard of but was actually not the worst singer of our time or maybe just sounded decent because we’d just been forced to listen to Krasey singing the songs of lurve for FAR TOO LONG, ABC.  Chris L. not surprisingly gets the rose because he is the most normal human on the show.

Next up, the rose ceremony, but first Justin — who I’d forgotten about — starts whining about Krasey’s tattoo or “burn” and there was some nonsense about a hospital and I then I just went ahead and lay in the street for a while and waited for a bus to run me over to put me out of my misery, but no bus came, and then I remembered that they stop going by here after 10, so that was a disappointment.   Did I mention that when I woke up this morning, The Bun barfed on my mouth?  Well, he did.   Later, The Birdy pooped on the bathroom floor, and then to make it a Trifecta Of Reasons Why I Can Not Go On, peed on the kitchen floor.   I am awash with bodily fluids, not including sweat, but luckily Frank takes care of that for me and actually said, “It’s my time to shine!” which made me laugh so hard and so meanly that I destroyed my karma forever and actually that’s probably why Fate gave me that vomit splash as a wake up call.   I’m sorry, Fate, I’m really not a mean person, I just play one on the interwebz.

Ali eliminates Wee Willie Weatherman, who predictably cries and whines and I actually do feel badly for him because he has no idea that he’s just completely destroyed his on-air personality and will likely soon be unemployable and homeless.   She also bids adieu to Jesse who is from a small town, craves cows and acreage, and yearns to be alone with his dogs.    Oddly, she keeps Chris N. who isn’t actually on the show, but shows up at Rose Ceremonies to get his flower.   He must be in solitary.   Maybe he made a shiv out of his room-service cutlery or something.   Will he be allowed early parole for good behaviour?   Stay tuned for next week’s episode in which Iceland tries to rid itself of sordid dating reality TV show cooties by physically erupting.   Good call, Iceland!