Category Archives: stuff i like

Hatin’ on “More to Love”

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“More to Love” is my favourite/most hated show on television right now. I was torn between it and “NYC Prep” on the first Tuesday night it aired, but after watching 20 fat women cry nonstop for an hour, I knew I made the right choice, and I’ve been making it every week since.

I’m not a person who believes weight has anything to do with love. I’m not thin, and I’ve loved and been loved in return by all sorts of men, thin and not-thin themselves. (But mostly thin, because fat people are gross. (Kidding.)) These big-boned ladies all truly believe, though, that their one shot at love is this 26-year-old spike-haired real estate developer who likes to eat and doesn’t want a woman who watches her weight.

And they all cry about it throughout every episode. Their skinny friends get hit on at bars. They’ve never had serious boyfriends. They’ve never been on a single date. And there’s a reason for that.

If you’re single–if you’re perpetually single–and you don’t want to be, there’s something wrong with you. There, I said it. Don’t blame it on men being superficial. Blame it on you being a crappy date. Unless you live in the middle of smalltown Iowa, in which case I’m a little more sympathetic, but seriously, it’s probably still your fault, especially if you’re one of those assholes who scorns Internet dating. Whenever I hear some fat chick say, “I have no idea why I’m alone!”, I want to go through a laundry list for her, because it’s always so obvious. Even the guys who are willing to look past your weight can’t deal with your jacked-up face, your total lack of humor, your junior high vocabulary, and your skank clothes.

For instance, not a single one of the women in the two episodes of “More to Love” I’ve watched has said something funny. In fact, when Luke asks each of them in turn if they’ll wear the ring that signifies their staying on the show another week, each of them in turn says, “Of course.” I’ve been waiting for even just one of them to say “bitch, please” or fake like they don’t want it only to throw their arms around him and snatch it out of his hands a second later, but they’re all so worried about losing their “one” chance for “true” love that all behave like robots. Whiny, sobbing robots.

My boyfriend called the show depressing, but I really delight in watching these pathetic women mope around. None of them are actually the least bit interested in this guy specifically, as far as I can tell, and are only interested in him being interested in them. And he’s too pleased with the opportunity to grope 20 fatties to care. I mean, MAYBE the producers are hiding the parts where Luke and the ladies have deep, meaningful conversation about politics and religion, but it seems like the most intimate information the group has about Luke is the name of his dog.

I had a long-distance relationship like this once: the guy would want to talk about how interested he was in the sinking of the Titanic every single time he called me–I mean, he really, really loved the Titanic–and I just wanted to talk about how in love we were. But I realized I was using him, whereas these girls are planning their weddings.

And the worst part is that they make absolutely none of this secret to him. They tell him that they’d pursue their music careers if only they had better images. They tell him that they’re virgins. They tell him, “You’re my first second date.” And he uses these confidings as teachable moments where he gets to build their self-confidence by calling them sexy and telling them to believe in themselves. And they cry.

It’s pretty clear that in the end, Luke’s going to pick the thinnest/prettiest girl in the house regardless of her personality, and all the other girls who were using his choosing her as sole proof that there’s hope for fat girls are going to kill themselves.

I finally asked my boyfriend why I’ve been able to find love when these women haven’t, and he said, “Because you’re not psychotic.” Win.

(Also check out Noel’s thoughts on the show.)

The Music That Made Me: Electric Six

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The other day, Dr. Boyfriend innocently informed me that he’d been listening to Electric Six’s Switzerland album on his iPod, not realizing that I’d go crazy reminiscing about how much it meant to me three short years ago. See, I met my ex-boyfriend Todd during our senior year of college at THE Ohio State University in a German film class, and after we’d dated for six months, he moved here for grad school at NYU. I took an extra year to write an undergraduate thesis and then moved to NYC myself, thinking that we’d both loved karaoke and strawberry shortcake from Whole Foods and riding the subway equally.

It turned out that Todd only liked to sing one song at karaoke, that they built a Whole Foods in Ohio, and that the subway made his claustrophobia act up. So he planned to move back home, and I planned to move with him, because it’s hard here, you know? And it’s even harder when you don’t know anyone but five of your boyfriend’s friends. I started looking at apartments in Columbus, picked out my future dining room table one day while I was shopping on High Street with my best friend, Tracey, and even bought some candles to match the exposed brick wall I imagined my new place would have.

And then I just didn’t go. Todd still went, and my friends must have thought I was the biggest asshole for teasing them with my plans to go with him, but I stayed, and I left our beautiful 350-square-foot studio with its black and white checked bathroom tile in Chelsea and found a sublet in Brooklyn. The sublet was the ground level of a brownstone in Park Slope where the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and one bedroom were on the first floor, and the entire basement was a second bedroom with its own bathroom.

I was rather lonely during that time. I hadn’t really considered NYC my home and hadn’t bothered to accept any invitations to hang out with friendly co-workers, so the only person I had to rely on was a guy from my very first job in the city. He lived in Park Slope and had been the one to convince me to take a sublet there, so I naturally assumed he’d be my tour guide and makeshift boyfriend. We did super-romantic things like meet at midnight for walks in the park (because he didn’t go into work until 11 a.m. and didn’t care that I had to be up at 7), listen to hours and hours of Radiohead (because it’s the only band we had in common) in his one-bedroom apartment (I didn’t know anyone else who was able to afford to live alone in NYC, so it impressed me), and watch the sun set from the roof of the Met (and then go straight to our respective homes instead of continuing an actual date). He’d call me only once a week, and I’d call Tracey eight times a day to complain about it.

The lease was up for the girl I was subletting from at the end of August, and I just assumed that my friend Wen (who I met while working Barnes & Noble, which was my second job for the first year I lived here) and I could just slide right in to a new lease. But on August 29th, the landlord called to tell me he was raising the rent from $2100 to $2800 and that I could get the hell out if I wasn’t happy with it. I begged him for a month to find a new apartment, and Wen helped me move my stuff into the basement bedroom so I could enjoy four glorious weeks of sleeping in a room the size of other people’s entire apartments.

I’d met Kamran (who is, of course, the current Dr. Boyfriend) on September 14th, but I wasn’t spending every waking moment at his apartment in front of a reality TV show yet. Every morning, I’d take a shower in the first-floor bathroom (because the downstairs one had seemed too scary to me after the flooding) and then try to find a corner of my room where I wasn’t visible to Wen on the first floor. The staircase was an open one with wooden bars where a wall should have been, so anyone standing in the kitchen could look down into the bedroom through the bars and see whatever wild thing I might be doing. I tried hanging sheets up with various sticking materials, but nothing ever took, so I resigned myself to hiding in my closet to put my underwear on for a month.

And I’d listen to Switzerland every single morning. I mean every single morning. Wen was always upstairs listening to cool stuff like The Blow from the crappy speakers attached to our TV (since we didn’t have a proper stereo), and I was always trying to drown him out with “I Buy the Drugs”. Which is totally a romantic song, right? “I am your man and I buy the drugs.”

I have no idea why the album hit me in just the right spot at that particular time. Maybe it’s because I was in such a state of oh-my-god-why-did-I-decide-to-stay-here? that I needed the tongue-in-cheek-ness of it to keep me focused on my yay-I-have-the-chance-to-do-whatever-I-want-to-with-my-life-in-NYC! thoughts and to keep my mind off my oh-crap-I-have-no-money-I-need-to-find-a-new-apartment-I’m-not-tough-enough-for-NYC thoughts. It was super-exciting to live in Brooklyn for the first time in this huge apartment and super-exciting to start looking for our next new place in my now-neighborhood of Williamsburg with Wen and super-exciting to be dating this person who felt different than everyone else from the moment I met him, and I really associate the album with those feelings and that time.

And now I have a boyfriend who loves it, too. Kamran and I agree that this is the best song on the album:

And now that I’ve told you my life story, tell me yours. What songs do you associate with certain times in your life? If you’re really motivated (and I hope you are), write your own blog/journal entry about it and let us know in the comments so everyone can enjoy.

A Fruit by the Foot Commercial for the Ages

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While watching our favourite Canadian teen drama, Degrassi, from noon until 8 p.m. one day last week while I was visiting Ohio, Tracey and I luckily captured this Fruit by the Foot commercial on her DVR:

It’s sort of the worst recording ever, but the hilarity of the commercial cannot be diminished by screen lines or weird camera noises. Am I right?

My Body Resembles a 1950s Hairstyle

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I don’t know if I can fully express my love for beauty products. I’m, like, the least-girly of anyone I know–I have no idea how to apply foundation, and I couldn’t pluck my eyebrows if I tried–but there’s almost nothing I like more than buying lotion, lip gloss, and body wash. I like it to the point that I can try a product, totally hate it, break out in hives or contract HIV, and still buy it in another scent or flavor just in case.

Naturally, this means that I’m a sucker for anything new I see. Nevermind that being new likely means it’s not been tested on enough humans for everyone to find out that it causes cancer. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of the new Vaseline Cocoa Butter Vitalizing Gel Body Oil, but the thought of that gel inevitably hardening underneath my fingernails bothers me. But yesterday, while browsing the aisles of CVS, I found this, the CVS Continuous Spray Cocoa Butter Body Oil Dry-Touch:

I tried it for the first time this morning, and it’s amazing. It glides on as if it was hairspray, people. And it smells like cotton candy, according to Dr. Boyfriend. It is not, however, dry touch. Maybe I just used too much, but there’s still a wet ring of it around the base of my neck. Not that I’m complaining, because I keep messing with it and making everything on my desk smell like cotton candy.

Actually, come to think of it, this would be a great way to repel creepy men in the subway: the more I resemble an oil slick, the grosser it is to rub up against me.

Kevin Van Aelst

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Kevin Van Aelst is a New York/Pennsylvania/Connecticut artist who Kamran introduced me to last week. Kevin is a nerd, is not afraid to show it, and makes me very happy. To start your week off right, here are a few of my favourites:


One Heart Beat


Hawaii


Apple Globe


The Brain

And now you can go view the rest on your own and tell me your favourites.