You're Cut Off!

Have you guys heard of You're Cut Off! yet? Never has a show incited me to write hate mail, but this one, THIS ONE. Well, it's the fucking worst. I literally looked up the cast's full names so I could try to hunt them down, and figure out a way to publicly chastise them.

Is that creepy? Don't answer that.

Apparently this show, which follows spoiled "princesses" after their family cuts them off from all their money and support, is in it's second season. I've just been blissfully cut off from what is clearly humanity's black hole, televised. These girls are like 28 years old! How is that possible?

These are real human beings who have spent 28 years on the earth, yet still have no idea what happens on this planet. They have tearful realizations that working minimum wage means you make about $30 a day. Who knew?! They found out there are shoes that cost less than $300. Seriously... who. knew.

Also, despite having been around for 28 years, and spending approximately $1 million dollars on themselves for each of those years, these girls still manage to look TERRIBLE. I mean like the "oof honey, get yourself fixed UP" kind of terrible, even in their head shots for the show:

That's why the show is here -- to teach them how to be people. They learn how to share money and write up grocery lists. That's really hard! And they learn how to have a group conversation without throwing a temper tantrum that gets them held down by security and kicked off the show. Actually, they didn't quite learn that one yet. Maybe next season!

So all these girls are really awful, but Hana Hills? Hana Mother Fucking Hills. She is a TRIP! What a doozy! Can we take a peeksy at her twitter page to see how awful she is?

Woof. It's just a yikes, yikes world for Hana Hills. Hana I Wish I was Paris Hilton. Hana Run for the Hills and Buy me a Pack of Cigarettes because I'm going TANNING Today. (No really, that was an episode theme.)

And I mean... that's about it. The show is pretty awful. Awful in that these girls are terrible humans, but also awful in that they're clearly forced to say some pretty idiotic things, even to their standards. And god damn, those are some low, low standards. Like, if there were standard deviations for how terribly low people's standards can be, these girls would be... you know... really really far to the left, where the curve goes on closer and closer to the X axis for infinity or something. Basically what I'm saying is these girls standards are as poor as my math skills. And the same goes for the producers of the show.

So now you totes want to watch a clip right? Well VH1 sucks and won't let me embed it. Here's a clip of the girls fighting about cigarettes and wine! Yeah!

Catastrophe Roundup

Guys there's so much natural disaster coming our way, and the stupid dummy Mayans didn't even realize it!


First of all, a giant asteroid is totes going to crash into Earth. I know, I know, it's exciting news. But hold on to your panties and save yourself a trip to Ricky's (obviously we're gonna get all snazzed up for the greatest disaster of our lifetime). This bad boy isn't going to hit until 2036, though first it's going to drop by and wave hello in 2029, passing just a few thousand miles from our atmosphere. God is such a tease, isn't he?

The real question is, how do respectable 48-year-olds celebrate the end of the world? I don't know the answer to that, but I think it's safe to say whiskey is a better apocalyptic beverage than, say, a mai tai. Feel free to brainstorm awesome party ideas. Maybe you can find inspiration when you calculate the impact of the asteroid with this handy simulation program. At any rate, we have some time to think about it.

Ok, but asteroids? I mean, so yawn, right? Once you've seen Ben Affleck act his way through an asteroid situation, you know it's a dead topic. Remember that Armageddon scene with the animal crackers? I mean that just a doomsday scenario killer.

Not to worry! We can always die from magnetic polar shifts. That sounds cool, right? This article is really poorly written, and the author apparently hates commas, but it's a fun read nonetheless.

Superstorms with winds reaching 300 - 400 miles per hour? Time to whip out your wind surfing gear! We're gonna cruise our way into the afterlife.

Rampant DNA mutations? Eh... I'm going to have to work on a positive spin for that one.

Maybe we'll just all die like this (at least some of us definitely will. definitely. no question.). Obviously dying from an asteroid/devastating magnetic pole shift is a lot cooler than going down in a pipeline explosion--err, literally--so I'm going to try and hold out for the former.

Eat This Now, Thank Me Later

Since I work from home, I spend a large percentage of my time procrastinating by looking for things to eat on the internetz. I go the grocery store almost every day, as well, just to get out of the house. It's a good excuse to change out of sweatpants and into yoga pants (truly the tuxedo T-shirt of the lounge wear world). I discovered this recipe over at Stone Soup,a blog dedicated to 5-ingredient recipes. It's all in crazy metric measurements, though, so I've been playing with it a little bit to get the proportions just right. It is hands-down the most delicious thing ever to come out of my blender, requires about 4 minutes of effort, and uses only 3 ingredients. I can't stress this enough guys: go home and make this immediately. I realize it's cold and snowpocalyptic over on the east coast right now, so just crank up the heat, and eat some damn gelato.

what's left of the strawberry

Easy Fruit Gelato

Combine in a blender:

• 16 oz. bag frozen fruit
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

Puree until smooth. Done.

Microwave the fruit for a minute before you add it to the blender to make it easier. Add a splash of orange juice if you're feeling adventurous. Stick the whole thing back in the freezer for about 2 hours, or until its reached your desired consistency. You can eat it immediately, if you like, but it'll be a little soft. Thus far I've made this with raspberries, strawberries, mangoes and pineapple. I've got plans for chocolate-banana and blueberry this week. My favorite is mango: it's super creamy and subtle, the most similar to American ice cream. Strawberry was also pretty spectacular. Raspberry was really brightly fruity. I loved it, but I have a special affinity for raspberry seeds that not everyone shares. The boys all really loved pineapple. As far as I can tell, you can do no wrong with this one.

Clam Jam #12: Let's Get Biblical!

Alright, so Irena's back, stealing my thunder, and all I still have time for is clam jams.

Seeing as the end of the world is coming and all (I can't wait!), I figured I'd do a little shout out to the big G-O-D. Let's get down with some bible music. Sorry these aren't actually videos. You can just stare into the void really, really hard until you see the stigmata appear on your hands and Ted Haggard dancing around on your screen.

There Will Be JEOPARDY!

Maybe it's the old person's soul buried deep inside of me, but I have secret soft spot for game shows. It's right next to my secret soft spot for stealing sugar packets and right above my secret soft spot for complaining about people leaving the lights on. Regardless, at 7 p.m. I like to settle in for the one-two punch that is Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! (Speaking of Wheel, have you guys seen Vanna White lately? I'm pretty sure there's an old copy of Playboy locked in her attic, becoming more and more disfigured with each letter she taps.) The past few weeks they've been running advertisements for a special edition of Space Jeopardy of the Future! where the show's two biggest winners compete against an IBM computer named Watson.

That's exactly what Watson looks like.

The computer was built specifically to compete in Jeopardy!, which seems like a perfectly reasonable use of millions of dollars and IBM's top engineers. Watson must decipher slang, irony, and a whole bunch of other things humans are better at than computers. Watson was engineered to deduce the meaning of a question, search a database of more than half a million books, and then press a buzzer in under 3 seconds. Needless to say, I am beyond excited for this John Henry-esque installment of America's Favorite Quiz Show®.

With nerds and their meager romantic prospects in mind, the first episode will take place on February 14th. I must remember to tell the boyfriend to cancel all those wildly romantic gestures he's been planning; Jeopardy! waits for no one (unless you have a DVR, of course).

Clam Jam #11: Wish Me Luck, Or Something

One degree of separation aside (full disclosure, or whatever), I think the concept is spot on, the execution barely falters, and the song makes me wish it was a minute and a half longer. If that's not a successful video endeavor, I don't know what is.

"Old In Florida" by You Can Be A Wesley from loroto on Vimeo.

The Great Shoveling Irony

As I waddled my way to the train stop this morning, over an entire block-length of three inch ice-slush (that's an inch of ice, covered by an inch of slush, covered by another layer of hard ice over top that cracks and splashes when you step over the fossilized footprints of the Slushozoic Era below. Oh, and there's water on top of that, like the Devil's slip and slide. It's perfect inspiration for next year's Winter Wipeout course.), I couldn't help but get really, really mad at Mayor Bloomberg. He is the guy to go after, afterall, right?

My superintendent gets up at the crack of dawn every day to scrape off whatever weather poop the skies have dropped in front of my apartment. He does some good old fashioned shoveling, salt sprinkling and pathway carving that makes it pretty a-ok to get up and out of the house. Everyone else on my block does the same. And the restaurants and store fronts do it 10 times better still, lest they catch me off guard on a bad day and get their asses SUED, mother fucker!

So why does the next block, with public park to the north and stalled construction to the south, sit completely unkempt and totally treacherous? Is this not the great hypocrisy of our time?

Don't shovel out your building? Get a hefty ticket. Don't clear your store front? Feel the wrath the of the civil suit, and a get hefty ticket. In fact, the law says you have a mere four hours to clear a path in front of your building. Violators can get a $150 citation from any city sanitation worker, not just police. And yet the city is all la-dee-da about their own properties. To put it in Sarah Palin's recent, brilliant words: WTF?

I think all of the people that cite poor shoveling and write tickets should be put to work hacking at the ice mounds piling up along abandoned buildings, city parks, and --hello?!-- every street corner in the entire city. How is it acceptable to leave snow compacted into the sewers, and allow five inch deep lakes of murky, city slush water to form around every one? And when I say every one, I don't even mean just NYC anymore. That goes for you too, Boston and Philly, and I would assume every other major city that gets snow.

Is there no way to solve this problem? The great minds in America have come together to create the a-bomb, perform stem cell miracles, put spaceships on Mars, but shit... how do we get the snow off of public property? How do we do it? I hope whoever gives the next State of the Union Address is sure to include this issue in the agenda. It is truly one of the great challenges of our time.

That's it. No facts. No solutions. Just rant.


The end.

PS - that woman is having the best day everrr!