Can't Stop Watching...

(Should probably warn you that this is NSFW due to hilarious, hilarious language)

TV Poisoning

I got a mild case of TV poisoning over the weekend. I'm okay now, but it put me in a weird funk for a couple of days, one of those "why do I even bother" existential crisis states.

Flipping through the channels, I stopped on Comedy Central airing what I quickly discovered to be "American Pie: The Naked Mile" - a straight-to-DVD film that actually did very well, all things considered. Now I do not have a good relationship with the American Pie films (all stemming back to a college party in which one drunken classmate became enraged - seriously enraged - that I was not laughing at the movie. Perhaps had I been drunk/high/had no taste, it would not have been a problem). But I decided to watch a few minutes to see how bad it could be. And I was mesmerized. Not just by how poorly it was written/acted but it actually became morally reprehensible within minutes. My inner feminist was freaking the hell out. It was beyond sexist, beyond misogynistic. And there were tons of shit jokes. Is this what young people find funny? I don't mean to generalize here, but someone was buying those DVDs when I worked at Borders. I started railing against this film and a morally bankrupt society that accepts this as entertainment but Leanna was too busy getting ready for bed and just ignored me (usually the best response to my rants).

When I could take the film no longer - my body weak, my mind numb - I flipped one channel down, where SciFi was showing their newest original movie "Aztec Rex," in which conquistadors must band together with the Aztecs to fight off an angry T. Rex. And that just broke my brain.

I spent most of yesterday in bed, watching British television to nurse myself back to health. "Green Wing" did the trick, as did the news that the US "Spaced" remake is dead. Thank you Britain. You have saved my life yet again.

On Wiener Dogs

We went to see a wiener dog race today. 

And it was kinda a big deal. Parking on site filled up immediately so they had to bus people in from a make-shift parking lot in a field. Big yellow school buses at that, only full of anxious wiener dogs. Excitement was in the air. Make no mistake, these wieners were here to win. Despite the cloudy weather and looming threats of rain, hundreds of people huddled near the fenced-in race area, waiting, hoping for a glimpse of the little stumpy legs running with reckless abandon. 

The race works as follows: the dogs enter the chute and the owners crouch at the other end of the race track, frantically waving the dogs' favorite toys. At this sight, the doggie athletes go into a veritable frenzy, scratching and biting at the gate holding them back. When the judges are ready (there were four of them), the gate is lifted and the dogs tear down the track, leap across the finish line and into their owners' hands. It was adorable.

We watched about 20 races. And then...the unthinkable happened. A black wiener dog named Peanut handily won the race, crossing the finish line waaaaaay before the others. The judges immediately broke into a huddle, heatedly discussing something, looking back at Peanut with furrowed brows. The head judge walked over to the owner and demanded to the see the dog's papers, as several of the judges believed it was not a pure-bred Dachshund and therefore ineligible to race with other wiener dogs.  Upon second glance, the dog did look like a mix. 

Sigh. Is not even a fine American tradition such as weiner dog racing not free from controversy?  What's next? Baseball?