Initial Real World: Cancun Reactions

MTV reality show The Real World premiered its 22nd season last Wednesday. 22 seasons! I thought the multiple VH1 Flava Flav spinoffs were excessive, but this is insane.

To its credit, The Real World was one of the earliest group-home reality shows. It has remained watchable over the years thanks to the simplicity of its premise, the new cast of personalities each season, and the fact that you can start watching at any point in the season and immediately understand what everyone's schtick is within about ten minutes.

I DVR'd the first two episodes and watched them on Wednesday and was pleasantly surprised. I normally hate the cast and stop watching after about 3 episodes, but this year's cast seems generally more real and likeable. Plus, there's a hot chick from Boston and a dude from Lawrence.

Basically, if you're bored most Wednesday nights during the summer like me, there's certainly worse TV to be watched. Anyways, here's my analysis of the character's so far:

CJ
From the first line he spoke all season, CJ completely carved out his character and made it clear he was going to be the Alpha Bro of the house: "I'm an NFL free agent and what that means is that I'm not tied down to one particular team. When I came out of college football, I was the number four kicker in the country." And perhaps the number one tool.

That being said, CJ is the most interesting person on the show, hands down. He seems genuinely nice even if he's shallow as a kiddie pool. He's the house heartthrob and all the girls love him for his wavy locks, dreamy smile, and ripped physique. He's pretty dumb when it comes to handling girls (i.e. sleep-spooning with Emilee, then telling his girlfriend via phone the next day...effectively ending the relationship) but he's managed to avoid serious drama. He's been macking out Jonna and the adventurer in me really wants to see him bag her. All the guys in the house get along with him and clearly wish they were him.

The Gist: Toolish in nearly everyway, but loveable.

Emilee
The Bahston princess. As Barstool pointed out early this week, Emilee is a former Smokeshow model. She's hot as shit, but she doesn't dress well enough to flaunt it. She's shy, seemingly unintelligent, takes no initiative, and is generally boring in every way. If CJ didn't chase her and she didn't obnoxiously defend Ayiiia (who can go suck a nut), MTV would have no usable footage of her.

The Gist: I'd fall asleep having a conversation with the chick. Step up the slutty attire or go home.

Bronne
I don't know how this guy got on the show, but I'm glad he did. Pronounced "Brah-nee" ('like the paper towels'), Bronne's a down-to-earth, average-Joe-looking dude who adds a positive energy to the house. He seems like the type of guy you'd want as a bench guy for your beer league softball team. He seems to hit it off best with Derek, the gay guy, but he gets along with everyone.

In what is the highlight of the season to date, Bronne hilariously started making out with a no-go Sharon Osbourne lookalike cougar on the dancefloor of a club one night. Joey was hooking up with a middle-of-the-road brunette roughly fifteen feet away, when she stops, looks over, and tells Joey, "That's my mom." Comedic gold.

The Gist: Going to be a dominant leader in the Drunken Mistakes stat category.

Jonna
Holy shit this chick is hot. Out of the coveted Rihanna mold (sexy complexion + striking eyes), she dominates the rest of the girls in the house looks-wise. She loses big-time points for having a home birthday who she calls three times a day (they must be a fun couple to be friends with). She's been falling hard for CJ's Dream Team-calibur game, letting him snuggle with her on the hammock, buying matching bracelets with him, and presumably using his tongue as a washcloth in the shower.

She seems like a real clingy girl who needs a guy nearby. It's just a matter of time before the hunter bags him game and Jonna appears in the CJ box score.

The Gist: I'm in love with her.

Derek
Derek is gay. That's not a condemnation, but simply the reason he's on the show. He seems like a really nice guy and is the house mediator. But the fact is, it's blatantly clear he's on the show because he worked at the same bar as Jonna.

Here's my guess about the dialogue that locked Derek a spot up:

MTV RW Recruiter: So Jonna, we think you're great and we'd love to offer you a spot on the show
Jonna: Oh my god! Thank you so much. (cleans her face off and gets off her knees)
MTV RW Recruiter: There's just one thing. We're kind of strapped for time since shooting starts next week. Do you have any friends of alternative ethnicities or sexual orientations?
Jonna: Well, at the bar I work at, there's this one gay guy named Derek who...
MTV RW Recruiter: Would you mind texting him and asking him if he'd like a spot on the show? I really don't have time to interview for this last spot and I mean they're all the same anyways right?

The Gist: The gay guy

The Black Chick
Does it make me a racist that I don't know her name? No. Does it make me a racist that I don't even care enough to look it up? Probably.

Shawty is terrible annoying because she hits it off with Ayiiia, who is the Antichrist. She doesn't act ghetto all the time, but has the annoying quality of turning her Jive Dial up to 11 when she gets mad. Which is a lot because Ayiiia caused more problems than unprotected sex with Magic Johnson.

The Gist: A waste of the black niche spot. Should have gone for more ghetto/booty.

Joey
With Fall Out Boy and pop punk doing relative well on the charts in recent years, MTV needed their emo kid. Joey's skinny frame, multiple tattoos, lip ring, alternative clothing, straight, greasy hair, and armada of guitars sufficed for the role.

That being said, he doesn't fit the punk rocker stereotype (which must have been pretty clear if he accepted a fucking role on The Real World). He admitted to being very proud of being the first to fuck in the house, which is pretty bro. He also doesn't seem to mind CJ's unbelievable levels of brohood. He seems to get along well with most people in the house, except Ayiiia (which he deserves major daps for antagonizing her). He loses points for playing guitar too much, being in a pretty shitty pop punk band (that somehow impressed most of his housemates), and crying when Ayiiia fucked up his guitar.

The Gist: I don't like Joey, just like I don't like Mark Hamill. But in the fight against the evil Empire that is Ayiiia, we need a Luke Skywalker.

Ayiiia
I don't know what dipshits voted this devil-woman in as the Real World Online Casting Winner, but they should repent. She thinks she is awesome, probably doubly so because her best friend in the house is black. She has told Joey repeatedly that she hates sarcasm and sarcastic humor. In terms of humor, that pretty much leaves Carrot Top prop jokes and The Three Stooges slapstick jokes, so she clearly is not a fun person to shoot the shit with. Admittedly, she has a nice body, but her teeth are disgusting. She thinks its a funny joke to crawl into peoples' rooms when they're fucking and spying on them. That's pathetic.

Another classic line by this Queen Bitch was what she told Joey on the beach after he earnestly apologized for spitting in her tacos. Keep in mind, she had it coming. She pretty much had treated him like he was a Mencia-level asshole because she couldn't take him picking on her innocently, as he does with all the other housemates. But on the beach, she tells Joey that she forgave him but admitted she wasn't interested in being friends with him. Her explanation: I'm genuinely a nice person, but I need to keep my guard up to prevent myself from getting hurt. No, Ayiiia, you're not a nice person. Just because John Wayne Gacy entertained the neighborhood kids by dressing up as a clown, doesn't mean we're gonna give him the Neighbor of the Year award.

The Gist: If God is just, swine flu or the Mexican drug wars will put her six feet under by season's end.

End of a Great Run?

To begin, let me get one thing straight. Achewood is probably the funniest webcomic of all-time, and certainly the funniest comic strip that I have ever read on a day-to-day basis in my life. The run of consistent hilarity that the strip had from 2002 to early 2008 is pretty much unparalled.

The comic, which takes place in the fictional town of Achewood, revolves around a cast of talking stuffed animal and robots. The characters all have unique adult qualities, whether it be the entrepreneurial, thong-wearing, jive-talking cat Ray, his programming, depressed best friend Roast Beef, or cocaine-snorting, wild child Todd the Squirrel. The characters grow on the reader over the years, each earning laughs with their own distinctive brand of humor. The ingeniusly utilized alt text also provides additional insight from the creator, Chris Onstad, on the strip and often earns a bigger laugh than the final panel.

If you have at least 10 minutes of free time right now, do yourself a huge favor and read a few strips from the beginning. The only real way to read the strip properly is chronologically. While the humor is slightly more offbeat towards the beginning, it picks up in a real way after a few months of material. Pretty soon you'll be addicted.

Unfortunately, over the past nine months, the quality of Achewood output has considerably declined. Some pretty bad storylines regarding Cornelius' girlfriend, Lyle's origins, and Little Nephew traveling back in time to Wales have really weighed it down. I trace this decline in quality to three main culprits:

1) Focus on Merchandise: Onstad has posted free strips to his site for almost seven years with no advertising, so it's understandable that he wants to make some money (especially now that he has a kid). However, with the release of the Great Outdoor Fight book last fall/early winter, he decided to go on a book tour. This resulted in a decline from roughly 4 strips a week to 1-2 strips per week. Additionally, the quality suffered. January of this year only featured two strips the entire month. That's thin even for an Olson twin.

2) Premium Content Segment: Achewood also features a premium content section, which gives paying subscribers access to exclusive strips and character blogs. While I can't blame Onstad from making a buck off this, I can't help but be convinced that this has taken away from the soul of Achewood, the main storylines which remain public. A detractor from both quality and quantity.

3) Fatigue: In any sort of art or entertaining, a common wall is simply ideas. There's only so many things you can do with the same characters to draw laughs without it becoming overly repetitive. There's a reason Fawlty Towers and The Office (UK) kept themselves to twelve episodes. Between the pressure of being consistently funny 100-150 times a year and having to raise a young kid, it looks like Onstad's head might be out of it. This might also explain the excessively haughty, boring language that's been used in some of the recent storylines.

In any case, I could never bad-mouth Achewood. I've bought merch from the store (which has excellent and friendly customer service), read the site almost daily for over four years, and still love all of the characters. I will always still read the site as long as they continue to offer free content. I just wish the characters would wake up from almost a year of being boring as a group of Saturday night stoners and get back to being the fun gang of the days of yore.

Middlesex Follies: Breaking News...Ed McMahon Eats Hot Dog 15 Years Ago

This was the front page photo for the Lowell Sun today. The lead article describes a 1994 visit that Ed McMahon made to Lowell. The late Johnny Carson sidekick started his career in radio in Lowell.

I guess it's nice to pay a tribute to the guy's life, but this is really scraping the bottom of the bag. The guy liked hot dogs. So do about 100 million other American guys. Maybe pay some sort of tribute to the guy's radio career or give him a nice half-page obituary, but this? As the lead story? Were there really no drug-deal-orgy-turned-triple-murder cases in Lowell this past week?

Come to think of it, this is a priceless photo. Ed McMahon sure could stuff a weiner in his mouth.

Throbbing Steeds

For those of you who I've seen this summer, I've most likely made references to the Adam Carolla Podcast, which I listen to about five hours per week at work. It's a pretty hilarious show that gives Carolla the opportunity to rant and riff with various different comedians or performers about whatever interests him.

One of the funnier theories that Carolla has presented in the past month or so of his podcast is his "Good for the 'Stang, Good for the Wang" theory. This notion is that historically, a large number of Triple Crown race-winning horses have had names that sound a lot like something that you would name your johnson. Using this theory, he postulated that, therefore, top horses have dick names and then attemped (unsuccessfully) for each of this year's Triple Crown races.

Looking at Wikipedia pages of past Triple Crown race winners, I now present the Twenty Greatest Stang Wang Names of All-Time:

20. Bold Venture
19. Black Gold-The ebony prince
18. Needles-Long-but-thin gets the win
17. Pleasant Colony-Your cock is a wonderland
16. Commando-Anti-underpants artillery
15. War Admiral
14. Stage Door Johnny
13. Empire Maker-Probably what Travis Henry named his
12. Duke of Magenta
11. Bally Ache-For the frequently blue-balled
10. Colonel Holloway
9. Chateaugay-For the Brokeback crowd
8. Tobasco Cat-Sure to leave girls burning for weeks
7. Commendable-Well done, genetics
6. Regret-The low-standard love pump
5. Majestic Prince-I bet Shakespeare called his junk this
4. Ruthless-Rarely takes Tenacious D's advice to heart
3. Big Brown
2. Lemon Drop Kid-When life hands you balls, make lemonade
1. Genuine Risk-Neglecting to wear a rubber since 1978

Honorable Mentions:
Conquistador Cielo (The Latin lover)
Agile
Phalanx (Sounds pretty phallic)
Assault
Foolish Pleasure

Maine Outing

All the men from the last two generations of my dad's side of the family went up to my brother's godfather's place in Maine this weekend to lamp. Pretty solid weekend drinking Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat from the kegerator of one of the finer man-caves southern Maine has to offer. A few firsts went down, including beer pong game with the pops, boosting our life-time record to 1-0. Also, I never thought I'd smoke up with uncles, but I guess I just didn't give credit where credit's due. These dudes lived through the 70's. They had to grow up in an era without cable television or internet porn. And if that ain't hardcore, then at least this is:

Just Back

Colin said go abroad and he's right. He pretty much covered it all so it's not worth beating a dead horse. Just do it.

And just as Colin mentioned, a lot has happened since we have been gone, like me discovering that there is a National Sleep Foundation. Did you know this? It's nonprofit and was started nearly 20 years ago. Check it out.

Off Road Classiness

Done with work for the week, I pulled out of my company's office park and accelerated towards the first set of lights. When there's a red light and I've got 50 or so yards before the nearest car in my lane, I like to coast in. There's no rush in these situations since I'm going to have to wait for the car ahead of me to accelerate anyways and get up to speed when the lights finally do turn green. Add the ever-increasing price of gas into the equation, and coasting is just the economical way to go.

On Fuck You Fridays, however, Dan Douchebags don't agree with me. I caught a black Toyota truck 30 yards behind me as I start my coast, rapidly approaching within seconds. The truck quickly switched lanes and began accelerating towards the red light in the vacant right side of the two-lane road. However at the last second, instead of opting to be first in that right lane, the truck switches back into my left lane behind the only car waiting at the light. Taking this as a "fuck you grandpa" message to me, I threw my hands in the air and slammed on the breaks behind this Toyota.

I knew the driver of this truck was not bourgeoisie material. Anytime you see an off-roading roof rack with a light cage, you know the guy behind the wheel most likely is the sort of fella who brought a crib sheet to his GED exam. But nonetheless, his trashiness managed to surprise me when I caught the sticker on his back windshield:

Cape Cod Nude Beach
#17937
Parking Permit

How do I compete on the road with that kind of man. Touche 1992 4WD Toyota. May the summer grace you with the divine imagery of sagging tits and furrowed ball sacks.