A new crown prince in the kingdom of douche

In a finale almost as anti-climactic as that of this cycle’s Top Model , Simeon (Dave calls him “Slimeon” — with a long “i”) won the pick-up douche title, surprising no one. Not even Slimeon seemed surprised: When he won the earlier challenge, a race to “kiss-close,” his comment was not how thrilled and relieved he was that he had won, but that he was concerned that he “stay humble.”

But I like Slimeon ok. Matt’s ok too, but you know, they’re both just… ok. It’s not like there was some big asshole on the show that you were praying wouldn’t win. (I realize I said at first that I liked this show because the guys all seemed pretty nice, so fine, maybe I was wrong, ok?) But it seemed that once NostrilMan Greg was gone, the drama left with him.

One guy I really liked was Matt’s friend who visited in the next-to-the-last episode. That dude was cool. A nice-looking bigger fellow, he showed up in this nice short-sleeved black button-down shirt that was a million times cooler than the crap they put him in after his “makeover.” All of their friends seemed pretty mellow and cool, actually, but of course the purpose of the episode was for the pick-up contestants to prove how douchey they could make others, a transcendent leap from merely proving their own personal doucheiness.

Slimeon plucks the perfect thing for his pal to wear: a bedazzling studded sweatshirt. Then, purporting that it will make the friend more attractive (you’ve surely seen this guy on runs of the clip of he and Slimeon with their arms around each other, practicing how to kiss-close), they dye his hair and eyebrows AND eyelashes albino-blond, the poor bastard.

Matt’s friend appears to fare better in his doucheover. After outfitting his poor friend in a stupid t-shirt with a big skull on it and this lame striped button-down, they dyed the bearded one’s hair black and Matt urged him to shave his beard off, too. His friend refused, but agreed that they could trim it. You would think that would have been the end of the controversy on that, but no.

In the elimination ceremony — which never fail to make me laugh when they pull out the “medallions”…hahaha, I’m chuckling even as I type this) — Matt is totally reamed by Matador for not forcing his friend into shaving his beard. I was pretty surprised. Matador charges that Matt failed to impress upon his pal that learning pick-up is a “life-changing experience,” one only possible, evidently, after a thorough removal of facial hair.

Then since Matador had played the heavy on the beard issue, Mystery chimes in that hey man, he’s not anti-beard, but intimates that the beard could have been utilized as part of his “avatar,” like, a conversation piece or something, was the gist I got from it. Um, ok….snicker. (I figured that little drama was fabricated just to give some reason why Matt might be eliminated instead of Greg, who totally abandoned his wing in the club challenge that evening, but it was still pretty ridiculous.)

Keep in mind that these admonishments are administered by a guy pushing 40 with black-painted nails and goggles resting over the brim of his big furry hat. It’s just so hilarious. When what they’re saying gets too retarded, the outfits of everyone except Tara are always good for a chuckle.

But I got away from why I really liked that guy whose name I’m too lazy to look up: When Matt is drilling him about all the dumb boring lines he’s supposed to say and how much cooler it is to look like you’re merely pausing to spit some words over your shoulder rather than stopping to actually talk to a chick, his friend admits fairly amiably, “I’m not particularly interested in any of this stuff; I’m just here to support you.” Cut to a concerned-looking Matt and a doozy of a cliffhanger before a commercial break!

Last night was another milestone in the show: The contestants were reminded that the purpose of this “game” is to actually have sex with the chicks you pick up. So Mystery arranges a big party filled with “perfect 10’s” and other people who are such close, personal friends of Mystery’s that none of them seem to notice that Mystery isn’t at the party — as he’s in some back room watching hidden camera footage of his students — and the nerdz are sent into the mix to lure unsuspecting skankz into their pretend bedrooms and close them in.

One of my favorite parts is when Mystery leans back and throws up his hands in disgust when Matt is having an actual conversation with two of his targets. Slimeon is better at staying on point, babbling nonsense and keeping things nice and shallow. Matt redeems himself later when he lures his target back to his bedroom and tells her he just had to get her alone because she is the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. Vomit…so, bullshit resumed, order is thus restored.

Matador and Mystery exult during their spy session of the nerds that being picked up by a pick-up artist is a privilege, which made Dave and I laugh quite a bit. That’s the narcissistic notion I remember from trolling the fastseduction board: ideally, the pick-up douche should leave his skank better for the experience than he found her, and she should be somehow unperturbed (or even unaware) when he blows her off (i.e., the master pick-up douche is not supposed to accumulate a stable of psycho exes bashing in his windshield).

So how was this skank left after watching each and every (season 2) episode of this silly show? Maybe very much like a “target” feels, actually: vaguely satisfied, amused by the douchery I have witnessed and more than a little swindled.

Oh, alright, I loved this show, I admit it! Bring on the next stable of nerdz!

Picking up some vegetables at the market

Oh, it has been a spell again, oh well. I was busy milking my birthday for all it was worth, contemplating my ancientness and prospects for employment when I am inevitably laid off, but it was probably my best birthday ever, so who am I to complain, as I always say (har).

Before I poke my nose into unreality tv, I want to plug Shojin, a vegan organic Japanese restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. I’m not sure if everyone loved the food, but goddamn, that kobacha squash chowder is really effing good. Dave and I had the tempeh with vegetables for entrees, which were good and not too heavy, which is what I wanted since I knew we were having dessert. A couple other people got bento boxes and my friend Mai didn’t like her udon; she said it tasted like noodles in mushroom water (they took it off the bill)…but still. It’s a lovely place, the desserts are great, and you won’t get more courteous service anywhere.

They turned the lights out before they brought out my dessert (we were the only ones in there on a Sunday night), then someone flashed them on and off while what seemed to be the entire kitchen staff came out and gaily sang happy birthday to me. They put a candle in a little pouf of chocolate mousse and wrote my name on the plate in delicious raspberry sauce. It’s one of those things that you know people are doing to humor you that your birthday is a big deal, but it’s still touching all the same.

But back to the gutter…

Pick-Up Douche: Talking to Vegetables
I was impressed that the show decided to forgo the safety of a lame nightclub filled with drunk floozies and actually sent contestants into a grocery store to test their pick-up douche mettle. And even better, the results were so completely and literally cringe-inducing that it made for some entertaining television.

I think Matt was the first one up. If I recall, he wandered around haplessly with an empty basket then left without talking to a single chick. Bravo!

Then I think Simeon came in and went up to some girl looking at broccoli and asked her if she’d consider dating a guy named Herman or something. Jesus, dude. But that was just his warm-up: Next he launched into a bizarre monologue at some piles of kale and lettuce in the produce department. Since Simeon was staring so intently and unwaveringly at the vegetables while he babbled, a kind of plain, pale redhead stood uncomfortably about 10 feet away, apparently wondering if he was talking to her or the leafy greens. Then she finally walks away while Simeon is still talking to the kale. It takes him a minute or two to notice she’s gone. CRINGE! eesh.

He has better luck with some plump girls taking advantage of free juice samples. He engages them immediately but then in about a minute, invites them to a bbq. Make it a bit more obvious that you’re just looking for warm bodies and not any particular human beings, Simeon. Surprisingly, they relinquish their phone numbers, but as they turned away from him they exchanged looks like they were thinking Simeon was a total freak.

I think Greg bothers some chicks with his standard weather-yawner, ugh, and Rian…what did he do? I think he did that silly mirror game with some chick and wins the challenge. He is making great strides in pick-up douchery, but oh, that walk! I’m not sure what can be done about nerd-gait, but I think he’ll fare better in the game if he sticks to small clubs where you can’t move around much.

Overall, I was really appalled at how shitty they did. There’s a whole fucking store filled with conversational gambits! Ask some chick if the skin of something is edible or “how do you cook this?” or anything! Or if you insist on sticking to those lame Mysteryisms, at least put a couple of items in your basket so it doesn’t look like a fucking prop in your nerd theater. God.

Then the contestants to be Mystery’s new bff returned to the comforting, warm dark bosom of a Phoenix nightclub to hit on vegetables of a different sort. Tonight’s lesson is how to be a good wingman, and Greg totally fails at this because he’s too into making out with his target. His wing, Rian, didn’t actually need any help, unless you count taking his head out of his ass and not being such a pussy as something a wingman could assist him with. Rian has not one but two chicks basically telling him how it has been a while since they’ve kissed a guy and gee, that might be a fun idea. Rian just nods between them as they grow more confused and uncomfortable and then he just gets up and bids them farewell! Dude! WHAT were you thinking? They delivered you an invitation to win the challenge via certified slut mail and you just leave? Ugh.

So he is sent home, big surprise. Greg would have been gone for sure if Rian hadn’t have pussed out like that. But Mystery’s crush is still hanging on. And getting pretty ballsy, too… I have mentioned before how supportive the nerds are to each other but now that it’s getting down to the wire, the claws are coming out. Mr. bashful voice-cracking Greg actually throws Rian under the bus when he’s probed about why he shouldn’t be cut, saying that he thinks Rian has potential but that he has more. Oh, no he didn’t!

I think Simeon is probably going to take the prize. So I guess that means he’s going to travel to exotic locales with Mystery and his wingz and pick up randoms at clubs for a while? woo. hoo.

Speaking of anticlimaxes, last night was the most limp-dick of a Top Model finale I have ever seen. Once poor Annaleigh is sent home, I knew McKey would win. Like Samantha had a chance, stop pulling my leg. She looks like a Sears model. And did anyone else notice her increasingly “gangsta” syntax and tone in her interviews? She ain’t playin’, Tyra, she’s in it to win it! I found it very puzzling.

And that runway was totally retarded. Why would anyone design a runway that the models would have to run up because without that momentum, they’ll fall on their asses? People making a reality show about modeling and who want them to fall is the obvious answer, but I thought the whole thing looked like a giant breast cancer ribbon anyway. So dumb.

But I love the PR the show does at every commercial break now to combat the by now generally understood reality that these chicks rarely become real models or at the very least, do not become “top” models. Last cycle’s Anya was touted as a gainfully employed model, and Nigel hurriedly wrapped up his voice-over of her modeling coups with “…Greek Elle.” Greek Elle? Who knew there was such a thing? Well, if it got her to Greece, good for her. I want to go to Greece.

When reality is more pleasant than TV

I’m still waking up, but I really, REALLY don’t feel like working on version 3 of some copy for this lame German-soldier-and-Jewess-fall-in-love movie that takes place during Hitler’s invasion of Poland, ugh. So here we are…

Charm School
Charm School, Charm School, Charm School. Come on. In the most contrived episode yet, Sharon Osbourne brings in a fake Duchess to test the ladies’ skills in tea drinking, soup eating and saying hello. One of few bright spots is that Megan is gone, and I gotta say, I have taken a shine to Brandi M. She appears to actually want to learn about etiquette and if she’s being disingenuous and is just a good actress, then kudos to her for that regardless. I didn’t see the first Rock of Love so I don’t know if she was horrid on that show or what, but it does seem like her background is probably on the lower end of the middle class, so I feel a kinship with her (although I could be completely wrong about this, can’t even find any info about her online).

I’m going to digress for a moment and tell you a longwinded story about who reminds me of Brandi M. Years ago, I wrote this arts feature story on this Bay Area theater group/tour thing called Popcorn Anti-Theater. The idea is that you meet them at a bus and don’t know where you’re going, and they whisk you off to some weirdo performance somewhere in the Bay Area. (I guess they don’t do the bus thing anymore. Pity.) So when I went, they took us to Half Moon Bay. I don’t really remember the bus and have an extremely vague recollection of the performance we saw, which I think was in a (cold) parking lot (at night) and involved some gothy, heavily made-up fat guy, but what I do remember well is the roadhouse-style shitty little bar they took us to after the “theater.”

It was the kind of place that seems really quaint after years and years in San Francisco; when you live in a major metropolitan area where there is constant competition to create the most trendy, nouveau business establishments, restaurants that serve complimentary iceberg-lettuce salads before entrees and bars with bright lights and wood paneling on the walls seem kind of endearing. I guess I didn’t get out of San Francisco all that much when I lived there so I was really fascinated by the toothless yokels, the blaring sports game on the TV and just the good ol’ All-American air of decay about the place.

But in such an atmosphere, rulers still emerge. The clear queen of this krap bar was this incredibly drunk, young and pretty little thing who I think was named Robin. I think she wanted this giant ragtag assortment of San Francisco weirdos to know she was in charge, so she drunkenly slurred and shouted at us, at one point standing atop a bar stool to put us in our place. Her poor boyfriend was trying to pluck her off and set her back down, but, wobbly as she was, she was determined to teeter above us, alternately toasting the newcomers congenially and menacing that we get the hell out of her bar.

That’s Brandi M. to me: Some town’s Robin. I can picture Brandi bartending at some shithole and all the old men leering at her but only when she’s not looking because they know she won’t take any of their shit. She gets too drunk sometimes and flirts but her favors are reserved for only the very cutest underemployed, alcoholic sometime construction worker in her town.

So that’s why I want Brandi M. to win. Or this is why I’m crazy, take what you will from this blog-diggity tangent.

Pick-Up Douche
As usual, I’m not writing about much that I thought I would, but I do want to say that I love these nerds. They are so sweet and supportive to each other that I want to pinch their nerdy little cheeks.

And hats off to Rian; Dave and I totally thought his days were severely numbered but he got a phone number and a kiss on the cheek in last week’s episode and well, he sucked this week, but he’s hanging on. It’s funny because you can see that Mystery has a huge hard-on for Greg, the cute real estate one, because Greg is better looking than the other guys on the show and therefore can make Mystery look really good if Greg can ever get over his crushing shyness and awkwardness and pick up some hot chicks. But Greg has stubbornly stuck to his snoozeathon weather opener, which always makes Mystery and the Wingz bounce around in their chairs with frustration as they watch from their remote spy area. He could be next, however reluctant Mystery is about letting him go.

The meanest bitches in reality tv
When the first episode of Scream Queens — a show in which a bunch of actress hopefuls compete for the questionably grand prize of the lead role in Saw VI — reared its ugly head, Dave said that surprisingly (given our love of reality tv and horror movies) he isn’t the slightest bit interested in this show at all. I agreed and tried to puzzle out why. I said, maybe it’s because the appeal of horror movies are about the lead-up to the murders, picturing yourself in the situation and feeling the fear and creepiness of the scene and imagining what you’d do in the victim’s place. Once the girl is screaming, who cares, that’s the least interesting part.

But clumsy philosophizing aside, there are many other contributing factors in why this show is lame:

1) James Gunn. I don’t have a big problem with James Gunn generally, but as the big expert on horror, really? Feh.

2) It’s also hosted by that chick who evidently was in Saw, what 1? I don’t even remember her, but I find her monotone deeply boring.

3) The prize, which I’ve already mentioned. Saw VI? Why the fuck is there a Saw VI? I wasn’t even particularly impressed with the first one, honestly. The script seemed amateurish in spots and I found the ending extremely hard to swallow. Interesting idea, but that Saw became this powerhouse mill churning out sequels really surprised me. What do I know, evidently…

4) I saw a bit of one challenge where the hopeful bitches met with a casting director who told one ridiculously pretty chick that she has the “typical horror look,” which made me gag. Since when?? Who decided that chicks in horror movies had to look like models on their way to a fucking swing dance? I thought they were supposed to be girls next door, girls we could identify with. It’s disgusting.

And last but not least: 5) These are the meanest fucking twatty bitches I have ever seen on any reality show, for real. They make Megan look like …I don’t know, substitute someone nice, I can’t think. In one of the first exchanges I caught on this show, one girl sniped to several others that a girl not in the room is “ugly as fuck” and can’t act, blah blah blah. And then on another episode, the girls are all drunk and going back to their bitch lair in a limo and one girl defends her drunkenness by telling another that she had actually drank more but that because she weighs 50 pounds more, the alcohol doesn’t affect her as much.

So the other chick retorts, “Do you have any idea how ugly you are?” and I was like, whoa!! Then she adds: “…how Jewish you look?” WHOA!! Just, whoa. I can’t believe they let that exchange on TV. Sadly, I’m sure they were very excited to air it. Where are the lines on these reality shows? Are there any? I mean, a normal show would never have dialogue like that, would it? If I’m wrong about that, I think that’s pretty fucked up. If you won’t hear anyone say “nigger” on a regular tv show, I don’t think “ugly Jew” should fly either.

So that’s where the title of this blog came from. Not long after I watched these horrible horror bitches, Barack Obama was elected president. I can’t recall another time in my life where so many people I knew were proud to be Americans and hopeful about the future of this country. And it struck me that for once, real life was providing me with a positive and inspiring escape from the ugliness of TV, not the other way around.

The Pick-Up Douche 2

When The Pick-Up Artist 2 first came on, Dave and I groaned, “oh, God…yuck” but we were soon riveted by the show’s ragtag assortment of nerds desperate to learn how to talk to girls. And the show amuses from the get-go: As soon as the camera zooms in on Mystery’s big furry hat, eyeliner and black nail polish, I immediately start laughing.

But the nerds are pretty endearing, and to the show’s credit, they are not She’s All That -style “let’s put glasses on a hot person and pretend he or she isn’t hot” nerds but actual nerds: Among them is a 28-year-old virgin, a guy who has never been given a haircut by anyone but his mom, a guy who hasn’t gotten laid in 9 years or something and a Radio Shack employee who, after he found out his girlfriend cheated on him, didn’t dump her for another three months. (His intro video has him strumming a guitar and singing about being stabbed in the heart with a spork.)

As Mailee pointed out in a comment on my last blog, the show felt the need to trek to Phoenix to find women who might not have heard these tired pick-up schemes that are detailed and outlined in Neil Strauss’s The Game . So in the first episode, the nerds are let loose in a noisy, cheesy club to humiliate themselves demonstrating how abysmal their game is while Mystery and his wingz watch on hidden cameras. Afterwards, Mystery and his cohorts swoop into the club to show the nerds how it’s done.

To showcase his true skill, Mystery — oooooh! — removes his ridiculous hat and goggles, demonstrating his pick-up mastery sans douche accoutrements. Inside the club, Mystery makes spooky hand gestures in front of one girl’s face that reminds me of people wiggling keys to entertain babies and Matador drags a couple chicks over to Mystery who asks him “Are they cool?” And Matador shrugs and replies “Cool enough.”

Right. If some dude said that to me I would be like, Fuck. You. Hat-Douche. But that such a front would actually engage chicks shows that the point of “The Game” is not to pick up normal adult women but to prey on young drunk chicks with low self-esteem who are looking to get laid anyway. Who else would bother listening to that shit?

The bell-and-whistle aspect of The Lame, I mean The Game, is one of the most amusing aspects of the show. In the second episode that aired Sunday, Matt won the Bingo challenge (which was pretty cute: Mystery sent the nerds into a bingo game to practice “opening” sets with some unintimidatingly old biddies. After the nerds made the rounds, Mystery asked the ladies to mark on their bingo cards who they liked best.) so his “prize” was this ridiculous feather boa that Mystery gave him to wear to the club that night. When Matt fails to work the boa to Mystery’s satisfaction, Mystery scolds him, “That boa is magic in my hands!” Dave and I had a good guffaw over that scene.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…do catch the “makeover” segment of the first episode, where the nerds are taken to a douche-outfitting boutique to choose their new “avatars.” Bahahahahahaaaa!!!! They actually call them avatars! The pick-up douche avatar — where sex meets Dungeons & Dragons.

Anyway, Mystery and the Wingz offer critiques and encouragement while the nerds paw through and try on white Fedoras, sparkly vests and shiny button-down shirts. Their eyebrows and chests are waxed, their hair cut and dyed and, puke, most of them are adorned with piercings to render them cool. Is it 1991 in Arizona or what?

But the nerds do look a lot better, although most of their new “avatars” would completely repel me personally, but whatever. Newly confident, they return to the club and it is heart-warming to see that after just one lesson, their game has improved quite a bit.

This is the essence of the show: it’s a feel-good triumph-of-the-underdog kind of thing and the guys they chose for the cast seem pretty likable, which helps. But this sunny take on the pick-up game — that all it is is helping shy, awkward guys get over their fear of women — seems as disingenuous to me as the cutesy, fawning media coverage of The Game did.

A friend of mine dated one of these pick-up aholes in San Francisco for a month or two, and I know more about this community than I really care to. (Incidentally, I met this guy once and I swear to god, he was the most hollow, dull, repulsive little prick I’ve ever met in my life. She urged him to run some of his lines on me that were supposed to be engaging and so he said “You’re like my little sister,” and I was like, what? He also sullenly stood in the doorway of the restaurant and muttered that he wished he could he could machine-gun everyone in it. Yeah, really impressive. I have no idea what she saw in him, never have I so instantly and enduringly despised anyone.)

My friend found their internet “lair,” Fast Seduction, which offers some free lessons on dehumanizing women (you rarely if ever see the word “women” in this community; they’re referred to as “HB”s, which stands for “hot babe” or “hot bitch” and is usually followed by a numerical rating. So “I met these two girls at a club last night” becomes “I opened a two-set with an HB8 and an HB7.5,” etc. etc.) but the most interesting section is the message boards. There, self-described reformed “frustrated chumps” gleefully write “lay reports,” in which they detail their exploits. Some of these guys get more excited about accumulating several phone numbers in an evening than actually getting laid, seriously.

They did mention “negging” in the show but only briefly. Here’s the fast seduction definition of it:

“A negative remark towards a girl designed to break her indifference to you by showing her that you are indifferent to her beauty (or other striking features). Not an insult, that would be bad. More like ‘Those are interesting nails – are they real?’ or ‘It’s really cute how your nose wiggles when you talk – look, there it goes again!’. No more than 2 negs on an average HB (7-9/7-9), a maximum of 3 on a super HB (10/10). Negs are pretty much a necessity for 10s or strippers (whether they’re 10s or not – simply because they are in an environment which is conducive to them thinking they are 10s).”

Those are pretty mild neg examples, if I remember right. Some of these little turds will say shit to a chick like “That’s a pretty dress; I’ve seen three other girls here wearing the same one.” I mean, these guys are awkward; the odds of them going too far with any of this shit is pretty high. Negs are annoying and they are meant to insult the targets, I mean, come on (and women are called targets, by the way).

But the most basic, and I think disturbing, tenet of the “Mystery method” and other off-shoots of this mind-fuck philosophy is that no woman is special, they’re all the same and therefore there’s nothing to be afraid of. I think that how much a pick-up student embraces the misogynistic aspects of the game varies a great deal. But still. I remember there was one guy who was one of the nerd-king teachers who did have a girlfriend, and this appeared to be accepted among his peers, but in general, a guy who is thinking about settling down with one girl is derided as having “one-itis” and dismissed as a chump. You’re not supposed to want a serious relationship, so …how healthy is the game, really?

I haven’t been to the site in years, not since Strauss’s book came out and all the nerds were in a tizzy over the mainstreaming of their formerly secret world. But I can tell you that several years ago, there arose among the pick-up douches a rallying cry for “proof” of how hot these conquests actually were, which led to fucking VIDEO and photographs of these chicks, often obviously unknown to the (mostly drunk) women. Many of these idiots posted these pictures and videos on this public board and elsewhere until a few voices of reason got them to stop and move them to private “lairs” that were password-protected. (It would likely surprise you how long it took them to wise up and do this.) It was pretty fucked up.

When Neil Strauss did a reading a few years ago in West Hollywood, I pitched a thing about it to the LA Weekly. The editor wrote back, cc’ing a couple other editors, but with palpably mild interest; he admitted he was pretty skeptical that any halfway intelligent woman would fall for their bullshit. Like the rest of the world, evidently, he seemed dubious that there might be anything really sinister about this, so I bagged on it and didn’t even go to the reading. It didn’t seem worth racing to WeHo from Chatsworth after work for the “thanks, but I’m going to have to pass” that I felt was inevitable.

Yes, folks, that’s the kind of naked ambition that has me blogging for you for free here today. Yahoo! And think of all the pick-up wisdom I missed out on, too.