What's on TV: Mysterious Annoyance

Now that the Girl and I are co-habitating (for those of you who didn't know, the Girl and I are now co-habitating), I find the differences in day-to-day life are subtle. We still stick to mostly different diets, she still sleeps more than would seem humanly possible whenever she has time, and I still try to play golf as often as I can. There are certain obvious differences, but what stands out to me so far is the TV.

I probably consume a somewhat standard diet of TV shows for a sports fan/geek. I like to watch football and college hoops just about as much as I can. I like 24, Lost, Heroes, The Office, etc. I stay the hell away from reality TV because I think it is the worst thing to happen to television since the first lower corner pop-over ad showed up on one of those damned Turner networks. I have actually seen a few of them, and their formulaic nature is downright disturbing to me. I just don't understand how people can watch more than one of them in a year. It's do some stuff, have a Challenge to win Immunity, someone faces Elimination, Take a Maudlin/Funny Look into Contestant Q's Life Outside the Show, find out Who's Going Home ... when we come back. Rinse and Repeat. Seriously, how anyone can stand to watch those hour-long results shows live is beyond me, given that there's a grand total of about five minutes of actual new information. It seems like a Tivo would allow a motivated person to watch those in no more than 10 minutes.

All of that said, the thing is that we are still in midst of the Sports Doldrums (although college football has officially started now, and not a minute too soon, but the Doldrums don't officially end until the NFL season starts), and none of the shows I like to watch are new. So the Big Ass HDTV is often tuned to things that the Girl wants to watch, as they are new. And the Girl like reality shows, be it American Idol, Big Brother 765, or ... whatever. As things would work out, I've seen a few of these shows. In fact, I don't mind Last Comic Standing too much, because it's about being funny (but I'm still irked that they had a "challenge round" in that show). The show that's on my mind, though, is VH1's the Pick Up Artist.

I've mentioned more than once before that I'm not so smooth when it comes to attempting to get my schwerve on with random chicks of the female persuasion, but this show is supposedly about helping guys who seem hopeless. I have to admit that parts of it are interesting, and they do suggest some useful things. For instance, they pointed out to the guys, that having two guys approach two girls is a near-ideal situation. However, the thing is that, in trying to make the tips they give seem more exclusive or rare, the guy who runs the show (and has a business helping losers pick up chicks) has invented a whole vocabulary with arcane terms like "set," "IOI," "high-value individual," "IOD," blah, blah, blah. It annoys the ass out of me. More than that, though, is that the guy calls himself Mystery and wears top hats with huge goggles wrapped around them. I have no idea why. Nonetheless, the Girl loves that show because she enjoys watching those awkward or anti-social guys try to be smooth. (Of course she loves that; otherwise, she wouldn't be dating me.) And I can't claim to quite hate it, as much as I want to smack that Mystery dude and tell him to stop wearing fuzzy, wide-brimmed hats.

Thankfully, the NFL will come calling next weekend, and good TV shows will be back on the air before the month is out. I definitely can't recommend this show over real TV, but you might get a chuckle out of it before that goodness comes back on.

Have a great holiday weekend.