Tuesday, March 02, 2010

REFEREE

It snowed again today in Atlanta - what is that, the third time this year? - and She Who Must Be Obeyed got home at 2:30, the county schools having been let out early. (It doesn’t take a whole lotta snow to make Atlantans piss their collective pants in fear.)

Snow in March
Yes, indeedy: Snow. Again. And in March, fercryin’outloud!

To amuse ourselves, we decided to catch up on our stored TeeVee-Show Inventory. Our digital video recorder is packed with stuff we’ve never taken the time to watch... not a surprising outcome, since in any given week we record about twice as much as we would ever consider looking at. Once every two months or so, we erase most of the crap on the machine and start building a new pile. (Welcome to Television in the 21st Century.)

The show we happened upon was “The Marriage Ref,” which had aired last Sunday evening. Featuring Tom Papa (the nominal Ref) with an advisory panel consisting of Kelly Ripa, Jerry Seinfeld, and Alec Baldwin, the show adjudicates disputes between married couples. Not disputes like “I saw you giving your big-titty secretary the eye,” but disputes like a husband wanting to display his beloved (albeit dead and taxidermied) dog in an alcove in the house, over the strenuous objections of his wife... or a husband wanting to build a stripper pole in the bedroom for his not-too-fond-of-the-idea wife.

I had been looking forward to seeing a show that featured not one, but two of my homies: Baldwin and Seinfeld. And the show was amusing enough, given that it is, after all, Reality TeeVee.

There was one moment, though, that cracked me up unto the point of breathlessness and tears... and that was when the husband - he of the dead, stuffed dog - observed that the dog, whilst sitting in its little alcove, was giving his wife the malocchio. This is the Italian version of the ayin hara - the evil eye, and the matter-of-fact way in which the husband mentioned it just frickin’ caught me funny.

Whatever. It beats the living crap out of tripe like “The Bachelor,” a show that the Missus refers to disdainfully as “The Trashlor” while watching every single drippy, sickening minute. Gaaaahhhhh.

Hey, now there’s a Marital Dispute that’s tailor-made for The Marriage Ref! “You gonna watch that crap again?!!?”

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