4 – Richard Davis & Ginger Alexander

I don’t really watch television all that much anymore.  Well, that isn’t entirely true, I watch a lot of hockey.  And Lost and Heroes and Pushing Daisies.  But I’m not one to sit around watching marathons of America’s Next Top Model or Rock of Love.  Reality television just isn’t my thing.

Except for home building and improvement shows, go figure.  Maybe it’s because my parents built our new house next door to our old one, and I got to watch every step of the way, who knows.  I just kind of love Flip This House and The Real Deal.  Now those are shows I could watch a marathon of.  Angie and her husband kind of bother me (more her than her husband), so I don’t watch the Atlanta one.  I never seem to catch the New England episodes, and Armando and his San Antonio crew have gained such an ego that his “flips” are excruciatingly painful to watch.

And then there is South Carolina, with good old Richard and Ginger.  I just can’t get enough of those two.  Richard seems like he’s a pretty down to earth guy, despite having a hugely successful company and television show.  He appears to genuinely like his job and he makes it look easy, but not so easy that he comes off as a huge jackass (see, Armando?  It is possible to strike a balance there).  And Ginger is one of those people that you want to go out for coffee with and just listen to.  I can imagine she probably has some pretty good stories to tell.  Again, she seems like a real person and one that knows her job and likes it.

I don’t know why the concept of flipping houses fascinates me so much.  You buy a piece of garbage, add some ‘curb appeal’ and get rid of the mold and termites, and there you go.  Of course, it’s much more difficult than that, and Ginger and Richard always seem to run into huge problems, but the super folks that they are, it just works.  I mean, just look how cute they are in their picture, wouldn’t you want to buy a house that they flipped?  They make even dealing with contractors and ripping up floorboards look fun.  Wait, you need to spend another 2,000 dollars to fix the huge hole in the ceiling?  No problem, they don’t sweat it.

What I like about Richard and Ginger (as opposed to the other teams) is that they really make it seem like if you work hard enough, you can flip houses too.  Of course, you’d need to know a little bit about homebuilding, and you’d need someone to crunch numbers, but it almost seems doable.  An adrenaline rush, even.  And of course there is drama, they’re featured on a reality television show, but the dynamic duo can stand up to all diversity and Trademark conquers all housing evils.

I like you, Richard and Ginger.  Not because you sued A&E for stealing your show and creating three awfully uninteresting new versions of you, but because you’re fun and enthralling to watch.  You make me want to take a trip down to Charleston just so I can steal one of your Trademark signs and hang it on my wall.  Because I feel like that would be a really cool souvenir.

Picture courtesy of IMDB.com

3 – CSS

When I heard the song “Music is My Hot, Hot Sex” in the iPod Touch commercial, I thought it was pretty catchy.  Good beat, mindless lyrics, something you could listen and dance to without having to feel philosophical or inquisitive.  While sometimes I hear a catchy tune and download it before realizing I already own it, I knew it wasn’t the case this time.  It was different enough than anything I listen to, and yet I was still intrigued.

I googled it, as one does with all things they want to learn more about.  Their genre was described as “Brazilian indie pop”, and if that description isn’t reason enough to keep up the search, I don’t know what is.  After further google investigations, I discovered that CSS stood for “Cansei de Ser Sexy”, and it stood for “tired of being sexy”.  Apparently Beyonce said that in an interview once, and well, that is a quote that is practically begging to be mocked.  An interesting sounding genre and a stab at an “actress”/singer I particularly dislike for no real reason?  Well, sign me up for the CSS fan club.

And so I got their self-titled album.  It’s probably the most entertaining album I’ve stumbled across this year so far, and it’s one of those albums that just gets better every time you listen to it.  A friend once described an album they were recommending as “a great album to listen to just straight through”, and I’d have to use that to describe CSS.  Their lyrics are in no way thought provoking (“lick lick lick my art tit” is just one brilliant example), but the music is extremely catchy nonetheless.  With song titles like “Meeting Paris Hilton”, featuring such wonderful lyrics as:

Hello, this is Paris Hilton…
I, I went to the beach
the beach was so hot
She came to me and said:
Do you like the beach, bitch?

What’s not to like?

It’s a short album, yes, but a really unique one.  To save this from sounding like an album review, I’ll break out my inner fangirl and stop commenting on lyrics and album quality.

People think that CSS “sold out” by letting their song be used in an Apple commercial, but really?  I still don’t know many people who have heard of them, let alone listen to their music.  Maybe that’s part of why I like them.  I’m not one of those people that will refuse to listen to a band once they’ve gone ‘mainstream’, but I do pride myself in listening to bands that aren’t on the radio every five minutes (I’m looking at you, Nickelback).  CSS just seems like the kind of band that you’d want to hang out with after a show and not feel like you need to take a thousand showers to get the stench of entitled rock star off of you.  They’re fun and hip, but unlike other bands (cough Panic! cough) they don’t milk their eccentricity for all of it’s worth.  Maybe because they aren’t American.  Or because they don’t have emo egos.  Probably the latter.

I like you, CSS, because I can listen to you while I’m walking to work or class and not feel the need to analyze my relationship or the meaning of life.  I can sing you in the shower, or into my hairbrush, or at the gym, and your bubblegum songs will still make me smile.

2 – Girl Scout Cookies

I’ve attempted to eat healthier these last few months, but when I see that brightly colored box in the pantry, all promises of sticking to “healthy” snacks go flying out the door.  Really, Girl Scout Cookies are more than cookies, they’re a cultural phenomenon.  I bet if you ask twenty Americans exactly what job Condoleezz Rice holds…well, I don’t know exact percentages but I can almost guarantee you the responses wouldn’t be 100% correct.  But ask those same twentyAmericans what the hell a Thin Mint is, and they’d all be able to tell you.

I was a girl scout once, back in the day.  I signed up in first grade because all of my friends were doing it.  I was super excited because my troop had two leaders, so double the pleasure, right?  Wrong.  One was pregnant the entire year (I swear, she was at that “any day now” stage for a least three months), and the other had a really bad case of pneumonia.  My biggest field trip was to the Friendly’s around the corner.  Awesome.

So needless to say, I relied on friends and younger sisters when it came time to seek out a girl scout to satisfy my cookie fix.  And with the marvelous invention of cookie booths, one never knows if their trip to the grocery store might result in a surprise encounter with a few new boxes of Tagalongs.  The prices keep going up and up, but I’m willing to spend it.  If a restaurant can charge six dollars for a pint of beer, I will certainly splurge on some Samoas.

You can freeze Thin Mints, that just makes them that much better.  If you buy one or two or twelve boxes, you can eat some, and stick another sleeve in the freezer.  Then, in those summer months when there are no girl scouts going door to door (do they even do that anymore or is the fear of strange sexual predator neighbors too strong to ovecome?) you can dig past the frozen vegetables and pizza-for-ones and voila, some frozen Thin Mints just waiting for you.

A friend who is studying abroad recently mentioned that if we stumbled upon a girl scout, to get her a box of Thin Mints since, sadly, Juliette Gordon Low didn’t feel the need to extend her girl scout program worldwide.  Oddly enough, I found myself at a girl scout luncheon a few days ago, as part of my internship.  I had to sit through a number of ridiculously corny speeches about how wonderful scouts are (I’m kind of a cynic because again, my biggest field trip was to Friendly’s), and I also had to endure the ramblings of a crazy girl scout mom who ended up at my table.  But at the end of the lunch, we all received goody bags, and I was the lucky one who got a box of Thin Mints in mine.  Now, I already had a box of Samoas sitting at home because my cousin sells them and I felt obligated to buy a box (and when I say obligated I really mean I couldn’t pass it up), so the nice thing to do would be to pack up those Thin Mints and bring them with me when I visit this friend abroad.

However, I don’t think she’ll want the empty box, which is all there is left.  One cannot resist the temptation that is a good Thin Mint.

1 – Michael “Skittles” Sheridan

Congratulations, universe, you win.

I’ve always been against the crusades of school districts to stamp out obesity. In theory, it seems like a good idea. A lot of these kids don’t have healthy diets, and whatever they’re eating at home doesn’t seem to be helping. However, when you tell me that I can’t buy soda or candy in a school vending machine, that’s crossing the line. I was brought up on a healthy diet, I’m a healthy weight, and most importantly, I know my limits. Buying a candy bar in school did not lead me to want to devour an entire bag of fun size Snickers. In fact, I think most of the clubs in my high school would have been absolutely sunk without the wonderful ability to traipse around with a Ziploc bag of candy to sell to friends. I don’t believe the schools should be punishing those children who do know how to balance their diet because some kids have been taught that eating Big Macs five times a week is a good idea.

So Michael Sheridan bought Skittles from a friend. It was a little bag. When his dirty deed was caught, he was suspended, his invitation to an honors dinner was revoked, and he was told that he could no longer be the vice president of his class. First of all, congratulations to Michael for being an honors student and vice president, I’m pretty sure a smart kid like that isn’t selling drugs out of his locker (or worse, M&Ms). Really? Has the problem of child obesity come so far that buying a bag of Skittles from your friend on school property leads to suspension and being stripped of an elected office?

But I like you, Michael Sheridan. According to the AP article, you didn’t know that buying candy was against the rules but you did notice that the kid selling them seemed “secretive”. I honestly can’t blame you for assuming you would be allowed to purchase a taste of the rainbow without such strict repercussions. Of course, your horrible punishments were later revoked, and this won’t be going on your permanent record. Which is good, otherwise I might have had to call your principal in your defense. All you wanted was a bag of Skittles, and you ended up in a world of trouble. How backwards. I hope that your first action as re-instated vice president of the 7th grade is to create a motion to abolish this unfathomably silly rule.

I think the real winner in this entire thing was Mars. I mean, when was the last time Skittles were in the news or received any kind of attention outside of television ads? I know you’ve got at least one person craving those teeny pieces of colorful goodness after reading this story, and that’s one more person than you had before Mr. Sheridan’s mother was told her son was suspended for buying candy.

Picture courtesy of CNN.com.