If you thought the Lady Shake Weight was dirty, just wait until you see the Shake Weight for Men ad. Just like the commercial says, “The more you shake, the more intense and, ahem, challenging your, ahem, workout.”
I can’t wait to see the SNL spoof of this one.
Question 1: Do we need this?
Question 2: Where have you been all my life?
It has been declared (by some) (me?) as the summer of games. I love games — love competing, love coming up with strategies & love winning! Your Mom’s friends will confirm. Anyway, I’m hoping to round up some friends for a true game night one of these days. And, since I recently learned how to play backgammon (thanks SD & MF!), I’d really like to buy this:
It’s embroidered!!
Love me some Jonathan Adler (and his adorable BF Simon Doonan), but possibly, at $295, it’s a touch impractical?
I really just don’t have the words to discuss the below news. [It may have something to do with World-Cup-related day drinking.] One thing to add: The made-for-TV-movie, My Fake Fiance — starring MJH and Joey “Whoa” Lawrence — was … umm … not that terrible. I mean it was less stupid than, for example, Leap Year. And the lighting in the former was way more flattering to MJH than the lighting was on the obviously-more-attractive Amy Adams, so … yeah, not sure what conclusion to draw from all this. [So clearly, I always have more than one thing to add.]
From ew.com:
ABC Family, Aug. 17, Tuesdays, 8 p.m.
Gen-X nostalgia alert! Sabrina the Teenage Witch‘s Melissa Joan Hart and Blossom‘s Joey Lawrence, both 34, return to their sitcom roots on Melissa & Joey. She’s a party girl–turned–local politician, he’s the bankrupt financial adviser who moves in to help her care for her sister’s kids. In a word: Whoa! —JA
If you haven’t seen the whole 3-minute Nike commercial, stop what you are doing and do it now.
Your Mom is getting ready for a raucous afternoon watching USA/England at No. 8E. It would be even better if we all had these tees:
Sweet Tee
GO USA!!!!!
Lost is over for good. Glee just ended for the summer. And all my other network shows are done. So what do you watch when there’s nothing to watch? Your Mom is here to help. Aside from catching up on shows I missed through Netflix (my list includes Tru Blood, Breaking Bad and the Showtime line-up of Dexter, Nurse Jackie, and United States of Tara), there are some non-terrible shows to keep you entertained during the summer.
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1) Justified
So, technically, this show’s season just wrapped up, but I’ll be none of you watched it. Which is a real shame, because it is real good. Timothy Oliphant as a modern, more sarcastic, only-slightly-less-tortured version of his Sheriff Seth Bullock from Deadwood? Yes, please.
Timothy’s character Raylan is a trigger-happy US Marshall who is sent back to his home state of Kentucky, kicking and screaming, after shooting a drug dealer at what may or may not have been the Delano Hotel in Miami. Lots of bourbon drinking and sultry crime fighting ensue. [Query: whether the crime is sultry or the fighting of the crime is sultry. Answer: yes.] It also has bad-ass opening credits, with some sort of dirty Southern rap song that totally sets the mood. You can catch the 2nd half of the season on Hulu now, but hopefully they will reshow the whole thing on FX throughout the summer.
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2) Royal Pains
This show tops my “Non-Terrible Summer Shows” List. Yes, it is a pretty stupid premise: Manhattan doctor lets a powerful hospital trustee die, is blackballed, and is forced to become a concierge doctor in the Hamptons. And it reaches MacGyver-levels of unreality. “Come quick, Doctor: I have been exposed to mercury poisoning and, somehow relatedly, am being crushed by a panic-room door.” “Come quick, Doctor: I am a super-rich woman on a remote island with no cell-phone service and am going into labor at the same time that my grounds-keeper is septic because of a broken leg.” But don’t poo-poo it too quickly; it’s non-stupid summer fun and quite entertaining. Plus, it gets the rare DJ Seal of Approval. And I think Mark Feuerstein is dreamy.
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3) Burn Notice
This is at the top of my “Cable Shows That Look Stupid But Are Really Great.” I have always liked this show that adroitly balances cheeky spy action with dark spy action. Michael Weston is a burned spy who will stop at almost nothing to get back into the spy game (dark spy action). In the meantime, he helps Miamians in need with the various imbroglios they have gotten themselves into using his years as a spy to help him out (cheeky spy action). Four reasons to watch the show:
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4) Leverage
This show would probably go on my list of “Ok, It’s Kinda Dumb, But Lighten Up, It’s The Summer And This Show Is Fun.” Timothy Hutton leads a rag tag bunch of con artists including Lindsey from Angel, who still needs to cut his hair; the arrogant New Orleans quarterback who almost took the lead spot from Saracen before Coach Taylor sees the error of his ways on Friday Night Lights; the slutty one from the British Coupling; and Pilot Inspektor’s mom. It’s the most fun you’ve had watching criminals solve crimes since Remington Steele.
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5) Remington Steele!
Why not! Thee first three seasons are on Hulu, and it’s even better than you remember. I still want to be Laura Holt when I grow up. Her hat collection would be the envy of every hipster this side of the Hudson.
For some reason, several of my friends are freelance writers in the NYC area. And oddly, they all seem to know each other and be freakishly linked with me. Try to figure out this one: my roommate’s hometown friend’s college friend’s writer friend is also my step-sister-in-law’s sister’s husband. Whoa.
Which is totally not the point. The point is I used to get all sorts of “Do or Don’t” requests from them for various magazines. Like “Do wear white after Labor Day: Winter White is a real thing.” Or “Don’t wear eyeliner on your bottom lid cause it makes you look whorey.” That kind of thing. So today, I have one of my own. Do or Don’t: Wear cowboy boots with dresses and skirts that hit above the knee. (Obviously, Linda Ronstadt and my mom in the 80s proved that the long skirt with cowboy boots is h-o-t, so that’s a non-issue.)
I am a proponent of the boot/dress look, even if mostly for utilitarian reasons: My cowboy boots are super comfortable, warmer on a slightly cooler day like today, and don’t make my feet reek like my slip-on flats do. Plus, Connie Britton rocked the look on the season premiere of Friday Night Lights in May. Sadly, I couldn’t find the full shot of her with her navy shirt dress and brown cowboy boot combo (which is, in fact, what I am wearing today), but here’s the top half of it anyway.
Also, watch Friday Night Lights. It’s so good.
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[Updated: Not sure whether this weighs for or against the look, but a man on the subway platform stopped me to tell me that I had the prettiest legs he’d ever seen except for his. Yeah . . . First, thanks. Second, no I really don’t. Third, really? You can only see about 3 inches of them. How can you possibly tell? Also, additional utilitarian use of cowboy boots: running from shards of glass swept up by frenzied cab driver. Who knew?]
While Your Mom was sleeping, we ran across several interesting items that we wanted to share with everyone. This morsel came when we were discussing swaddling during March Madness. [What? Isn’t that what everyone talks about during great college basketball?] I mentioned that, back in the day, people would swaddle their babies and hang them from hooks to keep them out of the fire. My fellow game-watchers’ incredulity culminated in a Scrabble Challenge. And during the ensuing internet searches, we found …
The Zaky Infant Pillow, or as the San Francisco Chronicle’s The Poop Blog calls it, Scary Disembodied Mommy Hands. On sale now for just $40 a hand! Available in Vaguely Ethnic Beige and Boy MuppetBlue, Girl Muppet Pink, and, of course, Gender-Neutral Muppet Green. Now, I am pretty sure all those baby experts words were clear when they said, ahem “DON’T PUT ANYTHING IN THE CRIB WITH THE BABY.” Not even a bumper! Certainly not a murderous-looking dead hand.
I think the creepiness factor of The Babykeeper is actually outweighed by its usefulness. What mother haven’t you heard complaining about not being able to get a break peeing, especially when they were out and about with the baby. Though, do you hang them on the front of the door — like a salesperson letting you know which stall is yours — or on the back of the door, where they can have a bird’s eye view of the activities below. And, for the love of Pete, please don’t forget your baby. Thanks to The Poop, I now have an irrational fear of running to a public bathroom in an emergency and slamming the door, only to find a baby offering me a roll of toilet paper. And why does all useless baby crap cost $40? Did some economist figure out that is the exact price parents will pay for useless crap they have been made to feel is vital to their baby’s health and survival?
The end result of the Scrabble Challenge was that Your Mom was, as always, right. Query whether this image [to the right] is more or less upsetting than Mommy Hands? Though, I have to give Mommy Hands the less disturbing award based on what I read in the article in which this picture was found:
Since the infants were nursed while swaddled, they stewed in their own excrement for days at a time, the mothers leaving their babies “crying with all their might” in the cradle or “tossed in a corner” or “hung from a nail on the wall” while they “spend hours away from their cottages” during the day. Few traditional mothers or nurses heeded doctors’ pleas “not to let them lie in their filth,” so that during their first year of life they were usually “covered with excrement, reeking of a pestilential stench [their] skin completely inflamed [and] covered with filthy ulcerations [so that] if touched…they let out piercing cries.”
i-am-your-mom 