Love and Reality TV

Last night, I watched the two hour premiere of The Bachelorette on ABC. Normally, I would not subject myself (or anyone else, for that matter) to this programming, but a friend and former teammate in college was making his television debut, and based on what we all know about him, watching was a necessity (he's usually a beacon of entertainment, even when cameras aren't present). While the personal highlights were scattered, they were amazing, and I am thankful he received a rose after the first night, ensuring at least one more episode of spontaneous uproarious laughter every time he appears on screen. But, I am also thankful that he was not successful in this journey, as could be clearly identified by his lack of exposure in the series preview, since, simply reinforcing my preconceived notions, the vast majority of reality television is at least partially scripted, planned, choreographed, story boarded, and set up, resulting in a group of non-professional actors and actresses attempting to feign reality, conning millions of viewers and joining together to lower the IQ of the world.

In the first two hours, you had:

- A man in a mask claim he wanted love to grow from the inside out. A bold act, and one that isn't unthinkable, but immediately caused the alcohol inspired and culturally shallow contestants, err, suitors to start a conflict, antagonize, name call, and dramatize the phantom of the opera type stalking the masked man performed. There was no way that his actions weren't at least a little bit influenced by the faces off camera. Because, when I wear a mask to stand out and make an impression, I make sure to lurk in the shadows while dark movie music plays.

- A man, while one-on-one with the prize of the show, pulls his cell phone out and calls his mom. So, while none of the other contestants carry a cell phone (an assumption, based on they're required to deactivate facebook for a while, not to mention you never see a phone during the rest of the show), this man gets to follow through with his plan by calling home so his mom can tell Ashley that once they start sharing a bedroom, to always use protection. Because the first thing most moms would tell a strange women whom their son is trying to court is to wear a condom when they have sex.

- A man walks into the main room with a guitar, trumping my boy's main chance at getting the bachelorette alone, only to walk her out onto the patio and hurl his guitar into the pool. He claimed he didn't know how to play guitar, and showing up with one was just a way to get her alone. Because, when I'm packing for an undisclosed amount of time in tight quarters, you can bet the first thing on my mind is 'better save room for that guitar I can't play.'

- The highlight of the night: A man, consumed with the jitters, unable to utter one word of intelligence, including the main contributor to team 'Anti-masks,' becomes so alarmingly drunk that he loses the ability to form words, and falls asleep on the bench, snoring away, unable to be awoken for several minutes until he's carried away by some fellow competitors and ushered into his limo ride home. This 35 year-old worked as a liquor distributor, but apparently, despite being surrounded by it as a career, never distributes any into his own system, and somehow managed to get so drunk he forgets how to speak. Because, when I stumble into my 15 minutes of fame, with the goal a beautiful if not terribly smart wife, my first instinct is to drink my face off, reducing me to the intellect of a 3 year old, and hope that goes over well.

And among all of this, the bachelorette has the audacity to stand in a room of 25 men she's never met and foreshadow aloud, 'I think my husband is standing in this room.' So amidst the production lights, invasive cameras, scripted dates, over-exaggerated traditions (like pausing 15 seconds before handing out each of the first 18 roses), and the over-whelming sensation that these candidates are literally competing, from scheming, backstabbing, bad-mouthing, and any other form of getting ahead, to end up as the final man with a rose, just to force a marriage with someone who already failed once (she was on The Bachelor a few years ago), Ashely is confident that this is the best medium for finding true love.

I don't know a lot about love. I haven't had many successful relationships. Of my closest friends, I'm the one still single. I'm saying my track record leads me as far away as a love expert as you could imagine (besides being a romantic at heart with a passion for sappy quotes and Shakespearean plots). So forgive me for saying, but somewhere between the failed reality of reality a television show and the over-bearing production of a relationship, chalk full of the same woman going on dozens of dates around the world with several guys at the same time, I just find it hard to believe that this is where love is born, grows, and survives. Reality TV screams scripted, fake, deceiving, staged, and controlled; couldn't be a better way to describe love, right?

Recipe for One and Done: A Guide to Unsuccessful First Dates

Ingredients:

One well-rounded individual (WRI)

One potential mate/interested party (PM/IP)

One restaurant (small)

4 cups Alcohol

Scoop of Emotions

Pinch of Awkwardness

Money (credit card fine)

Handful of Hope

2 Follow-up Texts

Steps:

1. Start with the one well-rounded individual. Smart, reasonably successful, cute but not hot, fluctuating levels of confidence. Rinse and scrub, coat with dressing of your choice (keep it classy, nothing too extreme). Set aside for now, we will need this soon.
2. Bring in the potential mate/interested party. The background isn’t important, but make sure it pairs well with our main ingredient. Use lean meat, aged, but not moldy. Strong enough to be a main dish, but here, works well as a pairing. Once upon a time this was important to really pin down and get it perfect, but as time has gone on and this recipe has had time to mature, there is more liberty here than ever before.
3. In the small restaurant, combine WRI and PM/IP. Lightly mix, letting the fringes overlap, but keeping the cores separate. This consists of job descriptions, one-sided conversations, nostalgic/go-to stories, college experiences, family life, or currently living situations. Keep the topics high level, but if interest is shown, delve as far as necessary to rope in.
4. Slowly mix in the 4 cups of alcohol. It’s going to feel pretty thick and tense the more you stir, so keep adding if necessary until it loosens up. The alcohol type isn’t important. It could be beer, individually coupled with each main dish, or a white wine, split evenly between the two. The more alcohol you mix in will definitely affect the WRI more than anything else. When it’s all said and done, more alcohol now will mean more fun later, so you have nothing to lose.
5. The scoop of emotions (use a wide variety here; anything from overly content to down on your luck) and pinch of awkwardness should be added together. It’s hard to use one without the other. Emotional depth is imperative to show, as it displays the ability to connect and care more than just any old dish. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is anything you’ve ever had before. There is more going on behind the eyes than you could imagine. Simply coat the entire dish with these. Your ingredients should now start to resemble the desired result.
6. It’s about this time that you’ll need the money. Go ahead and use it like you normally would, making sure the entire dish is taken care of. Nothing out of the ordinary here, but do make a mental note: If you plan on making this a lot, you’ll probably have to replenish your supply sooner than you think.
7. Hope is a tricky ingredient. If used incorrectly, it can take many other forms. Layered on too thick, and it reeks of desperation. Sprinkled sparsely and it feels more like depression. For what we’re making here, a healthy coat is what we’re looking for. Don’t be scared of the transformation, it’s essential for this recipe.
8. Often included with a hearty layer of hope are the two follow-up texts. These should be sweet, as they are the final touches, and the lasting memory you will leave. Use names, for recognition factor. These should get everyone thinking about the future, when you’ll be preparing this dish again. Reaching is essential here. Relive the moment that just transpired, allude to the next time it will be made, and make sure to reiterate how much fun you had. After all, you wouldn’t keep pulling out this recipe unless you were having fun, right?

I'll Be There For You

What is your priority when it comes to friendships? How do you construct your web of people that you care about, that you include in your life, that have a place in your safety net? Who makes the cut? More importantly, who is worth the effort?

In high school, I was not Dr. Popular. I wasn’t Mr. Popular, Sir Popular, or even kind of popular. I was the epitome of what I haven’t been able to escape in years: stuck in the middle. Not quite one side or the other. Not quite a jock, not quite a nerd. Not quite an A student, but not quite a B student (I actually used to get A-/B+ grades on essays; my college GPA was 3.5, exactly between A and B). Not quite popular, but not friendless. So on. So forth. I had a slew of people that I would have called friends, and fell in and out of seemingly everlasting bonds that haven’t quite stood the test of time. These days, Facebook literally counts the number of friends you have, which I’m sure I tried to do at some point, staring at a yearbook, wondering how many more people I could get to sign it to show that people cared about me.

This somewhere between sad and not so bad story of my high school life almost directly influences the way I treat my current social relationships. I assume my lack of ever truly fitting in has led me to attempt maintaining, reviving, restarting, repairing, and evolving most of my friendships, hoping that, as I move forward with my life, the surrounding cloud of companions, ranging from knowing every detail of my day to day activities (and I apologize to those people) to just being okay with catching up a few times a year, will be able to do everything that you could come to expect from people that care about you: protect you, make you laugh, make you love, encourage you, straighten you out, guide you, help you, kiss your ass and kick your ass, ya know, that kind of stuff. That is, to say, that I’m ‘making up for lost time’ by building the biggest personal entourage with the most people so I never feel even the slightest bit alone or abandoned. Okay, there’s probably a little truth in that.

But besides the fact that the ‘effort’ required to keep a friendship afloat has dwindled to nearly nothing (fb > click name > write ‘We should totally catch up soon’ > never catch up), I do this for a different reason. Not only has my high school (and grade school and Jr. High for that matter) sparked my desire to grow from my past, but the experiences I had in high school and throughout college shaped who I am today, which is, someone who genuinely cares about the people around him, would take the pain to spare another, and sees the benefit in friendships not as a positive addition to my life, but as a positive addition to the life of someone else.

If you’ve never watched the move ‘Pay It Forward,’ I’ll save you the time. Not the greatest movie in the world, but the lesson learned rings true. The idea is that someone does something nice for you, for no reason at all, and you must do three good deeds for three other people. The exponential math leads to world peace, or something, and the world is a better place. Far-fetched, for sure, but let’s think of it small scale. How many times have you approached a door, had the person in front of you make an extra effort to hold it open for you, and in return, you wait an extra few seconds to hold the door for the person behind you. Then the next time you approach a building, the person clearly in ‘wait, hold that door’ range, sheepishly lets the door close, with no regard to the existence of another, immediately spawning a sour mood, causing no chance you hold the door for anyone behind you, two paces or twenty. This microcosm of ‘pay it forward,’ without the exponential growth, shows how quickly the act of others impacts our own. What if the act was bigger?

I’m not saying we should be buying each other cars, but think of how small the act of reaching out to a friend is. Think how, in 2011, there are more ways to communicate with anyone you’ve met in the last 10 years than there are seasons of The Simpsons, but there is no cause for concern as ties and bonds disintegrate quietly, no longer strong enough or long enough to bridge the gap between two people. My selfish side wants to do this so I don’t have to feel like I’m walking the halls of my high school, but that side of me is small, naïve, and fading fast. The rest of me not only cherishes the friendships I do have, from the close knit circle I see frequently to the ones on the fringe that I think about more than I talk to, but hopes that my consistent and at times relentless attempts to refuse the decay of a relationship inspires those around me to do the same, ultimately creating less strangers, and more people that I’m happy to run into on the street, being able to say more than ‘hey, we should catch up.’