31 Weeks

Congratulations!  Your baby is now roughly the size and shape of the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol from "Raiders of the Lost Ark"!

By now, baby has a favorite member of One Direction and can already resent you!  Perhaps you've noticed other changes, such as the feeling that THIS IS NEVER GOING TO END and WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME YOU ASSHOLE.

Have you finished your Birth Plan?  WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T HAVE A BIRTH PLAN!?  You're already a terrible parent.  What do you think, babies just plop out and that's it?  How are you supposed to have a baby without a Birth Plan?

Have you gone to a lot of classes?  SIGN UP FOR SOME MOTHERFUCKING CLASSES ALREADY.  Jesus, you're like a child yourself.  Do we have to hold your hand through this whole thing?

You're probably wondering now what your baby's name will be.  It will probably by Rylynn or Kannadi or Smayden or Brixx.  Hard to tell until you get it from the Central Name Registry.  It usually comes in around Week 35.  Get ready!

What the fuck is up with this ad for chocolate?

Check out Russell Stover's 2013 V-Day joint:


OK, so let's leave aside the YOU MUST BUY CHOCOLATE OR ELSE message, like, what if my gf's a diabetic, Russell Stover?  What then?  Instead, let's focus on how fucking weird all the males in this ad are.  First we have your classic pudgy middle manager with the goatee type you can see in any airport or Home Depot.  Despite his nasally Wisconsinesque accent, he's not all THAT objectionable except you just KNOW he totally listens to Rush Limbaugh every day and maybe flirted with birtherism and forwarded some racist Photoshop emails.

OK, next guy, WHOA.  Chin much?  And that grey stubble/Just For Men head hair combo isn't doing anyone any favors.  But he seems harmless enough. I guess he's here to appeal to the smoked-pot-in-college-rides-a-motorcycle-on-weekends-builds-furniture-in-the-garage demo.

THIRD we have an otherwise cleancut young man who is clearly wearing lip gloss.  "No chocolate? Big trouble," he warns us, but notice he never uses any female pronouns.

FINALLY we have Kindly Gramps who still gets his wife chocolate!  Or maybe she passed away and he has a lady friend now.  You can see them out in his golf cart tooling around the Planned Retirement Community, talking about their grandkids and gout and whatnot.  We'll follow up the Russell Stover with a couple of Tom Collinses and then hit the hay around 7:30.

I don't object to a little V-D candy, Russell, but couldn't you find anyone, I don't know, maybe attractive to push it?

The Bachelor: Hot, Gross, and Thirsty

"Ya'll been in a seaplane before?" is the first thing we hear descending over St. Croix and no, Sean, we most certainly have not been in a seaplane before.  Let's get our Solo Date with AdopTee on, who Tierra labels a "cougar" because she's 32!  Well, I never!  First of all, 32 is NOT THAT OLD and second, I don't remember what second is because I'm old.  Anyway, they manage to get about 10 minutes into the date before Adopt brings up her abandonment issues and they swim out to a boat and then hit the beach and talk about.....Tierra!  Perfect.  Then the classic Making Out in the Surf and I hope she has cleared this whole thing with her team of psychiatrists.  For the Night Portion, we are having Outdoor Dinner By The Sea and AdopTee has a secret!  Guess what?  She got married at 17!  And then divorced, we assume, although she doesn't bring that up.  Oh, BFD, sweetie, who hasn't had a regrettable HS marriage?  Then for some reason she stands on a chair and yells "Ï LOVE SEAN" and ok, ok, please get down off the chair now.

Solo Date with Tierra. Strolling around St. Croix, Tierra is "Hot, Gross, and Thirsty," which is never mind I don't even want to get into it.  Following a totally impromptu and not staged by ABC at all Local Color Parade, they relax and talk about why Tierra can't get along with anyone! Nothing really comes of it.  Night Dinner is in the ruins of a sugar mill that is 100% haunted and T announces that she is "falling in love with him" and he will certainly "take that into consideration"!  The romance is strong here!  Fuck this shit.

It is 4:42 a.m., as the time on the screen alerts us.  Sean creeps into the Chick Bunker with night vision goggles on.  PEW PEW PEW one bullet between each of their eyes and all the rest of the girls are dead.  Haha, I wish.  No, they are actually being forced to get up WITHOUT MAKEUP!  Geneva Convention, where are you?  Drunk Lindsay, Ambiguously Ethnic Catherine, and Katie Holmes are off to see the sunrise.  Luckily, this is accompanied by mimosas!  DL is already getting the shakes and sobs with relief as she sucks down her drink.  Then we're off for a Tour of the Island which thankfully for Lindsay includes frequent Booze Breaks.

Next we stop by a treehouse and Des must relate to this kind of living situation having been a poor herself.  Then the oblig frolicking on the beach, wherein DL attaches her face to S like a remora.  Oh wait, Catherine has a secret too!  She has 4 Dads and one of them is in China?  I'm tres confused.  Is she the product of some bizarre genetic experiment or what's the deal here?  It's very cry-y whatever it is.  Oh one of the 4 Dads tried to kill himself in front of the kids!  That's terrible!  Catherine, just be like Lindsay and Drink to Forget.  Des wants him to meet her family.  That should be great, as long as he remembers to bring some cans and bottles!  Meanwhile, Drunk Lindsay gets the rose, yay!

Solo with Lesley Bugeyes.  S wants to "sit and talk." Oh great, asshole, everyone else gets Helicopter Bungee Jumping or Skyscraper Rappelling and I get Sit and Talk.  We're off to an old rum factory or roof factory, I'm not sure which, he was mumbling.  All ruins look about the same anyway.  She has a secret too! It better be good because 4 Dads has set the bar pretty high.  I hope she has at least 3 Moms.  No, wait, her secret is that she's falling for him? L A M E.  Call me when you had a kid with James Franco or huff paint on weekends, Lesley.

Guess who else is on St. Croix?  Sean's sister!  She's a ruddy lass who wouldn't be out of place smiling and holding an oar in the J. Crew catalog.  For some reason S wants to introduce Tierra to her!  But back at the Chick Compartment, there is a fight underway between Tierra and the girls!  I got distracted by her ringworm.

Tierra's parents said she had "a Sparkle"! Don't take away her Sparkle!  And there's something about how she can't control her eyebrows?  It's no 4 Dads, but it'll do, I guess.  Anyway, S arrives just as Sparkle is weeping on her loneliness cot and after a brief period outside staring meaningfully into middle distance, S tells T-Dog it's time to go!  The producers are not going to be happy about this.  In the Crying Van, T once again returns to the topic of her Sparkle.  Sparkle on, playa!

Some Serious Shit has gone down here and there will be no Cocktail Party.  Lindsay looks crestfallen.  We will proceed to the Rose Ceremony.  Dee gets one first, then 4 Dads and AdopTee.  Bye Lesley!  Meanwhile, why is Catherine decompensating?  YOU'RE SAFE GIRL.  I mean, for now.  No way you make it to the end.  Who wants 4 father-in-laws?

NEXT WEEK: Home visits! The General! Cath's hot sisters! Desiree's brother is a dick!  I guess his food stamps ran out early this week!

TK & The Wife tour the Birthing Center

Little Baby Beyonce is now the size of a head of cabbage, I am informed, albeit a kicking, thrusting head of cabbage (according to The Wife) and also the most perfect head of cabbage EVER, like the progenitor of the Ur-Slaw, wow is this metaphor ever going awry let's get back on topic.  ANYWAY, as it turns out, hospitals don't let you just cruise in on the Appointed Day and be all "Hola! Let's get a baby out of this woman!"  No, you have to sign up and take a Tour of the Birthing Center first to have a look around and it's sort of like when you show up at an apartment cattle call and everyone awkwardly pokes around except in this situation all the women are pregnant and instead of a formal dining room there's a Lactation Center.

So last night we show up and all the couples convene in one room and then The Wife and I silently judge all the other couples.  There's the Vulpine Shaved Head Guy with a woman in a caftan who's having twins but it looks like it may be triplets or more.  There is a solo guy who is later joined by an Important Business Lady Type who shows up late and talks about her mentor and a seminar she went to the whole time.  Some of the couples already have a toddler with them like they're lording it over us about how "We already did this once" and well aren't you just special.  One of these aforementioned toddlers won't shut the fuck up the whole time and makes it very hard to hear the Patient Navigator who is not, as you may guess, someone in charge of steering a ship who is also very good at waiting but instead is the person at the hospital who is designated to help us out with any non-health-care related things like, I guess, how to work the TV or keep my Mom away from the whole thing as long as possible.

So we trundle off to see some delivery rooms and aftercare rooms or whatever.

Fig. 1 The Whelping-stalls

The actual room where it goes down is pretty nice, with a very fancy bed for the birthing and a couch and stuff and also a TV.  I forgot to ask what cable package they have, but they better have CSN Bay Area because on Beyonce's due date the Giants are at the Brewers at 5:10 p.m. 

There's also an operating room for like C-sections and whatever.  You can bring one support person into the operating room.  The Wife tells me if she has to get opened up I have to come into the OR with her.  I already feel like I'm going to faint.  Mom of Won't Shut Up Toddler asks - and I SWEAR TO GOD I am not making this up - "Can we have a photographer in the operating room?"  The fuck?  You want a professional photographer to shoot your surgery?  Do people do that?  "Hey, I'm getting my gall bladder out on Monday, I'd love to get some color glossies, maybe shoot some video, are you available?"

(The answer, BTW, is you can have one Support Person in the OR.  If that's your photographer, so be it.  Maybe this is my out for not having to go to the OR.  If The Wife has to do that, I'll line up some papparazzi stat.)

At the end we cruise by the nursery.  There was one Actual Baby in there.  Cute!  Seems like a lot of effort to get one, though.

The Bachelor: This is now a slog

"The Special Two Day Bachelor Event continues," Chris Harrison cheerfully tells us.  TSTDBE is my Personal Circle of Dante's Inferno.  Instead of the usurers crouching on the burning sand, the Bachelor Recappers are forced to watch over and over again night after night and there's never a Rose Ceremony and Tierra keeps inventing new ways to fake injury and there's no alcohol.  Anyway, we're now in Canada.  Banff Canada.  BAMF.  Banff. Banff Canada.

Solo date with Ambiguously Ethnic Catherine.  She is taken to a glacial wasteland and left for dead.  No, she actually is abandoned there until Big Dumb Sean arrives in the tunneling machine from the original Total Recall.  This leads to some frolicking in the sub-zero blizzard and whatever.  I'm sure AEC is praying for some indoor activity, but night brings us to a fucking OUTDOOR CARRIAGE RIDE and then drinks in an Ice Castle that's made of ice and hypothermia.  AEC wants to get meaningful and tell us "why I am the way I am" and proceeds to tell us the story.  When she was 12, she was at summer camp.  This already sounds like a Friday the 13th installment.  She was walking down a narrow path in the woods.  Her best friend was walking ahead of her.  THEN.....JASON APPEARED AND SAWED HER FRIEND IN HALF WITH A CHAINSAW.  No, that's actually more plausible.  What really happened is a TREE FELL ON HER FRIEND AND KILLED HER.  The fuck.  This has shaped her entire life since and that's why she's looking for....I'm not sure exactly.  Somebody to walk ahead of her, I guess.  She gets the Traumatic Tree Falling rose.  TIMBERRRRRR.

Group Date at the Lake.  Lake Louise.  Why is Lake Louise that color.  Chemicals, I bet.  More canoeing!  One Arm Sarah must be psyched.  They get to the other shore and it's time to bikini up and Polar Bear Plunge into the freezing waters of Lake Louise.  Not everyone is psyched about this.  Drunk Lindsay's down, though!  Her permanent .08 BAC will ensure that she doesn't freeze up.  Selma's out.  AdopTee says it will make her emotionally vulnerable.  So would having coffee or boarding a bus, though, so no surprise there.  Anyway, everybody into Lake Chemical Peel and it's fine except for Tierra of course who immediately develops some hypothermia and is wrapped in foil and taken away by a team of medics hopefully to the middle rack of a preheated 450 degree oven.  Anyway, back at the hotel, treatment apparently involves a nose tube and a sandwich.

Sean comes to reward this shameless attention whore and tells her to miss the party tonight and GEE I WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN.

Night drinks.  Finally something indoors.  All the chicks who managed to survive the chilly waters of Lake Magnesium get some solo time.  Sarah decides to show him a bunch of childhood pix.  Dude, boring.  Wait on that shit, k?  BTW, her handicap isn't having one arm, it's that fucking stoner voice.  Project, damn you!  Diaphragm!  Of course T-Pain gets suited up and makes an appearance because she was faking, duh.  S makes a beeline for that shit but my girl Linds is already a couple of chardonnays in and breaks that shit up.  YOU GO LINDS.  Shockingly, Lesley and not T-Pain gets the rose.

Afterwards, Sean makes a special trip up to Chick Suite to dump Sarah personally.  I told you those baby pix were not a good idea, girlfriend!  Aww, she's very sad.  It's all gonna work for you, Sarah! 

Solo w/ Des.  We begin with some rappelling, like duh, there has yet to be any season of this show that didn't involve rappelling.  Blah blah blah, they make it to the bottom, picnic, giggling, they climb a tree, that fucking ad with the rock climbing and that banshee howling "SOMEBODY LEFT THE GATE OWWWWWWPENNNNNNNNNN" comes on.  It's time to fucking bury that ad.  Nighttime.  Teepee with indoor fire.  It's like having a date inside a chimney!  Des, as it turns out, has her own hardscrabble tale of growing up as a Poor and living in a tent and a trailer and it's very sad but it's not like a tree fell on her BFF or anything.  S and Des are perfect for each other because they are both just about as vapid and boring as each other.  She gets the Poverty Rose, which she sells for a block of cheese and a few crusts of bread.

Finally it's time for the Drinks Party.  Selma breaks her religious code of honor or whatever and kisses him.  Way to bring shame to your family!  Oh, yay, it's Drunk Lindsay's turn.  She's giggly-drunk tonight and when S asks her to tell him something about herself she says "My face is a mask of joy, but my soul is tortured by ten thousand lifetimes of pain. I am born and reborn into a dark universe."  Kidding!  She says, "I sleep naked!"  That's what she says.  Oh, Linds.  You are Human Mardi Gras Beads and I love you.  AdopTee appears and decides she hasn't gotten quite fucking weird enough yet, so she gives him a handkerchief and tells him to blindfold her for some bizarre Trust Ritual and starts crying about being abandoned and she needs WAY MORE THERAPY than this show will provide.  Her whole steez is "I'm a complete basket case and emotional head-on train collision and I will repeatedly demonstrate that to you but hey PICK ME LET'S GET MARRIED."  Somewhere there is a team of psychiatrists who can't wait to get their hands on her.

Rose Cer, finally.  GUARANTEE you T-Pain's not going anywhere.  OK, so 3 of them already have the hardware.  Drunk Linds gets the first one, yay!  AdopTee, because how can you kick her off after her crying jag?  Then Tierra, of course.  See ya, Daniella and Selma.  They cry appropriately and leave.

NEXT WEEK:  The tropical paradise of St. Croix for the usual diving-off-the-back-of-a-yacht and Tierra crying.  Fuck that bitch.

The Bachelor: Tierra del Fuego

BOOM with that headline.  See what I did there?

So it appears the Montana Tourism Board or whatever has ponied up because we're off to Big Sky Country which admittedly does look nice and it's a shame it's wasted on these idiots.  First Solo Date is with Drunk Lindsay, who I kinda love.  It appears to be morning but Linzshy may already have been hittin' the bottle, based on her first question of the day.

No, Linds, it's a Vertical Powered Drinks Elevator!  CLIMB ON IT AND LET'S GET SCHWAAASTED.  As if the White Man hasn't visited enough indignities on the Native Peoples, we're off to the Blackfeet Reservation for a picnic at which nothing happens and then YOINK commercial and then POW it's nighttime and Big Dumb Sean is toasting the "incredible" day they had and I guess that part was edited out.  Time for Lindsay, who is only at about half-slur, to talk about her childhood and here it comes ABSENT DADDY was off in the War and that's why we're so clingy and Blood Alcohol Content-y.  She gets a rose and then we stroll into Downtown Whitefish for a concert by Wendy Darling or something and the Happy Couple can dance on an elevated platform above the massed citizenry of Whitefish.  How come it's always country?  Why can't we ever have scenes of the happy couple dancing to dubstep or witch house?

Group date.  Apparently Arabic is in a turban of some kind and looks like LADY GINA - ALL QUESTIONS ANSWERED - PAST PRESENT FUTURE - or maybe Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest."

I don't have a picture of Selma's headdress so just use your imagination.

The gals are headed out for some Outdoor Activities and there are some goats imprisoned in crude wooden devices and shit's about to go DOWN and one of the pack goes "Oh my goodness are those dogs?"  That really happened.  I rewound it 4 times to make sure.  I hope to fuck someone just said "Yes" and let it go so whoever it was can tell the story of how she milked a dog for the rest of her life.  ANYWAY, this turns into one of those bullshit team competitions with canoes and moving hay from place to another and then goat milking and then Desiree chugging a jar of goat milk and then VOMITING SPECTACULARLY right into Daniella's weave oh no wait that last part didn't happen.  I mean, the chugging did but not the vomiting.  Des takes her goat juice like a champ.  In fact, S. says "You took it like a champ."  I'm just leaving that here.

So at night we're in some bar or restaurant and the winners get to spend the eve with S. except he feels bad and INVITES ALL THE LOSERS TO COME TOO.  What the fuck is the point of having a competition then?  Desiree looks stricken, because she just poured a quart of raw unpasteurized warm goat fluid down her throat FOR NO FUCKING REASON AT ALL.  Selma and her turban are fucking FURIOUS.  I'm with you, girl!  Let's put on our suicide vests together, my Desert Flower, and blow this thing straight to hell.  Oh here comes Tierra too.  She wasn't even on this date but here she comes sneaking up on S while he's trying to do his interviews.  Do you really want to marry this stalker bitch?  Like what happens when you go to Bowling Night?  She's gonna pop up behind the ball rack or be watching from the parking lot, slowly plunging a knife into the seat and repeating "You are mine, my dear. Come back to Mommy."  Meanwhile, back at the bar, it's Daniella's turn to get all weepy and insecure and naturally this gets her a rose.

OK, 2 on 1 date with Tierra and Jackie and let's not kid ourselves, there is NO FUCKING WAY Jackie is going to be the winner here.  The producers obviously love the fuck out of Tierra because she's a nutbar.  Anyway, we start with some horseback riding or whatever and then J. gets Sean alone and tells him some story about Tierra flirting with someone in an airport? Or something? This is supposed to have some effect, I guess?  Here's a tip, Jacks, skip the story about Tierra being nice to the skycap and maybe focus on her OBVIOUS PERSONALITY DISORDER.  Later after dinner it's time for Tierra to tell her story.  Oh, OK, I see now.  She was with some guy who was in and out of rehab and then died.  Or else he tried to go to the movies without her once!  I would take a good look at that autopsy.  Anyway, Jackie, we hardly knew ye.  You have just become Tierra's Next Victim.

C-Party.  Oh fuck, we have to do this 2 nights in a row.  That's just starting to sink in.  Anyway, Des has finally figured out the way to stick around is to act crazy and desperate, so she gives that a shot but then kinda fucks it up by talking smack about Tierra.  Oh, right on cue, Tierra is in mid-tirade when Sean just happens to walk by, nudge nudge, as she's in the midst of a complicated metaphor in which she is the scorpion and everyone else is a shoe to hide in or something I didn't catch the end.  Anyway, S. tries to get the dirt on the T-Monster but all Lesley can manage is that she's cold and unfriendly.  That should do it, great job girls.

Finally we get to the fucking rose ceremony.  Who are our lucky winners this week?  Apparently Arabic, Ambiguously Ethnic Catherine, Chipmunk Cheeks, AdopTee, One Arm, and Katie Holmes.  Sorry, Other Black Girl, your time has come.

NEXT WEEK:  Next week is fucking TONIGHT.  Ugh, for fuck's sake.  Why do you do this to me, ABC?  Fuck you.

Here are your prop bets for this year's Super Bowl

Phil Simms says something stupid within first 10 minutes   3-1
Within the first half                                                           10-9
At some point during the game                                         OFF
Someone at your Super Bowl party loudly proclaims 
they "don't watch football"                                                9-5
It's a girl                                                                           3-2
This is in San Francisco                                                    11-10
Akers misses a field goal                                                  PICK
Daisy posts a picture of herself crying                               2-1
CBS shows split-screen shot of Harbaugh brothers          5-3
Player mentions God in postgame interview                      1-10
Jim Nantz recounts Ray Lewis murder story                     50-1
Beyonce suffers wardrobe malfunction                             YOU WISH
Ravens lose; hacky headline writer uses "Nevermore"       3-2
Randy Moss scores touchdown                                        4-1
Randy Moss is insufferable in some way                            9-6
I am insufferable in some way                                            OFF