So why was Harrison so damn happy?  He was super casual in a shirt with buttons on the sleeves so you can keep that casual rolled up look in the same high humidity that had Beyan’s hair looking like she showered and blow-dried with a washing machine and laundromat dryer.  Hell, Harrison even went through the longest ever explanation of the one-on-one dates.  Hey Chris, I know we’re not the brightest audience because we keep tuning in, but let’s be honest, it’s not fucking cricket.  It’s not some dragon game nerds play in a basement with a twelve-sided die.  It’s the Bachelor.  Make out with ZBOW, tell him you are taking the journey to find love and what better place to find love than in Vieques and then he’s contractually obligated to at least make out with you and compliment you for opening up (both emotionally and sexually).

THAT’S THE GAME, CHRIS.  WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?

Swimsuit Issues came out with a T-zone brighter than the Puerto Rican sun and a shirt she took from an ex-boyfriend that said “Be Nice”.  The date card came in Spanish, which might as well have been written in Sanskrit because none of these girls, save Contagion, could probably order at Taco Bell without sounding like white trash.  Swimsuit Issues was exempt, because as a model, she has people read for her (and do her makeup clearly).

I mean honestly, look at Paris HilTRON’s face (because she looks like Paris Hilton and a robot procreated) when she was listening to the Spanish date card being read:

She’s totally like “why are the words not making sense in my ears?”  She had plenty of time to think about on the date she was not going on.  Instead, Mrs. Doubtfire (because she looks like Sally Field) gets to go.  Hooray!

Anyone notice the formation the girls were in sun bathing?  Like, what are the odds they were not forced to sit that way.  This shit is turning into The Hunger Games, but the natural way to convert a spray tan to a tan-tan is to lay in the middle of a pack of rabid wolves waiting to chew off your face.

Fresh off a loss at the Australian Open, ZBOW got right to the neon t-shirt wearing and helicopter riding.  Fuck yes.  We’re listening to inexpensive stock Latin guitar music as we fly a helicopter around an old fort that used to shoot cannonballs at pirates.  It was awesome.  Then Ben used the Spanish he learned in Tucson (where he is from) to order some snow cones just in time for it to start pouring everywhere.

Credit to Mrs. Doubtfire.  She’s low maintenance.  She didn’t seem to care.  If Paris HilTRON was on this date, she’d have short circuited.  If Swimsuit Issues was on this date, she’d have been naked already anyway so it wouldn’t have mattered.  If this had happened to Contagion, she’d have blamed it on Courtney.  If that had happened to Chris Harrison, he wouldn’t have noticed because you get really hot when you are on meth.

Ben was awesome in deciding to go all white linen when they decided to shop for clothes.  I’d have done the exact same thing.  Shit, I do that when I get dragged to Santa Monica.  Mrs. Doubtfire, on the other hand, decided to steal a pocket square from a Puerto Rican forest giant and clamp it around her neck.

Enjoyed it when she tried to speak Spanish that was fed to her by the producers.  MOOOEY MOOOEY KAL YEE YENT AYE.  If you light a candle and say that in front of the mirror three times in the dark on a sleepover, Chris Harrison shows up behind you with a bloody nose.

Then they watched a wedding which was entertaining only because the poor bride’s dress was all effed up.  It took five of her fat aunts to get her ass up the stairs without being covered in street grime.

Naturally, this led to conversations with Doubtfire about what happened in her past relationship.  She beat around the bush a lot.  Let me translate.  Homeboy cheated on her.  I am tired of girls not getting it.  She said something like she wished she had lived with him before, which made it sound like she wanted some additional insight into his living patterns.  Not true.  If she lived with him, she’d have noticed prior to marriage that “going to the store” means “having sex with people that aren’t you”.

Either way, Doubtfire is okay with me, even if there’s no way she is going to win.  It’s the Hunger Games, bitch and she is taking an arrow to the face.

Back at the mansion, Candy Striping Hooker and Let’s Get Physical were arguing over who is getting the Juan-on-Juan (come on, we’re in Puerto Rico and what better place to make a stupid Spanish play of words that VIQUES!).  In the end, Let’s Get Physical won it and the chance to show off what being a personal trainer and having a plastic surgeon can do.

The group date was pretty fun.  I am a big baseball fan, like Ben, so I enjoyed seeing a bunch of hot, crazy girls wear three-quarter sleeves and butt shorts and go at some hardball like a sorority philanthropy.

Harrison shows up with a bullhorn (which he had been using to dictate the packing of cocaine into plastic bags at his plant in San Juan) and explains that there’s going to be a death match and only half the girls get to go to a sexy beach party.

Two observations.  I don’t care if girls everywhere hate Beyan’s hair, she’s cute.  Also, how high does Harrison look in this screengrab?

The game was pretty rocking and I was pretty impressed at how well girls from the south can swing.  Blakely was a hell of a fielder given the physical disadvantage of having two giant work out balls grafted to her chest.  Also, she managed to find a way to turn a baseball shirt into a themed outfit from a strip club.  I mean, only she rolled her shirt up.  To quote Swimsuit Issues, “who knew strippers could play baseball?”

It was good to see Beyan get competitive.  I’d have picked her (as Ben later did on the beach).

In the end, team Contagion and Candy Striping Hooker lost and then they all cried their ass off while a HELICOPTER JUST SHOWS UP OUT OF NOWHERE.  ZBOW, you are the man.  Thank you.  You have brought back the helicopter in the biggest way ever.  What better way to stick it to Hey Bear than to bring back helicopters and the integrity of this show (which has no integrity) and demand hot people travel by helicopter in the same way Muppets travel by map.  It’s the way it ought to be.

Swimsuit Issues rubbed it in while the blue team kept crying on a bus and really solidifying the eye black as a “bad decision” because by the time they got back to the W, they looked like a bunch of abused coal miners.

On the beach date, Swimsuit Issues calls out Beyan for being 24 and lacking world experience (which is code for sex practice with lots of dudes, especially photographers that tell you they know agents so you can crossover in film).  Swimsuit Issues steals ZBOW and basically explains that she has a plan.  In true model form, her plan is to get naked, talk in a baby voice, make weird faces and dominate Ben like Djokavic just did in the final of the Australian ocean.

Look, a TON of you readers want to hate on me for admiring Swimsuit Issues.  That’s because I don’t believe this show is a journey to find love.  I think this show is a journey for Chris Harrison to smuggle narcotics with the smokescreen of wine-drunk insecure people further disoriented by extreme dating and helicopters like some sort of perverted R rated Space Camp.  Swimsuit Issues knows this is the Hunger Games and she is picking off chicks from the clocktower with a sniper rifle.

Let’s Get Physical’s date was too damn boring to talk about.  I don’t feel bad she gave up her job because somehow I think she can find another physical trainer gig.  Hell, Swimsuit Issues said she “could use a personal trainer” when things didn’t work out.  Seriously, you don’t appreciate her game?  I get the shiny T zone, I get the weird baby talk and mouth shapes, but she dominates Ben.  He has no choice.  He is totally out of control when he is with her.  He cannot fight back because his mind goes to that place a guy’s mind goes when he doesn’t want to get a boner on national television.  And I commend him for that quest and plan to ask him his secrets next time I’m in SF.

Other than jumping off a yacht, this date failed.  Ben pretty much can’t make a face other than “I hope you choke on the fake food they have in front of us” if he is not feeling it.  Which brings me to the night date.  What’s up with the dress?  It looked normal except for the ghost of her mom’s prom dress crawling up her left arm.  Luckily, Ben found the world’s first “capri tuxedo” to make her feel comfortable.

I hate how these girls don’t watch the show.  She says “I’m sick of being single” and “Do you have any questions you want to ask about me?”.  IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU LET’S GET PHYSICAL.  The show isn’t called “Insecure Girl in a Weird Dress” it’s called the Bachelor.  That means you just ask Ben questions, let him make out with you and blatantly lie that it doesn’t bother you that he is hooking up with literally every human you see all day.  That’s the game.  Wanna play?  Deal with it.  Despite being married, into girls and unwilling to wear neon clothes on camera, I am positive I could win the Bachelor.

Know how to beat Courtney?  Give her agent 5,000 dollars to call her and say she got offered a role in a new Jonah Hill movie as the girl who dances on a table at a party and Seth Rogen says “she is literally dancing on that table”.

Ben kept his reputation as a cold-blooded executioner on this show when he PICKED UP THE ROSE and then didn’t give it to her.  I loved it.  Sorry, but that is your punishment for being on this show.  Your reward however is a really cool ride in a dingy, some ugly crying on camera and the opportunity to say “I don’t know how this could happen?”

It happened because you are on a dating show…

As she cried, Chris Harrison and Ben made me fucking day by playing David Gray again, squeezing every last drop out of the music license ABC bought.  I fully expected them to pan down and show that Ben actually just keeps a boom box ready to play the song whenever he cuts someone and they start ugly crying.

When Let’s Get Physical get cut, the girls tripped out like guys do at the end of Usual Suspects.  This triggered Courtney to go into get naked mode.  She simply stated something about how Ben might like skinny dipping with a model and how LGP leaving was bittersweet, or bitter for her and sweet for Courtney.

I didn’t know it was possible to see a man sexually assaulted on a television show, but Ben was a deer in the headlights.  I mean look at his face:

Game.  Set.  Nudity.

Real quick, what was up with the need to blur out side boob?  What was going on there?  That said, I saw enough of Ben’s ass for one lifetime in the internet trailer, so I was willing to not see Courtney naked to not have to see Ben naked (plus, Courtney will be naked in a movie soon enough).  Sorry haters, this girl is the best contestant on this show in years purely from a competitive standpoint.  She’s the Michael Jordan of reality dating.  If I ever meet her, I’ll give her a high five and she will probably respect my shit talking because I am the Michael Jordan of blogging.  You’re welcome.

Later there was a conversation designed to get Courtney to fess up about the skinny dipping and I learned how much girls like skinny dipping.  Like, damn.  It must REALLY feel good as a girl.  I mean, I am into it, but it was a consensus.  Naked and female in water equals:

Regardless, the girls were way too deep in mojitos and oaky Chardonnay to connect the dots, which depressingly were one inch apart with arrows pointing between them.

Candy Striping Hooker depressed me so damn much.  Ben was definitely cutting her ass, but then she admitted to being 33 and old and alone and that she never thought she deserved a nice, normal guy.  In the process, she completely ruined strip clubs for me and I have 2 bachelor parties this year.  All we all will think about is Blakely wanting to be a girlfriend and not just someone you pay to leave.  Like, when did the documentary about exotic dancers invade the show.  Damnit.  And she’s good at baseball.  Morale of the story, strippers are people to and next time one offers you a lap dance, don’t answer.  Just say “you are a person and you deserve good things”.

Real quick.  Define irony.  Swimsuit Issues keeps calling Blakely a stripper, but is the first girl to voluntarily get naked on the show.  Hmmm.

Contagion tells Ben she’s over dogging Swimsuit Issues, but the immediately dogs Swimsuit Issues.  Ben wanted her to be the first person to find a way to drown due to humidity.

The Rose Ceremony came and he cut Neon Redhead, who seems cool, but got basically waxed because she wasn’t going to win anyway, Blakely earned another week and the producers gave Ben a suitcase of cash probably to keep Contagion one more week to play foil to Courtney.

Then despite Neon Redhead’s good start, she blew it in some of the ugliest crying we’ve seen in years on this show.  And then said she didn’t understand.  Then in trying NOT to cry, she kept like beeping like a microwave.  Ugh.  I need to get hired by ABC to give these incoming contestants pointers on how to win.  The season would go to hyperspace.  I know the producers are out there reading this because I am hot fire with a pen.  Consider it.  I’ll make it rain all kinds of ugly.

Then, they announced they’d be going to the “most glamorous city in Central America” which to me seemed like “the nicest buffet-style restaurant in Barstow”, but I could be wrong.

Finally it clicked.  Chris Harrison was in a good mood because he was going to Panama.  He was going to drug smuggling land.  No wonder he was giddy like a schoolgirl.

I have never been so excited for next week.  Also, wtf happens to Paris HilTRON?  It better not be a death in the family because if they film that shit, I’ll be pretty mortified, and I am a bad person.

We’ll see…

In my new feature, here’s some reader shout outs.  A photo will get you everywhere with me, especially if it has the blog up on your monitor or you make an awesome sign that scores me points with my wife.

So, big love to Abby in Minnesota and her co-workers (notice my blog in the background)!

And of course cheers to Hilary and crew who dressed up as the contestants for their fantasy league!

 From left: Bad Dress Personal Trainer, Candy Striping Hooker, Swimsuit Issues, Contagion, The Girl Know One Knows [AKA Jamie, we couldn't even find a name for her on your blog!], and Forest Gump

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Regardless, Rodger seems like a good dude and I have to respond since I think it pours everclear on their fire with us.  I think most of us are just getting ready for summer since it’s been freakishly 80 degrees all weekend.

Here’s his take:

In 2008 Oregon State defeated number 1 USC without ever giving up the lead… everyone in the state of oregon knows that if that game had lasted 3 minutes longer USC would have won that game. Why? Because USC was a much better team and after 3 quarters of play they figured out how to score points again.

The reason I bring this up is because nobody in their right mind (who knows anything about football) would deny that if the Oregon USC game had lasted 30 seconds longer, Oregon would have more then likely gone on to win that game. Thats nothing against USC, that was just the way the game was going.

I love this blog but I have probably read “when you never held a lead”, some statement about Oregon getting crushed by Auburn, and beating a single digit ranked team in a bowl game (last two rose bowls USC won were against Penn state and Illinois, sorry but they were TERRIBLE) over a dozen times. Those comments aren’t arrogant, for the most part they are completely fallacious… if anything they make you sound intimidated.

Hey Rodger, I appreciate you reading this blog, so there’s no need to be uncivil in my response. I think you have the best take I’ve heard from a Duck fan so far, although naturally I think you are guilty of hyperbole (without intentionally going for it). “Anyone who knows anything about football”? Not sure there. After that game USC was ranked higher in the AP than Oregon. Could the Ducks have won with 3 more minutes? Sure. But they could have fumbled on the goal line like USC had just done (or did against Stanford). What if has no role in football as enticing as it can be.

To that same point, there would have been more than 3 minutes left if Chip Kelly knew how to manage a clock, something they don’t teach at that half-ass school Bellotti or whover dragged him out of.  One of the benefits of this blog is I get to hear every Oregon argument, well, every argument from every team.  One of the number one arguments Ducks say is that Chip Kelly could have managed the clock better.  Only he didn’t.  In my beautiful mind covered by my handsome face, if Oregon wanted more than 3 minutes to win the game, they could have managed the clock.  Only, Oregon doesn’t have a 2 minute offense because they always run a 2 minute offense, only rarely do they need to call timeouts.  It backfired hard.  Anyone who knows anything about football knows that.  Just kidding (but it’s true).

None of that has to do with the fact that the best way to have more than 3 minutes left would have been to nail a field goal at home.  When you tie a football game and time runs out, they give you more time in something called “overtime”.  Anyone who knows anything about football knows that (sorry you set me up with that).

Your last line about me (us) sounding intimidated was confusing.  We won the game and never lost the lead.  How can you be intimidated after you won?  Remember that scene in that war movie where the army defeated the other army and when they looked at the dead bodies they all got super intimidated and ran for the hills?  Me neither, that’s because no one is intimidated when they win.

By the same token, USC has had incredible runs over and over spanning many decades.  When we lose, we assume it’s an outlier, a great team that is cutting into our role as Pac 12 alpha male and we just kind of enjoy the process and wait until it rights itself.  Like this year, when after 3 years of getting slapped around by Oregon’s offense, we figured it out and righted the ship.  Like we’ll do with Stanford next year.  Like we did with Washington this year.  We don’t get intimidated.  We just wait until we right the ship.

The Oregon State example is a fine one, but they beat us something like 3 of 4 up there in a period of time. They had our number and maybe we were the “finer team”, but we lost and there for all the woulda-coulda-shouldas, we certainly aren’t hunting down OSU blogs and still talking about it during NBA season.  Frankly, I was stoked to get this comment because I had been focused on spring training for the Dodgers and who the new owner is shaping up to be.  It was fun to talk Oregon again, a nice reminder all of you are still thinking about it.  Can’t wait for the game next year.

The Illinois and Penn State are terrible argument is a little played out.  All Big Ten teams are terrible.  That’s why since I got into USC in 2001, we never lost to one.  Not Michigan (2x), Ohio State (2x), Illinois, Iowa or Penn State.  If I recall, you lost to that same Ohio State team Barkley beat in his 2nd game as a true freshman on the road in the Rose Bowl.

A Duck dismissing a Rose Bowl win or opponent is simply laughable because at 10-15 in bowls, you are not the authority on quality bowl wins, having seen your first one since Joey Harrington’s crew got robbed of a shot to lose to Miami in the Rose Bowl in 2001.  In the time between that Fiesta Bowl win and this Rose Bowl win, USC has won 2 National Titles, 3 Heismans, 4 Rose Bowls and 2 Orange Bowls (feel free to subtract one Heisman if you like, we’re claiming both AP titles since sanctions don’t mean much around here and I hope when Lyles comes down, you guys stay as upbeat as we did).

My point is, I had to really try to remember exactly how many Rose Bowls we won between your big game.  I may have even gotten it wrong. Look, you can talk all the smack about our Rose Bowl wins you want, but first let’s check out your last decade of bowls:

38-8 loss to BYU?  A loss to Wake Forest?  Look, I congratulated the Ducks on their Rose Bowl win.  Yes, it’s true you got it easy without having to play us a second time, but a win is a win and you get your name up on the wall at the stadium (along with our 28 or whatever mentions up there).

Everyone gives Oregon credit for their 3 years of beating us pretty darn well.  It was 3 years out of the norm for the history of the two teams and I wouldn’t take anything away from it.  Why are Duck fans so intent of commenting on our win this year?  I think it’s because when USC is down for a few years, we know we’re going to get to eat at the big kids table.  At 10-15 or whatever in bowls with no national titles or Heismans and 2 Rose Bowls ever, I think Duck fans, no matter how much they protest, know another one isn’t a guarantee.

Either way, appreciate your take and that you read the blog.  Good luck this season to both the team and their bid against sanctions.  Believe it or not, I am hoping you don’t get any.  I also hope Phil Knight stops making you guys ugly jerseys and backing up Joe Paterno.  That said, he’s the best owner in college football.

This is Keith before I knew him.  The thing is, Keith probably stole this dog by mistake.  He was probably in some random neighborhood at a bar you and I would never find and someone asked him to watch their dog and he probably just decided to liberate the dog for some reason.  Now, clearly he’s taking care of it.  It’s not like that.  It’s more that Keith may have been sent here to destroy the universe or he may be from the Bible.  I am not sure, but from the moment I met Keith, he has been somewhat of a hero to me.

Flashcut.

Keith and I were sitting in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium years ago drinking some beers ignoring the no-tailgating policy.  We had the beers in brown bags and were pretty much just standing there before a day game.  Security comes up in a golf cart and asks us what’s in the brown bags.  Keith just responds “what bags” over and over until eventually, something else more important happened and they just gave up.

Keith is magic, okay?  He’s Gandalf.  You have agreed to Keith’s demands and you don’t even know him yet.  That’s why when I get to the end of this article, despite the fact he likes a stupid pro team, despite the fact that he married into being an Oregon Duck, you are going to help him.  I’d never have perfected killing bears without meeting Keith.

Like, who is that guy?  Keith knows.  And he won’t tell you.  That’s Keith’s cowboy friend and you are out of the loop.

So, Keith hired me a long time ago.  This was a great meeting because I am almost positive that he would have preferred every other candidate and I interviewed poorly.  In fairness, this was the day after the cell phone ordinance was passed and when I was going to interview, I realized I had brought a suit to change into, but no shirt.  So, I got pulled over on the 405 trying to ask for directions to a mall near the interview which I was running late for.

I ended up getting almost naked in a parking lot outside the mall in front of some local kids and making the interview by one minute after having told the woman at the checkout to “keep the change” on a 20 dollar shirt that I had a 50 dollar bill for. After the interview I realized the size sticker was still on my chest and I was bleeding in two spots because I forgot to take all the pins out.  A far cry from my business life now, but everyone starts somewhere.

That is pretty much the best way I can describe my relationship with Keith.  We were cosmically supposed to destroy the planet together.  Period.  I have bled through many shirts being his friend and great things have happened along the way.  When we are old men dying from years of being awesome, we’ll probably just high five each other and try to book a suite in hell.

The guy just gets it done and he does so with the stealth of Seal Team Six.  I am still not positive he’s not on Seal Team Six.  The biggest argument against Keith being a member of Seal Team Six is he would have named it something more like “The Awesomes” or “Superkillers USA”.

I am pretty sure he’s in Jamaica here.

Look, since he hired me years ago, we’ve both gone on to do great things.  I’m not talking about work or the blog.  I mean one time we found a street vendor in New Orleans who was selling cupcakes and we just bought all of them and made the girl give them out at a bar as if we had it catered.  We were not drinking at all, obviously.

I gave Keith a Dodger hat one time after some Yamazaki at an afterparty when my band had played the Troubadour and he responded by slapping me so hard I spun around 360.  Then he just pointed to me and walked home.

I can’t even tell you any more stories because people are reading this.  You are one of them.  All I can tell you is that Keith is the reason the dinosaurs got loose in Jurassic Park and he’s suing Spielberg for messing up a true story (he tried to sue Michael Crighton, but turns out he is dead).

We are go to guys.  When I was getting married, Keith came through with a million things for me, left and right from helping with the bachelor party to keeping me from dying at least 3 times in my life, especially in Costa Mesa that one time.  You know what I’m talking about, big guy.

So when Keith got married, not only did I help plan the bachelor party, I actually was the officiant who married he and his wife.  Yes, I legally can perform weddings (so if you want me to marry you, I’m not cheap but take it from anyone, I know how to marry some people right) and basically listening to me marry people is like watching Love Actually on Christmas Eve with a model who really loves Hugh Grant.

So, here’s the thing.  As I mentioned, Keith has terrible taste in sports teams.  While all of his best friends are Trojans (because how could a man like this not gravitate towards people like us), he is an Oregon Duck by marriage (and his wife is tied with Steve Prefontaine for Duck Most Deserving of Being a Trojan) and a Yankee fan (just puked in my mouth) and a NY Giants fan.

Keith’s Giants are in the Super Bowl and the other day, I realized he was going to try and go.

So, Keith is going to Indianapolis, home of the NCAA and the end of Peyton Manning’s career, without Super Bowl tickets or a place to stay with his longtime friend (and now my friend) Josh.

The two of these men have a long tradition of sneaking into sporting events.  Oregon Stanford.  A SF Giants game.  The list goes on and on and on.  I don’t know how they do it other than that Keith is a six foot Jedi and Josh is the best actor in the United States.  Sometimes Josh comes over in character and I don’t realize it is him until 2am.  His impersonation of a New Orleans cab driver haunts me.  He’s also fun to play craps with.

Keith even snuck into this ad.

And these pictures at my wedding:

So here’s my dilemma.  I don’t want Keith to fail at this.  I don’t want him to try to sneak into the Super Bowl, the most heavily guarded media event in the universe, because I believe he will stop at nothing and as his priest-slash-bachelor-party-coordinator, I feel it is my responsibility.

This blog is awesome and you know that.  Even most Oregon Duck fans who totally hate it keep reading it because, like Keith, they know a good Trojan when they see one.  This blog is read internationally by hundreds of thousands of good looking people.  Surely some of you are in Indianapolis or have a hookup for a Super Bowl ticket.

This post is not sanctioned by Keith, although he (and his wife) will find out about it sooner than later.  Here is what I am asking, and the bearfighter rarely asks for favors.

• Somewhere for Keith and Josh to crash (paid or free)
• Access to 2 Super Bowl tickets (paid or free)

Anyone who helps will receive the greatest of gifts.  I will get Keith to hand-draw you a sign thanking you and I will make it the header of my blog for a week (unless the picture is great and then I may just leave it).

That’s my ask.  Who can make it happen?

So, this cocktail called for champagne or sparkling wine, so who better to ask than ZBOW, who being from Sonoma (and San Francisco and possibly Park City) knows his fucking wine.  Tennisless Rafa Nadal was very courteous to respond to me, especially being that he is currently on a reality television show and competing in the Australian Open:

You can almost here him saying “me likey” can’t you?  And I bought some Frexinet and got everyone smashed.  Victory for me, reality television, ZBOW and the world.

Okay, enough foreplay.  Let’s get on the bearskin rug, drink some disgusting oaky Chardonnay and get our Bach on.  And what better place to get on the bearskin rug, drink some disgusting oaky Chardonnay and get our Bach on than PARK CITY UTAH!!!

Being an Angeleno, I totally thought for a minute I was watching the Travel Channel because I didn’t know Park City actually existed after Sundance ends.  Like, I thought once the people in big puffy coats they get to wear once a year (at Sundance) left, everyone just went back down the hill to Salt Lake City to not drink.  And maybe that is true, because outside of the really creepy country music show (we’ll get there), did you see another human this entire episode?  Did Chris Harrison murder the townspeople?  Honestly, I’ve seen horror movies about deserted mental institutions that featured more humans than this ghost town.

Plus, we’ve gotten to the point of the season where the girls have stopped eating so really each of them counts for half a person, except for The House Mother (the old looking one who later gets kicked off for, well, looking old) and Blakely, who counts for half a person and two silicone dog toys.

So, ZBOW preheated all your ovens by doing “outdoorsy” things like “riding a horse through a stream” and describing the natural beauty of Utah that looked “painted”, which definitely works because whether by choice or by the producers poking these headcases with a cattle prod, each of them was like “Ben looks SO hot on a horse”.

I wish I knew about this show in middle school before I stretched out into the handsome Don Draper sociopath I am now, because I’d have just ridden a horse to school in a tuxedo and when people questioned me I’d slap them and tell them to “trust the process”.

From the beginning of the episode, Kacie B. (who I am now calling Bayen due to how she pronounced Ben’s name 30 times an episode) was made out to look like she is about to crack and start force drowning girls in her tears.  Like human waterboarding.  She just kept saying that she missed Beyan and it was hard and she didn’t know it would be this hard and that despite the fact there is no way after 3 weeks she’d get another one-on-one (this would be the equivalent of your parents randomly deciding to let you stay up all night on a Tuesday when you were 9 years old and blow lines of Pixy Stix until you started uncontrollably laughing and pissing everywhere), she still expects a one-on-one.

Oh Beyan.

She really begs the question that I ask every single season.  Do you fucking girls even watch this show?  This is my fourth or fifth season, but like seriously?  Each of these girls has been watching the damn show since they went to prom.  They know they won’t be one-on-one each week.  They know it’s going to be hard.  They know they are vying for a dude who is making out with ALL your new friends that you have to live with and compare body parts and alcohol related weight gain against.

But yeah, we didn’t know this would be so hard.

I can’t wait until some contestants on future seasons have read this blog for strategy, because we’ll see some total stars really dominate.  I mean, Ben read it last year, which in my egotistical mind is why he shuts girls down when they freak out, makes out with every girl he can and doesn’t shy away from climbing bridges and extreme dates.  I know I kind of know the guy, but let’s give him some credit.  It’s been four weeks, the house is crazy, he kisses everything with a mouth (sup, Chris Harrison) and none of the girls seem to be getting fat yet.

I did get super depressed at the female experience when Beyan said she was happy just to see Ben picking up his date, even if it was just for a minute.  Is this how girls feel about unrequited love?  Every girl I ever really had a crush on that it was unrequited I mostly hoped would fall down the stairs when I casually passed by them and at this point, I typically take pride in being married while most of them are in their 30s pretending Sex and the City is still cool.  Maybe Kacie B. is just a really great person.  A really great person who probably spends 2 hours every morning trying to get her hair straight.

Fuck, this is getting me depressed.  When it doesn’t work out, let me go ahead and set you up with one of my cute friends who will probably mess with you, but not on television, so, step in the right direction, yeah?

Date one went to Girl With The Dragon Tattooth and she was super excited, which I could tell because she made weird faces and exposed wrinkles I didn’t think were possible.  Something about her screams dumb-coke-induced decisions, like her cartilage and nose piercings.  She’s not indie or punk, so I’m just confused.  She’s kinda hot and then suddenly I hate myself for saying that because it goes to hell in a handbasket and just when I think I’m crazy, she’s hot again.  It’s maddening.

I felt like I got my hetero one-on-one when there was a hard cut to A FUCKING HELICOPTER.  I was all YESSSSSS and my wife was looking for divorce papers because only 6 year olds and people who produce the Bachelor get as stoked about helicopters as I do.  It’s like peanuts and a hot dog at a ballgame.  It’s not the Bachelor until there’s a helicopter and the cheesy ass helicopter theme song (wait for it next week, it’s majestic).

So, Girl With The Dragon Tattooth must have pissed off the editors because her date was more awkward than finding out the prostate exam you just got wasn’t from a doctor, rather a guy who escaped the psych ward and found a labcoat.  There was a whole part about how it was hard to not blink in sunlight and then ZBOW won the bet with his buddies back in his hometown (Sonoma or SF, you choose, don’t care) that he could say the word “beaver” on national television.  He was talking a beaver dam, but still, even South Park struggles to say that.

They went on a gross canoe ride that was more bug-invested than a tube steak left in the swamp for two weeks.  And what better place to find love than on a bug-invested canoe?  One  a scale from one to ten, let’s get off this fucking boat.

They later had dinner and talked about how Tattooth hates opening up (or has no soul, your choice) and in the end, Ben gave her a rose because she’d be better in a fantasy suite than at least half the girls still left and the worst outcome is a gross date for the fantasy sweet.  I mean, this show is essentially your world’s greatest bachelor party.  You get to hook up with tons of women and not get in trouble for it, you go to like ten fancy hotels and everything is comped, you get reminded that girls are crazy so settling down with a normal one is desirable and then at the end you don’t even have to pay for the engagement ring.  Hell, you even get to test drive the final three!  I’m not even sure this is legal!

Also, kissing after eating a s’more?  No thanks.  Eat some gum and call me.  I’m a city guy.  But these girls like that because they go see Channing Tatum movies.  Also they ate salmon for dinner.  Fish breath and marshmellow goo.  There’s a reason seafood restaurants have mints at the door and not s’mores.

The group date sucked and I wanted to kill myself a couple of times.  There was a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives mini marathon on and I was debating which was harder to watch:  a bunch of starved, desperate women pretend they give a fuck about fly fishing or a guy with an awful goatee, bleached hair and a bowling shirt eat himself to an early death.  I stuck with the fly fishing because Ben did hook me up with a good wine reco.  Suggestion.  Out of nowhere, a helicopter should have floated down and shot them all with paintballs.  Whoever panics least gets the rose.

Swimsuit Issues kind of dominated the group date and from this point of the episode on, I learned a lot about the world.  While I am positive that Chris Harrison planted that fish she caught (I was starting to wonder if Utah had fish at all), Courtney dominated in a big way.  She just stole Ben away, which is probably hard for someone that skinny wearing rubber pants in a current and she basically just kept working her voodoo magic on his junk.  I really want to take Ben to Santa Monica to a wine bar and show him that is one of a million, not one in a million, but in fairness, she started earning my respect this episode.  I’ll get there.

Side note on Swimsuit Issues before I start praising her.  Like many actress/model/dancer/whatevers, she doesn’t know how to do her own makeup.  She is always the shiniest person on the show, including Ben.  It’s because she never has to do it herself.  When you see a model in US Weekly who looks like a bag lady with a shiny face, there’s a reason.  They never have to dress themselves or do their own makeup.  It’s like, here bitch wear this and don’t move while I powder the glowing mask where your face is supposed to be.  Sorry, I’ve lived in LA for so long, I have to make these observations.

There definitely was no animal cruelty monitoring because they sure didn’t catch and release that fish.  I know fish aren’t animals (wait, are they, I was a film major), but they killed this fucker and I suspect they didn’t just have a quick trout snack.  Truth is, Chris Harrison told the airport he needed to bring it home to have it stuffed (because we all know Courtney is winning) as a keep sake.  Meanwhile he stuffed it with bags of heroin and flew it back to his drug den in LA.

So, later in the date Kacie B. got some alone time with Ben who is keeping her around in case Swimsuit Issues bails on him (or gets a text from an actor she used to date or something).  Luckily, this is all the water the Beyan plant needs.

After that, Sororistitute comes up to Ben demanding a one-on-one date and holy shit she made weird faces.  Ben went buckwild on her and it totally pumped me up.  He’s a veteran Bachelor and he knows someone not trusting the process when he sees it and ended her journey to find love with an uppercut to the pushup bra.

Cue Swimsuit Issues’ brilliance.  She is now my favorite.  Ben is all in because she is really good looking.  She arbitrarily tells him she is doubting if Ben has feelings for her (compliment fishing AND trout fishing in one day?!) and Ben freaks out because he decided she was it when he saw her, just like Brad did with Emily (who will be the worst Bachelorette ever because she is boring and whispers all the time).  Ladies, advice from a guy who calls it like it is.  If you tell a guy you aren’t sure how he feels and he DOESN’T make the PLEASE DON’T GO I LOVE YOU face that Ben made at Courtney, leave.

That’s what it looks like.  If you have to make excuses, he’s out.  Peace.  You’re fucked.  Sorry.  There are other fish in the stream.  In Utah.  And what better place to be insecure and entrap a man than Utah.  On a scale of one to ten, that’s how you fucking claim a rose.

i kinda feel like i am not supposed to see this moment

The next date was with Forrest Gump (she literally said “I know what love is”), who totally repelled into a creepy crater in a helmet and a bikini (which is how I chose my wife as well).  Ben likes her because she is good at kissing and never complains.  This girl is totally friend zone, which Swimsuit Issues pointed out, but surprisingly not in a mean way.  Like I said to my wife, I would like this girl to date one of my friends.  She isn’t annoying and if we toned her hair back to auburn down from “Chernobyl Red”, she’d be pretty reasonably cute.

Then they got rained on and then went to this creepy gathering of ghost hicks watching a Clay Walker concert in the middle of nowhere.  I went to go pee at this point because that’s what country music does to me.  Also, Ben.  You were arm dancing.  Gotta move with that body as I learned prior to my wedding at the 3rd Street Dance Studio where for my wife I danced with a man who taught me how not to look like an 8th grader on the dance floor.  Or she was just fucking with me.  My wife is cool.

Rose Ceremony time.  Cue the IV drips of wine and the sleep deprivation.  This time, Contagion cracks and commits the cardinal sin of Bacheloring.  You DO NOT shit on another contestant to the Bachelor.  Ben even called her out when she tried to throw Courtney under the bus, which didn’t work because Ben wants to throw her under the covers.  Didn’t matter, Contagion wants justice in the world, which begs the question of why the hell she is on the Bachelor.  Her questionable decision making was obvious though when she let Blakely put highlights in her hair.

Just to be clear, she let Candy Striping Hooker do her hair.  Last I checked, we don’t look to strip clubs for hairstyle trends (or earring trends, Jesus Blakely, these things are so long she literally has a bigger suitcase for her earrings than her clothes, which she wears very little of).

Contagion bitches to Random Attractive Blonde about Swimsuit Issues, but it flops because Random Attractive Blonde knows better than to fuck with the alpha bitch of the house.  Like Mean Girls, RAB has been partnering with slightly hotter girls her whole life, like some kind of attractive parasite.  She knows better.  Ironically, the woman who studies diseases doesn’t get this.

Courtney said she wanted to “rip her head off and verbally assault her” which was awesome because it’s fun to see pissed off hot people, but in case you are reading this, verbally assault her before ripping her head off.  Severed heads don’t hear anything.

Harrison came in and showed Ben the correct way to wear a skinny tie.  Look, I admit to keeping up with GQ and as a business person, I think suits are important to know how to wear.  If you got big lapels and a point collar, it makes your micro tie look like a shoelace.  Next week, I’m worried my homeboy Ben is gonna come out with some mint dental floss as a tie.  Wide collar, thinner lapels, fatter skinny tie.  WWDD (what would Draper do?)

In the end, Ben sends House Mother home because she looks all old.  Then he says they are going to some random beach in Puerto Rico and Courtney is all “I was just there”.  Every girl was like “you bitch”, but that’s fine.  They were like that the minute she got there because she is magically both hotter and smarter than the rest of them.  This is a one-woman race at this point with Kacie B. there just in case Courtney peaces out to play the girl Clive Owen has sex with in a 2 minute bit part of a film most of us won’t see.

Until then, it’s her game.

Side note, I’ve been getting hundreds of emails from new people finding this blog, which is awesome since I write about sports and bourbon, so this is my fun offseason attack.  That said, one group in particular told me they have a Bachelor fantasy league and use this blog for strategic insight, so I’m giving you guys a shout out.  So Meredith and the crazy Denver group-bachelor-fantasy-league, what’s up.

If you read this with your friends, let me know or send me a picture with proof.  I’ll post it up here.  I’m good like that.  I’m the Egg McMuffin of bloggers.  Or like, the helicopter of bloggers.

See you next week.  In the meantime, connect with me at the links below because I am hell with a pen:

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He had some quote about how he had accomplished everything he could possibly accomplish at Oregon.  In his mind, he was thinking “win a Rose Bowl, wear lots of outfits, figure out I don’t like taking classes, play in a national championship”.  The rest of us, once we got over shaking our heads at someone leaving a year early to at best be a late round pick comparing himself to Cam Newton, who schooled his ass in last years BCS Championship, had plenty of suggestions for Darron as to things he had yet to accomplish.

I started a list and netted out with wild concepts like “win a national title, win a Heisman, have a winning bowl record, beat a Big Ten team that’s actually ranked in the single digits, wait to go pro when someone actually wants you at the pro level”…  I don’t know.  But yeah, Darron, you schooled the world.

With LaMichael James set to be a late round pick and Darron set to, well, not play in college anymore, I thought that was that.  But then Chip Kelly, the chubbiest Pac 12 coach to wear a visor, said he was going to the pros to coach Tampa Bay.

Immediately, most of us thought this was because of sanctions he knew were coming (and probably still are now that the NCAA has reloaded with a new set of totally arbitrary guidelines for grasping for control of their runaway business).  I mean, how could you announce you are leaving right before signing day?

Then when it was reported that he was coming back, I started thinking this was all about Nike.  I mean, Nike must have told LeBron it was okay to make “The Decision” the way he did.  When Barkley announced he was coming back, it was just that.  He announced he was COMING BACK.  When Holmes Kalil (spaced on that one) went pro, he just went pro and issued a statement.

I started to wonder if this whole thing was about diagnosing most recruit’s main concern about Oregon:  their offense is a gimmick and their players are low draft picks.

Looking at the record and this upcoming class, winning games at Oregon does not lead to high draft status.  Calling plays based off cartoons on poster boards isn’t going to help you beat the Ravens.  And the NFL knows this which is why you are hard pressed to find a dearth of Oregon NFL offensive juggernauts (right now, some Duck fan is rushing to comment and talk to me about LeGarrette Blount, but please don’t, it makes you looks stupid).

Is it possible that Chip Kelly talking with the pros was to show Oregon recruits that Chip’s unique brand of “blow big games” is a pathline to playing on Sundays?  (Oregon fan who was gonna post about Blount, please also save the “we won the Rose Bowl post”.  I know, it’s amazing, you’ve done it once a century.  And you beat a team you were ranked way above because you didn’t have to play the USC team that never gave up a lead in beating you.  Also, USC has won almost 2.5 times more Rose Bowls than Oregon has won “bowls in general”.  Honestly, I can’t off the top of my head remember how many we even won in the 2000s because the Orange Bowl wins confuse me.  So please, spare us.  We’re glad you won a Rose Bowl.  Now win 5 more bowls and have a 500 record in postseason play.  You guys make UCLA look historically relevant.)

So, was this what Chip’s plan was?  Did Phil Knight threaten to kill him if he left?  I am so confused.  All we heard was Chip Kelly say he had “unfinished business”.

Really, Chip?  I mean, your “win the day” shit was the biggest Pete Carroll “win forever” rip off ever.  Now you steal Matt Barkley’s “unfinished business” line?

How dumb are you?  The one thing that scared me about USC this season is that they might not play with the same chip on their shoulder.  They will be ranked higher than Oregon, favored to make the national title.  It will be 2005 all over again (hopefully minus the Lyles type sanctions drama Oregon is heading for).

Why on EARTH would a team that got exposed by USC at home be helping them keep the chip on their shoulder?  Why would  a coach jack a player’s swag?  I mean, Matt and Co. already provided the blueprint for beating Oregon (we stole it from Auburn and LSU), which is take your time scoring, small and fast linebackers, sound tackling and bet that they can’t go deep on you.  The only thing that was going to trip SC up this year was complacency.

So thanks Chip.  Glad you have unfinished business too.  See you in November.

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Anyway, ZBOW (or Tennisless Rafa Nadal) is back on his journey to “find love” and “what better place to find love than in San Francisco” which, like Sonoma, is also his hometown.  Ben’s bringing a strong theme of letting these girls know that if they want to land the winemaker, they better love his hometown.  Both of them (not including his third hometown, which I am pretty sure is still Tucson).

HI JULIA!!!

Ben first met up with his sister, who I am actually friends with by way of my wife.  They are very much twinzies even though biologically, they are not twins.  I was riding in a car to a wedding in Sonoma once with Julia and she gave me no spoilers about the show, so she is a pretty good sister or Chris Harrison stole a vial of her blood and put a voodoo curse on her.  Either way, America can agree it’s a good looking family.

They got together to have some iced coffee or iced tea on a San Francisco day at a San Francisco coffee shop and everything was super San Franciscoish.   I was surprised they weren’t listening to def poetry and eating cioppino out of a sourdough bowl. Really though, we found out the purpose of Ben needing to see Julia before his first one on one date when he met Emily on the dock with the first truly awkward “excited to see you running introduction” of the season.

Ben was wearing a Lululemon sweatshirt, which I can only assume is why he hung with Julia before the date.  You know, to borrow her women’s sweatshirt.  My man Ben definitely borrowed a few of her blouses back on Hey Bear’s season.  He was the original pirate of the Caribbean on a few of those episodes.  I mean, it had to be a women’s sweatshirt.  I didn’t know Lululemon came in “man”.  That sentence sounded sexual.  You’re welcome.

So, what do you do in a women’s sweatshirt with a Contagion (the disease expert) who is afraid of heights.  Oh, yeah.  Let’s have her walk up the fucking Bay Bridge with just two clamps.  THANK YOU, BEN.  Finally we’re doing some Bachelor shit.  Hey Bear’s season was such a boring traipse through random Asian street market to random Asian street market, nearly void of all helicopters.  It was so refreshing that Ben took my blog’s advice and decided the best thing to do with a house full of crazy women who are not allowed to eat (see Chantal O.) unless they eat wine or vodka and are kept awake 24 hours a day with cameras on them is to make the participate in extreme sports.

This was the beginning of Ben fulfilling my hopes for him as a Bachelor.  Helicopters, base jumping, keeping it extreme.   The way Chris Harrison intended it when he invented this show after doing LSD for 3 weeks on a beach in Thailand with a couple monks that also create amazing artisinal salt dishes (a must for aspiring home chefs).

So Contagion started looking a lot hotter on this date.  Isn’t it weird when work boots and a hard hat make a girl look good?  It speaks to how the stylists on this show are just there to mess with people (especially Candy Striping Hooker whose earrings each week set new length and tackiness records).

Anyway, Contagion start panicking halfway up this completely buckwild test, and then Ben makes out with her because that’s what you do when you are way up in the air above a busy freeway being circled by helicopters and you are the Bachelor.  It’s text book.  By the way, how good are the fucking helicopter camera dudes?  Every single shot in this sequence was perfectly in focus, but the background was flying by faster than Chris Harrison on the back of a dirt bike after that time he killed a whole village of terrorists for their heroin supply.

By they time the got to dinner, ZBOW’s lips told the story.  He’d been making out with Contagion all night.  I knew this because he was wearing more lip gloss than all of my college invite dates combined.  Ben didn’t seem into it, but Contagion is smart and good looking so he gave her the rose.  And then made out with her.

The sheer amount of making out Ben does really makes me have to analyze the making out to determine who I think wins.  Some girls he does an over-abundance of lip-smacking pecks, the kind of kisses you don’t want your friends to see because the next time you go drinking with them they ask you who was the girl in that make out session.  Some girls get the open mouth porn star treatment, which doesn’t tell you much really, especially because Google is definitely going to prove Candy Striping Hooker, our “VIP Waitress” has actually done a LOT of porn.  In the 80s.  Because she’s old.

I loved how Harrison planted the telescope in their room so they could watch the date and the fireworks.  This season seems to be all about sleep deprivation, wine drunk (which is more emotional for girls than vodka drunk) and anything that can make them all insecure.  It’s like when the cops try to end a hostage situation by blasting bad music at the house until the criminals fucking crack like eggs.

The group date was amazing.  Ben basically just said put on some bikinis, it’s summer, then made these girls ski in their underwear down a busy SF street.  I got to know all the contestants better, including Kacie B. (my fav) who skiied butt first down the hill.  By the way, get used to calling her Butt First.

So how does this show afford to make an SF street a ski run?  They let Honda pay.  The product placement was at its worst last night with the explanation of the Nav having “wallpaper” and then the media buy of CR-V commercials about independent women who won’t get married until they’ve handled their leaplist.  Having worked in advertising so long, I can picture this conversation between the media company and ABC and being truly honest, I would have beaten the hell out of everyone in the room.  Come on media company.  Nothing screams “independent woman” like being forced to ski half naked on national TV for a one in fifteen chance of getting engaged to a person who will probably not go through with marrying you.

But yeah, totally get the product placement…

So, earlier this week I was chatting with ZBOW on Twitter about after this season coming up there and probably apologizing to his fiance (assuming he has one) about calling her some combination of needy, drunk, stupid, vain, anorexic and/or insecure and going out to watch some baseball and drink.

So Ben agreed to Tonga, it’s the coolest bar on earth and a must in SF (Anthony Bourdain and his 90s earring and Chris Costantino agree).  I was feeling pretty good until I realized Ben took ALL THESE BITCHES to Tonga.  WTF Ben?  I thought I was special.  We were going to rent a two person bike and maybe pick a fight with some homeless people after I drank too many Singapore Slings.  But now I know it’s just your spot.  My wife had to bake me cookies and buy me flowers before I got over it.  I thought I was special, brah.

I’m just effing with you, bud.  Tonga is a great place to go, especially on the Bachelor because it seems like you are drinking fruit juice but then you suddenly can’t walk and it starts raining INSIDE the bar and then a barge floats out and Girl From Ipanema starts playing.  Then you throw up at 3am and find yourself eating sourdough bread on a random corner in Russian Hill judging business people in turtlenecks coming out of coffee shops.

Wow, diversion.

Back up in the room, Friday Night Lights got the next one on one date and with it, a really ugly necklace in the shape of a key.  This girl needs some help.  Her hair is the worst since the Muppet (Ali) and she wears foundation that is literally two shades paler than her skin.  NOTE TO CONTESTANTS.  WHEN YOU SPRAY TAN, CHANGE THE COLOR OF YOUR MAKE UP.  She looked like an actor in a Shakespeare adapted movie who suddenly “falls ill” and then dies of something like “consumption”.  If she didn’t up and quit the show like a crazy person, I’d have changed her name to like Oregon Trail, because her make up looks like she was gonna fall ill to a disease from that game.  (Side note, you could only carry less than one buffalo’s worth of meat in the game, so why did we always shoot like ten of them and then waste ten bullets seeing if we could hit a rabbit.  Damn, Oregon Trail was the scotch).

Real quick.  Friday Night Lights was like a funhouse mirror.  She looked out of shape when she sits and when she stands she looks like a supermodel.  I quickly did a pH test of my water to make sure my wife hadn’t poisoned me and I was hallucinating.  I’m still here, so it wasn’t a mistake.

So, Ben didn’t seem to give a shit and instead gave the date to War Horse and her totally confusing head that looks like Picasso painted it.  Every time I see her an eye is in a different place or her teeth are at a different angle.  She looks good and all, I’m just mad confused.

So they went on a Trolley (only it wasn’t because it was a bus made to look like a trolley), they got some ice cream and then went to city hall where they were ambushed by a band I had never heard of (I think his name was Mike Macadoodler) playing a song I’d never heard of (and never will again) and then they danced and did some porn kisses.  I felt so bad for this musician’s family who all gathered around the TV for his “big break”.  It was like watching an old man eat alone at a dirty diner.  That’s how this guy made me feel.

Then, Ben took War Horse to a piano store to play the one song he knows, that David Gray song again.  Twice already.  I totally dig how this move must be his go to.  He brings girls to a piano and drops some 2005 David Gray and then it’s GO TIME.  In fairness to Ben, maybe he knows how to play more songs, but when Chris Harrison was given 50,000 dollars to spend on some song licensing for Ben, he spent 5K on David Gray and 45K on White China (that’s cocaine for you nice people out there).  Ben, you’ll have to tell me sometime when we’re at Tonga (yes, I’ve forgiven you and really, tiki drinks are amazing when you don’t want bourbon).

So, the big curve ball was the return of the Undertaker from Chico.  Holy shit.  One, she looks crazy good still.  Girl needs a new job.  Two, I have never seen so many girls get so damn insecure so fast.  It was like being at the beach and Brooklyn Decker shows up.  Swimsuit Issues, who everyone hopes starves herself to death, was rocking out at the cocktail party.  She was putting chicks down and making people hate her.  She went out with Ben and he grabbed her face and made out with her after she did a bunch of overbite-baby-talk, proving once and for all that if you are hot, you don’t need to play hard to get.  Pretty much, you just can play get.  Ben is all in on this girl no matter what she says.  Now, maybe they edit the show to create a villain and she is cool, but they are giving her the Michelle Money treatment for real.

Now, being that she is a model/actress/dancer/whatever from fucking Santa Monica, I knew at some point something would make her insecure and then, she’d crack.  Enter the Undertaker.  This is how the hot girl feels when the new girl is hot too.  She said if he picked Undertaker for a rose, she was “out”, only she didn’t do that because she is an actor and does whatever she is told whenever she is told.  Like when they said “go on Bachelor and win over Ben”.  Boom.  You got it.

Everything went to hell.  That sad faced girl who I just call Snuffaluffagus (I forget her real name) just cried through the entire cocktail party after that super awkward part where Shawntel got to talk to Ben alone, except everyone was standing directly behind them.  Did Chris Harrison drug Undertaker and tell her this was a good idea?  I mean, Ben should have picked her.  She is top 3 on the show.  Maybe they are setting Undertaker up to be the next Bachelorette, which will be cool until her hometown date where we have to have more embalming discussions.  Let’s keep it to helicopters and Tahiti, kthxbai.

Shit got so intense at the damn ceremony, girls were so wasted and drunk that literally one girl passed out (it might have been from the fact her dress appeared to be made up of chains, like she’d escaped an insane asylum and immediately qualified for reality television).  Snuffaluffagus just kept crying and looking gross.  She did have the line of the night when she said something like “on a scale of one to ten I want to throw up”.  I’m using that.

just found this pic, guess the name is Jaclyn. okay, I can forget that now. until I see snuffaluffagus and remember.

On a scale of one to ten, let’s go to dinner.

So, Pass Out, Snuffaluffagus and Undertaker get sent home.  Undertaker never gets treated right.  Even in a weird ass dress she looked good.  Even getting the most insecure hatred from a room full of drunk, tired hungry people, she looked good.  Ben, maybe keep her number, yeah?

At the end of the show, Ben announced they were going to Park City, Utah (which will for sure be referred to as his home).  Also, during the credits, Pass Out showed Ben her inner lip tattoo that said “amore” which is Italian for “bad decision”.  I am so glad she is gone.  She’s not even the fun kind of embarrassing drunk.  She’s the kind you hopes starts puking so you can lock her in the bathroom and pick it back up in the morning until she pukes again when someone orders eggs benedict and she smells the Hollandaise sauce.  Think back to college.

All right.  I’m out.  Keep it classy when you drink wine.  On a scale of one to ten, have a great week.

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Last night it became clear what ZBOW (or Tennisless Rafael Nadal) wants you to take from this season.  HE IS FROM SONOMA, KAY BRO?  You might ask about his dog wearing a U of A collar and how he lived in Tucson as much as he lived in Sonoma.  NAH BRO.  BEN’S FROM SONOMA.  Don’t believe me?  Check out my tractor.  It matches my Bronco.  And this shirt the producers gave me.

Being that we established the ground rules (Ben is fucking from Sonoma, so don’t front), we got to take the traveling wonderbra show to wine country (where Ben is FROM, bitch) so he could show these girls what it’s like to be from Sonoma.

And that’s what he did.

First one on one date of the year and Ben takes Kacie, who after two episodes is the person I think is least likely to kill him with a needle in the ear when he is sleeping.  That has to be a plus, especially in Sonoma, which is where Ben is from.

He took her on a date around (wait for it…) Sonoma and told her how important to him Sonoma was.  They went into a candy store where clearly one of Chris Harrison’s slaves-slash-drug-smugglers planted a baton for Kacie to pick up as they were leaving.  She was a baton twirler apparently as a child, so guess what.  I’m calling you Band Camp now.

This baton had like dents and rust on it.  I wanted to believe Ben’s Sonoma was a magical place where all your childhood artifacts just show up, but like I said, this had Harrison’s work all over it.  And in it.  Pretty sure you unscrew the rubber protectors on the top of the baton and you can fit like 8 grams of blow in there.   Harrison needs it.  We’ll get to that later.   In Sonoma.

Next, Ben took Kacie on what might be the biggest double-edged sword of a date of all time.  Look, it was pretty cute (yes, I said cute, don’t worry, I also just cut myself, we’re even) to share childhood movies and it was really (not kidding) touching to see Ben and his family.  Kacie was even a sweetheart to make the wife-worthy observation that it was a different experience for her to see her Dad than it was for Ben to see his.  I admired Ben for this date (especially since it was in Sonoma).

Here’s the thing though.  You can’t just take a really nice southern girl out week two, show her your soft side, make her watch baby photos and then make out with the rest of the cast all season.  This could potentially turn Band Camp into Scary Bradshaw.  If you want to define female psychological terrorism, it’s watching baby photos in a romantic theatre in wine country and then having that man dump you on national television.

That said, I realize that Ben is going to try to kiss every contestant and I am starting to really admire the fact that he may be, in fact, a psychological terrorist.  There’s already been one lesbian encounter, twelve chicken fights, baby photos, Sonoma and like 8 swimming opportunities.  Ben is to the Bachelor what Neo is to the Matrix.  That makes Harrison a coked up Morpheus.

So, warning to Ben, who is already done filming so I am sorry for not being there for you, but Band Camp may murder you now, or sometime in the future.  I’ve probably fucked with some people’s heads in my life, but none of it was on national television (except when I fixed the Broncos game this weekend.  You thought Jesus did that Tebow?  Bitch, please).

The group date was pretty funny.  ZBOW decided to have children put on a community play, which was pretty entertaining, although I enjoyed it more before Ben stripped off his sheep clothing.  Not that he shouldn’t have, I am just an honest person.  It’s not so much the partial nudity that bothered me, it was just that this episode I thought he was contractually obligated to wear no less than 4 layers of summer suit and a really skinny tie.  Nudity isn’t a layer.

I enjoyed the try-outs a lot.  Nicky with the good Texas accent, who now I am calling Hot Sally Field (also ran:  Mrs. Doubtfire and Brothers & Sisters) embraced her roll of playing an ass, and that is good because when you are a contestant on this show, you either make and ass of yourself or are turned into a piece of ass.  We’ll see where that goes.

Blakely (really?), our “VIP cocktail waitress”, showed up in half an outfit and had to run in place, much to the terror of the young girls.  The only kid who loved it was the last kid, who probably went through puberty on the spot and will spend the next 10 years wading through inadequate high school girls until he can go to a strip club legally and find old women that dress like that and smell that much like Parliament Lights.  It will all come back to him in a flash and he’ll realize it was that one fateful day when Blakely (seriously?) jogged in place.

About that name.  Doesn’t it feel like her Dad wanted her to be a football player and when she popped out of the womb a girl, he just turned Blake into an adverb and hoped it made her feminine?

I need to skip ahead a little bit to the after-party, where Blakely got her nickname.  For the first time in the history of this blog, I am letting a contestant name a competitor.  Someone called Blakely (really?) a “Candy Striping Hooker” and frankly, I can’t beat that.

Candy Striping Hooker is doing a bad job hiding the fact she remembers all of the 80s.  Exhibit one?  Her earrings in the pool.  Did she steal those off a dead body from the Copacabana scene in Scarface?  And why did you wear them in the pool.  Also, I haven’t seen a ruffled bathing suit since my family went to Virginia Beach in 1986.  I was fucking four years old.  Conveniently, Candy Striping Hooker was in high school applying to colleges (which is code for VIP waitressing gigs) *which is code for being a stripper.

Did this stop Ben from making out with her?  Of course not.  And that’s what I like about Ben.  That and he’s from SONOMA, BRO.  Don’t get it wrong, KAY BRO?

Ben also made out with the the redhead that got in line for hair dye too many times and miraculously, as if she’d never watched this show before being on it, was shocked Ben made out with HER AND BLAKELY.  For future contestants reading this, let’s be clear on two things.  First, if you go on the show, everyone is kissing everyone all the time on helicopters, on ziplines, in fucking hot springs.  It’s part of the game.  Second, Ben is from Sonoma.  Don’t get that wrong, okay?  The guy lives wine country.  They are renaming Falanghina to be Flajnikghina.  In high school, they called him Beno Noir.  Get it straight, Ben was probably not born by conventional methods.  He was cultivated in the cool air of Napa Valley and harvested at the optimal time and then fermented in a barrel until he was ready to go into internet advertising.

Okay.  Homeboy is from Sonoma except when he was from Tucson.

The rest of the group date was filled with awkward faces from Scary Bradshaw, a steady drip of wine and then a mass-exodus away from Candy Striping Hooker when she came to sit down and air dry her ruffled swimsuit and meteors glued to paperclip necklaces earrings.

Oh yeah, when Candy Striping Hooker was talking to Ben one on one, she was talking about her boobs the whole time.  This is not helping convince me that a VIP waitress isn’t an escort.  Sorry.  Not that she has to.  The best part was when she described herself in that area as being blessed.

Yeah.  With a credit card the plastic surgeon’s office accepted.  Don’t insult our intelligence.  Oh wait, we watch the Bachelor.  Insult away.

The date card was dropped off and Band Camp read it aloud to the group getting shitfaced at home.  Swimsuit Issues (who looks like she rubbed on the face with sandpaper in her testimonials, but looks like a model in every other shot) said some crazy bitchy stuff like “how’d that taste coming out of your mouth” at which point I fully expected half the country to say “that’s what she said” in unison.

Band Camp, who is going to kill herself when Ben goes for Swimsuit Issues, was even polite in her shit talking.  I think she’s the early reasonable choice.

Anyway, bitch-at-home-sweet-on-dates Swimsuit Issues went on her one-on-one with Ben and his cool dog Scotch (in a U of A collar, spotted by @pachoopsab) to a quiet spot in Sonoma, which is Ben’s hometown.

Ben was pretty much paralyzed by her hotness and asked her lots of questions about being a model and she pretty much responded in this quiet-and-I-don’t-finish-sentences sort of way due to what appears to be a massive overbite (which I think is not structural, rather just the effect of being hot and never having a guy tell you that your baby talk flirting makes you look like you need head gear because they are scared that will mean you won’t sleep with him).

Regardless, Ben seems fascinated by this girl, although I have a tip for my homie Ben, who may not be as up on Los Angeles (and Santa Monica) as I am, which is probably because he is from Sonoma.  You can walk into ANY of the 23,000+ wine bars in Santa Monica and find an actress-model-dancer-whatever who will go out with you if you tell them you are a photographer, know a photographer, used to be a photographer or that they look crazy skinny.  They are cheap dates too as they don’t eat and three sips of chardonnay have them black out drunk.

You don’t need to be on the Bachelor to find a Courtney.  You just need to go to Bodega.

The final party before the Rose Ceremony was a total shit show.  The wine took way over.  Scary Bradshaw was making no sense, crying and doing more weird mouth shit.  Blakely got so drunk and tired she hid behind some suitcases in the luggage room (it’s a Sonoma thing).  At a point, I felt so bad for Ben.  It would be like trying to talk 15 jumpers off a ledge at the same time knowing you need to marry one of these people.  God save the ZBOW!

In the end, Ben cut Scary Bradshaw and her weird mouth.  I guess we can look forward to reading her fictitious blog never.  I forget who else he booted off, it doesn’t matter it’s still early.  Just like a cigar, this show improves halfway through when you can really feel the psychology of each of these hot messes.

I will say this…  I figured out why the girls are such a mess and why Harrison has to do so much cocaine.  When Scary Bradshaw was crying in bed after crying in the bathroom, the clock showed it was 2am.  The rose ceremony is at like 3am?!

Have you ever gone out with your wife/girlfriend and her friends until 3am after 30 bottles of wine and then brought up a sensitive subject?  Holy shit, this is sadistic.  And none of them are eating because of what happened to Chantal on Brad’s season (her clothes fit less each week), so this is a bunch of over-tired, starving drunk girls fighting over a winemaker in Sonoma.

Recipe for disaster.  It’s like Guantanaho Bay.

Lastly, Ben had a surprise for the girls.  They are going to San Fran.  Frisco.  The City by the Bay (I just said that because locals hate that and I am still pissed about the World Series 2 years ago).  Ben was really excited because as he said, San Francisco is his “home town”.

What the fuck, Ben.  I just spent an hour telling everyone you are from Sonoma.  So off to San Francisco and what better place to find love and be from Sonoma than San Francisco.

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I can’t mince words.

Larry Scott is a monster hypocrit that borders on being a total ass clown.  He is the kid in high school who was not actually smart, but got into a good college.  He’s sneaky.  He promotes his success and ignores his failures.  He insults your intelligence (yes, all of you and myself included) by assuming we aren’t noticing how awful his tenure as Pac 12 commissioner has been.

I’m the bearfighter and before we get to 2012 and our unfinished business, I am taking off my gauntlet and slapping Larry Scott in the face and challenging him to a duel.  Take an interview with me, Larry.  I will email you questions and you can simply respond to them.  I won’t edit a word.  I am a gentleman (and an appreciator of fine cocktails and cigars) and thus would never edit what you had to say.  I am confident your answers to my questions will make my point.

Let’s get down to it.  I’m not a sportswriter.  I’m a troublemaker that loves sports.  I am not going to take the time to cite a million sources in this post because I’m a blogger.  What I am going to do is tell you why Larry Scott is awful and USC should leave the Pac-12 on principle and go independent unless this guy is taken out.

The way I see it, I can respect a man for having a different viewpoint than I do if he can back it up.  Basically, you need to walk the walk.  I’m a fairly liberal cat (socially at least), but I don’t find myself in arguments with my conservative friends because if you can tell me a reasonable reason for your beliefs, I respect that.  I’d be bored if we all thought the same way.

That’s why when Auburn came under fire and the SEC commissioner was blocking for them with the NCAA and IT WORKED, I said whatever.  I said whatever because the SEC doesn’t claim to be something it isn’t.  The SEC doesn’t think anything matters but the SEC and they know if SEC football fell from grace, they’d be left with the South without football, which is pretty much what most southern churches describe as hell.  Or at least purgatory.

When Ohio State was under fire, the Big Ten commissioner blocked for them publicly.  It was pathetic, it was antil-compliance, it was distasteful.  That said, it was loyal and it made business sense.

But Larry?  Larry did neither.  He publicly defended USC (sort of) while doing nothing but dumping gasoline on what was supposed to be our funeral pyre.  He came out and felt USC had been harshly sanctioned, but then when proceeding to draft the Pac 12 rules (which were new thanks to a new Pac 12 starting just before year 2 of the bowl ban), he stated no sanctioned team could compete in a conference championship, even though it isn’t the postseason.

That’s fine.  He didn’t want USC to possibly beat Oregon for a second time and then have the loser of the game go to the Rose Bowl, which would make more sense if the following things weren’t true:

• Larry lost the Pac 12 millions of dollars having UCLA in that game, the inaugural Pac 12 Championship.  Not only that, but it was a slap in Oregon’s face and it’s hard for anyone outside of Eugene to definitively feel like UCLA losing by 20 to Oregon proved Oregon was somehow better than USC, who beat Oregon at Autzen without ever giving up a lead.
• That experience RUINED the UCLA program.  It resulted in the most embarrassing title matchup in memory, making the Pac 12 South look like a women’s field hockey league.  It lead to PR nightmares for UCLA with the firing of Slick Rick and then begging the NCAA for a bowl game, which after losing, made the the losingest  team EVER to participate in a bowl game.  He was worried USC would ruin his Oregon brand in a tiny DMA, so instead he screws over USC in the 2nd largest DMA and takes the other LA based team and nukes their credibility back to the stone age.
• You can’t say it’s about money (getting 2 Pac teams in BCS games) because even if SC played in the “title” and won, Oregon would still get the bid to the Rose Bowl.  The BCS is not sacred anymore.  The Orange bowl was between two midlevel teams and had the lowest overnight rating of any BCS game in history.  We have a boring rematch for a national title.  Michigan is the worst team to ever win a BCS bowl and that’s because they got to play and even worse team.  (Don’t think Larry’s new deal with the Big Ten had zero effect on the pre-game speech the refs got before they helped Michigan steal a win).  Larry can’t explain the thinking.  Oregon fans wouldn’t STILL be on my blog talking shit about their Rose Bowl if they got a chance to play us in the title.  They are puffing up their feathers because they know they lost to USC and would have played them again, but Larry didn’t let them.  As myopic and history-starved as Duck Nation is, I feel bad for them.  It’s best to get to compete.

None of this stopped Larry from lamenting that USC wasn’t in the game and calling the circumstances “unfortunate”.  Well, that’s accurate.  It’s unfortunate you are the Commissioner.

And if the Lyles scandal at Oregon comes to fruition, which it probably will since Larry will do nothing to defend them, and Oregon has to “vacate” their recent Rose Bowl triumph over a 10th ranked team, what then Larry?  You will have punished USC, who will be your money maker next year (which you’ve said plenty about already you bandwagon amateur) to protect a team that will have to give up the Rose Bowl you were apparently trying to protect.  It’s confusing, but then again, reasoning with idiots tends to be.

Larry has received so much praise for what I keep calling a six inch putt.  He got a Pac-12 TV deal that made everyone rich.  Like I’ve said 10 times, getting a billion dollars for endless sports content played out of top DMAs like LA, SF, Portland, Seattle, Phoenix and Denver is what the previous commish should have done.  Just because you took the suitcase of money 100 people were fighting to hand you doesn’t make you a businessman.  It makes you simply NOT a total imbecile.

Larry has also bastardized the gentleman’s agreement to not over-schedule Friday nights with college games.  That is high school night.  Friday night lights.  By making high schools compete with colleges, you are further blurring the line of what a student athlete is.  For those of you that are disgusted with the Army All American game and it’s process of having 17 year olds pick up the hat of the school they plan to attend, get ready for more of it.  A high school kid hasn’t earned anything. If being a top prospect meant something, Dillon Baxter would be 2 Heismans deep right now.  Joe McKnight wouldn’t be returning punts and playing special teams.

These are kids.  Let them commit and come earn it at the university of their choice.  Let their high schools celebrate them.  I’ll celebrate them when I see them in the endzone at the Coliseum.  Until then, let’s let them be humble, work hard and strap on the pads.  We’ll know when to make these guys feel like rockstars.  When they are rockstars.

Larry Scott is marked by the propensity to say something, do the absolute opposite and deny both. He’s sound and fury signifying nothing.  He’s a man who means nothing.  He’s quickly becoming my post-Frank McCourt target du jour.

Now, you all remember how he came into power stating the referees would be better, the subtext being that USC gets treated unfairly.  That said, when the same Pac 12 refs who screwed VaTech against Michigan screwed USC 2 years in a row against Stanford, what happened?

Well, Lane spoke out about a few calls that no one from ESPN to the guys at the local newstand could explain (the spot of the holding call, the no-call when Robert Woods was sexually assaulted in the endzone, the UR call on TJ McDonald, and of course being blatantly lied to about calling a last second time out post review), instead of getting an apology which is customary (USC got them for their loss to Vince Young (knee down lateral, Reggie Bush forward lateral) in the Rose Bowl title game, Larry Scott fined Kiffin and said their refs may NEVER be criticized for their calls.  Ever.

What?

No one suggests taking the win away from Stanford, but at least admit the refs got it wrong.  Nope, shove USC under the rug until we are free to play in bowls, then get ready for some ass-kissing.  I say no.  I say fuck you Larry.  We don’t want your handouts.  We want your resignation.

For those of you thinking this is USC whining, realize that this will happen to you too when you are on top.  Look, I’m happy as a pig in shit about this season. 10-2, Barkley, Woods, TJ and Marqise coming back.  A top five finish.  I’m not upset about where we are.  I’m upset that the Pac 12 leader is going to ruin everything for all of us, whoever you are.  Oregon, seriously, brace yourself.  You aren’t in LA down the street from CAA.  You don’t have good weather or big city draw.  You will not survive sanctions like we did.  You should be rooting for Larry to go.  Take it from your older brother who is actually happy you won your first Rose Bowl in almost 100 years.  Larry will stab you in the back while posing for a photo with you.

Check out this exchange from the LA Times last week or so:

USC-Ohio State would be a good first matchup. Do you share the Trojans’ unhappiness of the reduced discipline the Buckeyes received from the NCAA (one-year bowl ban, less lost scholarships) for what could be argued as more severe violations?

“I was certainly troubled by the severity of the punishment given to USC and expressed that. What is incumbent of the NCAA is greater transparency and fairness. I can’t say I know all the details of what happened at Ohio State, but I know the concerns USC has, and it’s still an area of concern for me. I still intend to be an advocate for equitable sanctions and the principles of NCAA transparency.”

I don’t believe there’s satisfaction that is happening.

“Right. I’m not going to comment more publicly on this. I don’t think it’s helpful. USC has a very bright future. Whatever thoughts and follow-up I need to do on this can happen internally and quietly.”

Wait, what?

You are an advocate for equitable sanctions and you were upset by what happened to USC, but then immediately after you say you can advocated internally and quietly?  You are calling the bearfighter dumb, Larry.  That makes me angry and you won’t like me when I am angry.  I’m gonna go to work on you.  I dare you to come to USC for a game next year.  Thousands of signs will greet your ever step.  You are the king of assuming your fans are dumb.  We are not.  We know an “advocate” is someone who “speaks out” against something.

Either play SEC or Big Ten football and fight for us, or just say USC got what it deserved.  If you straddle the fence, you end up hurting your balls.  I’ll see to it.

It’s not just us that are getting the shaft.  The Apple Cup will be played on Black Friday where no one will be watching.  The Big Game between Stanford and Cal will be played in October, which is Nor Cal blasphemy (so is a bitter latte, though).  Larry Scott does what he thinks is best for the dollars and that’d be okay if I thought he knew what was best for the dollars.

The truth is, he is pretending to care about NCAA sanctions and student athletes when he is doing more to destroy the image of a student athlete than anyone.

He wants to move the Pac 12 basketball tournament to Las Vegas.  He wants to move a college event into the hotbed of gambling in the universe.  He wants a bunch of kids 1 year from the NBA to sleep in hotels surrounded by thugs, drunks and gamblers who’d do anything to work out point shaving.  There’s a reason there’s no pro teams in Vegas.  But yeah, Larry.  Let’s move the kids there.  Remind me again, what Pac 12 team plays in Vegas?  Or Nevada?

And then he dropped the biggest bombshell.  He wants to play Pac 12 football in China as soon as 2013.  Seriously.  Fucking China.  He thinks he can “build the brand” in the untapped Chinese market.

If we can’t have playoffs because it fucks with our students’ learning schedules, please tell me how sending them on a marketing tour to China (which none of them will get paid for) is helping them as a student athlete?  And don’t tell me it is a culture experience.  So is eating sushi from a place with a D rating.  So is visiting the red light district in Amsterdam.  If you want them to see China, have them enroll in business school and go there to learn, not to sell YOUR brand.

I can’t wait for next season.  Unfinished business is bigger than anyone realizes.  We are the sword that can gut the system.  It’s dire times and we’re somehow the good guy.  I always liked being Darth Vader, but this time, we’re Terminator (from T2).  We’re the bad guy who has to save the world.

We can start by winning and refusing to let Larry celebrate our success.  I want you to take this offseason being excited for our team, our chances to win a Rose Bowl (until there is a playoff the “natty” is arbitrary, but if we get to play an SEC team, I’ll be all about it) and about the packed Coliseum come football time.

I also want you to think about Larry Scott and what he’s doing to our conference and college athletes in general.

I’m just getting started.  He’s the biggest bear of them all.

But I need to talk about something that’s starting to get pervasive.  I’m talking about something most of us have been seeing at events for years, but now I am finding it on my toilet paper.  I am not talking about QR codes, which are so 2000s now that they may come back into style.

I’m talking about hashtag confusion on Twitter.

I’ve long had a philosophy about social media in general.  It’s that people harp far too much on the “media” and not enough on the “social”.

Amidst the chaos of a world that is going more social every day and wild infographic “virals” telling us social is growing like the plague, we’re losing sight of what it is.  The more decks get thrown your way on sentiment, engagement, ROI, KPI and the lot, the more we lose sight of the point.

That point is a conversation.

And here’s where the hashtag is brilliant.  One of it’s two usages (in my mind) is to simply identify a Tweet as a part of a larger conversation.  It’s inherently at the core of why we subconsciously are addicted to social platforms.  It’s our chance to globally get something off our chest and pin it to a conversation across all countries and demographics.  Even if it gets lost, it doesn’t.  Somewhere out there in some Fievelian sense (yes, the mouse from the cartoon) someone is reading your pinned anecdote and you are a part of something bigger.

The other usage for a hashtag (my favorite) is as some sort of Twitter parenthetical that hearkens back to Kevin Nealon’s “subliminal man” on Weekend Update from SNL.

Here’s what I mean at the expense of Tim Tebow.  Here’s my sample tweet:

Wow, Tebow.  Where was Jesus in THAT fourth quarter? #ontheseventhdayherested

See?  You can use a hashtag to create a short, snarky, totally a-hole of you quip with no fear that people will attach the polite beginning of you text to the raw truth bomb you provided post hashtag with absolutely no spaces.  #spacesareforamateurs

In common speech, I’ll literally sometimes say “hashtag, go to hell” and I can get away with saying mostly anything.  That said, it’s pretty new media d-bag of me to say “hashtag” outloud, but I know what I am and embrace it.  #mywifestilllovesme

So let’s get back to the first iteration of a hashtag, which is to attempt to wrangle Tweets into one searchable lineage.

This practice really took hold for me at industry events.  At say SXSW, it’s helpful to have hashtags listed everywhere so you can see what people are saying about what you are attending without having to figure out who all these people are.

It helps agencies and companies measure (lazy style) volume and sentiment as their events go on and long after they’ve ended and if the hashtag took hold, it almost lets you circumvent the Radian6′s of the world.  #ifeelawkwardwhendiscussthetwitterfirehose

Lately, we’ve been seeing the hashtag pop up during television shows and on-air movies.  Sometimes this makes perfect sense.  Having a #bachelor or #americanidol hashtag is great because you are watching and having opinions and why not share them and see what others are saying.  It’s realtime-ish, your friends are all saying funny things, it’s a conversational medium.

I’ve seen it with television shows of the episodic nature and for something like, say, Glee, I get it again.  Gleeks love the damn show and it’s impossible to avoid their tweets of “OMG GAGA COVER FINALLY”.  Why not stoke that flame for the hardcore fans.  I’d rather be tortured by an ex girlfriend than watch Glee, but I think they warrant some hashtag love.

But like the Fonz once did, the hashtag is jumping the shark in a big way.

I am seeing it in places that make no sense.  I’m seeing it in commercials.  Why?  WHAAAY?! #cartmanvoice

To play Devil’s Advocate (one of my favorite pasttimes), I get it if there’s a sprawling 4 part commercial brand initiative, like say, when they let the audience choose the next M&Ms color (although there was no internet at the time I don’t think).  People had to write in and vote (#sonotgreen) or call a number to vote (#precellphonedays).

That campaign now would warrant a hashtag because it was starting a conversation.  It was asking you what color you wanted in your M&Ms, which affects virtually every time your girlfriend, friend girl or wife gets sad and eats an industrial size bag of them.  Thank Tebow blue won.

The thing is, I am seeing it during commercials for products with no planned conversation around them.  They are simply hashtags for the sake of eating hashtags.  This is like pissing in your sink because it has a drain.  Sure, you CAN piss in your sink, but there’s a toilet right there and it’s been designed for you to piss in.  Let’s respect solid thinking and planning.

I’ve seen some products ask you to hashtag tweet for an incentive.  I get that, kind of.  I mean, the ultimate goal in social is for the brand to behave as a consumer so you don’t feel like your friends with a commercial.  Think about Red Bull and their advantage.  They can show you Travis Pastrana almost killing himself in a rally car and brand that experience and their target audience feels grateful.  That’s because Red Bull knows their consumers and they know even if Red Bull didn’t exist, they would share and talk about Travis Pastrana almost killing himself in a rally car.  Since most people can’t spend the money to facilitate this (or don’t know Travis), Red Bull acts like your cool, rich friend and does it for you.  They advertise socially right to your face and you thank them. #winnerwinnerchickendinner

If that kind of interaction is not possible, say you market a product people don’t tend to love talking about in social, say a sensibly-priced female skewing automobile or a food product not skewing toward teenagers, then incentivizing conversation is reasonable.  If you can’t give me a thematic reason to talk about your brand, at least give me something of value for doing it.

Think of it this way.  When you were a kid, you knew that friend who would eat anything for five dollars.  A worm, a urinal cake, you name it.  He didn’t do that for free.  If you pay him a nominal fee, he’ll take a nominal punishment and maybe even enjoy it.  That’s social equity at work.  That’s conversation.

It may seem like a stretch, but think about it.  If you aren’t at the very least offering people an incentive, you better know what you are asking.  It’s like uncanny valley, if people don’t understand why it’s there, they react poorly.

Again, think about the social, not the media.

You could assume a #glee hashtag will be dominated by positive Glee conversation.  If you aren’t sure you have the community to support a hashtag, are you just inviting haters to hate.  At that point, are you helping or hurting? #youarehurting.

We’re too focused on the media.  For a lot of these placements, it’s like watching Ron Burgandy struggle to figure out where and when to say “when in Rome”.

So we don’t burn the world out on something really good, let’s exercise some caution as an industry.  Let’s practice safe text.  Ask yourself “what will someone do with this” when they are given a hashtag.  Have you specifically told them WHAT you want them to do?  Is it part of something larger?  If so, did you plant that seed because if not, they’ve already forgotten.

It’s about conversations and not creating a convention.  Hashtags are as vital to Twitter as “likes” are to Facebook.  So why do we collective get that we need to spend ad buys, incentivize and create calls to action to gain likes, but we’ll slap a meaningless hashtag with little to no chance of a good conversation on anything.  And that’s if you are lucky enough to get a conversation at all.

I tend to stick with the second hashtag usage.  You know, being snarky.  Every now and then though I’ll be watching USC and want to tie my opinion on a call to the larger conversation and sure enough, thousands of people are tweeting with #USC attached.  Naturally.  Almost like… like…  a real conversation!

I’m not hating.  I’m just a big advocate of looking at social tangibly and doing everything to dissuade the world that it is a bubble waiting to burst.

So, if this got you going, feel free to tweet about it.  #hashtagetiquette

How on earth could I do what I do to someone I know and like?  Hell, he even tweeted my posts last season and sent them to cast members (so I’ve been told).  Can you imagine how happy it makes an asshole like me to know Ames read everything I said about him last year?

I was getting lots of pressure to cover it again, but I had a big year rocking my “day job” of USC posts.  Frankly, I kicked some ass this year.  But the women in my life (real life and my readers) gave me the full court press.

So I asked for Ben’s permission through his sister.  And I got it:

So in fairness, I can only really punk Ben like I’d punk a friend of mine, which is a lot.   That said, last year, ZBOW (Zach Braff on Wine) played it pretty damn cool (save a few pirate cut blouses in the tropics) so I suspect most of the really flaming arrows will land in his field of bat-shit crazy suitorettes…

And after watching the premiere, let me say this…  I don’t know who Ben chooses, but I am pretty sure I know who he shouldn’t choose.

Let me rephrase that.  I am pretty sure if Ben picks anyone besides about 3.5 of them, he may need to commit the ancient samurai ritual of Seppuku and gut himself before his life becomes a slow rollercoaster of Chardonnay-induced psychosis after which he will gladly welcome the sweet embrace of death like those infected people in Alien.

So, as Ben said in his super-Napa intro to Hey Bear, “What I don’t need you to do is pull any punches, that’s what I don’t need you to do”.  Check, bro.  Let me lace up my gloves.  It’s Bachelor season.  Time to “find love”.  Or drunk girls arguing.  Either way.

WEEK ONE

Good things don’t end unless the end badly.  Let me politely disagree.  Hey Bear sucked.  She might have been a good person.  I don’t fucking know.  All I know is she always wore midriffs, insisted on making us watch her dance and avoided helicopters at all costs which made me hate her stupid spray tanned face.

The intro made me think that the producers are going to give Ben the orange treatment.  They put homeboy in orange shirts and on orange tractors during orange sunsets.  Then he showed up at the Bachelor house were Hey Bear banged the Assassin and played the song on the piano they played in Girl Next Door when Emile Hirsch banged Elisha Cuthbert after taking her to prom and making her feel less slutty.  (Wasn’t that hilarious that sex made a porn star feel less slutty?  AMERICA!)

We got to the mansion and Chris Harrison came out like it was opening day.  I loved his first speech.  It’s the most sober he will be all year.  There’s no dead hookers backstage.  There’s no drugs hidden in the seams of his outlandish ties.  He’s fresh faced and we get to watch him erode to the point that by the end of the Bachelorette, he’s one foot into rehab.

Onto the girls…

First there was Lindzi, who spells her name like someone who didn’t get much attention as a child.  She’s also way too into horses.  We’ll call her War Horse.  I couldn’t tell if it was the camera angle, the spray tanning or my private shame that a week ago I was covering college football and now I was watching this, but I couldn’t stop focusing on the fact that one of her eyes seemed lower than the other one.

Maybe this was the reason she got dumped in a text message?  I don’t know.  I think you want to dump someone who rides horses in person because she probably goes back to the stable and feeds the thing peppermints and talks to the animal like it cares.  I feel like that’d be fun to watch.

Next up was Amber, the hunter with fake boobs who explained she wanted to invite Ben home to Nebraska for some “Beef Nuts”.  She then explained “beef nuts” are “cow balls”.  I mean, I don’t know whether to blame her or all of Nebraska.  You don’t need a nickname for a nickname.  I mean “balls” aren’t the medical term.  At least in Colorado they call them Rocky Mountain Oysters.  But yeah, Amber.  Thanks for clarifying.  Let me clarify.  I am going to call you Beef Nuts for the rest of the season.  Please don’t shoot me with a fucking crossbow you scary person.

Kacie B. seemed cool.  Not ready to pick on her.  I mean, she was also sprayed with orange Krylon before getting on camera but she had a nice smile and a nice accent and didn’t make me want to rub a cheese grater on my face, so GOOD LUCK TO HER!  I’ll figure out a nickname for her when she eventually drinks too much and fucks up.

Next up was Courtney the model, who was a total pain in the ass from the get go.  If you live in LA, these people are a dime a dozen and they all have crazy issues.  That’s why I am calling her Swimsuit Issues.  She’s like a younger Michelle Money, except she was in the Caesar’s Palace commercial where the dude locks himself out of his room and Michelle just had sex with Carlos Boozer when he was on the Utah Jazz.  Dream big, girls.

The next girl was cute and had to raise her 4 siblings because her family sucks so she’s on the INCREDIBLY SHORT LIST of keepers.

Next was Lyndsie, who took over from War Horse for the lead in the “worst way to spell a common name contest”.  This girls scared me a lot.  Like, I made my wife turn on the lights.  We watch this show in the dark so my neighbors have no proof I watch.  That and I’m fighting a wicked flu or something and this girl’s switching dialects and crazy butt chin were making me see pink elephants. I am just going to call her Fabiolette, because she looks like a female Fabio, or just a skinny Fabio.  Either way.

Next up, Scary Bradshaw.  The crackshots at ABC ripped off the Sex and the City theme and stuck this head case blogger on the scene.  I google’d her blog.  It looked like she just put it up.  Kind of like I now have to put up with her.  Her calling herself a blogger made me want to smash my laptop and run my fingers through a meat slicer at Canter’s.  If she blogs, I need to come up with a new name for what this is.

Next up was Leanne Grimes, a girl that will definitely use her cute kid as ammo to get Ben to like her and slowly the producers will figure out which of her eight hair colors will win the war on her head. I know we’re all looking forward to it.

Another Nicki showed up wearing orange and she is a dental hygienist which was totally because after Hey Bear, Ben needs to cross a few people in the dental field off his list for revenge.  That said, she was cute and had the good Texas accent, not the bad one.  You know what I mean if you know people from Texas.  There’s two.  The good one and the one that makes you want to drown yourself in a public toilet.

Before the girls showed up, Ben and Chris Harrison had a sit down to discuss where he was at emotionally.  ZBOW played it cool and Chris kept nodding quickly because he was getting antsy to go into his private room and start doing drugs.  Being in the mansion does bad things to this man.  He was like “yeah, yeah, Ben, heartbreak, heartbreak, yeah, yeah, do you have a c-note I can roll up?”  I started getting pumped up.

Rachel came out in a red gown and there was something off with her teeth.  She can be The Girl With The Dragon Tattooth.

Then Cleavage Lawyer came in and told a dumb joke and Ben made me laugh when she walked away and he deadpanned “that was funny” in a “I’m going to kill myself” sort of way.  I have high hopes for much more of this as he begins making out with these people.

Then there was Canadian Bacon, Bad Dress Personal Trainer and then Scary Bradshaw came out and got so awkward I developed a stomach ache.  You know bad things are coming when they play the “creepy Bachelor theme”.  This began a long string of creepiness from Scary where she over-analyzed everything all night.  I swear to God she was planted by the producers.

Swimsuit Issues came out and immediately made it to the fantasy suite because Ben was all “that is a pretttty girl” and the rest of America said the same thing.  The Bachelor provides you the luxury of keeping an egomaniac like this until the final 3 for some kind of possibly-illegal sexual test drive. Congrats Swimsuit, you’ll be riding in a lot of helicopters.

Next was a disease doctor or something like that.  She had good game making him Purell and Binaca before kissing.  She had kind of bad skin and later rapped about infectious diseases, so I’m going to call her Outbreak.  Also ran:  Proactiv and Contagion.  Still, she seems alright and her rapping was better than Serial Kasey’s singing from the Muppet years.

WTF with Miss Pacific Palisades?  Eff off.

Then a girl with a mesh dress.  Then Beef Nuts pulled some dumb love at first sight thing.  Then a psycho with a huge ass hat came out and asked Ben what Kentucky was known for.  I was like Bourbon and Baseball Bats.  Ben said Bourbon and I gave him cosmic knuckles for getting it right.  But she was like, HOT GIRLS AND HORSES.  I’m just calling her Hat Shit Crazy.

Then there was some crazy skinny girl that I couldn’t pay attention to, I just wanted her to eat something.  I was actually for real worried about her.  When the damn model weighs 20 pounds more than you, you are probably dying soon.

Then a girl brought her Grandma out to block for her, which IS a football reference because she looks just like Julie Taylor from Friday Night Lights, which is her new nickname.  She also was accentuating her chest region.  Clear eyes, full hearts, big boobs.

Nicki dental hygienist was a knockout in her yellow dress.  Final 3.  Calling it.  I just felt bad for Ben who was struggling not to look down her shirt.  I mean like, it looked physically difficult like carrying a couch up the stairs or passing a kidney stone.

Then Gigglepuss McCandytaster came out.  Whatever.

One girls just blew past ZBOW and that game might have been cool if I believed she actually was smart enough to figure out the guy waiting outside the mansion in a suit was the Bachelor.  For all I know she just was cold.

Leanne Grimes wore her prom dress which was a bad call for taste, but a good call for letting Ben know what 75% of you looks like naked.  Like a test drive or something.  Still, she could be a shady candidate and her kid seems cool, which can really work for you in this messed up game.

War Horse showed up on a horse, which totally worked for her and she looked cute in the horse riding hat.  Her eyes lined up this time too.  Maybe it was the cough syrup.  When she said she rode a horse in, Hat Shit Crazy was like “BITCH”.  Loved it.

Looking at the room, it was a TON of people that were like nurses or dentists or nurse-dentists and like 2/3 of them were from the south.  ZBOW, what did you ask Harrison to hook you up with?

Look, the first episode is a huge clusterfuck and there’s no way I can cover everything that happened, but here are some observations for your reading pleasure.

Every girl drank wine to not offend Ben.  This lead to not enough drunkness except for a few choice shitshows.

Girl With The Dragon Tattooth had a lot of ear piercing stuff going on.   What’s the deal?  You don’t buy piercings in bulk.  You don’t go to Costco and get as many as you can.  You sort of just pick and choose.  Maybe it was a tragic fishing accident and I owe her an apology.

Blakely (really?) and Purple People Eater (based on her dress color and her general bitchiness) had a little “thing” going on.  Note to viewers.  Cheap chardonnay causes these two to forget their sexual orientation.  Ben, tip for Envolve Wines.  Figure out how to manipulate oaky Chardonnays to consistently have this effect and you will start selling cases to fraternities by the truck load.

Was positive that Leanne Grimes was going to come out of her dress when they played soccer.  You?

Scary Bradshaw got mindeffed by Purple People Eater (and the chardonnay) and went into a place so crazy I honesty broke into a cold sweat as I was sure she was speaking in tongues and the apocalypse had started.  Every time she’d finish a sentence she’d do something so creepy with her lips.  Like Will Ferrell as Mugatu in Zoolander in the “foamy latte” scene.  Like she couldn’t decide if she needed to sneeze or receive an exorcism.

Of course, Ben was given 3 million dollars to pick her to keep her an extra week (just like Hey Bear and The Mask).  Of course, she is a package deal with Purple People Eater and her oddly named potential lifemate Blakely.  (Really?)  Also, real quick Blakely, what is a VIP Cocktail Waitress?  Sounds like a stripper.  Sorry.  Calling it like it is.  Never been at a bar that offered the choice of a cocktail waitress or a VIP cocktail waitress.  Or you work somewhere with bottle service and that makes you an awful human being.  Either way, let me know.

First impression rose went to War Horse, and after spending 2 hours with the rest of this crew, that seemed reasonable.  Crazy potential is high this season and I am sure Ben will enjoy watching it.

The Rose ceremony cut the girl who doesn’t eat, Giggles McCandywhatever, Candian Bacon, Fabiolette and Beef Nuts.  And probably other people I never bothered to know were there.

Real quick, before the Rose Ceremony, anyone see Harrison came out with a knife to clink on his glass for a toast?  A knife?  Who was he stabbing or what was he cutting lines of backstage?

The show is off and running.  I am back on the case.  I am staying sharp in the football offseason and glad to be back in touch with my Jan-Aug crowd.  Sup.  Yeah you.  You look good.

We’re here to watch ZBOW find love and what better place to watch him find love than on Lost Angeles, home of me, the destroyer of worlds.

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