It's Not Your House Anymore!!!

Okay.

Fortified with a nice glass of Cotes du Rhone, I sat down this evening to watch a bit of television. I surfed around and landed on TLC and a show called "Moving Up." The premise of this show is stunningly simple: Two houses, one a starter home, the other a step up from a starter home. First-time buyers purchase the starter home and proceed to renovate it to their own taste. The couple who sold their starter home to the first-time buyers purchase the step-up home and proceed to renovate it to THEIR taste. Then the people who sold the first-time buyers their home come back to tour the renovated house and comment on the changes, and the people who sold THEM their step-up home come back to tour that house (which has also been renovated) and comment on the changes.

For some reason, none of the sellers seem aware that once someone else buys and moves into the house you sold them, IT'S NOT YOUR HOUSE ANYMORE!!!!

Now, I'm sure that the couples who come back to tour their erstwhile homes are instructed by directors to find as much fault as possible, but DAMN, people! At least TRY to be consistent!!

Case in point:

In tonight's episode, the first-time buyers changed a retro-looking battleship-grey kitchen with standard black granite countertops into something a bit warmer. They installed cherry cabinets and a counter of mottled beige and brown granite. Not really to my taste (which shifts rather violently between sparkly granite like uba tuba butterfly--which we wanted but couldn't ultimately afford for our kitchen redo--and retro boomerang Formica in turquoise or red with assorted pastel motifs), but not horrible. Just different from what the old owners had.

When the former owners (we'll call them the step-ups) came to see the renovation, though, they were offended by the change. They didn't like the cabinets. They were especially put out at the granite, because they believed their old granite to be "perfect." Okay... the new kitchen is not to their taste, but hey! IT"S NOT YOUR HOUSE ANYMORE!!!!

Fast forward a bit to the walk-through of the step-up's newly renovated home. When the step-ups bought the house, the kitchen was all white save for a butcher-block wood countertop. Care to guess what kind of cabinets and countertops the step-ups put into the kitchen once THEY bought the house??? Walnut cabinets (ooohhhh.... so NOT like cherry!) and the VERY SAME beigy-brown mottled granite for the counters!!! Huh??? It's blasphemy in your old home, but it's what you love in your new one?? Oy, gevalt!

But wait!! There's more!!

In the starter home, the original bathroom was an artifact of the 1950s, complete with cotton-candy pink ceramic tile surrounding the entire room. I have to admit, that had its charms for me. I probably would have worked with it, myself, although it's not what I envision for the master bath remodel we are planning for our own place sometime in the future (like when we pay off the kitchen reno in about eight years or so...sigh). But the first-time buyers didn't like it. They tore out the old tile and put in beige tiles (I'm sensing a "color" preference here).

As you have probably already surmised, the step-ups were outraged that the first-timers had torn out a piece of history. It was original to the house and it was now gone forever! How dare they?? Because (time for a clue...) IT'S THEIR HOUSE NOW--IT'S NOT YOUR HOUSE ANYMORE!!!

But oh, the irony... What did the step-ups rip up when they reno'd the bathroom in their step-up house? Why, nothing other than the original yellow 1960s tile, original to the house! And what did they replace it with??? BEIGE tile!! Good grief!! And when the former owners commented that the step-ups had torn out a piece of history, the step-ups were--you're way ahead of me here, I can tell!--outraged!! That old tile was hideous and outdated, thankyouverymuch!

I have to tell you, I was channeling my dad, yelling at the TV, trying to holler some sense into these idiots.

Oh well... I just had to share.

I don't think I've had enough of that fine French wine yet, do you? Heh!

True Confession Time

Okay, time to come clean.

I'm not much of a TV-watcher, really. The last time I watched something on network TV was when I played along to "Jeopardy" on the afternoon of Martin Luther King day, which I had off from work. I've never seen an episode of "American Idol." I think I've seen one episode of "Survivor" and that was only because my pals Beth and Barb were visiting and they didn't want to miss it.

About the only shows I insist upon watching regularly are "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." Aside from those offerings, I'm more likely to surf the movie channels than anything else.

But, yeah... I've been hooked on my share of trashy cable TV offerings, including "Flavor of Love," "Celebrity Fit Club," and a short-lived show that featured b-list celebrities hunting ghosts in notoriously haunted buildings--a show that I don't even remember the name of (but it was pretty unintentionally funny).

Blame the writers' strike on my latest embarrassing TV addiction: MTV's weekend marathons of "America's Next Top Model."

I'm not proud of that--but they say the first step to solving a problem is to admit that you have one. Here is the problem: Once I surf onto one of these shows in progress, I must stop there and watch. And watch. And watch. No matter that it is about the most shallow, vacuous show ever. No matter that almost all the aspiring models are dumb as posts. No matter that every cycle follows the same pattern, down to a regular viewer (which, I guess, is what I have become) knowing that only five girls get to go to the international fashion city of choice for that go-round, or that the infamous "go-see" episode always occurs when the field has been winnowed to four supermodel wannabes...

What is the attraction? After all, I'm about the least fashion-forward person ever... (although I will cop to the fact that I own a hell of a lot of shoes).

Well, where else on TV will you hear a pretty young thing admit that she didn't know how to react when the photo-shoot director told her she "looked regal" because she didn't know what regal meant? Where else can an apprentice fashionista confide in you with the utmost confidence that she's so jazzed to be posing with an elephant because it IS part of the dinosaur family? And the go-see episodes are singularly amusing for the way the challenge exposes the utter lack of common sense and basic map-reading skills these glamour gals possess.

But that's not the attraction. Well, not the main one.

It certainly isn't the cliquish, middle-school mentality that prevails in the posh digs where the contestants lodge during the weeks they are involved in the show. Really, how much of a revelation can it be that these pretty girls are catty and jealous and do bitchy things like pouring another contestant's energy drinks down the bathroom sink in retaliation for a couple of disappearing granola bars or writing "Clean Up Your Shit" in the surface of a pan of just-baked brownies (these sticks eat brownies?) because the girl who baked them leaves dirty dishes in the sink?

No, that's not the attraction either.

Nope. The attraction is the pictures. The photos by which each girl is judged at the end of each show. They are quirky and fascinating and (probably the biggest draw to a magpie such as I) very often involve lots of sequins and spangles and sparkles. Also, I rarely can fathom the criticisms leveled at the photos by the panel of "expert" judges--so often they will pick apart a photo that I think is stunning, only to laud one I think is lame in the extreme.

That, and I find that I'm a sucker for the elimination angle.

Suckered in, that's me.

I'm not proud of that.

But maybe now that I've confessed, I have a slender hope of recovery...