EVERY WIFE ON EVERY SHOW ON HGTV

I took a crack at what the casting specs must look like for ladies on shows like House Hunters:

Female, any race, ages 23-45. Looking for perpetually displeased women who feel like getting a 4 bedroom 2.5 bath is a god-given right. Must be really into laminate wood flooring, but only if it’s dark, because light wood is “so 90’s.” Must be between a 6 and 8 because we wouldn’t want to upstage the hosts, now would we? Bonus points for those willing to “do some of the work yourself” even though all you’ll do is move a small plank from the kitchen to the back yard. Pear bottoms are preferred. Applicant’s default facial expression must look like you’ve just smelled a compost bin in Mississippi in August. Your chances increase exponentially if you appear to be constantly on the verge of burning this whole motherfucker down. An underlying tension between you and your spouse is ideal. We want your overall aura to oscillate between a smoldering disappointment about having settled and genuine excitement about starting your first home with your young family. Must be able to speak freely about how hard it is to raise a kid and how you’re on the fence about having a second. Must also be comfortable with unleashing poison-tipped comments about how your significant other just has to have that man-cave for watching action flicks and football even though everybody knows it’ll just turn into a masturbatorium with wall-to-wall carpets.

And for the men:

Male, any race, ages 23-75. Just looking for some pushovers who look super-uncomfortable on camera. 

THE TIME COOK BUTTON ON MICROWAVES

If you can’t simply enter your desired time then hit start, your microwave is so good it sucks, end of story. Otherwise you need a degree in mechanical astrophysical bioengineering to make it work. You have to hit time cook, then enter the time, then, well, sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it makes you hit a power level. And that power level button works 4% of the time. When you finally get the power button to beep, how the hell do you then enter the time? So you hit cancel and you’re back to square one. By now your appetite is gone and all you taste is pure, rage-filled frustration. You don’t even want that quesadilla anymore. What you do want is to throw that microwave out the window, but you can’t even do that, because you snuck into a complete stranger’s house to make a righteous quesadilla and throwing out their microwave would be insanely disrespectful. And you know what else chafes my undercarriage? When people throw down an emphatic “end of story” then continue to tell their story.

 

SPAGHETTI SAUCE STAINS ON TUPPERWARE

Maybe I’m holding the bat too tight but spaghetti sauce stains on tupperware make me want to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. No matter how much you scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub it just refuses to come out. It makes you feel like sadness will takeover the land and death will rain down upon us all. It makes you feel like no matter how hard you try in life nothing will ever work out the way you want it. It makes you feel like grabbing your best friend Thelma’s hand and driving off a cliff together. It makes you feel like fashioning a shirt on a stick so it holds some essentials and jumping on the first empty train car out of here. It makes you feel like wrapping a belt around your neck and holy shit I have to stop listening to this Tracy Chapman record.