Lady Business: Something out of nothing

Summertime is a real snooze-fest for TV watchers such as myself. Last Summer, we cut cable and brought it back just in time for It’s Always Sunny. We kept it this year because it was such a hassle to connect it again. However, the offerings are pretty slim out there when one absolutely, positively refuses to watch shows of the America’s Got Talent variety.

I’ve come up with some games to make the best of a sad situation and keep myself entertained without having to actually leave the house,  live my life or be social.

What are they doing right now? – I play this a lot with the Real Housewives series because Bravo has them on 24/7. When I see it on the guide, I take a guess as to what’s going on in the show and change the channel to find out if I’m correct. You can be as creative as you like. For the Housewives, the choices usually are:

A woman talking into a cell phone while holding it in front of her face.
Several women fighting with each other and waving wine around.
Several women discussing the previous night’s fight over lunch.
An exterior shot of a house the size of your high-school. Beige, of course.
A commercial for tampons.

Mixed Martial Arts is also great for this. Choices can be:

Fighters dancing around and flinching away from punches.
Fighters locked together in what appears to be humping with extreme violence.
Fighters pacing around the floor with nervous energy. 
A shot of the ring with a bloody mat. 
A commercial for Axe.

Can you believe this value? – We get two home shopping networks for some reason. I used to love Tivo because it let you choose the channels wanted to receive and I could always block them. However, we now have whatever our cable company is calling itself now’s DVR and I can’t figure out how to block the channels. So, I turned home shopping into a game. The way you play is, you see how many ways a salesperson can describe a certain item without repeating themselves. I must warn you, these people are GOOD. I once watched two women describing an outdoor/gardening shoe without repeating themselves for nearly 20 minutes. I was mesmerized. I may have also been hepped up on cold medicine, or just tremendously bored. I can’t recall which.

Where have I seen that actor before? – As an avid Law and Order rerun watcher, I tend to run across a dearth of people that look familiar that I can’t quite place. I think every actor was on there at least once. That casting director must know EVERYBODY. It also explains the fact that when Jerry Orbach’s photo popped up in the Oscars montage the year he died, the room went nuts. However, I digress. For this game, you either have to have a good brain for faces, or access to the IMDB website. It also helps to have a pause button on your TV, and to have seen a lot of Seinfeld episodes.

Blind Instant Streaming – Sometimes, I find that I spend far too much time choosing something from the Netflix Instant Streaming menu. So, I’ll close my eyes and hit the buttons like crazy. Whatever movie I land on, I have to watch for at least five minutes. I must admit that this game is mostly for laughs, because it inevitably lands on something so criminally awful that I can’t bring myself to press play.

And she was all… –  On our honeymoon, we watched a Spanish dubbed version of Junior, made up some dialogue and ended up with the line “I can’t believe I drank the baby.” (I don’t think I fully understood how Mr. Schwarzenegger was intended to get pregnant in the film.) Of course, don’t limit yourself to talking over shows in a foreign language. Just put the TV on mute, and start gabbing away at anything. The best things seem to be soap operas, and shows aimed at teens.

TV and I are so close that we finish each other’s sentences -  Sometimes, the menu cuts off the title of a show. The game here is to figure out the rest of the title before clicking the info button. I’m always wrong. My favorite channel for this is Lifetime. One time, it just said “Love’s…” which pretty much opens the box for anything. For instance (taking into account that its Lifetime), “Love’s…Brutal Beating at the Hands of  a Man That Seemed Perfect at First” or “Love’s…Forbidden Tempation Ruins Your Marriage and You’re Left to Pick Up the Pieces on Your Own Because Men Are Selfish!”. Turns out, it was “Love’s Deadly Triangle”. So close!