1.) Martha Stewart Vs. Rachael Ray
Last night on Nightline, Cynthia McFadden tried to stir up shit between the two women.

2.) Martha Stewart Vs. Sarah Palin
But on the red carpet this week, Martha didn't need any encouragement to talk shit on Sarah.

3.) Piper Palin Child Beauty Queen
Earlier this week, I joked that Piper Palin was wearing so much makeup for Sarah's interview with Barbara Walters that she practically looked high glitz.

Later that day, Oprah's camera crew went to Wasilla to film the Palin family at home, where Piper was wearing a crown and a sash.

4.) Mother/daughter bonding

5.) The D.E.N.N.I.S. System
It's funny 'cause it's true.

6.) Crap letter from a dude
As featured on True Life: I Can't Leave My Boyfriend. The guy later came back to her apartment when she wasn't home, and stole all of her electronics and her dog.

7.) America's Next Top Amityville Horror
ANTM aired some never-before-seen moments, and I'd rather that this one had stayed unseen.

8.) Drunk idiots
The people on the Real World/Road Rules Challenge get so stupid drunk that they always end up fighting, and subsequently kicked off the show (whichseems to be their sole source of income). Brad started in with Darrell for no reason.

And then Darrell turned Brad into Quasimodo.

9.) Sewing with Nancy
Her awkwardness makes me uncomfortable.

10.) Stomache

Grace is a 20-year-old college student who met her 40-year-old boyfriend Hangman (yes, that's his name) on MySpace. She moved to NYC to be with him, and all they do together is sit at home and eat Chinese food (he won't eat any other kind of cuisine) while he bids for things on eBay. Watching their interaction is infuriating, because she obviously doesn't understand (yet) that she could do a million times better.


Eventually Grace moves back to her hometown in Pennsylvania, but still can't bring herself to completely break up with Hangman. She believes that on a looks scale, he's a 10. And she thinks that the note that he wrote on her mirror—"Somebody loves somebody"—is sweet and romantic, so she won't wash it off. She eventually went back to NYC to visit him, and two months later, he finally made an effort to visit her in Pennsylvania, where he took her out to eat... at a Chinese buffet. And she was excited about that. I hope she watched this show and realized how crappy this guy is. In every way.

Aja is a 28-year-old mother who worked in a real estate for a Fortune 500 company. She was making a decent living, but spent her earnings on designer handbags, clothes, and a pricey rental in Brentwood. Having not put any money away, she now is living in a one-bedroom apartment with her three kids, and looking for work. Her situation is everything Suze Orman has been warning us about.


Aja has had to pull her kids out of private school and receives aid from WIC, which oddly, has restrictions on certain cheeses.


Caitlin is 25 and worked in the subprime mortgage division of Lehman Brothers. She used to go out to dinner six nights a week, traveled extensively, and shopped frequently. Now she's working three jobs just to stay afloat.


Lastly, there's Adam, 26, who once worked at a PR firm. In the course of this episode, he lost his apartment, was dumped by his girlfriend, and switched from fancy beer to 40s of malt liquor.

Steiglitz, who worked in the field, filming her own footage, said that she'd been in some risky situations for the show—maximum security prison, in bullet-proof vest, looking for illegal immigrants crossing the US/Mexico border, etc.—but claims that "by far the worst was being in the projects." While trying to film exteriors for the show, Stieglitz was repeatedly shot at...albeit with a paintball gun.

Jason works at a pizza parlor and recently got engaged. He wants to get a better job to make a better life for himself and his fiancee, but feels that his tattoos — particularly the ones on his face, neck, and hands — will hold him back from being hired somewhere. He began the process of laser removal, but didn't realize that the healing process would include giant, puss/blood-filled blisters.

Having blisters, of course, was not a good thing considering that he works with food. Especially when he started "softly draining" them in the employee bathroom. His boss told him he had to go home, and lose the day's pay.

Actually, all of the tattooed individuals on the show seemed to compulsively make decisions that were not completely thought out, like Ali, a 26-year-old woman who had her fiancé's name tattooed on her arm, after they were together for four months.

A few months after that, he left her, and subsequently (softly?) drained her bank account. Ali suffered a nervous breakdown. Now she can't stand to even look at his name on her arm. She doesn't have a job, and can't afford laser removal, but was able to scrape together enough money to get another tattoo to cover up the original. However, this would require that she get almost her entire forearm covered in ink. She briefly considered the fact that she might hate this new, larger tattoo, and that it might hurt her chances at getting a job in a law office. But she went ahead and got the cover-up tat anyway.

Then she got back together with her ex-fiancé.

Tryce ended up not setting Wendel's clothes on fire, because she couldn't find her lighter. However, she did pour bleach all over them. I don't know why she was "shocked" that he took the TV with him.

Adam is a 28-year-old devout Christian who married his high school sweetheart. He's been forced to move into a shitty bachelor pad when he could not comply with his wife's demand that he stop, not only masturbating to porn, but masturbating altogether, which is something that Adam does on a daily basis. They continue to refer to his quest to rid himself of masturbation as "getting sober."

My question is, how does she know when he's masturbating, and why is masturbation a deal breaker?

The couple is in counseling and Adam has called on the XXX Church, a Christian anti-pornography group that utilizes a "hip" aesthetic to convince people that not liking porn is "cool."

Craig, the founder of XXX Church, came over Adam's house and his first order of business was to change the password on Adam's porn sites so that he couldn't access them. Ironically—or perhaps just weirdly—Adam's password was "ilovedenise." Denise is his wife. In the end, he checked himself into a sexual addiction recovery center as a way to patch things up with his wife.

The fact that the couples' religion played such a heavy role in what they view as a problem makes me suspicious of whether or not Adam is truly addicted to porn, or if he and his wife have been conditioned to think that his natural impulses to jerk off are evil and wrong.

However, one of the other subjects of the show, Brandon, seems to have a full-fledged addiction to porn, which is indicated by his "Born for Porn" T-shirt."

He's 26, unemployed, and lives with his grandma. He watches porn 5 - 10 hours a day, visits an adult video shop called Spanky's on a "daily basis," and admits that porn keeps him detached from women, because it allows him to enjoy women without having to deal with their real-life drama.

The third person featured on the show was 22-year-old Michele.

Her porn name is Jayden James, which is sort of disturbing because that's Britney Spears' second son's name. Michele/Jayden's biggest concern is that she doesn't think she makes her parents proud, but doesn't want to give up what she loves most, which is getting paid for sex.

Like Adam, her situation didn't exactly seem like an addiction, but instead an inner struggle between doing what she likes, and doing what her family members would like. Ultimately, she came to the conclusion that "my decisions are my decisions and I'm happy with myself."

Bonus Clip!
You have to see how stereotypically sleazy, yet completely unenthusiastic this porn director is.

• We were so into the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints and their Yearning For Zion Ranch, where girls in their early teens get married off to gross molesty old men with multiple other wives, none of whom are allowed to wear red because that's Jesus' color.
  
• Are those teens better, or worse off than the brave 8-year-old Yemeni girl name Nojoud Muhammed Nasser who was married off by her crazy homeless father, but has now successfully filed for divorce.
  
• A study in contrasts: the marriage of Nojoud Muhammed Nasser versus the insane Southern belles of MTV's True Life who call themselves "old maids" at age 24.

• OMG I almost forgot about that Australian father and daughter who fuck and have babies. Oh ew.
• Can't some people just have a nice, normal wedding that doesn't involve incest, polygamy, statutory rape, fake boobs or Botox?
• Mommablogger Dooce appears to be a fairly reasonable person whose wedding probably didn't involve any of those things.
• Karl Lagerfeld hates Dooce's kid, though. Actually he hates all children. And also fat people!
• You know who probably had kind of shitty moms? Those horrid teenage cheerleader bitches who beat the living hell out of their friend and may now face life in prison.
• So make a bonfire out of Cosmo's "Sexy" issue, and rip off that bandanna you've been wearing. Let it all hang out this weekend!