Tuesday, January 09, 2007

We Had Many Emotional Reactions, Most Of Which Involved Self-Loathing. It Was A Lot Like The Real Dating World, Actually.

Like many of you, probably, we sat down to watch "Gay, Straight or Taken?" last night. We're not sure we'd do it again, but like sex with a woman, we thought it was best to wince through it at least once to see what it was like. In case you missed it, Slate has a good little wrap-up.

Our overall impression was that it was less offensive than it could have been. Yes, it trotted out stereotypes, but has anyone seen "Will & Grace" or "Queer Eye" lately? The only bit that annoyed us, really, was when the girls in both episodes apologized to the boys who they had wrongly assumed where gay. Somehow we're not sure "I'm sorry for thinking you were Jewish" would have made it past the editors. Oh, and we wanted to ax murder the dude pictured above.

But the girls largely avoided putting their feet in their mouths, which surprised and impressed us. We loved it when Jenner, the first contestant, was so appalled by one of her suitor's teeny boxcut swimtrunks that she murmured, "I thought he must be the gay one when I saw his...swimming...underpants." We will definitely be using the phrase "swimming underpants" this summer at Fire Island, and are considering lobbying to change the name of "GayzOfOurLives" to "The Swimming Underpants Blog."

We think the best part of the episodes are when the boyfriend and girlfriend of the Gay and Taken boys show up. Especially since in the second episode, an extremely hot (or at least well put-together) guy turned out to have a completely busted girlfriend, and it visibly threw everyone on camera off guard.

But, of course, the best parts of the experience in general were the relentless ads for the Lifetime Original Movie "To Be Fat Like Me," which were blatantly targeted at the homo audience watching "GSoT." Lifetime execs must have realized, too late, that no overweight housewife wants to watch a movie about a skinny pretty girl pretending to be fat, feeling bad, and then going back to being skinny and pretty again. Thank God the gays, who are the only other demographic to watch Lifetime, eat that shit UP.

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