The Jeff R Project

For a long time, Chris and I have been talking about getting another dog. Getting a playmate for Rumble would make all of us happy a lot of the time, but also make my life (and commute with 2 dogs) a lot harder, so needless to say we are still a 1 dog family.

Anyway, now that I’ve finished my laughing fit, I need to relate what brought on that bought of happiness. Although I forget what started it, it basically involved my suggesting a name for the hypothetical new dog.

One of the qualities of a pet name, or given the odd names for children (Apple for example)  these days – kids,  is what I call the field test. Imagine yourself having to call for your dog (or child) across an open field full of families and children. How would it sound to innocent bystanders.

My suggested name for the new dog:

Bitches. But said with a slight ghetto twang to it. You know, like a peeimp (pimp ya know).

It goes downhill from there as I start running the field test on it and was entirely amused by the result.

• “Bitches, come bitches, come.”
• “Bitches want a cookie?”
• “High five Bitches.”
• “Shake Bitches.”
• “I slept with Bitches last night.”
• “Hi, ABC Dog Training? I’d like to register Bitches for puppy class… Hello?”
• “Don’t poop on the rug!!! Bad Bitches, bad!”

I know, about 1/2 of you are SO FURIOUS with me right now for something. I don’t care. For 10 minutes, Chris and I were in hysterics over it. It wasn’t malicious, it was just entertaining. It was even better than my 30 minutes of bad puns about the fastener store.

Fuck you, Ty Pennington.

A few months ago B.C. Place was host to a semi-annual Home and Garden show sponsored by HGTV. Along with the usual cadre of HGTV.ca hosts (Colin & Justin, Sarah whatsername) they featured Ty Pennington, host of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, this is the show where they take “needy” families who are usually in some sort of serious distress and give them a new house. The family may have had a fire, a series of deaths in the family, a disabled child or something that has caused them to livin’ in the margins of life.

Most of the families seriously need help. They’re often living 4 and 5 to a room, if they’re even that lucky. Sometimes they don’t even have rooms.

Somehow, they’ve managed to get the family together and obtain a video camera to submit a request to ABC explaining how and why they deserve a new house. After some kind of screening process, ABC decides on a deserving family each week and Ty and his team swoop in, shoot some emotion-driven video and destroy their house.

Then, while the family is on vacation, the Ty-driven-dream-team recruits some locals who want to be on TV and build an entirely new house in just 7 days. God complex anyone? There’s an abundance of stories about how crap these houses are, leaving the family with a camera-beautiful home, but leaky roofs, toilets and other mechanical problems. It’s hard to believe the it takes a year to normally build a house, but a huge number of people can build one in a week.

So, back to the Vancouver story.

I don’t remember exactly how it went, but I asked Chris if he wanted to go to the home show. He gave me the sad-puppy face and said “Why would I want to do that?” and I replied “Ty Pennington is going to be there.”

He promptly replied “Fuck Ty Pennington!!!” (Possibly with more exclamation points). He seriously objects to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition not just tugging on heartstrings, but actively plucking on them with a chainsaw and exploiting hard done by families.

Ever since then, it’s been Chris’s catch phrase. If anyone (me or on TV) mentions Ty Pennington, Chris exlaims “Fuck Ty Pennington!!”

Tonight, he added Steve Jobs. “Fuck Ty Pennington!!! and Fuck Steve Jobs!!!” was heard. I should go find out what happened to iTunes. It’s usually the cause of Chris cursing Steve Jobs.