I've gotta get those Glengarry leads! Fun TV find inside:

[jane_pippin]

The other day the boyfriend and I were bored out of our gourds. Having tired of traditional entertainment like movies, records, good tv shows, board games, cleaning the house, jumping jacks, etc., we decided to enjoy some tasty beverages and venture into the vast wasteland of digital cable's upper channels. (You know, the land of weird infomercials and nonsensical, almost universally ignored, badly produced crapola.)

We sat through a few minutes of an infomercial or two, but it wasn't quite what we were looking for. We were worried we'd have to kill the time by--eep--actually talking to each other, but then we found

The Real Estate Channel!

OH! What a treasure trove of fun this is! It's, as you may imagine, fairly straightforward. Pictures of homes for sale, the price, how to contact the realtors.
Sounds boring. Until you sit through a couple of the homes.
Then you start noticing a few things like how people decorate their $500,000 homes or $139,000 condos. (As an aside, can I just say that if you're going to drop $139,000 on a condo, please spend a few extra bucks on an actual coffee table too. Plastic crates are so 1991. Come on now people.)

The other end of that spectrum is pretty great too. The $44,000 dollar gem that--from what we could tell--had no door, just an open space with something resembling a door sorta half on it, but did feature an actual carport! (It's a steal!) It looked like Carl's house from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, if you need a reference.

Finally, after sitting though enough of these you get to know the realtors too. That might be my favorite part of all. In addition to the little picture of the person that goes with each of their properties, there are segments that feature certain realtors too so we can get to know them and their track record. AND it looks like the company produced the segments all by themselves. (Hat's off to them and their thick Wisconsin accents too!) After a while you can start making up back-stories for the people--who's moving in on whose territory, who's a player, who seems more like Gil from the Simpson's--Oh the mind runs wild with a springboard like this!

Anyhoo, I've gone on long enough, but I do encourage you to see if your town has one of these time killers and give it a chance. I know it seems extremely weird, but someday when you're that bored you might understand.

[bertha katzenengel]

1. I get it. You need stuff like that sometimes when you're bored. Here's one

I found - I actually like it but the "hostess" is TERRIBLE. It's on Animal Planet, called "Backyard Habitat." It's an extension (officially?) of National Wildlife Federation's Backyard Habitat program. This woman :puke: and a representative of NWF go to people's backyards and do a little remodeling to make the yard wildlife- and eco-friendly -- for stuff like frogs, butterflies, insects, birds.

Very interesting but the show sucks.

[jane_pippin]

2. That does sound interesting.

What makes her so terrible? Is she just uncomfortable in front of the camera or overenthusiastic or what?

[bertha katzenengel]

3. Hmm... how do I describe her? Picture the standard "re-do your house"

show hostess, like on "While You Were Out." But she definitely overdoes it. Way too much hand movement, too much emphasis on the wrong words, etc.