MOC Day 11 - Tell me a story (500+ words)
One more episode - Becca Bonneville
https://the-lilypad.com/store/One-More-Episode-by-Becca-Bonneville.html
Big Photo Templates 6 - Scrapping with Liz
https://the-lilypad.com/store/Big-Photo-Templates-6.html
For the Love of Journaling - Emphatic Brushes - Allison Pennington
https://the-lilypad.com/store/For-the-Love-of-Journaling-The-Brushes-emphatic.html
Journaling (789 words)
I haven’t always been a reality TV fan, or ‘unscripted drama’ shows as they call them now. When the OJ Simpson car chase was on TV in 1994 was so mad that the news coverage of the chase interrupted Seaquest. That was back in the day before On Demand and you had to try to catch the missed episode on reruns. The only shows about real life people I watched back in the day was about the Royal Family - I remember watching the royal wedding of Prince Andrew and Fergie with my mom as a kid, but otherwise I just wanted to watch sitcoms!
The first real reality TV show I remember is Survivor. I was going into my final year of University to get my degree in Sociology so you’d think I would be all over this “social experiment’ to put people on an island together and compete to win a million dollars. In truth I thought it was so stupid until the end, when Susan Hawk went completely bonkers in the final tribal council, and Richard Hatch won. I hated him, but haven’t missed a show since! I do forget a lot of the people in recent years when they return to the show for a second chance. I remember hysterically laughing with my mom in 2005 when one tribe ended up with just one person left - we both had tears streaming down our faces from laughing so hard when the tribe was decimated to just one person.
From there it seemed like reality TV just exploded, along with my interest in it. I started watching The Amazing Race from the very first season and it’s still one of my favourites - getting to imagine visiting all the exotic places I would hope to travel to eventually. American Idol was a fave for a few years, from the year Kelly Clarkson won until a few years before it went off the air. The best was the auditions and the terrible singers (William Hung!).
And don’t even get me started on the shows on The Learning Channel (TLC). Trading Spaces was always good for a laugh - remember the feathers on the wall? OMG! Clean Sweep had me setting my alarm on weekends to catch the new episodes when they aired (again, before On Demand or PVR’s were invented!). I also loved watching What Not to Wear, though to be honest I probably should have been on the show instead of watching it!
Of course, as life changed for me so did the shows I watched - I caught every episode of A Wedding Story while planning our wedding and A Baby Story while pregnant with Kaitlyn. I watched the first few seasons of The Biggest Loser and Mark and I watched Newlyweds - Nick and Jessica while we were planning our wedding (Chicken of the Sea!).
I was late to the party with Big Brother, but that’s another one I still like to watch, along with Big Brother Canada - because why not devote 3 nights a week to one show, two seasons a year? A bunch of my girlfriends and I got together weekly to watch The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise for a few years - it was a great excuse to get together every week, have some good eats and good company.
From there it seemed like we just started watching other people’s lives - no competitions involved! Their lives sometimes were just so fascinating compared to our little small town Canadian existence. From the crazy antics of the rich & semi famous (Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie) in The Simple Life, to a much more normal family of the Roloffs in Little People Big World. Don’t forget the families with a lot of kids: Jon and Kate plus Eight (and later just Kate plus 8), and 17/18/19+ Kids and Counting. Then of course there’s the people with other types of problems - Judge Judy, Intervention, Hoarders, My 600 lb life.
The one thing I never really got into was Dancing with the Stars or any of the other singing competitions - and honestly, I didn’t need to, as we watch too much TV! I still like a good sitcom or medical drama (hello, ER and Grey’s Anatomy!) and these days I’m still watching Survivor, The Amazing Race, and Big Brother. We also still watch Judge Judy, and at any given moment HGTV can be counted on for do it yourself shows, home buying, lotto winning, you name it! Having a teenager has gotten us into Dr. Pimple Popper and the grossness that ensues from it! One thing is for sure - never, never have I ever watched the Kardashians, or any of the Real Housewives shows. The buck stops there!
