Lord Byron Part 1: Blue Light Special

It's time for a new season of the bachelor! New rules to play by, and a new theme of Two-Fers: Famous Duos Throughout History. Meet Siegfreid and Roy for the new millenium--Byron and Jay.

First, a word about Lord Byron. We are first introduced to LB in a video segmet ("meet the bachelors the women must choose between") in which we learn that Byron has in fact had a mullet for his entire adult life. Following the pubescent sprouting of the original bowlcut, we are faced with a montage of Mullets Through the Ages, culminating in Lord Byron's current Fashion Options. These options are, in no particular order, 1) the mussy mullet, 2) the I-couldn't-get-more-creme-in-my-hair-if-I-tried slicked-back mullet, and 3) the most popular choice of both LB and women in the 1950s, that sort of smoothed down into a soup-can curl at the bottom mullet. He tends to choose #3 for the more serious moments on the show.

At any rate, LB is a 40-year-old pro bass fisher (and perhaps a "dynamite kisser?" Oh wait, that's a country song) from Nevada, has a big dog, was previously married to the "wrong girl" who "chose the nightlife of Las Vegas" over him, and is searching for a "union of two souls." As you might guess, LB is a poet at heart. Even more importantly, LB appears to only own one pair of shorts--a skeevy looking pair of khakis that he wears to run, lift weights, play tennis, and impress the "girls." He believes in rolled up shirt sleeves and just a hint of chest hair.

Running against LB is Jay, or as I like to call him, "My beloved." (sorry M). My beloved is a 40-year-old entrepreneur from New York City. He is one of seven children, has mercifully short and prematurely graying hair, appears earnest and serious, and even golfs. His big downside is he has those freakishly white middle-aged man legs.

We next meet the women. Or rather, we meet 25 screetching women, 1 purse dog named "Lola," and approximately 14 pairs of artificial breasts. Fortunately, in the arts and crafts segment of the show coming up later this season, the women will single handedly float the Bachelor to safety on a raft made of pure silicon and pulled by a french bulldog on a retractable leash.

The women are being secretly watched as they move in by the Bachelors from a "viewing room" (creepy) inside the Bachelorette household. There are far too many to comment on here, so let me highlight the more interesting ones:
A. Cynthia is a "ripe fruit, ready to fall off the vine."
B. Kristi is a bar owner who has "really learned a lot about relationships from listening to people talk at her bar."
C. Krysta, not to be confused with Kristi, is a horrid bottle-blonde financial analyist we we hate. Yes, we do. All of us.
D. Elizabeth is a "strong woman." I'm pretty sure she's also a drag queen.
E. Andrea was the runner-up for Single White Female. She already owns 9 yards of silk for her wedding dress, is "taken" with Byron, starts to cry, and likens her heart to a spliced strawberry.

There is also a dog groomer, an acrobat, a traveling nurse with virtually no eyebrows, and so forth.

Anyway, the first hour is pretty much everyone getting to know each other as the women try to decide which man to keep. It's at a pool, all of the women are in string bikinis with no untidy wobbly bits peeking out (except Krysta, who after swearing she has better fashion sense than half of the women, proceeds to wear pastry papers over her droopy boobs). My favorite quote from LB: "I want the kind of love that when you're 70 and she gets up to go to the bathroom, you still go 'wow.'" Yes, Byron, I hope to God I still use a bathroom when I'm 70 also.

So in the end, we have a First Ever Sadie Hawkins rose ceremony in which the women select Lord Byron as the new bachelor over a 15 minute segment in which the host, Chris Harrison, pretends he is The Count: "One, one rose for Byron. Two, two roses for Jay."

Then, the second hour was even less interesting, as it entirely revolved around Byron's selection of 15 women from the 25. His selections included all of the women previously mentioned, plus Kelly (an actress and the owner of Lola, and a woman seriously in love with the clothing of Flashdance), Charisse (my favorite. Go Charisse!), and others. Thank god Andrea had that giant wad of kleenex behind her ear doubling as a flower; I don't know where the tears would have gone.

Perhaps the only sane being in the first rose ceremony was the lone coyote that continually yipped, barked, and wailed "noooo" right on cue after the calling of many womens' names. My thoughts exactly.

But stay tuned, dear readers, for updates throughout the season. We have many catfights to weather together, a missing woman, LB's collapse, and a number of scientific experiments in which we test the gravitational susceptibility of Byron's hair in boating, flying, and underwater environments.