We’re off to beautiful Switzerland this week. Ben and the ladies have been instructed to refer to it as “majestic”, and as Bachelor Ben flies in wearing a t-shirt, he reflects on the three remaining women.

Unlike previous weeks, this is a very big week. Somehow I hardly care. I’m still missing Kacie B.

Ben shows up for his first date, with Nicki, and looks ridiculous in an overly-sporty dark coat. Too many pockets, too cool looking for Mr. Bach. Nicki is incredibly excited to see Ben, and he maintains his normal cool. At this point one might think that it would be time for him to start opening up, that it would be ok for him to start making his feelings known to these poor girls, but he’s as nonchalant as ever.

Ben awaits Nicki in an overly sporty coat

Continue reading

I’ve got an art show coming up next month in Sacramento.  Here are the details:

Gabriel Roberts: To New York and Back
March 8th – April 6th, 2012
Facebook Event

Red Dot Gallery
2331 J Street, Suite 101
Sacramento, CA 95864
reddotgalleryonj.com

Artist’s Reception
Thursday, March 8th
5:30pm – 8:00pm

2nd Saturday Art Showing
Saturday, March 10th
5pm – 9pm

If this all looks eerily familiar, that’s because this show was originally scheduled for December of 2011, but was postponed until now.

It’s time for hometown dates!  This week on The Bachelor, Ben F travels to the hometowns of Lindzi, Kacie B, Nicki, and Courtney.  He has dinner and a few heart-to-heart conversations at each stop, and each girl is convinced they have something special with this guy, who in the end makes a colossal mistake that may make me stop watching this garbage forever.

It begins with Lindzi, who rides up to meet Ben on a horse, just as she did on the very first night of the show.  Ben helps her down and they promptly begin cupcaking.

Ben and Lindzi are master cupcakers, and it persists throughout the entire afternoon as they tour Lindzi’s family estate.  They take a ride around the track in a buggy, with Ben driving.  Lindzi makes an insightful analogy about love: “Growing up, I was taught that if you fall off the horse, then you get back on the horse.  Being in love is the same way”.  Are these people trained to make inane comments like this?  Or perhaps they’re just so conditioned by watching the show to believe that this is normal.

After a blistering lap around the track, the two settle down on the grass for a little bottle of bubbly and some opening up.  Lindzi wants to take advantage of this time to really open up to Ben.  She was ready to marry her last boyfriend, thought that he was the one, only to get dumped.  Her parents saw her go through this, and it was really tough for them to.
Continue reading

Happy Valentine’s day everyone! I hope you had wonderful experiences in your real life that were nothing like anything that happens on The Bachelor. I visited Ben’s hometown of Sonoma, hoping he could tell me all about the true meaning of love, but alas he was nowhere to be found.

In this week’s episode, Ben F. and his six ladies spend the week in Belize, and everything we’ve come to expect from this show occurs (helicopters, overcoming fears, opening up). While I’m starting to tire of the repetitive nature of this mess, I can’t stop watching it.

Chris Harrison explains “hometowns” to the women. Basically, next week, the four remaining ladies will take Ben to meet their families. Everybody will talk a lot about how important the family’s approval is, moms and brothers and sisters will instantly love Ben, dads will be standoffish at first, but after a man-to-man conversation they’ll give him their approval, and the moms will say something about how “they have a feeling” Ben and their daughter are going to end up together. I’m really not looking forward to these conversations, but I digress. This week there will be 3 one-on-ones and one group date. No roses on the one-on-ones, and at the end two girls will be sent home.

Lindzi gets the first date card, and Nikki is already crying because she didn’t get it. This is probably the earliest tearful confessional in Bachelor history—we’re less than 3 minutes into the first segment, and she’s not more than a couple hours into her first day in Belize.
Continue reading

Bachelorpalooza 2012 lands in Panama City, which is in Panama.  The girls are all really excited and impressed by Ben: “So far Ben’s taken us to Los Angeles, Utah, Puerto Rico, and now Panama!”.  It seems the illusion that Ben is orchestrating and footing the bill for this whole extravaganza is alive and well.

As the girls squeakily tumble into their big plush suite, Courtney’s already getting excited about the possibility of skinny dipping again just by looking at the ocean and the pool.

Soon Ben pulls up to the hotel in an unnecessarily rugged and off-road ready jeep. The girls are waiting for him in the lobby, and Ben does his best Chris Harrison impression by delivering the first date card.  It’s for Kacie B, who is tackled and nearly strangled to death by Blakely, who really wanted the date card.

Kacie B and Ben are picked up in a yellow taxi cab.  Just kidding—it’s a helicopter.  The two are carted off to a small island, where they are stranded for about two hours on a sunny afternoon with a camera crew.
Continue reading

There may only be twenty-six days left in the month, but here’s a spiffy wallpaper calendar for you and your computer desktop to enjoy for what remains of February. I got this idea from the dynamo designers at Paper Leaf, who hand out delightful desktop calendars every month. I’m not gonna lie, their February background is pretty sweet, but hopefully some of you will like mine even better:

I’m sporting a big green cast on my right hand, so this calendar features one of my very first left-handed drawings. I’m going for that “cute handmade look”.

Click here to download the wallpaper in various sizes: 1280 x 800, 1440 x 900, 1680 x 1050, 1920 x 1200, 2560 x 1600.