Fancy words from a clitoris

Saturday afternoon found me trapped on the couch, impatiently waiting for rain that never came. All week, the weather reports got me excited for the day's alleged thunderstorms (the only thing I miss about South FL). Disappointed, I remained on the couch for hours, waiting for something else to happen.

Determined to find brain candy on the TV, I unearthed nuggets of fun between channels 187 and 190 ("80 Hours of the 80's" on VH1 Classic and a "Prince Video Marathon" on VH1 Soul). Ah, the 80's: permed mullets, acid wash, Peter Gabriel's Africa phase and Prince's little purple boots.

But I soon found something funnier than Glass Tiger's "Someday" video (really, it summarizes everything that went wrong in the 80's). Caught between the two channels like some Balkan nation is CMT, the Country Music Channel (or "the channel I quickly skip over, pretending not to notice").

I'd never watched more than 5 nano seconds of it before; I thought it was an endless loop of "The Dukes of Hazzard." But while skipping past it, I stumbled across a show called "My Big Redneck Wedding."

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

Hosted by a surprisingly-tolerable Tom Arnold, the show follows the nuptials of the red state-iest rednecks who, through some giant legal loophole, are allowed to marry and produce offspring.


Yup, she got a pink shotgun as a weddin' gift. It's a right perty one.

The first episode I saw was about John and Gail, a couple from a place I'll never visit who live in a double wide trailer and deliver newspapers for a living. It was as if they'd won a "who can best exemplify every redneck stereotype there is?" contest. Consider:
* John proposed to Gail by peeing "marry me" on the road one morning.
* They decorate the wedding with beer cans (John drinks most of them the night before to finish the arch in time).
* While writing his wedding vows, John tells his granny that "I'd like to use fancy words but I don't have a clitoris" (i.e. a thesaurus for those with indoor plumbing).
* One of his vows goes like this, "I want to put your love into a locket, 'cause you're hotter than a Hot Pocket. We done it in the backseat and at the zoo, I don't care where we do it, as long as it's with you."
* Their wedding is held at an indoor flea market and includes a mechanical bull ride.
* John gets Gail's wedding gift at a bowling alley out of a claw machine -- a stuffed snow man he paid $38 in quarters for.
* On the day of their wedding, Gail is sent into a tizzy because she can't find her teeth.

A 5-minute clip from John and Gail's episode that includes John's lack of a "clitoris" to look up "fancy words." (View more episodes here.)

After setting the DVR to record future episodes, I realized that it was my lucky day: CMT was in the middle of a "My Big Redneck Wedding" marathon! Other episodes included mud, hog hunting, mud, deer skulls, mud, demolition derbies, mud and a Confederate-flag-waving-truck load of camouflage (every groom wore it and every bride incorporated it into her dress, veil and/or garter).

Between laughs, the fear started creeping up. I began to feel dirty. I wondered, is wearing camouflage one of Jeff Foxworthy's "you might be a redneck if..." jokes?

While I don't own any camo hunting coats, I sometimes wear camo pants to do bullshit errands and hang out. I mean, it was only a month or so ago that I was lamenting the loss of my favorite camo pants in the Grand Canyon (see "I lost my pants in the Grand Canyon" blog entry).

As I got myself off the couch and ready to go out, I announced to my man, "I don't think I can ever wear camo again after seeing that." A fan of camo himself, he reassured me that as long as I don't show up to a weddin' wearing camo, I'm in the clear.

Minutes later, I threw on a camo cap to hide my hair (which had been viciously attacked by humidity from rain that never came). Feeling like a Wal-Mart shopper in Central Florida on her way to buy bullets for the kids, I stepped out into the streets of Brooklyn. Fuhgetaboudit, ya'll.


"Camo cap" is probably a lot more tasteful than it sounds.