Rated R for Ridiculous.

Secret Life of the American Teenager started off as a very typical ABC Family show. By typical, I mean slightly bad acting and some serious life lessons we will all take to heart. It's a show about a 15 year old (maybe she was 14 at the time) girl that gets pregnant. You obviously expect the show to be about the hard life of being a teen mom and why you should do everything to prevent that. Which it does, but really, I'd prefer my teenage daughter watch Grey's Anatomy. At least if they are watching a show that has a lot of sex they A. are adults in the show and B. it's much better acting.

I got sucked into the show about half way through the first season. It was some cheesy show created by the same person that does 7th Heaven. Seriously, innocent, right? I thought so. Some teenage girl gets knocked up and has this debate of whether or not to keep the baby. For the sake of having a show, she obviously keeps it. The show continues, slowly but surely, about her sad teenage mom life.

But wait, it isn't sad. The dead beat baby daddy (Ricky) turns around and gets a job to support his son. The mom (Amy) gets a job at the church nursery..conveniently. Her parents get a divorce but her mom is pregnant with her dad's baby so obviously they are slowly falling back into love. Oh and oh so Christian Grace has sex and her dad dies because of it (and by dies I mean he was embarrassed to be on the show so he quit immediately). There are various other actors like Amy's sister Ashley whose best friend is gay because you can't have a show without without someone being gay-thanks for sticking with what's PC, ABC Fam.

That's a hunch of what I have been watching for an hour every Monday night. This show is progressively getting more and more morally...wrong. They always try to get their line in for the teenagers watching like "just because your parents don't talk to you about sex, doesn't mean they don't care" or "Follow your dreams, don't make a decision based off of what your boyfriend thinks you should do". Those are fine. However, let me explain to you what the last episode's punch was.

"Just say Me" rather than "Just say No". I'm going to let you figure out for yourself what that means. Maybe to you it means something different than what the ten girls in the show took it as. See Grace's mom told her that instead of needing a boyfriend for sex there is an alternative way. A way that "lower's blood pressure, relaxes you, and you cannot get an STD or pregnant". I almost threw up on the tv. That was the.entire.episode. I'm really thankful they got the part in there about religion. It went something along these lines: "Yes, we are Christian but we don't follow all the rules, most Christians don't. What matters is that we are good people".

From what I have gathered with this show the lessons to be learned are the following: Sex before marriage is fine-as long as you are not a devout Christian-otherwise your dad will die in a plane crash. 15 year old's cannot abstain. Parents cheating is fine as long as they are honest. And really as long as other people are doing it-it's perfectly fine-whatever it is.

In the mean time, I would advise anyone with teenage daughters to just skip to Desperate Housewives. At least they have consequences for their actions, the religious ones feel guilt rather than justify, and the actors don't look like Bob Saget just fell out of a 1980's TV screen.

Valiant Effort

A few Sundays ago I was invited to go to one of my friends birthday party. He is the kind of person that throws out of control bashes, not simple dinners. I was really hesitant until he pulled the "it's 2010, you were lame last year...you can't be this year too". So, I swallowed every ounce of dignity and I went to this party.

My definition of a party: eating paradise pie from chili's.
This persons definition of a party: inviting 100+ people to a huge house and having a band play. Did I say people? I meant to say strangers.

About an hour into it I noticed a few familiar faces here and there..like my real live Edward that used to work out at my work, a hot volleyball coach from my work, and my brother in laws crazy friend that I have never seen in anything but just overalls at the white trash party.

Getting to the point, in the couple of hours that I was at this party I managed to get asked the same questions 18 times. Where are you from? Where do you work? Where do you live? How do you know who lives here? Are you going to school? What do you want to be? What is your phone number? You live with your sister? How do you like that? Want to come to another party? And then I do the same thing in return-only instead of inviting them to a party I'm like hey...you want to come over and see how cute my nephew is?

So, I left the party feeling pretty good and well socialized. I have since hung out with two of the above mentioned young males and the only thing I have learned thus far is, I will never go to another party. I do not like getting asked the same questions and I do not like recieving the same results of hang outs-congratulations-you have a tv big enough to cause me a headache, choosing Marley and Me to watch doesn't really win you points since you're the 5th person to do this, and your jeans are worth more than my entire tax return.

Needless to say, I put forth my effort to socialize and I found a purpose for attempting to look cute for a day. Now I think I should go back into my routine of what really matters and sit and wait until the one person I want to ask me out-actually does. No effort needed.