Mantracker / Babytracker

My husband and I were flipping channels on the TV the other night and came across this wondrous piece of crap TV – Mantracker (http://science.discovery.com/tv/mantracker/mantracker.html)! This truly glorious bit of reality tv was unfortunately not covered by www.televisionwithoutpity.com. I would have loved to have seen their take! As I can not direct you to their snarky comments, let’s see what I can come up with on my own… In the episode I saw Dan is a former marine and Jared is a martial artist. They’ve never met before and now have to evade “mantracker” in the 26 (I think) mile hike across the wilderness. Dan is super serious as a marine and decked out in the full cover “ghillie suit” (yes, I learned a new word today – it’s one of those camouflage things you put over you so that you look like the landscape – covered in grass, twigs, etc.). Jared holds up 2 tiny branches (little more than leaves) in front of his face and goes – my ghillie suit sucks. They manage to evade mantracker for over a day and even mess with him – put out trip wire to spook his horse or knock his hat off, sneak into his camp at night and hang a flag and “don’t mess with Texas” sign on his horse. But he catches them both in the end – when each is separately injured in one of his evasion moves (in the interviews, each blames the other for the loss).

We were mesmerized. It wasn’t as bad a train wreck as your average reality tv (you know the type – I was repulsed, yet I could not turn away!), but we still HAD to watch, despite the fact that it was after 10 and the baby was asleep so we could have been too!

So we went in to check on her after the show – and decided to practice our evasion techniques. Now, truth be told, if she sees us in there, it’s all over and she’ll be up for a bit. But we probably also didn’t have to crawl like a snake across the floor. I admit, this may be my fault. I walked in and did the [stop] hand motion followed by the [I’m going to look in the crib] hand motion. Let me try to recap the rest of the ‘conversation’ for you – done all through increasingly expressive hand motions –

Me: [I’m going to go look at her]
Hubby: [I’ll pick her up and rock her.]
Me: [no]
Him: [ok, I’ll crawl in the crib and cuddle with her]
Me: [no. just look and give her a kiss.]
Him: [ C’mon, how about I rock her and then crawl in with her]
The dog: [screw this, you people are crazy. I’m shaking my collar at you.]
He shakes his collar and the baby starts to stir.
Hubby: [Hit the deck]
We both drop to the ground.

You’d think this would have ended it, but no the ‘conversation’ continued through our ‘sorties’ to check on the baby, more questions or touching and/or moving the baby in any way, the request for my husband who is taller to close the curtains because they are caught on the rod at the top and his suggestion that he’ll lift me over his head to do it – and his subsequent attempt to do so.

We deserved to have the baby wake up on us.