MiTHology (4.0)

TOP 10: TV characters in a bake-off

June 16th, 2024

ETA: I don’t watch many of these shows anymore, because a lot of them are bad; but, I still enjoy the characters out of context, and this was a fun little game, so wanted to keep the post alive anyway!

I never used to care for TV before I married my husband. Had I not been so lucky as to meet him, I probably would have lived my whole life without owning a TV or subscribing to any streaming services at all, except maybe FORMED. Just one of the many, many reasons why I’m super lucky to have met my husband!

When he bought us our first TV, I didn’t like it. It was big, it was ugly, it was expensive; I felt, at best, wary of it. My heart began to thaw a bit, though, when my husband suggested that our inaugural viewing be my favorite movie of all time (The Wicker Man, the 2006 remake; yes, I will die on this hill); I even threw a little viewing party for us with a themed dinner!

And in the weeks and months that followed, I realized that the TV had another perk: it made at-home workouts way more fun and easy, because I could follow along with any of the millions of free workout videos on YouTube. It’s kind of hard to do that using the tiny little screen of a phone. So now, the TV and I became friends.

And eventually, at last, I discovered the joy of TV shows. My husband is a movie-and-TV genius – he knows pretty much every movie and show that’s ever been made, and scrolls IMDB for fun – so he introduced me to the world of streaming services.

Before, I always thought shows were kind of stupid. The only ones that I appreciated were things like Jeopardy!, cooking shows, HGTV programs, documentaries, and the like. I had no respect for TV as a storytelling medium. Even when my favorite college professor, the one whom I idolized (and whose voice lives on in my head forever as my inner writing critic), once remarked during class that some of the best story-writing these days was being done for television – even then I looked down my nose at it. People should just read books, I thought, haughtily.

Which they should, of course – but overall I was wrong: TV shows are fun, and some of them are brilliant!

Although I’ve come to love lots of shows of all different genres, my favorite kind of show remains the baking competition show. It goes without saying that GBBO takes the cake (ha) when it comes to the baking competition show – but I devour all of them with glee. My current favorites are the seasonal Baking Championships on HBO Max – Holiday, Spring, Summer, and Halloween (I actually don’t care for the Halloween one; too much campy gore and horror and demonish stuff: gross; I wish they’d just do a nice, pleasant Fall-themed one instead, but, oh well).

And so: the idea for this post arose from my obsession with baking competition shows, combined with all of the other shows that I love. My husband and I like to ask each other fun hypothetical questions, it’s one of our favorite games; and together we came up with this one: which TV characters, from any show, would you cast as contestants on a baking competition show? Obviously there have to be twelve; that’s the standard with baking competition shows. (The perfect format starts with twelve bakers, and eliminates the weakest one each episode, until there are three left in the grand finale, with the winner being chosen from those final three.)

So without further ado: if I could choose any characters from any TV show to be the twelve contestants on a new season of the baking championship, these are the ones that I’d choose – listed here in the order in which I think they’d go home:

12. Dr. Iggy Frome from New Amsterdam. He’s a fan favorite, and most of his fellow contestants love him (especially Tanya, she gloms onto him real fast), but, he’d bungle something in one of the challenges – he’d probably get nervous and do something idiotic, like, mention in front of the camera that incest is fine because, you know, love is love, after all, or replace the sugar with salt, or something. On his way out, he’d give everyone a giant hug and a tearful but uplifting speech about how it’s okay to fail.

11. Tanya from White Lotus. In fact, she was probably in the bottom two with Iggy last episode. She’s been tipsy this whole time, and probably dumped a whole bottle of booze into one of her bakes, then in the next challenge slipped in spilled batter and fell spectacularly, and had to be escorted off the set by medics, thus unable to finish the challenge in time. Her fellow contestants are glad to see her go.

10. Eddie from Stranger Things. He did okay; he did his best. I don’t imagine he’s much of a baker. It was just his time to go. He’ll be missed.

9. Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation. He’s been loud and boastful and cocky this whole time, insisting that he’s the winner and also the best dressed. The other bakers hate him, and hate how he sings while he’s baking (Izaya actually stabbed him in the first challenge this week). And he’s only made it this far by cheating, and because he was lucky enough to be teamed up with Marcus in the Team Challenge last episode. He throws a tantrum when the host announces he’s going home, and threatens to call his dad (Kendall laughs at this), and security guards have to walk him off the set.

8. Martha from Baby Reindeer. She’s actually a decent baker, and bakes with fierce intensity and devotion; she does a lot of bold, amibitious flavor combinations, like smoked chili pepper + tropical fruit, but she tends to fall short in the decorating department. She’s eliminated because she was a little too bold this time: she way overdid it on the spice, or the alcohol, or maybe she overfilled her pastries so the overspiced filling was oozing out in a gory mess. Just way too much for the judge’s palates. But, she’s not unhappy to be going home; she’s a very busy woman, after all, and knows she is sorely missed at her demanding job, and can’t wait to get home to her precious boyfriend.

7. Kendall Roy from Succession. He’s not a baker, and doesn’t know his way around the kitchen at all, but has managed to make it this far just by being insanely rich. I don’t even know how that works; it just does. But in this episode, he was high as a kite on park coke, and made a fatal error, like, baking an entire silver spoon into his pie, or vomiting into the ice cream maker, or something. As the host is telling him he’s eliminated, Kendall interrupts and says that, you know what, he’s done with this show, he’s leaving, it’s just not worth his precious time, he wishes you all the best, and besides, the prize money is barely even pennies to him, anyway. To this day he maintains that he would have won had he chosen to stay on. (Side note: my favorite Roy is actually Roman, but I think Kendall would be more fun to watch on a baking show, because he’s such a train wreck. )

6. Fr. Khatri from From. He’s low-key a really good baker, and has been a dark horse this whole time; lots of viewers thought he would be a finalist. But he made the mistake of helping Patricia in the last challenge when she was running out of time to ice her cupcake wreath, thereby sacrificing the finish on his own cupcake wreath, and this act of charity would be his demise. He was very gracious as he left, and attributed everything to God’s will.

5. Izaya Orihara from Drrr!. (“But Mith, why,” you may ask, “do you like that silly anime so much?” The reason is: Izaya.) It was actually a super close race between him and Patricia, who were in the bottom two this episode – Izaya’s cake looked much tidier, but his flavors were kind of dead inside, while Patricia’s supposedly tasted better, according to the judges. The consensus on Reddit seems to be that the judges just let Patricia through because she’s a single mom and always gets very emotional on camera about her boys back home. Anyway, I’m surprised Izaya wasn’t disqualified before now, seeing as how he’s threatened every other contestant with violence or made them bleed at least once. I guess it makes for good TV.

4. Patricia Tillerson from Outer Range. She’s formidable, and experienced, with decades of all-American dessert-baking under her belt. She’s always talking about her three grown sons and their tragic story and alluding to her crazy ex-husband and playing the victim, which makes her sympathetic to a lot of the viewers. She goes home not because of a mistake, but just because all the other remaining bakers are really, really good.

And the three finalists are:

3. Scanlan Shorthalt from The Legend of Vox Machina. Not a baker by any means, but he has that magic hand thing that he does, and the lute, so, basically he can convince anyone of anything, and has weaseled his way out of the bottom two several times now. He’s also seduced 10/11 of the other bakers (not Angela), all three of the judges, and the host, by this point; plus all the viewers find him weirdly enchanting, so it’s like he just can’t go home, no matter how chaotic his bakes are. He really wanted that prize money.

2. Marcus from The Bear. Obviously the best baker here, and the only one who’s classically trained; he’s won the most challenges out of everyone. He really should have won the whole thing. But in the final challenge, he got a bit too heated and emotional, and ended up making one tiny mistake and being bested by…

1. Angela from The Office. The baddest B in TV history? I think so. Her bakes are simple but flawless. She’s neat as a pin; she’s been making little passive-aggressive remarks about the other contestants this whole time; viewers can’t stand her. She accepts the prize money with an icy little smile and says something about spending it all on her cats.

Side note: Obviously I know Marcus would be the rightful winner out of these twelve. But, if you’ve ever watched a baking competition show, you know that the ones who seem like the rightful winners are often not the actual winners: for reference, see: Juergen from GBBO, Romy from Spring Baking Championship S8, and Alex from Spring Baking Championship S10.

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What do you think? Did I choose the right winner? Who would you cast? I also made a Season Two!
five years

April 6th, 2024

In January of 2015, my new AA sponsor and I were sitting in a Dunkin Donuts for our first official one-on-one meeting. I was in awe of her. She was seven years older than me, so thirty-two, and was absolutely the coolest girl you’d ever seen: unapologetically sober, articulate, educated, cool-headed and confident, but still gentle, courteous, and wholly attentive to whomever she was speaking to. And effortlessly gorgeous, with fair, un-made-up skin, a stylish sleek dark bob, and round, doll-like, pale greenish eyes; she was wearing, I remember, a cute little vintage tee that showed a white sliver of her enviably narrow, flat midriff. She was at once tomboyish and ladylike; she seemed to have perfect posture, even when she slouched. You could just tell that she knew who she was.

And then there was me: twenty-five, skulking, sorry, skinny but not in a cool way, a depressed bulimic wino still living at home with her parents, a wannabe Catholic trapped in sin and shame, just surviving at a grueling job that I was ill-suited for and no good at – a job where all of my coworkers around me were constantly living out my secret impossible dream of getting pregnant and having babies, which constantly rubbed my own failure and loneliness in my face, and made me angrier and angrier. I was angry at myself, at my situation – just angry in general. I was, at that time, particularly angry at this guy from POF whom I’d gone on a couple coffee dates with and now he wouldn’t stop texting me, even though I’d ghosted him, like, aggressively ghosted him, just like I always ghosted everyone, whether I wanted to or not. He was so nice to me and respectful of me, like he actually liked me – how unappealing! I was, in short, pathetic.

So there I was, sitting pathetically across from my impeccably cool new AA sponsor in the noisy, cramped Dunkin, listening to her melodious voice, twitchily folding and re-folding an empty Splenda packet into the tiniest possible rectangles, and feeling very awkward. She was giving me my very first AA homework assignment. I was nodding my head, eager to get started on it, to ace it. Bookwork and written assignments were, and are, my forte. I like to think I am less awkward in writing.

One of her assignments for me that day, at the beginning of my sobriety journey, was to write a letter to myself at five years sober. She wanted me to express my hopes and dreams and goals for my future, for all that I could become. She told me to then seal it up in an envelope and not open it until January of 2020, when I would be, God willing, five years sober.

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Well, in January of 2020, as it turned out, I would not be five years sober. From 2015 through early 2019, I was in and out of AA, sometimes sober, sometimes not. (At some point, during one of my “relapses,” I ripped up that letter I’d written to my future self, and threw it away. I no longer remember what was in it.) I did all the hard work, desperately throwing myself light-years outside of my comfort zone, repeatedly, because my sponsors and groupmates told me to – to no avail. That feeling of awkwardness never went away, and I never experienced the promised emotional release or total personality change that they say comes from working the Steps. I kept waiting for the cure to my chronic, crippling social anxiety and low self-esteem, which had driven me to drink in the first place, but it never came. So in the end I burned out on AA. It wasn’t working; it was truly making me worse. But I couldn’t go back to drinking either. I was at an impasse. Finally, in March of 2019, with some urging from my long-suffering and loyal husband (that’s right, can you believe someone married me while I was in the thick of all this?), I decided that I’d just do it myself: I’d white-knuckle it for a year, for one single year, and if, after 365 days, I was still miserable, I’d throw myself back into drinking with more reckless abandon than ever. I’d self-destruct.

Just two months after that, I got my first ever positive pregnancy test. My impossible dream miraculously came true. I had now something to live for.

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So in January of 2020, I was actually ten months sober, and getting ready to give birth for the first time. Plot twist.

It’s wild how much better life is now. Aside from having a family and a will to live, which are both really nice to have, it’s also just much easier to be a practicing Catholic when you’re not constantly in a state of mortal sin (after all, nothing we do outside of a state of Grace really has any meaning, ultimately, and let me tell you, I knew that in my soul before I knew it in my brain!). And it’s even worse when you’re trying to pretend like you’re fine and showing up hungover to be a lector at Mass and trying to put on a brave face and all. I don’t wish that kind of life on anyone!

I may not remember what I wrote in that letter back in 2015, but I know for a fact I didn’t even dare to even fantasize that I’d ever become a stay-at-home mom to not one, not two, but three children. With that very same guy who wouldn’t stop texting me back then – the sweet, selfless guy who courageously (let’s be honest: stupidly) became my husband. Not only that, but the ED is basically a thing of the past now. Not that I’m “comfortable” in my stupid meat-prison by any means, but, you know, you learn to live with your demons, if you can’t cast them out entirely. And it’s not so bad. Maybe I’m just too old to care that much anymore lol.

I’m still the same. Frankly, at the five year mark, I’ve only just begun to figure out why I’m like this: why I needed to drink so much in the first place. The debilitating social anxiety, persistent mild depression (dysthymia), negative beliefs about myself, and inability to make or keep friends, have all stuck around, and worsened, and kept me from being the person I wish I could. So just this year I finally got proactive about my own mental health and self-referred for a psychiatric evaluation, after which I was officially diagnosed with Avoidant Personality Disorder.

Finally. I can’t believe it’s gone undiagnosed for all these years. Well, actually, I can believe it. AVPD frequently goes undiagnosed, for several reasons. One is that it tends to hide beneath its comorbid conditions (substance abuse, eating disorders, depression, to name a few). Another reason it goes undiagnosed, or misdiagnosed, is that it’s just not widely understood, even by mental health professionals. Probably because avoidants tend to, well, avoid: to lurk in the shadows; to not seek treatment, or not stick with treatment consistently (like, I’ve been to probably 15 therapists over the years, but never for more than a few months – typical). And when we do get therapy, we tend to suck at it, because we suck at being open, honest, and vulnerable, and at expressing emotions in general; so therapy doesn’t tend to work for us, any better than medication does (unlike ADHD or depression, PDs are not caused by any chemical imbalance, but by a person’s fundamental, unshakeable beliefs about themselves). So the prognosis is grim. My efforts at managing symptoms are ongoing; maybe I should make a pilgrimage to Lourdes; do you think God would cure a personality disorder? haha.

Idk. So in any case I finally got to five years, although it took nine years and change.

And it hasn’t been conventional. Tbh I still don’t feel like I relate much to other sober alcoholics. Not that they’re all the same, by any means, I’m definitely not saying that – I spent enough time in AA and in the recovery world to know that everyone’s story really is unique and different – but nonetheless, I feel like a misfit because, even though my life has improved, dreams have come true, and etc., I don’t feel like I’ve actually changed much internally. I’m not a “new person,” unfortunately. And unlike most sober people I’ve met, I actually really miss drinking. I miss it dearly. Which is complete madness, because my life is so much better now. But the thing is, booze was the only thing that ever came close to solving the problem that the Twelve Steps couldn’t: for a few hours at a time, it all but cured the AVPD. Alas, poor me! Cue the world’s smallest violin.

But, God willing, I’ll never go back to it. I love my family and my faith too much. So I keep chugging along, counting the days (1,827) and side-eyeing the wines on sale as I pass by pushing a shopping cart full of clamoring small children. I’m not a great Catholic, or a great wife, or a great mom, or great at much of anything to be honest; but, –

But what? Lol, nvm, I got nothing. I don’t even imagine this will be useful to anyone except me, but, maybe I’ll put it on my blog anyway. But probably not haha.

It’s been almost ten years since that day at Dunkin in January 2015. I haven’t seen or spoken to that former sponsor in a very long time. If she could see me now… I doubt she’d be particularly proud, seeing as how I’m no longer in AA at all — I’m a sobriety heretic! I don’t need to confess to a sponsor anymore, I have Priests for that now! Plus she was a kind of a feminist and I doubt she’d be about that tradcath lifestyle, lol. But, I am still and shall ever remain grateful that she wasted her time on me. And it’s super weird to think that I’m two years older now than she was then.

I don’t guess I have a tidy way to wrap this up haha. But overall, was it a good move to quit?: absolutely, 11/10, do recommend.
on college

April 6th, 2024

Some of you may recall that the last time I kept a blog (version 2.0), I was a cringey college kid who thought I had the answers to everything. Well I’m back now to apologize for being such an insufferable, self-righteous fool, and to write down a few new things–why? What’s the point? Blogging is so silly. Why should I, who am not particularly interesting and have zero skills, have a blog? Well, I guess to “scream into the void” like we all do in some kind of way, right? I guess an inclination to communicate is part of being human, and blogging is easy and free and relatively safe.

Ten years ago this week, so November 21st of 2013, I graduated from college, and now I can happily say that I’m finally doing what I always wanted to do… which has exactly nothing to do with my $80k+ degree lol.

I’m not here to complain about the system. I’m not a victim of anything. I was absolutely, 1000% the idiot for going to pricey arts schools (first a liberal arts, then transferred to the fine arts) without a dollar to my name to pay for it.

They tried to warn me, every time I took out another loan: “you know, you’re gonna have to pay this back later!” And I was all, “Oh, I know right, I’m gonna be so poor lol!” I was an idiot, and I don’t expect anyone to cancel my debt for me. Some people might deserve to have their student debts canceled, but I’m definitely not one of those people.

Because I didn’t even have a plan. “What kind of career are you working towards,” they kept asking. I had no idea. “Something in writing,” was, I think, my canned response. But secretly I knew all along that I didn’t want that (me, a journalist?! Even my journalism professor found that laughable) — that I didn’t need a degree to do the kind of writing I wanted to do and was already doing. I didn’t fit in with all those career-driven kids.

So why did I get the dang degree? Why?! I guess it had been ingrained in me from a young age that college was just what smart people did (and I was told all the time that I was “smart”); it was how smart people “made it” in this world; in truth, it wasn’t really an option; people who didn’t finish college weren’t really worthy of respect. I’m not blaming anyone for conveying this false belief to me. It was just widely accepted to be true in the time and place where I grew up–or at least, that was the impression that I got.

People tried to help me figure things out. I’m only blaming myself. I blame myself for not having the self-knowledge, the self-confidence, or the strength to speak up from within and say, “ya know, I don’t actually want or need to go to college.”

So what did I want? Secretly, all I really wanted was to find love, have babies, and write books. But I was deeply ashamed to admit this, even to myself — all the way up until I was pushing 30! Why? Because, only stupid, un-respectable, unworthy people would rather stay home and pop out kids than get a cool degree and a job! But even in my childhood, when I pictured my ideal future, I saw myself not in a career, but as a writer/artist, wife, and mom. (In fact as early as sixth grade I wanted to have five kids, lol I had names for them and everything. The career I envisioned for myself? “Artist,” lol I had some flowery vision of myself in an in-home art studio, painting at an easel while my children played).

And look at me now! Strapped with massive debt, still unpublished, no in-home art studio to speak of, and not exactly rolling in cash — but here I am! God has given me a husband and three kids, which is more than I realistically thought I’d actually get, considering my disordered personality and the absolute pathetic idiot train wreck of a human that I was throughout my teens and twenties (and still, essentially, am, tbh).

I wonder often if college was really a complete waste of time for me. I know it’s pointless regretting anything in the past. The butterfly effect and all–if even one tiny thing had been different, I might not have the three perfect kids I have today, etc., so I’d better not wish anything undone. Still, I do wish I could have gotten to this point without dinking around so much.

Did I do anything at all worthwhile from fall 2008 to November 2013? Well: I met some amazing people, for sure. I’ve failed to keep in touch with any of them in any meaningful way, probably because of the AvPD that I would only later be diagnosed with. But I still think of those people often, and am grateful that they ever gave me their precious time at all, and I wish them well.

What else did I do in college? I certainly was exposed to some good books, some great authors. I traveled abroad; but that was honestly miserable, because I was miserable, and lo and behold, my misery followed me overseas (the geographic cure doesn’t work, y’all), and so all of my memories of it are just lonely and embarrassing and sad. Anything else? Well, as a Writing major, I did write some things… some of which I guess I’m proud of, others of which I’m still painfully embarrassed about (I lie awake at night and cringe about them to this day!), but, were at least educational/therapeutic for me I guess. And it was as a college student that I converted to Catholicism. Although, that wasn’t taught in class, that was on my own time–and I could have done that anywhere, couldn’t I? Did it really take that glorious Cathedral being just a couple blocks down from my dorm to get my attention?

All in all, there were lots of good opportunities–for connections, for experiences–but I squandered them all! I guess I can’t say I regret anything, because I eventually got my dream life out of it. But I certainly don’t recommend doing what I did.

So when my own three beloved children, God willing, reach college age, what will I say to them? I think about this a lot. Right now, I feel like what I’ll say to them is: what do you want to be? What do you think is your calling? No wrong answers! I am teaching my kids to pray, which is something I didn’t learn to do until adulthood–so, hopefully, if I do it well, they’ll be more mature, more skilled at listening for the honest truth inside of them, than I was. If their goal requires a degree, even a liberal arts degree, then you know what, we’ll make it happen! But if they’re not sure, or they just want to wait and stay home and figure things out, that’s great too. Whatever they choose, I hope that they don’t end up with a million regrets like I have — although I guess it’s actually possible to have a million regrets and still be doing well. The pursuit of happiness is overrated tbh.
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