Tuesday, August 17, 2010

An Industrial Salesman On Baggage

I was pumped up last night already, since it was going to be the premiere episode of the second season of Baggage on GSN. But imagine how much more thrilled I was when they introduced the first contestant. He might be one of ours!

He was introduced as "an industrial salesman from Los Angeles." Isn't that something? It's definitely something right up my alley, "an industrial salesman"! His name was Eric.

Immediately I started thinking if I might know him, since we industrialists stick together. So I'm thinking, "Eric, Eric, Eric ... do I know any Erics?" Then the thought came to me that maybe he's not a salesman for a company in the Residential Industrial Movement (RIM), but is a salesman for one of the major industrial powers. That wouldn't be quite as good, of course.

He looked a lot like one of the guys who grew up around here. Some of these guys have had one too many accidents with a shovel to the head. I've known quite a few of them. They're usually unhappy and drink on the job. Then the line starts up a little too fast for their slowed reflexes and the next thing you know you've got a dent on an expensive appliance panel. Not to mention a serious head injury. When we see their low aptitude for manual labor, we usually transfer them to sales. I was trying to place him, but it wasn't coming to me.

Spoiler Alert: If you've seen the show, you know the contestants are vying for the affection of a man or a woman. Today's episode was a little iffy on that count, as I will explain later.

But getting back to Eric ... Since I don't think he did a good job, I'm kind of hoping he's not with the RIM. On the other hand, if I knew he was from one of the major industrial powers, I would've probably changed the channel.

In the show, the contestants open a small piece of baggage, a medium piece, and a large. These correspond to the relative seriousness of a personal secret or something quirky about them. This gives the dater some information to go on, to see if one of the contestants is worth going out with. This was Eric's baggage:

Small -- "I have 24 snakes in my home."
Medium -- "I used my girlfriend's toothbrush to clean the toilet."
Large -- "I will literally sleep with any woman."

Maybe you'd think that someone with that much terrible baggage would never win. But guess what, he was the guy the girl (Helen) picked! The other guys' baggage was also very charming stuff.

At the end, then, the person picked gets to veto the date if he (in this case) doesn't like the baggage of the dater. And Helen's baggage turned out to be a whopper: "I was born a boy." Plus, as it turned out, she hasn't had the major surgery yet. This was not something Eric was willing to accept. She was extremely cute, beautiful even, but it wasn't meant to be! Which made me start wondering about Eric's "Large" baggage...

All that was very interesting. But the thing I found the most interesting was that Eric was an industrial salesman! I wonder who he works for, a major industrialist or a RIM family?

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