Hillbilly Handfishin’

Oh, for fk sake… seriously?!?

( full disclosure – this post is from my archives, an oldie but a goodie)

I kid you not.  I have had a terrible couple of weeks, just got back from my electrolysis appointment (waging battle against morphing into a post-menopausal circus freak, fyi – laser doesn’t work on blonde hair, permanent facial hair removal requires jamming an electrical probe into each follicle individually and frying the crap out of it, repeatedly…because once is not enough, and paying for the privilege…but I digress).

I toss myself onto the couch and catch a glimpse of two things – neither of which makes any sense and zero ability to reconcile the two.  On tv, some redneck male is wrestling with a huge catfish in a muddy bog of some sort, cut to a flamingly gay character (not that there’s anything wrong with that) in a cabin setting making over a couple of women …glamming them up in what can only be described as early 80’s chic make up, these are either friends or spouses of the men wrestling the catfish.  Don’t get me started.

So I turn to my son and inquire…wtf??  Apparently this is something called Hillybilly Handfishing…yes, there is a show called Hillbilly Handfishing.  He offers to change the channel – but much in the way you can’t quite take your eyes off a car wreck, the dark and twisty side of me was morbidly curious to see how this plays out.

She’s got one “under her butt, under her business, tickling her fancy”.  Nothing like having your fancy tickled by a 50 some odd pound slimy, mucky catfish…I’ll take your word for it, count me the fk out.

So, let me get this straight.  In order to go “hillbilly handfishing”, one gets into a van blindfolded ‘cause you are being taken to a secret location, the catfish hole is proprietary information, is there really a line up for this??  Isn’t there a whole genre of B movies that start out with unsuspecting people getting into a van blindfolded somewhere in the rural southern states?  Those movies never end well.  Some mutant miscreant is taking you home to meet the family with tell-tale banjo music playing in the background (“squeal like a pig”…if you don’t get the reference, I’m not explaining it).

You arrive at the mudbog where job one is to wade right in, the bottom is slimy and disgusting. You sit on down in the muck and feel around, there are catfish – huge, slimy, creepy, disgusting catfish lurking in the muck.  You feel around a bit until you find one – that may be sitting right beneath you, tickling your fancy, no less.  You use your hand for bait, and once it’s attempted to scarf down your hand, you grab its’ jaw and yank it out of the mud.

All of this is being done willingly, no one is being held at gunpoint.  I cannot tell you how long my “bucket list” would need to be for Hillbilly Handfishing to make an appearance.  Having a root canal (sans novocaine) during a colonoscopy (no lubricant, angry medical tech) would make the list waaaay ahead of Hillbilly Handfishing and you won’t see me signing up for that either.

At that point, my desire to figure out the whole makeover tie in was well in the rear view mirror, no amount of explaining is going to justify any of it…no “aha moments” here Oprah, this is just too many kinds of wrong.  That’s a half hour of my life I’m never getting back.  I’m not sure what’s more pathetic – that there’s actually a show called Hillbilly Handfishing or that I  watched nearly an entire episode of it…maybe a little from column ‘A’, a little from column ‘B’. 

∼ the nasty wench ∼

(this folks, is the prize ….note while the show is off the air, handfishin’ aka: noodling is still very much a thing, call it what you want…still not doing it)