Crawlspace Confidential

February 20, 2011 by Ted Crawford

Hello, fans. No, your eyes don't deceive you, it's a new and exciting post on the newly renovated T.V. Crawlspace. Yes, I played around with the theme and the styling, changed the colors and whatnot. I think it's pretty spiffy looking. Here's what the blog used to look like.

You may remember that in my very first blog post a couple of years ago I insinuated that I live in the crawlspace under my mother's house. Well, I should probably come clean and admit it's not really a crawlspace, it's actually a small basement that my mother rents to me for $150 a month. You see, I really named my blog T.V. Crawlspace because my name is Ted V. Crawford. It seemed like a clever play on my name, and it nicely reflected the state of my current living arrangement. So now you know. I repeat, I don't live in a crawlspace, so you can stop sending me all those emails asking me about my health and personal hygiene. I'll have you know, Mom lets me shower in the upstairs bathroom once a week whether I need it or not. Ba-boom, crash.

A few of you, I'm sure, are wondering when I'm going to start writing more again. Somebody, the editor-in-chief of this blog's parent website, has also been wondering. He called me this morning and we had a lengthy phone conversation about that very subject. When the phone rang I had just gotten into bed an hour earlier, after returning home from my graveyard shift at Majik Market, and I was too dazed to understand what he was saying at first. I began to wake up a little bit when the yelling started. "Two blog posts in a year?!! What's up with that, Ted? This is the last time I'm going to tell you. You have to give me a post at least every two months! Can you handle that? 'Cause if you can't then my neighbor's got a 10 year old niece who's submitted me 1003 pages of insightful commentary about Glee and Vampire Diaries."

I rubbed my eyes and told him what he wanted to hear. "OK, OK. It'll be bi-monthly from now on, I promise." I started to wonder why I was taking abuse from this guy. He's given me nothing in return for two years of writing except a gift card to Olive Garden. He keeps saying we'll all be rolling in the dough one of these days when the site goes viral. But he's right about my blog, my output has been beyond pathetic lately, so I'm going to try to make good on my promise.

The truth is, certain aspects of my personal life last year prevented me from posting regularly. For one thing I spent three months on assignment on Lost Island without internet access. It was my second trip to the island, and it was a lot more enjoyable than my first trip back in 2008. I had some interesting discussions with Benjamin Linus, and learned a lot more than I did the first time. More about that in a future post. After I got home I recuperated for a few days, and hoped to dive back into the blog writing, but I ran into a couple of problems.

First, I had to get my job at the convenience store back, and then I had to arrange to work extra shifts to make up for the three months of rent I owed Mom. She had been none too pleased about the late payments, and during my absence had decided to use my living quarters as a storage area for her massive crime drama DVD collection, which includes every season of every show in the Law and Order and CSI franchises. They were stacked up on the card table where I usually eat, crammed into my bookshelves, and piled high in several big shopping bags. She said she brought them downstairs to keep people from stealing them. What kind of person would steal Law and Order DVDs? I'll tell you who: her friends -- middle aged ladies who think stubble faced criminals with black stocking caps lurk in every alleyway and behind every 3rd SUV in the Walmart parking lot, waiting to either rob them, or kidnap them and give them that thrilling escape from suburban drudgery they've always dreamed of.

There's one new show in particular that they can't get enough of -- Law and Order: Los Angeles, which features an actor named Skeet Ulrich. He was most famous for his starring role in the action drama Jericho, about life in a small town after the collapse of the federal government due to a nuclear attack. He also starred in the excellent but short-lived paranormal drama Miracles. Mom and her friends love this guy so much they started a fan club. They have meetings every weekend, starting on Friday night and sometimes lasting until Sunday afternoon. These things are basically an excuse for the girls to party like it's 1999.

Can you imagine a house full of old hens drunk on margaritas, dancing with each other to disco music loud enough to shake the entire house? It kind of makes it hard to concentrate when I'm trying to write and do my research. On weekends I've been forced to wear earplugs and watch TV with closed captioning turned on.

One time I made the mistake of going upstairs to heat up a frozen pizza while one of their celebrations was in progress. Debbie Schwartz, the club's President, had sent Mr. Ulrich himself an email invitation to attend that night's meeting, and two minutes before I went upstairs they had been joking that Skeet was going to walk through the door any minute. Some of the ladies who had not met me before apparently thought I was a close-enough approximation of their heartthrob. The shrieks were deafening, and were accompanied by a barrage of hair-ruffling, groping, and pinching.

Mom, temporarily returning to her senses, stepped in and told them to back off. Shaken and disheveled, I proceeded to the kitchen and cooked my pizza, which those bitches promptly ate before I could get back downstairs with it. By that point I didn't even care anymore. There's nothing that will make you lose your appetite faster than getting hit on by your mother's friends. Well, except for that one brunette.

Anyway, I have installed a couple of extra dead bolts on the door to the upstairs for added security. Nobody gets in here unless they're invited. The fan club meetings have settled down a little bit since the last time the police showed up and took a couple of the Skeet Sisters away in handcuffs. Now maybe I'll be able to get on with blogging. Stay tuned.