John and I have this problem: it’s called Rachel Getting Married, and according to Netflix, it’s been sitting on top of our dvd player since shortly after it was mailed to us on August 21, 2009.  As in: nearly five months ago.  For five months, I have been paying a monthly fee to Netflix for the privilege of having Rachel Getting Married sitting on our shelf, making us look like smart people who watch well-reviewed indie movies.

But we have not been watching indie movies.  No, my friends, we have not.  What we have been watching is a shit ton of Pawn Stars.  If you are not watching this show, you need to start, immediately.  It’s set at a pawn shop in Vegas, run by a family and presided over by “The Old Man,” who wears suspenders without irony and talks like he’s got a mouth full of marbles.  It is the perfect blend of reality show elements: it’s a little bit of Antiques Roadshow, except instead of the Keno twins the goods are appraised by a bunch of foul-mouthed, heavily-tatted dudes.  Antiques Roadshow meets Miami Ink!  Brilliant!

This show is fascinating.  First of all, people want to pawn the WEIRDEST SHIT.  Just today, in the (oh, half-dozen or so) episodes we watched, we saw people bring in a playing card vending machine, an assemblage of hand-cast gold devil heads, and a knights of the round table cheese board.

And weapons- oh my god, who knew so many people had old weapons lying around the house?  Shotguns and military knives and throwing stars, oh my! You know you have watched a lot of Pawn Stars when you see a gun-toting guy walking into the store and you call out “musket! That’s a musket! That’ll be valuable!”  And then your husband looks at you like you are crazytown.  The end.

It’s always interesting to hear why people are pawning or selling their stuff, too.  You see a lot of slimy-looking frat boy types looking to sell something they found in grandma’s attic, just hoping they can get enough money to go out big on Saturday night, and I find myself hoping that their stuff is fake, that it’s not worth anything, if only so I can see the smug smiles wiped off their faces.  But then you see someone who is selling some treasured childhood item to try to get enough money to take his kids on vacation, or the guy who wanted to pawn his big rig truck for a few weeks so he had enough money to pay rent, and it’s hard not to feel kind of sad about the whole business.

One of my personal favorites was the kid who came in with a gun from his grandmother’s garage, which he wanted to sell so he could buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend.  The pawn shop dude is all, “well, we got engagement rings here,” and he said “really?” and then proceeded to TRADE the gun for an engagement ring. I can imagine the proposal now:  “Here, honey, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I’d like to symbolize it with this pre-worn and possibly fake bauble which I selected because according to the pawn shop it is worth about the same as some old gun!  Love you!”