Mood music provided by Bon Jovi swells in the background. A handful of burly men suit up in rubbers. And everybody's ready to get crabs.

Opilio crabs, specifically.

In the last few days, I’ve found myself getting sucked into the most unlikely of television shows. Alright, I suppose it’s not that unlikely. I did spend an entire Saturday sacked out on my living room floor watching the Frontier House marathon. Twice. And now it’s The Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch that has me hooked. (pun bizarrely unintentional)

And boy do I get into it.

“Oh man! Only sixty-four crabs in that pot! They’re never going to catch up to the Northwestern.”

The Northwestern is a crab fishing vessel. As is the Retriever and the Lady Alaska, whose ultra Christian captain will most likely not appreciate my clever little innuendo involving his crew. They, and several others, are out in the Bering Sea in the middle of winter, their crews working day and night without sleep, hauling in cages of the stuff your crabcakes are made of. It’s no easy task and I can’t help but get frustrated when one of those poor bastards pulls up an empty pot.

“Well, yeah. Of course it’s the salmon. Everyone else is using cod and they’re catching crab. So much for divine inspiration, dude.”

Goldner is absolutely thrilled by my affinity for the object of his TIVO’s desire. He may have been less thrilled that I ate all of his jujubes in that tense moment where it looked like maybe, just maybe, the Maverick would not make it to port in time to unload their catch forcing them to wait until morning, and possibly causing them miss more than twelve fishing hours when the season could end any minute. But they made it! They did! And I ate all the red jujubes.

Reality thriller. I swear. I haven’t been this worked up over reality TV since that afternoon Ben and I weren’t sure if Brittny Gastineau was ever going to land a spot in a runway show during Fashion Week -- which is like, the biggest thing ever for models and like, it’s totally her dream to make lots of money as a model.

What with crab fishing in the Bering Sea being somewhat more dangerous than modeling, I’m even more compelled and anxious. I’ve even dreamt about it. So next Tuesday night, you know where I’ll be. Camped out on Goldner’s couch, watching intently with high hopes that a bunch of rowdy fishermen get lucky and catch crabs.