Later, a woman in an old car pulled up at the yard sale and simply watched from the comforts of the drivers seat. This spooked Ashley out (then again, I'm sure styrofoam peanuts freak him out too. "Hey babe, I think there's styrofoam in here. Can you check it out??" Cut to the screen pausing and Ashley telling us, "This is scary. I hate styrofoam peanuts. Hopefully Tiffany can help me out. Otherwise, I don't know what I'm going to do.")

Anyhoo, the lady in the car finally stepped out, revealing the one-two punch of a fat ass and a nifty fanny pack. She may have been unsightly, but I enjoyed this kooky woman -- almost as much as she enjoyed pressing Ashley on prices. She manhandled many of the objects, including an oversized metal jack, and then ultimately plunked down some cold, hard cash for various mint-condition Superman memorabilia. Amazingly, Ashley sold most of the Superman stuff for $5, and I'm no appraiser, but I gotta figure that stuff was wroth more than that. I mean, has he even heard of eBay?

Elsewhere on the lawn, Scarlet was downing a few more beers, commenting, "This beer sure is good because it's so hot out here." Another thing that makes it taste so good: your rampant alcoholism.

"You need to drink your beer, honey, and stop being lagging behind. I'm almost done," Scarlet then told Ashley. You know, I'd love to see Scarlet in a bar fight. Because we all know she's been in them before. Heck, she was probably in one two hours earlier.

Meanwhile, financial guru Ashley continued to sell off his belongings, taking a mere $40 for what looked to be quite the expensive keyboard. Tiffany said he could have gotten $50 for it. I would have said $100. And I would have sold it on eBay, but now I'm just repeating myself.

Later, Ashley signed an unopened, rare, Asian-edition of an O-Town CD for Marilyn (fanny pack woman). And how much was this relic of boy band memorabilia? Oh, a whopping $1.50. Congratulations, Ashley. You've officially become sad.

Luckily for the fam, Ashley managed to raise a whole $154.50, which should pay for the cases of Zima that Scarlet probably had waiting in layaway. Ashley then headed off to his music producer's house (Shep Soloman, clearly the son of a Navajo Chief and a yenta), and as he walked by a pool, the screen suddenly froze, and we had by far the most ridiculous Ashley Parker Angel still shot yet. First, Ashley stepped onto the brick hot tub wall in the pool and "balanced," and then he went all Jesus-y by simply walking on top of the pool's surface, which just so happened to ripple with each footstep. Okay, producers. You're having fun with your visual effects. WE GET IT.

Anyway, once this distracting bit of FX passed, we then commenced a back-and-forth montage of Ashley working on his music and Tiffany preparing the big surprise party. This basically consisted of Tiffany using her baby voice to coerce friends to stop by the house and Shep straining his vocal chords as he attempted to sing Ashley's music.

Well, for better or worse, the music production was going nicely, but Tiffany was coming to the realization that no one actually wanted to come to Ashley's party. So what did she do? You guessed it: cried. As tears rolled down Tiff's cheeks, Scarlet tried to cheer up her daughter: "Look, she's gonna let go of all these balloons, and we'll put them all out, and you know how much Ashley loves balloons." Okay, first of all, is Tiffany five years old? And second of all, did Scarlet just say, "You know how much Ashley loves balloons?" What the? Is Ashley five years old too? Or maybe just borderline mentally challenged? I can just imagine Ashley going to a carnival and chasing a balloon around, pointing and giggling, perhaps screaming "Bawooon! Bawooon!"

With nothing better to do other than whine (her only natural talent), Tiffany called up Ashley and asked, "Baby, do you think the baby hates me?" That's a two "baby" violation, I'd like to point out. And yes, I do think the baby hates you, Tiffany. Mostly because you keep talking shit about it. I'm sorry, I should use the baby's name: LYRIC.

Well, Ashley tried to quell Tiffany's nerves by saying how she's just freaking out, much the way Scarlet yells and screams during traffic. And because Tiffany is such a thoughtful person, she let Ashley go on and on about Scarlet's road rage, not bothering to tell him that he was a) on speakerphone and b) within Scarlet's earshot. (Of course, it's sort of Ashley's fault for not realizing he was on speakerphone. Then again, he is an idiot). Well, Scarlet was not happy with Ashley's rant and shot him (or the phone, really) the finger. Okay, no one wants to hear someone talking about them behind their backs, but seriously, all Ashley was doing was saying how Scarlet yells and screams during traffic. Let's not be ridiculous with the middle fingers and such. Of course, this doesn't take into consideration just how drunk Scarlet was at this point. For all we knew, she was hearing her ex-husband cursing her out in her brain.

Anyway, Ashley eventually arrived home and surprise! Happy birthday! And look, Ashley! Ballloons!! Your favorite!! Well, Ash went around and greeted all his guests including two former O-Town guys and... Donald Faison (huh? He's way too cool to be hanging out here).

Posted by B-side on February 6, 2006 4:19 PM