Gamer Girls

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsD8kENmf8Q

This is one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen.

So in the above podcast, which was terrible and bizarre on many levels, Jimmy talks about how his wife got him a cake for the upcoming (as yet un-filmed or even written) AVGN episode.  

Jimmy then proceeds to SHOW the cake.  He actually brought the cake with him

Let’s look at the logistics of this.  Jimmy lives, I don’t know, let’s say 30 minutes from Screenwave Media.  That’s just a guess.  I don’t know his commute time but I assume that it’s short, otherwise he wouldn’t have hired these people in the first place.

So Jimmy took this cake out of his home’s refrigerator, put it in his car, drove to Screenwave, maybe put it in the office refrigerator for a little while, and then took it out for the purposes of filming this video.  Then he showed a completely disinterested Kieran and Justin this cake.  Then he brought it back home with him.  Here’s a screenshot that I’m plagiarising from Reddit:

I saw that thing and my immediate reaction was, “That is one sad-looking cake.”

As it turns out, this cake was purchased from a local grocery store called Wegmans.  You can see the name of the store printed on the box.  According to Wikipedia, there are 106 locations, mostly in the American Northeast.

So I looked it up.  You can purchase this cake online here:

https://meals2go.com/catering/Cakes%20&%20Desserts

Choose “sheet cakes”.

You’re then presented with two options: 1/2 sheet or 1/4 sheet.  This indicates the size of the cake that you want.  Apparently, these are baked in large sheets and then divided for the consumers.  Makes things more cost-efficient (cheaper) this way.  

You’ll want to choose 1/4 sheet.  Well, you personally may not but that’s what Mrs Rolfe chose and I’ll explain how I know this shortly.

Wait a minute.  This says that a 1/4 sheet serves 15 to 18 people.  Does that cake that Jimmy is holding look like it serves 15 to 18 people?  There’s no way.  Still, I’m pretty sure that it’s the 1/4 sheet, as I’ll explain.

Your next option is cake flavour.  You have gold, chocolate, marble, or if you really can’t make up your mind, there’s 1/2 chocolate and 1/2 gold.  No extra charge for any of these options.  I don’t know what flavour Mrs Rolfe got.  I’ll guess golden to make this as bland as possible.

The next option is frosting flavour.  There’s white buttercreme, chocolate buttercreme, whipped cream, ultimate chocolate (+$6.00), and ultimate white (+$6.00).  I suspect that Mrs Rolfe opted for the white buttercreme.  The ultimate white looks similar but I really, really doubt that Mrs Rolfe wanted to spend the extra six bucks for that.

Next is filling.  There are a lot of options here ranging for $5.00 for a custard filling all the way up to $16 for fresh raspberries in a clear glaze.  

Or, you can opt for no filling, at no extra cost.  I strongly suspect that that’s the option that Mrs Rolfe went with.

Then you get to choose your decoration.  This is how I know the size of the cake.  For the 1/4 sheet, you get 6 white chocolate balloons by default.  That appears to be what the cake Jimmy is holding has.  On bigger cakes, you get more balloons and on smaller cakes, you get fewer balloons.  

I should mention that if you get the gluten-free cake, you can get a 1/8 size cake, whereas with the full-gluten cake, 1/4 is the smallest size possible.  People on Reddit speculated that the cake that Jimmy received is sugar free and vegan but I don’t know where they got that information from.  I’m not seeing an option for such a cake on here.  Maybe they’re referring to the gluten-free cake.

Anyway, the six balloons are free.  Who wants white chocolate, by the way?  It’s disgusting.  You just end up throwing that shit away.  

Alternatively, you can get four roses.  Mrs Rolfe obviously opted for the balloons.

You can put 10 balloons on the cake for an additional $4.00 or 8 roses for an additional $4.00.  Mrs Rolfe just went with the free six balloons.

You can then choose up to three colours for these balloons.  It appears that Mrs Rolfe chose red, yellow, and orange.

By the way, everything that I’ve chosen so far has been the default option.  Even these balloon colors.  You can choose from seven colours but red, yellow, and orange are the first three options.  Does it just so happen that these are Jimmy’s favourite colours or was Mrs Rolfe so god damned lazy and disinterested that she just rushed through this shit and chose the default option for everything?

Next option is to add a photo or a theme.  For ten bucks, you can upload a picture and put it on the cake.  Wouldn’t it have been nice to put a picture of James as the Angry Video Game Nerd on the cake?  Or maybe a comical poop emoji or something?  James would love that second one, although the bakery might refuse to do it.  Still, there’s no harm in trying.

No.  Mrs Rolfe chose “none”.

Finally, you can choose a message.  It can be up to 40 characters.  So what did Mrs Rolfe go for?  “200”.

She couldn’t be bothered to try to max out her character allotment?   “Happy 200th Episode” would only be 17 characters.  “Happy 200th AVGN Episode.  Here’s to 200 More” would have fit.  No.  She chose “200”.

You can also choose the colour for this icing.  Seven colours to choose from.  Once again, Mrs Rolfe chose the default option, which was red.

The cost of this cake is $28.00.  

The gluten-free option would be $37.00.  So I strongly suspect that Mrs Rolfe went with the regular cake.

It is so unbelievably low effort.  She went to the fucking grocery store, found the cheapest cake that they sell, chose all of the default options, and put the most generic message possible on there.  Twenty-eight bucks.  That’s what she thinks of Jimmy Rolfe. 

And Jimmy brings this cake in like he’s proud of it.  “Look at what my wife got for me!”  

How awful must this man’s wife be that THIS is a gesture that he’s happy with?  This cheap grocery store cake that had absolutely no thought put into it.  

Couldn’t she have made him a cake?  Couldn’t she have gone to a a bakery and got a nice cake?  Couldn’t she simply have put the extra ten bucks down and uploaded a picture of her husband or the words AVGN or SOMETHING for this cake?  Couldn’t she at the very least come up with a better word than “200”?  IT’S FREE!  YOU GET 40 FREE CHARACTERS!  She didn’t even want to spend precious seconds coming up with a better phrase.

This is what Jimmy Rolfe has been doing for the past 15 years.  This is what paid for the house.  This is what keeps her fed and clothed.  This is what keeps their children fed and clothed.  Jimmy is obviously excited about this 200th episode because he has some autistic fixation on numbers.  And his miserable shrew of a wife doesn’t give the slightest of fucks.

The default option for every fucking choice.  Unbelievable.

They got married when they were like 22 or 23.  Really weird to get married at that age.  I saw some pretty weird MySpace page of his wife’s that the boys on Reddit uploaded.  Everything I’ve ever seen her do is bizarre.  There was that weird picture where they were dancing or something and James is smiling and she looks miserable.  There’s her insanely patronising message on the old Cinemassacre site.  Not just the “Caucasian sausage fest” comment but just generally it was awful.  She has those tattoos.  She’s pretty chunky.  

What’s the appeal?  What was ever the appeal?  Although, how fucked up does somebody have to be to marry a guy who spent seven and a half years in special education?  James is clearly mentally challenged.  Maybe she is too.  It would go some way to explaining all of this.

If I lived in the area, I’d order a cake, spend the extra $10 to get a picture put on it, and use the picture of James holding that cake.  

I suppose that I could send it to Screenwave.  They’d appreciate some cake.  But I don’t want to send unsolicited baked goods.  And I’d want a picture of them with the cake in return.  Justin, Kieran, Tony, maybe James if he has the time.  Ryan can also be in the picture.  And then anyone else who works at Screenwave .  They could all huddle around the cake.  Ooh, maybe that chubby Asian woman could also be there.  I’d want her front and centre.