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david foster

PATTING THE PALLET-ADJACENT PUSS

PATTING THE PALLET-ADJACENT PUSS

Remember that scene in Poltergeist when the technician whose job it was to photograph the gazillions of ghosts living and thriving inside the little blonde girl’s closet decided to go into the kitchen late at night to cook himself a steak?  Remember how that steak became infested with ravenous maggots that burst forth from the center of the slab of red meat and the way your pre-teen stomach began to topple and turn as you watched that thing crawl across the white Formica countertop?  Can you also recall what happened next, when the guy went into the bathroom and began pulling the skin off his face in gigantic hunks of blood and tendons until all we saw was a grotesque vision of bone and hollowed-out eye sockets and the sink below him was filled with heaping shreds of plasma-covered muscle?  Yeah, I’d rather watch that scene every single night on a loop and use the sound effects from the sequence as I walk down the aisle on my wedding day than ever fucking hear the word “Munchausen” ever again.

THE LOSING TEAM

THE LOSING TEAM

About a month ago – for the first time in more than a decade – I found myself totally obsessed with the NCAA tournament. It sort of started by accident. See, I like to leave the television on while I'm at work so my puppy doesn't feel so alone and I guess I'm willing to pretend that the people on TV make her feel like she's got company. Usually I put on CNN so she can stay informed, but one day I started to grow concerned that her fragile baby canine mind maybe shouldn't be exposed to the tragedies currently plaguing the world – you know, terrorism, people who don't believe global warming is real, Trump's views on women – so I decided to put on a different channel before I left the house. I think Married With Children was airing as I walked out the door at the ass-crack of dawn. I heard a loud roar of canned laughter and the unmistakable growl of Al Bundy and sure, I worried that Tallulah would watch the show and I'd come home and discover she'd shimmied herself into some Lycra and managed to procure a can of Aqua Net and she'd ask me if I knew that Traci Lords could act, but I decided to just deal with those issues if they popped up.

By the time late afternoon arrived and I walked back through my front door, sitcoms from the early-nineties had ended and basketball was on instead. I found myself playing fetch with the dog and getting my stuff ready for work in the morning and doing yoga, all with the TV still on.  The cheers of the crowd and the sound of the rhythmic dribbling offered me some unexpected solace. I didn't go all in – I never drew up a bracket or anything — but I legitimately began to care about the tournament and there were a few teams I started to root for. I wanted University of Michigan, Miami, or UNC to come out on top. Why? Well, there are very good reasons for all my choices!  My ex-boyfriend went to Michigan and I have fond memories of going to those games.  I even remember half of the school’s fight song, yet another little ditty I can’t sing on key. Most of my family roots for Miami so I threw that team into my mix because it's always nice when my family is happy. As for UNC, it's really very simple: the blue they wear is the prettiest shade of blue in all the land. 

I had to DVR the final game a couple of Mondays ago because my top priority was to throw all my concentration at the last part of the Vanderpump Rules reunion. (Yes, it takes a great deal of concentration to describe a collection of leaky douchebags who fancy themselves human.)  With my recap gloriously complete, I finally settled in to watch the game.  I was riveted. After writing about the morons on Bravo, it was inspiring to see people with actual talent appear on a screen in my home – and while I was upset that the team who wore the nice color didn't walk away victorious, it still felt like a lovely way to wile away the late evening hours. Besides, I've found guys line up for you when it's clear you not only don't mind sports, but you show up to watch a game wearing a hot lace bra under a thin tee while holding a bowl filled with the most amazing spinach and artichoke dip known to man.  (The trick is the red pepper flakes.) 

I couldn't help but think about those games and the team rivalries tonight as I watched the season finale of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Sure, on the surface these two forms of entertainment have almost nothing in common, but dig a little deeper. Both the teams and these women have complicated, public histories. Both have fans cheering them on. Both experience the harsh hatred of the public, some of it very much warranted. And I'm imagining that some basketball players harbor vivid fantasies about ripping fellow athletes limb from limb like you know our Housewives dream about on an hourly basis.

As we're at the end (almost – I’m betting there will be a twelve-part reunion where these women can once again discuss arguments that will still not make a bit of sense) of a season that has seemed fucking endless, let's review the blistering battles that have gone down. Since no fight on this show actually gets resolved, the ripples of dissension are still being felt and analyzed. In no particular order of importance – because none of these arguments actually matter – here's a recount of who has hated someone or who currently hates someone:

THE CONSPIRACY THEORY

THE CONSPIRACY THEORY

Oh, Kim Richards.  She’s kind of a living and breathing version of that creaky wooden rocking chair that sits on the porch of that nice madwoman who lives down the street, the one who maybe keeps a family of four chained in her basement. Like that chair, Kim’s sort of falling apart. Someone once tried to mend her with a little bit of spit and some scotch tape, but she will undoubtedly cause pain to whomever foolishly chooses to straddle her.  Still–splinters aside–I’d rather spend fucking eternity sprawled across that chair than ever be stuck in the same time zone as one of the vilest Housewives of them all.

Now sure, I understand that Kim Richards is an addict. I also understand that the only reason she appears on this show at all anymore is for a paycheck.  I suppose I used to feel kind of badly for her that her options were so limited that she was forced to pimp out her own questionable sobriety for profit, but the reality is that she’s such a lying and deflecting asshole that I have lost any and all empathy I ever pretended to have. I officially can no longer stand the sight of the woman.  I hate her oddly shaped eyes and how they squint and glare wildly at anyone who has figured out her very obvious truths.  I hate her bony fingers, the ones she likes to point in the faces of women who have decided not to believe a single thing this shell of a former human being says anymore.  I hate the rickety voice she uses to spew out lies before begging for mercy from people who had no idea what they were getting into when they casually agreed to climb into the back of a limo with her.  I hate that she still has the audacity to pretend that she and her family have been terribly wounded by people saying aloud that she started drinking again and that she never even considers blaming herself for all of it since – obviously – her actions spurred the stories and the pain.  But most of all, I hate that the appearance of Kim Richards means that she was never really just a terrible figment of my imagination like I’d convinced myself she was and I really hate how her presence makes me feel something that resembles sympathy for her long-suffering sister, Kyle, a preening specimen constructed primarily out of hair and ego.

THE TOOTHLESS, BOOBLESS, BRAINLESS WONDER

THE TOOTHLESS, BOOBLESS, BRAINLESS WONDER

Um, I believe it was implied that the Skinny Girl would show up at some point tonight.  After all, our Beverly Hills ladies are heading to the Hamptons and who is more representative of the Hamptons than Bethenny Frankel?  In fact, I heard through the grapevine that Bethenny is even considering running for Mayor of Southampton because she found out that she couldn’t throw her hat into the race to be the next Queen.  Her platform?  That every road sign in the community should be painted the exact shade of red that’s in her brand’s logo.  I don’t see how the woman can lose. 

We all saw Bethenny in the previews for this season and I guess I expected that she’d be onscreen from the get go.  While I don’t care that much about catching a glimpse of her on her own show, I was looking forward to seeing her in this bowl of non-fat, non-dairy, non-gluten Housewives soup.  See, I just love crossover episodes of television shows, don’t you?  There’s this extra special thrill that comes with watching the Love Boat as it flows intentionally towards Fantasy Island or seeing Mork and his rainbow suspenders saunter into Arnold’s to visit with the Happy Days gang.  It’s a joining together of some of our favorite characters – a double dose of in-jokes – and it almost doesn’t even matter that the episode itself never actually lives up to all the hype that preceded it because there’s just something kind of delightful about watching the Griffins dine with the Simpsons or witnessing a Carrington toss a Colby off a balcony and onto the hard marble floor below. 

It was with this barely contained surge of excitement barreling through me that I settled down to watch what I figured would undoubtedly be the Entertainment Moment of the Year.  And sure, it’s only January 5th, but what other recent televised moment should get that glorious distinction?  Twins showing up to compete as one person on the new season of The Bachelor? A convicted murderer potentially getting closer to an appeal because of additional information that might have been uncovered through a Netflix series?  Yeah, okay – that last one might trump the west coast Housewives colliding with some of our east coast Housewives, but just barely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IN SICKNESS AND IN WEALTH

IN SICKNESS AND IN WEALTH

Has it already been a year since a Restylane-stuffed monster sat on a velvet couch beside an alcoholic who was dressed like a marshmallow Peep and nodded approvingly as the alcoholic claimed to have never once struggled with her sobriety?  Have almost 365 days and nights really passed since we last watched Kyle Richards fling back her long curtain of hair and proudly invite her dear friend Faye Resnick, the same woman who once capitalized on her friend’s murder by spreading it wide for Playboy, to come to dinner in her home?  Have the shards of glass from the stemware Lisa Rinna broke during a screaming brawl with the most tragic child star of them all (and I’m including Leif Garrett in my countdown) finally been swept up and thrown away into a odorous garbage heap that looks an awful lot like Kim Richards’ face if you quickly glance at it in profile?  And was there ever really a movie where soap queen Eileen Davidson appeared in a catsuit as a space alien or might I have just dreamed the whole thing up due to some of the substances I possibly ingested to have some fun over the years?

 Proving there’s absolutely no rest for the weary, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is back for more.  More of what, you ask?  Well, I’m imagining there will be more betrayals, bigger lies, and scores of dinner parties that devolve into evenings of utter fucking misery before the guests leave with a gift bag.  There will be two new Housewives joining the gaggle of women we’re already quite familiar with and Brandi and Kim will no longer flounce their wretched way across our television screens with any sort of regularity.  I will not miss either of those assholes and I confronted the news that they have been seen filming scenes for this show with the kind of grace such a situation deserves, in that I threw myself across the floor of my home and beat my fists wildly against the wood until my knuckles were swollen and sore.  See, I think that last season I might have called Kim Richards “a thin-lipped vile monster” and there’s a chance I compared Brandi to “regret that tastes like cherry-flavored lube” and I would like to state for the record that I stand by those comments and – not to toot my own horn or anything – but I also admire the tremendous restraint I’ve shown in my efforts not to be mean to these walking fucking night terrors.