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CHANGES ARE AFOOT IN VANDERLAND

January 5, 2016

You know how some things just stand out in ways that can really surprise you? Well, there’s this quietly amazing moment in The Big Short that has stayed solidly in the very forefront of my mind since I saw the movie about a week ago. And it’s weird that it’s this scene that I can’t stop thinking about because it’s not a particularly showy scene. In fact, it’s not even an actual scene. Instead, it’s part of a montage near the end and there is no dialogue taking place at all because, by then, there’s just not a whole lot that needs to be said. The economy has crashed spectacularly – and sorry, but I refuse to label such a thing with a spoiler alert because if you don’t know the economy went belly-up in 2008, that can’t be my problem. (Feel free, though, to blame any combination of your parents, the liberal media, Donald Trump, or whatever virus you caught the last time you ate at Chipotle.) Anyway, two minor characters in the film –formerly so pompous and pleased with themselves for saddling financially unsophisticated homebuyers with outlandish and impossible mortgage rates – find that they too have been crushed by the very system from which they used to profit. These are guys we first met as they sat on bar stools and flushed hotly at just the thought of excess and we see them near the end at a job fair where they must start over without an expense account. The expressions on their faces – framed in enough of a close-up that we can see both abject terror and sweaty desperation – allows us to know that it’s not simply the economy that has crashed; everyone and everything fell. The blame scattered. There was more than enough chastening to go around.

It certainly says something about the stellar performances and the cinematography in The Big Short that a single shot that was maybe eight seconds long resonated so powerfully. The film itself? It’s brilliant. It is perfectly paced and far funnier than I expected a story about a flawed banking system to be, but I think the things that felt most intense to me were not just the homes that were lost or that sweeping shot of a vacant floor at Lehman Brothers or a security team ushering Finance guys out of a building like they were in danger of being shot. For me, it was about that moment when the realization set it – when it really set in – and people finally understood that everything had to change.

It’s those days and nights of gripping fear that are punctuated with a loss that feels like an exclamation point that brings about change. Rarely do we randomly stumble upon the idea that everything about ourselves must be overhauled. No, it’s more of a dawning comprehension, an internal skywriter who slowly sweeps out the words, “Nothing you’re doing is working for you anymore,” in loopy cursive and you finally have to stare at the entire sentence and admit, fuck: I need to make better choices. And look, making the declaration is the first step. It’s an active form of realizing that things can’t continue the same way anymore. It’s putting some cohesion into what – for way too long – was simply an abstract idea you allowed to do the backstroke because fighting the current just felt exhausting.

But it’s a new year – and it’s time to fucking swim.

I’m not sure that Jax or James or Kristen or Lala understand what it means to commit to changing and I seriously believe that gaining notoriety on a show for being their very flawed selves will not lead to anything different. But oh, what I would give to stare at a moment onscreen while James mutters, “You know, I really am an asshole who is crippled by massive inferiority that runs through my tiny brain and then lands on my low-cut tank tops like glitter – or dandruff. That must be why I behave like a toddler on blow most of the time!” I’d also probably pay to watch Jax stare at himself in a mirror – which so far seems more than doable – and hear him say, “I am an adult! I should stop trying to come between a twenty-two year old DJ and whomever he wants to bang! I should stop removing cartilage from my nose! I should be a better man tomorrow than I was today…” Seriously, I’d sell a family member to hear those words, but nobody is for sale today. See, I’ve got a birthday coming up and those people send presents.

HER BRAIN IS THE BEST PART!

December 30, 2015

As we inch closer to the last day of this year – or towards the first day of a brand new year, depending upon your levels of optimism – it's hard not to contemplate everything that's come before. After all, something new often walks hand in hand with some type of ending, doesn't it? There have definitely been some years where I felt a true thudding inside at the awareness that so much is over while other years it's just a bittersweet kind of twinge that takes over whenever I catch a glimpse of a calendar that tells me it's December 29th. But this year? Well, I feel completely at peace. What's gone is in the past and the present feels breezy and bright and I think that the very best is yet to come and the greatest part of all of it is that I haven't even tried to convince myself of such a thing. I simply feel this way and it's like wrapping my tired feet in slippers made out of cotton and clouds.

But when it comes to the Housewives, I'm not sure that peace and tranquility sells. My guess is that nobody wants to watch a program about happy rich people gallivanting around the globe, but then there's that part of me that wonders why Bravo thinks we want to watch a woman in the throes of a debilitating illness that's either physical or psychological or a devastating mix of both. And allow me to just say this: I believe Yolanda is truly sick, but I also believe that participating in this show when she claims everything about herself has been compromised is an odd choice. I know she's insisting that she is out to spread awareness, but since all we've been exposed to thus far about her illness is that she has a curious health advocate at her beck and call and a massive closet crammed with medication that clearly wasn't all prescribed to her by a doctor and her friends tossing out words like Munchausen Syndrome, I'm not positive she's doing the good work she's pretending is being done. After all, this is a show that's always been fueled by a cocktail of conflict and suspicion that's served with a slice of cynicism. This is a franchise that celebrates a convicted felon returning home from jail only to find a brand new Lexus sitting in her driveway that's wrapped in a gigantic red bow. This is a series that invited Brandi Glanville back to make guest appearances – and paid her for it. This is not a televised forum for anything particularly wonderful and we all know it.

ASS TATTOOS AND HATE CRIMES

December 27, 2015

On a street right near my house sits a church with a sign on its expansive front lawn. I’m not sure who actually changes the letters on the sign or at what time of day the newest message to the public is thrown up there, but I do know that every few weeks new words appear. I’d think maybe it’s God himself, but sometimes things on the sign are spelled incorrectly and my guess is that God’s got fact checkers and editors and at least three wise men up there who would never let a “your” pass for a “you’re.”

The messages on that church’s sign are usually vaguely threatening, at least the way I read them. They are always blunt – as I guess a sign should be – and they involve commands like, “Kneel. He wants you to,” and I cannot help thinking in return, “But are you sure he wants you ending a sentence with a preposition?” This week the message on the sign is far more tempered than I’ve ever seen. There’s no verbal insistence that, “He died for your sins!” up there right now. Instead, the church just wants to remind all of us that we need to put the “Christ” back in “Christmas” and I’d probably be far more okay with that command if it didn’t remind me of the kind of thing Kathy Lee Gifford used to say back when she hosted that old morning show with Regis and she had her former face.

It is with those staunch instructions about Christmas and what it should mean in my mind that I entered the salon I go to at a quarter to nine a few nights ago. I figured that just as we ought to put the “Christ” back in “Christmas,” I also should probably put some highlights back in my hair. When I moved a few years ago, I realized that I would need a new pedicure place and a new dry cleaner and a new Trader Joe’s and a new vet and I called my friend Shannon every time I needed to know where I should go. “Where’s a waxing place that’s located near a bar so I can get a drink to numb the pain of having hair pulled off my nether regions with either hot wax or sugar?” I’d text her – and she would send back an address and a reminder to exhale through the pain. And since she steered me in the right direction when it came to hair removal, I figured she might be just the person to recommend someone who would tend to the hair I actually want to flash to the world.

Andrea did Shannon’s hair and she started to do mine also. The first time I sat down with her, I laid it out straight:

“Listen,” I explained slowly, seriously. “I don’t like major changes with my hair and I really don’t like inches being hacked off that we didn’t discuss for hours prior. Once I called in sick after a bad bangs experience. I don’t really bounce back from hair-related trauma very quickly.”

She nodded confidently and flung me around in the chair to take a look at what she was dealing with in the moment. My hair hung far too long down my back and there were seven greys at the top of my head – and I know that because I’d counted them that morning with tears in my eyes.

“Can you give me three inches?” she asked assertively, which was exactly the tone to take with me just then, right before I could become hysterical.

“Where will three inches leave my ends when it’s dry?” I responded. She pointed to a spot above my chest and I shook my head and we negotiated and then settled on two and a half inches instead and then she pulled out some foil and some dye and some scissors and the next thing I knew, I left that salon with hair the exact length we had agreed upon and blonde highlights I didn’t know I wanted in the first place.

(That one gorgeous guy who can cook aside, Andrea might be the single most important relationship I have formed over the last couple of years, and I say such a thing with no embarrassment in the slightest.)

Since it’s holiday time and my hair likes to look like I didn’t just rub my entire body against an electrical socket for kicks, it was time to carve out a few hours to get everything done again so Shannon and I decided to ask Andrea if we could go to the place after hours, if she’d keep it open for us. She agreed and that’s why I found myself trudging outside in the pouring rain late one evening to get into Shannon’s car. I brought my new puppy with me.

“Are you sure I can bring her to a salon?” I asked Shannon. She was the one who suggested I bring the dog in the first place.

“Of course!” she trilled back. “It’s just going to be us there!”

We arrived – and the place was packed. Apparently, other stylists had been contacted by their friends who wanted to look presentable in the coming days and so I walked into a crowded salon clutching a member of the canine family. But here, of course, is the thing: there’s nobody who can look at a three-pound happy puppy and not immediately move from the thought, “Why is there a dog here?” to “I need to hold that thing this instant!” I did what I needed to do and I pimped my dog out and let everyone pass her around and marvel over her ridiculous level of cuteness – which is staggering – and eventually everybody except us left. I’d been holding her the entire time, but I placed a wee wee pad on the ground and she went right to it and Shannon and Andrea and I applauded. Then she went tearing around the place, finding the pedicure station the most interesting. While I was getting highlights, I didn’t want her to breathe in the chemicals so I tasked Shannon with watching her and handed her the bone the dog likes to gnaw upon at all hours of the day and night. The next thing I knew, she was underneath the salon’s Christmas tree, reclining across the tree skirt near the nativity scene while nibbling on her bone.

“Is she okay?” I kept asking.

“She’s fine,” Shannon would respond.

“Are you sure she’s eating her bone and not the Baby Jesus?” I inquired at one point. “Are all of the shepherds still where they’re supposed to be?”

Later that night – just as I realized that I really loved my highlights and my lowlights – my puppy peed underneath the Christmas tree.

“Tallulah!” I yelled. “That is not where you go to the bathroom! You go on your pad!”

She ran over then to the pad and she peed there too and as Shannon and Andrea congratulated her for being a belated good girl, I wondered if her act could in any way be considered a hate crime since she’s Jewish. And if it was intentional, I’m thinking that perhaps I can bring her with me to SUR so she can squat on Jax’s shoe, piss on a fried goat cheese ball that will be served directly to Kristen, and point her paw and laugh at all the people who flit in and out of the action on this show who have still never made it into the opening credits.

THE UNICORN'S BIG DAY

December 22, 2015

I take a lot of things in my life very seriously and one of them is Secret Santa. Sure, currently on the corner of my desk sits a pile of essays about 1960s-style film antiheroes that I should probably grade and there are definitely recommendation letters I need to write so some of my students can get into good colleges and not eventually have to live on the street or get a job at SUR. I should also possibly carve out the time to call the parent of an eighteen year old in one of my classes who sits directly in my eye-line and picks his nose and then eats it. (This is something that really happens. The first time I saw it, I was quite certain that I was hallucinating. I was not hallucinating; the dive into the kid’s nose was real and it was not just a one-time thing. This event happens daily and I fear I might never be the same again. Also, should this kid’s final average turn out to be a 12, I am still passing him just to get him out of my sight.)

Anyway, with all of my actual responsibilities piling up, I made what I think is the very adult decision to prioritize that which is truly important – and this week I have decided Secret Santa is where I should place the lion’s share of my focus. I run the event. I sent out the “Who wants to play?” email a few weeks ago. Then I sent out a follow-up email because some people suck balls and therefore find it impossible to respond to a colleague who is just trying to make the workplace a little bit more festive. Once the players were finally in place, I sauntered around a huge building in five-inch heels carrying a small box that was loaded with names written on small slips of paper. “Here,” I’d say, shoving the box towards someone while he was in the middle of teaching eleventh graders about the recurring theme of solitude in Into the Wild. “Pick a name. If it’s yours or someone you hate, you can choose again.” There were a handful of times people tossed the original name they picked back into the box. There was also the moment I said to a good friend, “You pick first. Anyone you want in particular? I have no guilt in cheating here,” and his response was that he wanted me and that was quite sweet, though it also totally ruins the game by eliminating the element of surprise.

One person was signed up to participate by someone else. I was aware of that and I didn’t think it would be any sort of big deal, but what I didn’t know is that participating in a three-day Secret Santa is apparently against everything this guy stands for and, when I appeared in his room and thrust the box of names towards him, he began to shake and stammer like I had randomly decided to turn Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery into something real and he was singlehandedly choosing the name of the poor sucker who was about to get stoned – and not in the good way. I let him off the hook because horrified people tend to make very poor Secret Santas, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t still weirded out by the whole thing.

As for me, I didn’t cheat – and that’s a first. I randomly selected a name and I bought that person all kinds of presents and I wrapped them this weekend in festive gift bags that have color-coordinated tissue paper shoved inside to make them look extra pretty and I lined them up on my dining room table so I wouldn’t forget to bring them to work because the only thing worse than a Secret Santa having a nervous breakdown just by picking a name from a box is a Secret Santa who forgets to bring a gift. I’ve always taken gift giving rather seriously. I’m not a wait-until-the-last-minute kind of shopper and I keep lists in my phone throughout the year of maybe-presents to buy certain people. And though the person whose name I picked is not someone I’d really qualify as my friend, I respect my role as her present giver. As such, magnetic poetry featuring the words of Charles Dickens, her favorite writer, is coming her way and she can affix all sorts of fragmented sentences about Dickensian poverty and misery to her refrigerator all vacation long. I hear she’s also a Fifty Shades of Grey fan and I did consider getting her some Christian Grey magnetic poetry too, but it is the holy season after all and she’s kind of religious so maybe it would be unseemly for her to create sentences out of words like “cock” and “fisting” this week. I settled instead on the Dickens gift and a few ornate picture frames and some chocolates and the most gorgeous handmade soap you have ever seen. And I only hope my own Secret Santa – whose identity was compromised before the fucking game even started – puts as much thought into his gifts for me and finally gets me that baby otter I have always wanted.

With thoughts of mistletoe and candy canes and Christmas morning running like reindeers on crack through my mind (which makes perfect sense and all since I’m Jewish), I can’t help but consider which gifts I’d choose for my favorite Vanderpumpers had we all participated in a raucous game of Secret Santa together – which, I’m imagining, would take place on the most frigid day Hell has ever seen. And while I’d probably open anything some of them give me with sterile gloves just as a precaution, I do love receiving presents and I’d look forward to unwrapping whatever it is that Jax was able to steal from SUR to bestow upon me, though I really hope it’s a half-burned candle and not one of the place’s illustrious and not-at-all discerning hostesses he’s convinced to get shoved into a box.

THE LAMEST HORSE IN THE RACE

December 16, 2015

There's really nothing better than jetting off to Europe on a wonderfully glamorous family excursion. There’s so much togetherness when you’re all cramped together on a luxurious yacht! Plus, once you dock, you get to steep yourself in genuine world history just by walking the same old streets the people who lived before us once wandered down. I think if our ancestors could come back today, they would be very excited by the Yelp app and positively flabbergasted by what constitutes entertainment at this moment in history. Let’s put it this way: just trying to imagine my sweet and departed grandmother’s face as she stumbles across the rapist with the steel dildo on American Horror Story (or a Kardashian in any of their incarnations) gives me a gigantic headache and, while I miss her, I think it’s probably a good thing that she’s long gone. I don’t think she would appreciate the Real Housewives franchise either, but Kyle Richards could care less that my Nana wouldn’t like her. Kyle, you see, simply does not have the time to contemplate ancient history or why my granny would look at her and slowly shake her head for allowing a camera crew to film her children in the kitchen or accepting Faye Resnick into her life in general. No, Kyle is spending her sun-washed European days shopping for caftans so that when she arrives back in Beverly Hills and someone who is just trying to be nice tells her that she just loves her baggy colorful top in shades of emerald and amethyst, Kyle can flip back her long hair and laugh her raspy giggle before murmuring that she bought the garment in Europe. That’s what’s really important.

Making fun of a woman so showy and desperate for attention is quite easy, but the sympathy I recently started to feel for Kyle remains. The woman comes from maybe the most fucked up family around – and I’m including the Manson Family in that little comparison. Not only is Kim Richards Kyle’s sister (and nobody sucks more than Kim Richards, who has blamed Kyle for giving her alcoholism just like she blamed her for giving her chicken pox when they were nine), but Kathy Hilton is Kyle’s other sister and she might be even worse. Kathy Hilton is the reason Paris Hilton exists, making her Patient Zero in the epidemic that brought about making people famous for a whole lot of nothing and trucker hats. And what kind of person only invites half of her sister’s family to a wedding? According to some press reports, part of the reason for the family division traces back to Mauricio starting his own agency after resigning from the company Kathy’s husband owned. Was loyalty compromised there? Probably. Mixing family and business is tough, but banishing people from your life is a pretty bold decision to make and it’s probably not the very best decision. All that said, I don't really care about any of this but I guess that Kyle and Lisa need something to talk about as they flip through racks of overpriced clothing while wearing hats with brims the size of the rings around Saturn and Kyle’s sucky family works just fine as the conversation topic du jour.

THE SPITTER

December 15, 2015

It’s that time again in New York when the trees rise stark and bleak against the backdrop of a sky that’s the color of a worn out grey tee, when you can see your breath leaving your mouth in a faded frosty cloud if you burst into laugher while standing on the street in the moonlight. It’s the time of year when I keep reminding myself that it might be very nice to invest in some footwear appropriate for the tundra and when everything I put on for work in the morning involves black tights that are designed to keep me from freezing my entire ass right off.

Yes, it is that time – or at least it’s supposed to be. I think maybe Mother Nature didn’t get the message, or perhaps she’s going through a tumultuous breakup and simply doesn’t have either the gumption or the energy to rain flakes of fluffy snow down from her expansive sky. There’s always a chance that she’s trying to ward off her own heady and chronic case of seasonal affective disorder and that’s why the trees here still have some stubborn leaves clinging to them. It could also be why I walked around all weekend in just jeans and a long sleeved tee and no jacket and I didn’t shiver even once. The brand new coat I bought that reminds me of the one Penny Lane wore in Almost Famous is still residing full-time in my closet. There has been absolutely no need yet to adorn myself with anything that once grew off of a faux sheep. The shovel that was worth every penny I paid for it last November stands patiently on my back deck. Last year it was frozen solid into a block of ice that remained until mid-April. I think it knows that it will eventually be called to action, but for now it’s reclining in peace and enjoying the sixty-degree balmy weather of an east coast December.

I’m quite sure that anyone who is not currently running for office would agree that what’s going on here is far more about the impact of global warming than Mother Nature dealing with the residual scalding bitterness of finding out that Father Time has been banging his mistress somewhere along the equator. It’s truly fucked up that I flung my windows open yesterday to enjoy the nice crisp breeze, that I’m not really sure where my gloves are or if I even have both of them anymore, and that every day the weatherman crows that we have just neared another record high temperature. But what I think we all must accept is that the weather patterns we’ve come to rely upon have shifted; that which we have come to understand and expect is no longer relevant. And if something like the weather can change so radically, maybe people can change too! Maybe Jax and James and Kristen and the thing called Lala can surprise us all by exhibiting character traits they’ve never shown before! Maybe some of those traits will be positive! Maybe these people are actually human!

A PLAGUE ON ALL THE HOUSEWIVES

December 9, 2015

Don't you just hate it when your wretched alcoholic sister tells your vapid narcissistic sister that you shouldn't be permitted to attend your own niece’s wedding because, as the relatively normal one in the family, you have consistently tried to do the right thing by providing tough love to a woman who has been a fucking calamity for decades and that sort of honesty is seen as far too unseemly for a family that prides itself on fame brought about by inherited money and blowjobs caught on camera? Yeah, me too.

I have always failed to see the appeal of Kyle Richards and I’ve made my opinion about her crystal clear. While I don’t believe she is inherently evil or terribly stupid or actually out to cause massive amounts of harm, I still don’t like her. Could I perhaps work to be more tolerant of her throaty giggle and her look-at-me machinations? Of course I could, but tolerance takes energy and I’d rather exert that energy by buying boots. What I’m saying is that I have no immediate plans to overhaul my mentality in an effort to be kinder to Kyle unless I believe the situation genuinely calls for it, and when it’s revealed that she has been banished from a family wedding, well, that’s the sort of scenario I can take umbrage with and throw my tepid support behind the only sane daughter who ever burst forth from her mother’s loins.

BATTLE SCARS

December 8, 2015

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about empathy, both as a broad concept and how it manifests specifically in my own life. Empathy comes easily to me (in much the way patience does not) and I’ve always been drawn to the empathetic sort, the kind of person who sweats great big drops of empathy after an intense workout that includes one-armed emotional pushups. See, I think that the tendency to comprehend someone else’s feelings and then adopt those same emotions as a way to connect on a deeper level is, in many ways, just an offshoot of being logical. Think about it: someone you know feels hurt or lost and you can see pain written across her face like a story that doesn’t have an ending – or one filled with far too many endings – and you take a second to trace back what it is that might have caused her to currently be curled up in a trembling fetal position on your living room floor. You know enough about her to realize it’s probably heartbreak and betrayal that’s been mixed into a shitty cocktail she drank through a straw without using a chaser. You understand that she feels momentarily broken. And you know full well that feeling broken is frightening, even if it’s been a good long time since you have been broken – even if you have sworn to yourself that, fuck no, you will never allow yourself to be broken like that ever again.

But maybe that’s the stumbling block for people who are unable to be empathetic – and yes, those people exist and they walk amongst us. Part of empathy requires sorting through your own personal storage shed of emotions and experiences to locate the one that will allow you to relate to the person sitting before you. Unfortunately, mentally stumbling back through experiences you thought you had successfully buried can be akin to taking a spiky garden rake to the face. (I was into my shed analogy, hence the rake. Please go with it.)

Relating profoundly to someone else’s emotions can result in you feeling shittier than you did before. Empathy is messy; it’s crushing to try to decipher and then share someone else’s pain, but I think ultimately it would probably be even more crushing to feel nothing. Still, there are definitely some perks to being emotionally barren. Without pesky shit like sentiment pulling my focus, I could maybe benefit all of humankind by solving cold cases or building sterilization chambers meant to stop much of the cast of Vanderpump Rules from ever breeding.

IN SICKNESS AND IN WEALTH

December 2, 2015

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.

MISERY LOVES MISERY

December 1, 2015

There are just certain things one should never do:

1. Enter any supermarket or CVS the day after Halloween when all the candy is 50% off and the sugary portion of the brain gets stimulated simply by looking at all of the discounted Twix that line the shelves like a caramel-and-cookie-and-chocolate-coated dream.

2. Meet a blind date on a boat that takes you far out to sea when you’ve never been that good a screamer.

3. Try on a bikini in December unless you’re tan, drunk, or surrounded by blind people who have been drinking.

4. Go shopping for electronics on Black Friday without having first rubbed Vaseline across your entire body. The slippery nature of the stuff will help you to stop the person who is trying to club you over the head so she can snag that humongous TV from getting a good grip on your forearm.

5. Watch the reality show you’re tasked with recapping when you are in a very dark mood.

Yes, I’m coming off perhaps the bleakest week of my adult life, a week where I lost a lot. I had to say goodbye to one of my greatest loves and it’s left me feeling a bit disoriented, more than a little bit lonely, and like I’m trying to swallow a craving that tastes both salty and sweet but the lump in my throat keeps getting in the way of gulping anything down, even a memory. Over the last seven days or so, I’ve been faced with realizing definitively who is there for me in the murkiest of times and who is not. I have watched life turn into death. I have lost water weight from crying the kind of guttural sobs I didn’t think my body even knew how to generate anymore and I have lost any sort of patience for assholes who try to hurt those around them. And it is with that mindset taking hold of my thought process that I’m going to issue a warning: if you want to read a nonjudgmental recap where the writer pretends these Vanderpumpers are not society-tarnishing demons, you should wander away from this page immediately. Come back next week when I’m sweet again. Call it projected fury caused by wrenching grief, but I’m venturing close to the shadowy corners tonight – and I’m inviting you to come with me as long as you’re willing to take the journey without a flashlight.

This one’s meant to be dark.

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