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REALITY TV

EMPLOYEES OF THE YEAR

March 22, 2016

You know what’s so satisfying about a reality television reunion show? It’s the way the participants, who behaved all season long like witless troglodytes experimenting with crack addiction, finally take some responsibility for all of their questionable actions. The accountability they are now so willing to express is likely due to having watched themselves acting like barely evolved human beings – because you too are on crack if you believe these people don’t watch this show every single week – and learning to reconcile that they (at best) have come off as supremely foolish and (at worst) have come off as fucking imbeciles. Yes, that’s why it was so gratifying as a viewer of this show to bare witness to Kristen standing up and announcing, “Though I am five feet nine inches tall and fabulous, I am also clearly insane! I have blamed other people for all of the problems that have plagued me for my entire life! These patterns of being banned from places and events squarely come back to my own repulsive actions! I should not wear rompers! I am choosing a new path for my future and it leads first to a white padded room where professionals will nod soothingly at me every single time I glance up and tackle me if I try to escape!”

You think that was comforting to hear? How about the moment when Jax – who brought his own blotting papers to deal with his little sweating issue – admitted that he is definitely a sociopath and might now be willing to maybe entertain a future where he doesn’t tarnish the lives of those around him for profit and sport? And how spectacularly sweet was it when Ariana stood up and cheered after he said that and then bounded across the set to give him a gigantic hug to illustrate her absolute belief that what he was saying wasn’t just another lie? (It was also totally kind when he complimented her natural tits and softly whispered that it turns out that silicone is not the number one thing that makes a woman interesting.) And don’t even get me started on the joy I felt when James broke down in racking sobs and serenely declared, “I am a wimpy piece of hamster shit and the worst dressed man in this entire country. I have allowed the headphones I wear as a DJ in a small restaurant to deafen me into believing that I am desirable. I have behaved atrociously and, as penance, I will return immediately to England where I shall live inside of a ditch that resides on the grounds of a monastery until the monks can no longer stomach looking at me. I’m so sorry, everyone, for the disaster that is my life.”

Oh, the breakthroughs the Vanderpumpers achieved by being put on the spot by Dr. Andy Cohen – who did his dissertation on the strategies needed to fuel narcissism in dickheads – were nothing short of awe-inspiring and I for one feel like I have just come out of a ten-day mediation retreat where cell phones were turned off, “bravo” was only a word and not a channel that turns nobodies into pretend-stars, and levels of awareness were achieved by even the biggest dumbasses stomping around this fair planet.

Alas, I’m sort of devastated to have to admit that the above description was just an awesomely vivid fantasy; not a bit of that actually transpired on Part 1 of the Vanderpump Rules reunion. Still, I’ve been reading up a bit lately on the concept of Stoicism and I believe the ideas inherent in this Hellenistic school of thought are finally beginning to seep in. See, the theory behind Stoicism is that one can train oneself to endure all aspects of grueling pain and crippling hardship without complaint. Not only that, but ultimately those who master these techniques will even be able to experience pleasure and remain indifferent. I’m not particularly interested in that part of it – and the men I know well seem to enjoy that I’m rather vocal when it comes to indicating that I’m being pleased – but how much calmer would life as we know it be if you could stumble through the symbolic fire and not even allow yourself to feel the heat? The way I see it, Vanderpump Rules – especially its never-ending reunion show where the cast continues to baffle me with their shock that Jax is a dick and their eye-rolling that Kristen is a real girl and not an extended acid trip gone very wrong – is a fucking inferno and, unless you can rewire your very soul to not feel stunned and offended by this group’s collective lack of humanity, something important within you will corrode and die.

CHARITABLE MANIPULATION

March 16, 2016

I cannot possibly be the only one these days suffering from intense Housewives malaise, right? It’s a real problem, my friends, but being the proactive type, I have taken steps to try to remedy the issue. My first act – flinging my cable box through a plate glass window – only ended up creating further (and bloody) problems, so I’ve decided to head back to the basics and deal with my challenge logically. It’s not all that hard to figure out what’s causing me to visibly recoil any time I see an adult female in an evening gown hold out a piece of fruit. Simply stated, I’m getting really fucking tired of watching grown women fight about pure nonsense and then get paid for it so I have recently taken some important steps to at least attempt to alleviate my pain:

Step 1: Cut several incarnations of the Housewives from my life like I’m hacking off a limb rotted with gangrene. I was able to accomplish this particular goal rather easily. “Au revoir, New Jersey table-flippers!” I shouted from my rooftop more than a year ago, my voice filled with glee that I would never have to figure out which twin’s husband allegedly slept with his mother-in-law or have to definitively ascertain what species birthed Theresa. “Adios, Atlanta lunatics,” I scrawled in the sand during one warm afternoon on a sundrenched beach when I could have sworn I saw something that resembled NeNe Leakes bobbing in the distance beneath the waves. “Suck it!” I happily trilled recently to my television set after watching my first (and last) episode of the newest Housewives who reside in and around the exciting city of Potomac. While I realize I shouldn’t judge a series on only one episode, I’m quite certain that the entire show revolves around a drag queen spewing out lessons in proper etiquette to fools who aspire to be as famous as Vicky Gunvalson. Those women have been forever sliced from the fabric of my life and I have never felt more free.

Step 2: For the Housewives shows that I will still watch because I write recaps about them – New York, Orange County, and Beverly Hills – I make it a real point to only view each episode once. Enforcing this rule can be complicated. It means that one must never accidentally leave Bravo on during a long rainy afternoon because we all know how those marathons can suck in even the most reluctant viewer and, for my sanity and for the safety of those around me, I must refrain from rewatching screaming battles fought by people I do not even know.

Step 3: Never – but I mean ever – follow a single one of these women on Twitter or Instagram. If there’s anything remarkably provocative that needs to come out, rest assured that an entire segment of the twelve-part Reunion will be devoted to whatever post one of these women wrote that singlehandedly sparked World War III and know with total certainty that each person on that couch will whip out a phone from between her Spanx-clad thighs to show some evidence that probably won’t end up mattering anyway.

Step 4: Accept that the people on this show will never really change. If you like one, you will probably continue to like her. Might your favorite Housewife fuck up every now and then and cause you to wince because you’ve decided to be on her side and she's momentarily behaving like a possessed toddler? Sure. But will your allegiance to these strangers actually matter in the long run? Not a fucking chance. Also embrace the fact that the Housewives who appear deranged are in fact out-of-their-fucking-mind-crazy and remember that just because one of them is sick, it does not mean that you have to like her now or overlook that she has surrounded herself with a posse of assholes.

Step 5: Cleanse your mental palate every now and again by watching Requiem for a Dream. After viewing the arm amputation scene or the gangbang done in exchange for some heroin, issues like Münchausen syndrome and Kim Richards' inability to accept any kind of responsibility for the misery that is her existence will appear positively minor.

Have I helped cure you of your Housewives Fatigue? Good! Because this episode is about glamorous women who hate each other doing charitable things and I feel like sharing this wellness plan can be my own little act of charity. I'll march for Yolanda and her babies tomorrow, but tonight there are more pressing matters to discuss. See, tonight Erika and a few of her enemies are boarding a private jet bound for New York, and since I've obviously chosen to embrace my philanthropic side, I'd like to caution her guests to sit very close to the emergency exists and perhaps bring along their own flotation devices. Several of them should feel free to use their own tits.

ENGAGEMENT PARTY MASSACRE

March 15, 2016

Let's talk about slashers, shall we? Yes, I’m referring to that illustrious group of grisly movies where nightmares happen all around Elm Street and severed limbs are doled out along with Milky Ways on Halloween. Judge away, but I love those movies. Give me an omnipotent killer who never says a word as he preys upon suburban teenage archetypes in dark and isolated settings to the tune of a revving chainsaw as it slices into some nubile flesh, and I'll be a pretty happy girl.

It wasn’t always this way. I used to be normal. In fact, I was the one who considered climbing out the window at slumber parties when The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was slid into the VCR after we’d grown tired of freezing the underwear of the poor girl who’d made the grave mistake of falling asleep first. For me, the visual carnage of torture that always seemed to be shot in extreme close-up was enough to give me waking nightmares for weeks. Friday the 13th was even tougher for me to take. I went to sleepaway camp, for fuck’s sake! I did not need the mental association of a wandering masked psychopath attacking counselors reverberating around my brain when I’d soon have to spend eight weeks in a remote setting with nothing to use as a weapon besides a lanyard. I mean, it was bad enough when they showed us Jaws on a rainy afternoon and then insisted that we jump into the lake for swimming lessons the next morning! I really couldn’t afford to be terrified of hockey masks as well.

The thing is, despite my very real wariness of all things horror, I was oddly drawn to those movies. I’d wander the aisles of Blockbuster with some Rob Lowe movie gripped in my hand, but I couldn’t help but check out the box covers in the Thriller section. I must have picked up I Spit On Your Grave a zillion times to check out the hatchet the woman was holding as well as the tagline that indicated that she had every right to have viciously slaughtered four people. Is that blood or dried small intestine on the tip of that hatchet? I’d wonder. I never rented I Spit On Your Grave while I was still in high school – I’d always chicken out – but I did eventually start enjoying the act of consuming cinematic fear. I can still recall that freezing chill that spread inside of me as I watched The Silence of the Lambs and I realized that there was something very powerful and almost hypnotic about the coupling of atmosphere and certain shots – of mixing explicit fears with an implied brutal subtext – and I would marvel at the way a great filmmaker is able to invade the psyche of someone he’s never even met.

Then came senior year of college and a high-level Film Theory course that was one of the last requirements for my major. For a class steeped in dense theoretical analysis, the professor elected to use all horror films as his visual texts. I perused the syllabus the first day with a heady mix of anticipation and palpable dread – and my heart almost stopped dead when I saw that one of the movies I’d be required to watch was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I’d still never seen it, not a single frame, but it had morphed into something legendary in my mind, my very own blood-spattered white whale.

In somewhat of a daze, I went to the bookstore after class to pick up what was required and it was then that I first saw the book that would become one of my all-time favorites. The cover – a mix of black background and red text the color of plasma – was emblazoned with a shot of Leatherface glaring beneath the title: Men, Women, and Chainsaws. I took the book home with me, crawled on top of my bed in my sorority house, and opened it with more trepidation than I probably would if I were invading someone’s diary.

By the time I finished chapter one, I was all fucking in. The author delved into the violent terrain of slasher films in an effort to examine theories of representation and identification in cinema and every single movie she referred to became one I needed to see immediately. My friends were good sports about my newfound obsession. They were mostly Business or Education majors who were drawn to romantic comedies, but they’d sit beside me as I watched Sorority House Massacre in our living room. They would understand when I’d press pause and join them when they took a break to get a snack or follow them into the bathroom as they peed because they realized I was too scared to be left alone on the couch. But while the movies still frightened me, I wasn’t really looking at them in the same way anymore. I started to focus instead on the visual and thematic iconography of this gritty little subgenre known as “the slasher.” I read my textbook carefully and recognized the signs of a killer ruled by psychosexual fury and began to see how his violent lashing out was, for him, a release that felt almost sexual. I started to nod seriously and take notes while watching a shitty movie like Splatter University. My friends would either be cowering behind throw pillows in fear or laughing at the horrible acting and the absurdity of a killer priest hiding a weapon inside of a crucifix while I couldn’t help but mutter to myself, “Girls always get killed onscreen and their deaths are shot at close range.” I began to note how men often kicked the bloody bucket in rooms so dark that it was almost impossible to see the penetration of the killer’s weapon or that their deaths took place entirely off-screen. I saw with clarity that female characters are mentally toyed with before the axe comes down and that there clearly is only one character a viewer is able to root for in the slightest.

The “Final Girl” – as coined by the author of Men, Women, and Chainsaws – is the survivor of the slasher. She’s the only character we really know anything about and our knowledge of her likes and her dislikes and her fears are divvied out to us from the very start of the film. She’s the one who is different from her friends: she’s intelligent and thoughtful and she covers herself the hell up while the rest of the girls happily allow their clitorises to wave in the wind. She’s the one who hears the strange noise and doesn’t think it’s just a storm, the one who never suggests that right now would be the perfect time to disrobe and take a shower. She eventually stumbles over her friends’ body parts and she’s often got a unisex name and some stereotypically masculine energy because God forbid a universe of viewers form an identification with a classically feminine character. She is not sexually active and she’s the one we will all root for until the bitter bloodstained end.

“Her name is Jessie!” I’d exclaim to the friend sitting beside me, the one I’d made watch yet another one of these movies. She’d be hiding her eyes behind her fingers while contemplating making new friends. “Jessie is a unisex name! She’s our Final Girl!”

“You realize that you’re ruining the movie, right?” she would mumble.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” I’d respond with a serene smile. “It’s not like you didn’t know that the blonde chick named Tiffany would kick it the second you saw her. She laughed about forgetting her chemistry textbook at school and you can see her nipples right through her tank top! That chick is going down in no time. I think she’ll be impaled by something like a spear! What do you think?”

My friend would respond by staring at me blankly.

“I think that I can’t believe you are getting a degree in this bullshit,” she would respond seriously.

She had a point.

I think one of the reasons I eventually became so drawn to a genre I used to avoid like the flesh-eating plague was because of how satisfying it felt to apply the theory as I watched. Okay, I’d think to myself as the blades of a chainsaw ripped through a female character’s flesh. This girl is dying because she’s trespassing unknowingly on the killer’s turf and because of the killer’s psychosexual fury. She’s been coded as nothing but female and sexual since she first stepped onscreen and that’s why she’s a fucking goner. There was a quiet simplicity to it all. I liked that there could be zero discussion about which person to root for in one of these films. The other entertainment I was typically drawn to was way more complex, populated by characters who were both benevolent and hideously flawed. I didn’t love how conflicted I would feel when I’d start to care about a character who would lie or cheat or steal. I had enough of a problem giving assholes passes in real life.

Speaking of assholes, I think one of the problems I have these days with a show like Vanderpump Rules is that I can find nobody with whom I want to fully identify. If this series were a slasher, at this point I think I might have to cheer for the fucking chainsaw.

PERMISSIBLE BEHAVIOR

March 9, 2016

For the love of all that is holy, can these women please stop throwing dinner parties? A plodding exercise in both pure futility and vicious verbal brutality, The Dinner Party scenes on The Real Housewives of Wherever always seem like they should be accompanied by ominous studio scoring. Nobody at the dinner will eat a thing. Not one person will be understood better than she was before she walked in the door and planted two fake kisses on her hostess' cheeks. No woman at that table will suddenly shout, "Eureka!" as she instantaneously decides that you were right and she was wrong during the soup course. Accept it, ladies: the evening will be a long and twisted nightmare from which you cannot awake. You probably won't even be able to escape quickly because your car isn't there since there's apparently a clause in the Housewives contract that requires that you carpool to all events with the person whose name you plucked from one of Kyle's Chanel caps. (Shhhh: the hat is as fake as its owner.) But really, regardless of how I feel about any of these strangers, there's no denying that they're all relatively smart women – except for Kathryn, who comes off as a moron – and I cannot for the life of me figure out the logic behind showing up at someone's house when you just know it's going to end badly.

And really, what is left for these people to discuss? Any retreading of past issues will again lead to no concrete resolutions and gathering together will surely just spawn even further animosity. You know what that means? It means the Reunion will end up being a FIVE-PART travesty instead of a three-part shit show and Kim Richards will show up so she and her sister can cry on opposite couches as they explain to the world at large that the only hope of mending their shattered relationship is to embrace privacy.

This week, it's Erika who is throwing the party and to that I have but one question: Why? While I'd love to pretend that the occasion is to celebrate International Women's Day or that she's officially reclaimed the word "cunt" and believes she must mark the occasion with a cake shaped like a vagina, I'm pretty sure she just drew the short straw at the last production meeting. Erika has already decided that Lisa Vanderpump is a manipulative alligator who likes to slink around in various shades of pink so she can undermine those around her while asking unbelievably intrusive questions like, "So, how long have you known Yolanda?" Yes, the woman is a monster. Erika has also snarled while watching Lisa Rinna question Yolanda's illness and she clearly believes Kyle is a waste of space, to say nothing of the fact that it was confirmed last week that Kathryn completely betrayed her and then blamed Erika for it because she made the mistake of speaking. What else might someone in Erika's position do now except call a caterer and welcome these women into her home? I'm confused. Are we supposed to act like any of this makes sense? Are we expected to think that Erika will seat herself across from Lisa Vanderpump and muse to herself, "I was wrong about this woman! She's a delight!" Are we being asked to develop some hope that this season will skid to an end with all of these women suddenly friends? Or are we just being encouraged to form our very own March Madness brackets and take bets on which Housewife will walk out of that dinner party with her dignity intact? (Anyone who slots Kathryn as the winner is a total sucker. I'd put all of Lisa Vanderpump's livestock ahead of Kathryn's chances at victory.)

THE CATCH

March 7, 2016

I attended a wedding once where the bride leaned in to kiss her brand new husband during the first dance and he pulled away from her, recoiling. To this day, I can feel the reverberation of the walls in the place as they shook from the collective gasp let out by the guests who were surrounding them and watched it happen.

At another wedding, there was a rain delay. I was a bridesmaid. I arrived at the beautiful location at noon to take pictures with the rest of the wedding party. There was no food set out for us anywhere – no water either – and we baked in the Florida sun for hours until the rain came. Sadly, Reese's Pieces did not fall from the sky. It was probably going on hour seven of this wildly unnecessary bout with starvation when I began to seriously contemplate stripping some bark off a nearby tree so I'd have something to gnaw. Three hours later, the storm subsided, my friend sauntered down the aisle, and dinner was finally served. The salmon I ordered was brought to the table raw – and not in that good-sushi kind of way, but in a this-chef-sucks kind of way.

Then there were the nuptials I attended for a woman desperate to be married and a man desperate to believe he's straight. When the priest pronounced her no longer single and him heterosexual, the kiss was long and full of tongue and something I can't ever again unsee.

I had to miss a friend's springtime wedding because I'd already planned a vacation with my boyfriend. I felt terribly about missing her big day, but there were nonrefundable plane tickets involved. Turns out, I missed quite a wedding. There was a cake people couldn't stop raving about (the single most important thing at a wedding besides true love and a pre-nup) and a moment when the bride's brother went to punch his father and accidentally clocked his mother. I know what you're thinking and I'm pleased as spiked punch to confirm that, fortunately, the knockout occurred nowhere near the cake because that would have been a total disaster.

I bring all this up because it is my staunch belief that those compromised celebrations will be seen as fucking perfection in comparison to the engagement party Katie and Schwartz are throwing for themselves. Sure, the weddings I attended were colored by deception and hunger and bloodshed, but Kristen Doute didn't attend a single one. She must've been far too busy winning a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama to show up for cocktail hour. (Just to be clear, I will never – and I mean ever – tire of the ridiculous comment she made that she's best known for her dramatic roles and I vow to somehow include that line in every single recap from this day forward in much the way I used to comment so frequently on her limp hair or the fact that the woman is a bonafide lunatic.)

THE CONSPIRACY THEORY

March 2, 2016

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.

STASSI RISING

March 1, 2016

Is there an exact date on record in the annals of history of the first time someone answered the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" with simply the word, "Famous"? Did that person just shrug dismissively when someone brave questioned whether or not he or she actually had any talent that might beckon fame in the future? And if we journeyed back in time and snipped that shrugger’s vocal cords and also maybe hired a sniper, would Vanderpump Rules even exist?

I think one of the things that infuriates me the most about this show is that so few of its participants appear to have any goals other than achieving some level of generic infamy. I mean, sure –you can argue that Sandoval's got a band and Schwartz is a model and Katie (who has never once worn an item of clothing I have coveted) has a style blog, but what do the rest of them want to do besides strip off their dignity season after season while cameras point and aim and shoot? What is Jax’s long-term plan for his career and personal happiness? Ready to laugh? I recently heard that our favorite felon opened (or will be opening) a restaurant of his very own. Riddle me this: would anyone who has ever watched this show actually consume food prepared in an establishment that was started by one of the ooziest guys who has ever appeared on television? How might one sterilize a dumpling? Then there’s Kristen. She claims to want to be an actress, one who is best known for her dramatic roles. But here’s the undeniable caveat: after being inside of this loon’s dreary apartment and watching her tell random strangers to “Suck a dick” and knowing that she proclaims to her bedroom mirror, “I’m 5’9” and I’m spectacular!” on a daily basis, can anyone even pretend to buy her as an authentically sane person or really believe her in any role other than Scorned Psychopath?

(I’d toss James into this little exercise too – you know, just for giggles – but the guy has already announced to the masses that he’s the white Kanye West. When it comes to this English weenie, I figure that I don’t even need to lift a fucking finger anymore. The guy is just that ridiculous; all I have to do is record what he says and then walk away because this dude has become my living embodiment of a human mic drop.)

THE EMAIL

February 24, 2016

It occurred to me recently that there are entire stores dedicated to helping human beings try to outsmart dogs. Seriously, walk into Petco or whatever establishment wants to charge you money for rawhide and just wander around for a while. There are aisles and aisles filled with products and, regardless of their lovely packaging, the subtext for most of them is TAKE BACK CONTROL FROM THE ANIMAL YOU ALLOW TO LIVE IN YOUR HOUSE AND SLEEP IN YOUR BED, THE ONE YOU INSIST UPON DRESSING IN SWEATERS OR IN A NICE FLEECE WHEN IT GETS CHILLY. I was at one of those stores last month for the third time in one week and I stood looking for a moment at the array of items in my cart that I'd soon pay for and then lug home:

There was a plastic square designed to hold a wee wee pad in place. I needed this item so my dog might stop ripping her pad to shreds before swan-diving into the pile of crumpled wee wee pad she created in what I think was an attempt to fashion a plusher fluff pad than the one I'd so lovingly provided.

There were sprays of all kinds. One was to stop her from peeing everywhere. One was to cover up the smell of pee when Plan A went to hell. And one was flavored bitter apple and it was designed to stop her from nibbling on my moldings, which my former dog used to wander by without ever showing the slightest interest.

I had two plush toys with tags attached that claimed the toys were demolition-proof. My puppy demolished all of the moose and half of the chicken in two days flat.

She kept knocking over the dishes in her crate, so I found hooks that promised to hang the bowls permanently. Those worked. I also found her a pretty sweater that she happily romped around in for a while before removing it herself because apparently she spends the time I'm at work practicing to be a stripper.

"How's it going with Tallulah?" a friend of mine asked today.

"She's the sweetest dog in the world," I responded with a smile, "but she's having a hard time with some of the commands I'm trying to teach her."

"Which ones?" he asked.

"You know – just sit, stay, and come."

I bought and read three training manuals. I spent twenty minutes trying to decide which training treats to buy. I debated the merits of chicken vs. bacon. I purchased a leash the "experts" recommended for teaching commands.

My dog sits when she feels like it.

What I've realized is that training anything is really fucking hard, especially when you're doing it during the same months you've decided to cut bread out of your life. The benefits my sweet puppy brings to my life far outweigh the difficult moments, but it's not easy and it's made exponentially worse when you realize you've one again been bested by an animal that weighs 4.4 pounds and that means her brain is only, what, half a pound? I think I just always assumed my larger brain would prevail when it came to which one of us would outsmart one another and prove ultimately victorious. I was sadly mistaken.

The thing is, I know I have to train Tallulah now. I've listened to all the random adages I've heard over the years! I know it's the journey that's important and that success is 90% perspiration. I also know that it's almost impossible to teach old dogs new tricks and that lesson has led me to start thinking about our dear Housewives. What kind of tricks would I attempt to teach them if they were my pets – and more importantly, what kind of dog would each of them be?

Lisa Rinna looks very much like a cute Yorkie I once knew, so I've decided that's her spirit pup. As for what I'd teach her, it might be nice if she learned how to stop over-apologizing for things she really shouldn’t feel so badly for doing. Of course, should she piss in the corner of my bedroom in dog form, I'd like her to apologize for a day and a half straight.

Eileen is clearly an Afghan. I'd brush her daily. And while I have no idea about the mathematical capability of hounds, I'd instruct her to take over the financials of her household because all of these references to Vince's gambling this season have started to worry me.

THE DECLINE OF FRIENDSHIPS...AND WHITE KANYE WEST...AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION IN GENERAL

February 23, 2016

I think the dew is off the flower.

This is a real thing my gorgeous best friend said to me two nights ago when she discovered a line near the corner of her eye that she swears didn't used to be there.

Please, I told her. I've named the wrinkle on my forehead after the person I know gave it to me. I say "good morning" to it.

The truth is that both of us look fine. Sure, the passage of years means that we've changed, but she is still beautiful and here’s some proof: whenever my ex-whatever used to hear me say her name, he'd state happily, "That’s the one I like." He said it every time – and he never really liked too many people and, well, let's just say that he's slightly more critical of aesthetics than Anna Wintour, so I think it's safe to say that yes, my best friend is very pretty. Anyway, that night – after laughing hysterically over her dewy flower comment – we started talking about the weird and winding roads we once walked (and sometimes crawled) down that led us to become friends all those years ago. It’s funny: I don't remember actually meeting her, but I do remember the two of us becoming real friends in a quick progression, as often was the case during those hurried college days before the concern about forever colored things, before my wariness about getting too close spiked sky-high.

Once upon a time, there were ten of us and we were really close and we stayed that way for about a decade. Even after we no longer lived in the same house or on the same street, we made it a point to get together frequently. Of those other nine girls, I can pinpoint the exact moment when I met six of them. Many of my finest stories from those years involve them playing major roles. We shared private jokes that, even after they were told a thousand times, stayed somehow funny to us and for a very long time I knew almost everything about those girls and they knew just as much about me.

Certain memories stick out:

One of them collected every tissue and wad of toilet paper in the known vicinity and handed it all to me in a tragic clump when I found out that one of my top graduate schools had rejected me.

One of them used to take off her socks when I felt down because she knew the sight of her oddly shaped toes – they looked like water towers! – made me inexplicably smile.

But there’s also this:

One of them still has my grey Delaware hoodie and I miss that hoodie more than the person who stole it.

We had a good run, the ten of us together. But at a certain point the group splintered. To me, it felt like a natural thing and a part of me always expected it would happen because some long-distance friendships don't last. I held no animosity for the girls I no longer considered my friends and I truly wished them all well. And I had no desire to engage in the bitter war of words a few were waging for no good reason at all during the aftermath. It all eventually broke down for real when one of the people who has remained my friend emailed everyone to say that she was fucking sick and tired of showing up to showers and weddings and birthdays to celebrate the major moments in the lives of a group of people who never once asked anymore about her life. All she wanted was reciprocity and an acknowledgment of some sort that these people had become bad friends, but that’s not what she got. No, these people – who for a few years there never once asked her how her career was going or how she felt after she moved to the city – all of a sudden had a shit-ton of things to say and all of it was defensive and not one of them ever apologized. There were long emails that could have been turned into lengthy scrolls on which some girls swallowed any complicity they might have chosen to recognize and instead threw up the kind of bitter verbal bile that even smells accusatory. Not one seemed willing to harness any self-awareness in order to say, “Hmm, this person doesn’t usually send me this kind of hurt and angry email. I wonder if perhaps I contributed to her feeling this way…?” As for me, I often asked her how her career was going, so I wasn’t part of her intended audience and I didn’t know what the result would be from a group of people I already felt distant from, but whatever my guess would have been, I’d have been wrong. I watched with total puzzlement as the interactions grew ugly and it really surprised me. I never expected such fury! What was the point? Did any of them really expect that ten of us would continue to walk into bars together until we turned sixty? Had they never before grown apart from somebody? Why were they taking the loss of a friendship they didn’t care enough to nurture so hard? Was there no way to simply bid adieu to half of a group of friends and revel in the fact that now there were fewer people around who knew what we all looked like before we’d discovered waxing? Would nobody even consider looking on the bright side?

And since we’re on the subject of splintering friendships that are actually broken beyond repair, I tuned in to the season premiere of Girls Sunday night and watched as a Marnie the Bride surrounded herself with a group of bridesmaids who hate her. They do not hate her because she’s getting married; they hate her because she sucks and the four of them have nothing in common anymore because it’s hard to find real friendships that can be sustained beyond the purview of college convenience. And sure, recognizing the limits of a friendship can be disappointing – startling even – but sometimes it’s just best to move on and to do so before everything falls to shit and you can no longer recall a single thing you once appreciated about that person you once called a friend.

My experiences might not be universal, but one thing I have found is that some friendships are not fully linear. There can be a period of time that passes with nothing but silence and then a connection somehow transpires and the relationship reforms with new common ground, one that is now supported by the foundation of history. Just this last summer, I found myself reconnecting with someone who had once been one of my closest friends and we each waded back in gently but with a smile. She asked me to meet up for lunch and I took care with my outfit like I was heading out on a second date with a guy I might really like. The second I saw her, I realized three things: 1) she looks exactly the same 2) she picked out her clothing carefully, too 3) it was like no time had gone by. We did not rehash any of the old animosity because there was no anger anymore. Time had taken the sting out of anything we’d ever done to one another, and I left that lunch with a big grin on my face and feeling like I had just made a new friend who I wouldn’t have to take so much time to explain my history to because she already knows it.

Over lunch she suggested that all ten of us should get together again. I have no problem with that prospect, but I can’t say I’ve actively missed some of those people and I cannot imagine that they are losing any sleep missing me either. I mean, I’d probably do it just out of curiosity and to see if those old jokes still land funny, but I wouldn’t harbor any hope that we’d end up becoming a group like we once were. Also, I know off the top of my head someone who would rather set herself on fire than be in any room with some of those people, and while I share none of her still-raging acrimony, I can see her point.

Some friendships simply should not be rekindled once they have finally been laid to rest. There are just events some people cannot get over, incidents that once crackled too loudly to pretend there could ever be a peaceful silence in the present. That said, I am living proof that a former friendship can be rebuilt if you are both able to harness a quiet forgiveness that doesn’t need to be continually explored or rehashed because all of that is just fucking exhausting. I also know this: probably one of the best ways to avoid having to repeatedly have unpleasant conversations you don’t want to engage in is to stay the fuck off a reality show because yammering away about past conflicts so they can remain present conflicts is clearly part of the job.

And speaking of our Vanderpumpers, what have we learned about them so far this season? We know that Stassi became so lost that she was willing to believe that she found a safe harbor on a lunatic’s couch and that she desperately wants to be friends with people she used to loudly decree were beneath her. We know that Sandoval spoke for ten minutes straight about why he didn’t want Kristen to come to Hawaii – he told her all of the reasons directly to her face and in alphabetical order – and this crazy woman still walked away from the conversation by randomly announcing, “Congratulations, Ariana – you win.” We know that Ariana, of course, continues to win just because she’s not Kristen. We know Katie and Schwartz are heading into a passionless marriage and that he doesn’t ever want to sell sangria. We know that there’s clearly a fierce battle going down between Jax and James to determine which of them is awful enough that science should jump on in here and make at least one of them extinct. But perhaps the thing any of us watching with at least one eye knows best is that these people probably wouldn’t be friends with one another anymore if not for this show. It’s too messy now and, even if they all reconcile, they will end up on a two-part reunion where every single thing that hurt each one of them will be discussed ad nauseam and that kind of miserable retreading is not what typically leads to closeness between people who sort of want to maul one another.

Since we've still got a ways to go before the reunion, there's more of a mess yet to be made and we begin this week's emotional pigsty in a lingerie store that allows cameras and hands out champagne you must suck through a straw. Scheana has set up the whole shindig in an effort to reconnect with Ariana and she’s gonna let Katie watch as it happens. Also, Scheana once heard from Jax that girls trying on lingerie in a group setting is a complex fantasy some guys harbor and, knowing that it might not work out with Shay in the long-run, Scheana would like to keep herself attractive to all men so she can have herself some options. As for Ariana, Scheana misses her and she can't imagine why Ariana isn’t there for her, especially after she made sure to continue to invite Ariana’s nemesis out for drinks even after that nemesis continued to imagine aloud the very best ways for Ariana to be killed. Still, if anything can bond women it's trying on garter belts together and the whole excursion might have been a success if Ariana didn't bitch about every bra she strapped to her body. Katie walks out with some new stuff and she also lets us know that she and Schwartz have still not had sex and I wish I'd formed a bracket at this point so we could all place bets on how long this newly-engaged couple will go before one of them explodes.

On another stressful note, Stassi has been texting Katie but Katie is still not interested in making amends with someone who so ingloriously ditched her. It's not going any better for the guys in their little group. Ariana tells Katie and Scheana that Jax flipped the fuck out on Sandoval last night but Scheana is quick to correct her and to blame Sandoval for the mess because that's exactly what you're supposed to do while you're trying to win back a friend and the lingerie shopping didn't work and she hates you anyway.

Speaking of hatred, the next scene is all about James and the single greatest accomplishment of his life. Yes, I too thought it would be his tank top collection, but in fact it's a Pump complication CD! So just how talented is James? Well, let's allow him to tell us! "I don't mean to be conceited," says this ridiculous human specimen that needs to be studied quickly. "But I'm the white Kanye West." That can't possibly be a statement that'll come back to haunt him, right? (Ten bucks says he copyrights that sentence and starts putting it on tee shirts.) I think what James means here is that, just like Real Kanye, he too is easily 50% more influential than any person – living or dead – on planet Earth and in a totally unrelated note, is there an ETA for when a civilization is ready to start on Jupiter because I think I need to move to a planet where people refrain from saying such idiotic things. As for our White Kanye, he's working in the studio on his masterpiece when Lisa comes by to check on the status of the project because she's the one who is financing this little operation. James tells her that his song with Lala might not make it on the CD cause bitches be crazy. He also lets her know that he’s been making the very intelligent choice to miss Kristen. Shaking her head at his nonsense, Lisa tells him to stay away from negative influences – like alcohol and his ex-girlfriend – and James thanks her for her advice with an odd glint in his eyes that is so weirdly cold that it almost caused me to shiver.

There's something very off to me about young James.

In an office across town, Schwartz and Sandoval sit together in a waiting room. It's a rough day for Schwartz. Sandoval is getting his tattoo removed so they will no longer be ass tattoo buds and it’s sad when something real ends. I'm not taking it too badly, though. I think these two will be married to one another in less than a decade and I'm already happy for them. But before I can purchase them some flatware, Ariana calls to tell Sandoval that Jax – age 36 – claims that the reason he lost his mind the other night and formulated sentences like, "I'm the most popular one!" was all because Sandoval wanted to talk about his band. The entire fight between these two is so silly and there's no time to focus on any of it because we're about to see Sandoval’s ass tattoo get removed with a device that looks like it was developed in a medieval torture chamber.

In an IKEA-and-Pier-1-decorated torture chamber across town, Stassi is starting to feel right at home getting trashed on Kristen's couch during the daytime. She's even able to offer her benefactor some support! Kristen, who is known mostly for her dramatic roles, is involved in a comedy project (besides Vanderpump Rules) and she's a bit nervous about it, but the subject almost immediately gets changed to Stassi’s obsession with Katie, a girl who seems to have somehow morphed from Dullest Vanderpumper Ever into Queen Bee of a hive I’d guess is rather sticky. Stassi doesn't know what to do because Katie won't talk to her, but Kristen has an idea! She will drag Katie to Palm Springs and shove her unknowingly into a room with her former best friend and she will hope for the best and she says this like it's actually a very good and sane idea. Stassi, who is clearly losing her mind due to what I hope is some undiscovered form of Stockholm Syndrome, hops on board with the “Blindside Her Into Listening To My Apology” plan and then she and Kristen sit side by side on a couch and lament the loss of friendships they didn’t seem to appreciate in the first place.

In yet another waiting room, Brittany is filling out medical forms for her breast enhancement while her miserable boyfriend tells her that he's unhappy in all areas of his life. He feels like he's falling back into bad habits and he doesn’t want that for himself so he tries to be a little more mature right then and there and he accomplishes such a feat by fondling some silicon in the doctor’s office, saying "boobs" several times in a row, and purchasing his new girlfriend some new tits.

Who says bad habits can't be broken?

As for those new breasts, Jax all but peer pressures his girlfriend (who might not ever become President of MENSA) into believing that yes, she totally wants to be a D cup, and the two of them giggle once the decision is made and I sort of hope that her new cleavage crushes one of them during the night.

Two people who probably should be in a doctor’s office are Scheana and Shay, but they are at home where they’re having another conversation about his drinking issues and her mothering issues and, listen, these are major issues – true problems – and now it seems that Shay has some other problems too. The guy is thirty and has no career and no prospects but he does have a new video game. One day he would like to teach and coach, he says. But looking at these two? That day seems very hard to imagine.

In a happier space, Ariana rubs lotion on her boyfriend's tender heiny and then Jax enters and the mood grows dark. He's there to help remove the couch on which he once nailed Sandoval’s girlfriend while Sandoval’s slept blissfully oblivious in the next room. Now, I'm not sure how great it would be for the environment to burn Naugahyde, but I think the thing should be destroyed forever and we can maybe risk a minor biohazard to rid the world of that stained sofa. While moving the furniture, Jax decides to keep the change he finds beneath the cushions so maybe he can also purchase Brittany some brand new nipples as well. The peace between the three of them does not last. Outside, Sandoval and Ariana confront Jax about his crazy behavior and he reacts by crazily screaming and yelling and pointing fingers and deciding that it's Ariana who is escalating the situation and I really wanted him to walk down the street muttering, "Congratulations, Ariana – you win," but I guess some dreams don’t come true.

Now it's the day of Brittany’s surgery and Jax, backwards baseball hat and all, is positively giddy about the gigantic boobs heading his way. The surgeon begins the procedure by saying, "Let's rock and roll," and Jax compares his girlfriend's swollen chest to a 70" TV – evidentially not a flat screen – and then enters the recovery room by calling her "Boobs McGhee."

I swear that I no longer think this guy is real.

Over at SUR, Lala chats with Peter about how she's now reading Ayn Rand because she's had the time to allow philosophy into her life after cutting James loose. Peter's got some good gossip about the guy the planet at large will eventually name Earth’s Best DJ – so long as all the other DJs have gone missing first. Seems James and Richardson, Lisa's head guy at Pump, got into a spat that might or might not have started after James decided to drunkenly profess his love for Kristen. Apparently, James told Richardson that the guy is below him and he tossed several other class-related insults the guy's way. Upon hearing this information, Lisa is appalled and I hope that we'll get to watch him be fired in slow motion after which he'll ride off on a Pegasus into the animated heavens just like the Real Kanye’s mother did during his fashion show/album release/most recent pubic mental breakdown.

Back home and sore, Brittany needs Jax's help and he's not really a guy so accustomed to helping, but since new tits are part of the equation, he summons up all the kindness he can muster. She requires assistance bathing and changing and peeing and all I can think when I look at her is that she's only been here for a few months and her boyfriend has already been arrested and she's already had some surgery. Katie and Schwartz stop by next and they let Jax and Brittany know that they're having a party at the beach while they take their engagement photos and Lala will be there because Katie wants to stop the invitation fatwa they've been randomly waging against one another. Schwartz is kind of dreading taking the engagement photos for reasons I don't fully understand and this is maybe the most grumpy engaged couple I've seen since that girl I know got engaged to that gay guy.

On the beach, the happy couple meets up with Sandoval, Ariana, Shay and Scheana. Why there's a crowd gathered to watch them take engagement photos confuses me, as does the fact that anyone feels the need to make sure that other people know that Jax's account of things might not be totally accurate since he's a fucking pathological liar. Still, it takes Sandoval explaining things slowly to Scheana for her to finally understand that Jax is the asshole in the latest scenario, not him. And then the asshole arrives and he really wants to hear a story about someone who might be a bigger moron than he is, so Scheana puts on her Mother Goose outfit and tells Jax The Tale of James. The story goes that James wandered into work at Pump already drunk and insulted everyone in his eyeline and now he has to answer for his actions. The guy he verbally abused will be there as Lisa tries to get to the bottom of the guy’s latest fuck up. She knows he's going to be a ball of warped contrition – that he will beg her for another shot – and that's just what he does. He tells her the Lure of Kristen made him behave badly and he’s sorry the night became a complete fiasco. In another language, Lisa implores Richardson to reveal just what it was James said to him that night and it turns out to have been some form of, "You're nothing and I'm James Kennedy," making the White Kanye slightly less grandiose in his assertions of self-mastery than Real Kanye. As for Lisa, she wants James to understand that those are the kind of words he speaks when he's drunk and that he's maybe not cut out to work at Pump. In response, James rolls his eyes and begs for just a suspension and Lisa tells him to go away and grow the fuck up. His response is to cry and to ask about his Pump CD and then fold his arms across his chest when it’s revealed that the greatest DJ in the land has been demoted to being a busboy.

That sound you hear in the distance is Kanye West weeping about how he’s now the planet’s sole genius.

At a party she was finally invited to, Lala feeds right in to Jax's blatant instigation when he asks her where James is and how he can possibly be involved with someone new when he was just shouting about his love for Kristen from the gutters. Desperately needing a friend because of that time she was ostracized in the third grade, Lala happily agrees that James sucks before the conversation changes to Kristin and how she brought a new guy to her comedy showcase where she made sure to tongue him in front of cameras just in case Sandoval stumbled across the footage. But Ariana could care less about the new guy in her stalker's life. What she wants to concentrate on here is how Kristen is pretending that she knows anything about sketch comedy when that bitch hasn't even taken a motherfucking class and nobody takes sketch comedy more seriously than Ariana and that must be why people always seem to have such a joyful time in her presence. Nobody laughs anymore, though, after Katie tells Ariana that she's being really gloomy right now and Ariana responds by saying that she's been pretending to enjoy Katie and Scheana's company for about a year. There's a beat of silence that tends to follow the truth and one is taken here as well and into that silence bounds James. He has shown up with some girl named Laurel, but Lala has vowed not to break and allow jealousy over this idiot to consume her. She glares at James who in turn glares at Kristen who is staring out into the abyss and wondering how long it will take for the tides to sweep Ariana away forever and this is what I'm talking about: there is zero reason for so many adults who dislike one another so severely to ever be in the same space and these people just keep thrusting themselves back into these questionable scenarios in an attempt to revisit relationships that are brimming to the rusty rim with toxins and they are getting fucking paid to do it.

Proving once again that he is a garbage person, Jax immediately sits down with Kristen to tell her that Ariana was talking major shit about her and her new mastery of sketch comedy. See, Jax once accidentally stumbled into a Psychology 101 class after he stole a beer cozy from a campus bookstore and, harnessing his impressive education, he now has a plan. In an effort to redirect all of the problems he's caused with Sandoval, he will instead blame Ariana for riling him up and to prove that Ariana is nuts, he will have Kristen attack her in public so Ariana can lash out and prove her total lack of stability in the process.

I didn't say it was a good plan.

Nothing makes Kristen happier than the thought that Ariana hates her because that must mean that Ariana perceives her as a threat! But while she alleges that therapy has made her far less confrontational, the thought of verbally bitch-slapping her until Ariana eats sand gets her all tingly. (Guess ignoring the issue is just out of the question. Did therapy not cover that strategy?) They all start screaming at one another and it comes out quickly that Jax and Scheana have been talking about Ariana a lot ("It's because you're negative," explains the crazy lady. "If you can just be positive and be normal...") and see, that's when I would have gotten up and either calmly stated, "Fuck this" and removed my microphone and walked away into the sunset or ripped every stringy hair out of Kristen’s head and made a dreamcatcher out of it that I would hang over the bed where I happily slept with the bitch’s ex-boyfriend.

As for why she's so close to people who used to abhor her, Kristen wants Sandoval to know it's because she has learned to own her shit and Ariana and Sandoval stare at her kind of blankly when she says that, but I think it's because they're just scared and I sort of don't blame them because Kristen is so delusional that she has become a genuinely terrifying presence.

On another section of the beach, Jax laments to Peter about how there must be something wrong with him to be this age and still be so screwed up. He is not proud of himself for a lot of his actions and he wonders if there is "something wrong upstairs" because he is fueled by a mindset in which he needs other people to be talking about him or it means something is wrong. Maybe the guy has a narcissism disorder. Could be that he's a common sociopath. Perhaps he's just a jerk. Whatever it is, with an interior monologue like the one he’s got running through his brain, a reality show is either the perfect place for him to exist or the very thing that might eventually drive him legitimately mad.

Do I believe that Jax feels badly about the problems he’s caused for himself and for others? Sure. Do I think that anything will ever change? Not in a zillion years. But on the plus side, I have discovered that watching Vanderpump Rules can be both an edifying and soothing experience. I have learned that there is no limit to the damage former friends can inflict upon one another and I look back now at the people who are no longer in my life and I forgive every single one of them. Not one ever slapped me across the face or recommended that I puff up my tits. As far as I know, not one ever slept with my boyfriend on a couch I paid for or told me that she faked enjoying my company and what all this means is that I have officially decided to just move on. I even forgive the girl who stole my hoodie!

Fucking bygones, am I right?

Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York. She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon.com in paperback and for your Kindle.

THE SCARY BARBECUE

February 16, 2016

You know how there are certain words people just hate? The ones that always make me want to tear my ears off and then fling them across a crowded room so I'll never see them again are "moist" and "panties." Combine the two and I'll never eat solid food again. I don't know why it is that those words make me cringe, but the reaction is real and it's probably somehow related to the way they grossly they roll off the tongue and the visuals that I connect them to in my head. At any rate, there are scores of other words that make me smile. "Poodle" is my favorite word of all time and I have no answers for how that came to be. What I do know is that none of us should ever use the words "cunt" and "scary" in front of Kathryn, our newest Housewife, a woman who likes to engage in battles over linguistics in an effort to make her guests feel as uncomfortable in her home as is humanly possible.

We begin this week still in San Diego. Erika Jayne and her liberating gyrations on Pervert Night are just a thing of memory now. Over at Kathryn's San Diego house, a chef is preparing lunch for a group of people who – at best – tolerate one another for payment and – at worst – do not trust one another in the slightest. Think about the conflicts that are a ‘brewing along with the coffee the chef is currently slaving over:

Kyle doesn't like that Kathryn thinks Faye is a cunt – even though Kathryn would never ever use that word and Faye is totally a cunt.

Kyle doesn't appreciate that Lisa Vanderpump did not decree that Kathryn should be shot after uttering negative words about Faye at their joint birthday party where everybody had to show up in costume just so they would all have something to talk about.

Lisa Vanderpump doesn't appreciate that Yolanda tossed her kids' medical records into her lap at a restaurant like she's some basic bullshit OC Housewife since we all know those ladies are a nickel a fucking dozen and Ms. Vanderpump should be anointed like she's fucking royalty.