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PIZZA & PAINKILLERS

PIZZA & PAINKILLERS

As someone who once politely asked one of my male friends if he was interested in placing a bid on my uterus should I happen to put it up for sale on eBay during a particularly hellish and crampy month, I clearly don’t have a problem with women discussing vaginal issues or flashing iPhone pictures of wounded vulvas as they make their own pizzas.  What I do have an issue with is the way two women, exceptionally thin in their own right, seem to think it’s acceptable to speak about someone else’s eating disorder while they are wearing microphones.  Is Jules almost invisible when she stands sideways?  Yes.  Did I recently see a picture of her in shorts that caused me to actually gasp out loud?  Yup.  Might it be problematic that the lady totes around Lidocaine – which can be added to coke to increase the numbing effect of the drug in a way that might impact the ability to successfully chew anything resembling a calorie – and gleefully pops some into her calzone?  Definitely…though I want to try a forkful of the stuff.  There is obviously something quite disturbing about Jules and her frail frame, but watching Carole and Bethenny joke about it and debate her weight makes me feel uncomfortable. These are two people who should (and do) know better.  (By the way, I am very much aware that I too have just commented on Jules' weight issue, but I'd like to plead that I have to do so in order to accurately recap this show. I feel sort of badly about it, though.  I shall punish myself by watching an old episode of this series, the one where Jill Zarin donned a full costume to ice skate at a party she threw for herself, and I'll turn the volume way the fuck up so it's as unpleasant as is humanly possible.)

But before Jules can once again be shamed for a psychological condition that manifested into a physical one, Bethenny tells all the ladies (besides Sonja and Luann, who are no longer invited to events planned by producers unless Bethenny gives her explicit written consent that their presence is acceptable) how grateful she was that Dorinda accompanied her to the doctor and that it’s hard because she doesn’t have family who will care for her during events like a medical crisis.  Ramona is sweet here.  She tells Bethenny that her friends are her family and they’re there for her.  But enough about the serious stuff!  It’s time to make pizzas, decorate them with toppings, and ask Jules her exact weight, even though both her expression and the tone of her voice clearly indicate that she would rather discuss her husband’s alleged infidelity.  She claims to weigh 115 pounds, a nothing weight for someone as tall as she is, but while she’s outside – inhaling nicotine and the kind of freedom that comes from not sitting at a table and being grilled by her new friends –Carole and Bethenny remain inside and sneer that there’s no way their emaciated buddy weighs more than 95 pounds, max.  “Jules presents her eating disorder as something she’s gotten past,” Bethenny says.  “It strikes me that she’s right in the middle of it and maybe not entirely dealing with it.” I’m sure Bethenny has a point here. I have a point, too: commenting on Jules’ weight to the cameras will probably not be the thing that propels her to get healthy any time soon.  

 

VICKI'S CASSEROLE

VICKI'S CASSEROLE

For those of you too caught up with watching the recent scuffle between lunatics who want to continue to allow people on a No-Fly list to purchase automatic weapons and decent people who desire some change and chose to squat on the House floor until a vote could transpire or the chaos rumbling through the financial cosmos because of the Brexit vote, I am very sorry to tell you that you missed some other essential news this week.  Yes, it was reported just the other day that Vicki Gunvalson – a woman who makes me want to secede from the human race in general – claims to have lost over twenty pounds!  And how did she manage to shed one of those thighs?  Well, she used a wise diet that included gnawing on grapefruit and lettuce for breakfast (because who doesn’t crave lettuce at dawn?) before skipping lunch entirely and then tearing into an ounce of chicken when it grew dark outside.  In other words, Vicki used a diet plan called “Starvation” to achieve her goals and though I’m repulsed that she put such information out into a world where impressionable people might decide to follow in her bullshit footsteps, I’m even more upset that her dramatic weight loss did not result in her vocal cords depleting to just a hanging thread of nothingness.

Turns out that Vicki can still speak because the world is just not fair.  It also turns out that we start this week’s episode still on that boat where Heather would like to know why Vicki didn’t call everybody immediately after the Brooks-faking-cancer-and-doctoring-medical-records debacle to say, “Holy shit, you were all right! I was dating a lying sack of total horseshit who was so repulsive that he lied about having cancer.”   I feel the need here to say that, whatever Vicki’s response to Heather's question, that answer matters far less than the fact that she waited until the motherfucking cameras were following her again before she even attempted to craft an apology to any of these people and that kind of scheduling tactic makes me scoff at any of her impassioned pleas for forgiveness.  By the way, in this context, “scoff” means flinging something at a wall and wishing the wall was Vicki’s face.

THE MYTHICAL SHE-BEAST OF ORANGE COUNTY

THE MYTHICAL SHE-BEAST OF ORANGE COUNTY

There are just some people whose absence in your life feels nothing short of palpable.  It’s not even the lack of their physical presence that creates the smoldering void, but all of those damn associations you stumble upon – daily, hourly. If you’re anything like me, you find yourself tripping dangerously over song lyrics.  You bang headfirst into television commercials that advertise products you once would have purchased just to see that person smile.  You fall with a painful thud down a whirring rabbit hole that’s been lined with a tarnishing silvered memory and land, totally disoriented, into a pit of what you are certain must be simmering regret. When you wake up in the morning, another name pops into your fatigued brain, even before you wipe the cloudiness of sleep from your eyes, even before you remember your own name. 

You finally understand why just the syllables that make up the word “longing” sound so incredibly hopeless.

I have not experienced any of the above emotions during the many months that have gloriously stretched by since The Real Housewives of Orange County has graced my television screen.  I have not missed a single one of those ladies or the bedazzled tank tops they wear without even a hint of irony.  And while I suffer from the terrible affliction of always wanting to give a person a second (or a nineteenth) chance to prove he or she is not a total asshole, my opinions are already rather solidified when it comes to some of these women who have suffered continuously due to the exposure and stress being a part of this show brings into their lives – and yet they still always come back for more, more, more.

THE COUNTESS IS IN LOVE -- AND YOU'RE ALL JUST JEALOUS

THE COUNTESS IS IN LOVE -- AND YOU'RE ALL JUST JEALOUS

Welcome back to The Bethenny Show!  And just like last week’s episode (and the episode before that and the episode before that), I’m fully anticipating that this week’s installment will be rife with the kind of sinisterly bitter conflict and emotional mayhem we’ve come to expect when a show that’s supposed to be about the lives of seven women has been permitted to transform into a series about six of those people reacting to the constant verbal eviscerations and machinations inflicted by one very slender lady.

Look, I certainly recognize that there are some ramifications that come with Bethenny Frankel hijacking this show.  I know some viewers are irritated – furious even – that this season is panning out in such a way that Bethenny has managed to dictate the temperature of any room she enters, and that includes closets and outhouses and bars located inside of sheds.  I too find her borderline impossible much of the time and I will happily go on the record and say I probably would not want to be anywhere near her in real life.  Still, I do not hate Bethenny’s presence on my television screen.  Yes, she is undeniably the single coldest human being I’ve maybe ever seen – and I watched all of The Jinx and stared at Robert Durst’s face for many hours.  There’s a hardness that emanates from Bethenny – a blistering chilly steel – and it is blatantly obvious every time she spits out her words in a flurry.  She enunciates each syllable so methodically that it’s like she’s biting and snacking on her own vocabulary, a form of organic trail mix made out of sarcasm and strychnine.

 

HO! HO! HO!

HO! HO! HO!

It’s June!  And the total awareness of my looming days of bliss during whence I shall sleep until the sun comes up and then frolic along beaches with my puppy and a particularly adorable man has left me feeling both exhilarated and rather selfless – and that reverberating sense of positivity has translated into a desire to help others.  Seeing as I am unable to do shit like save lives, I will instead pay it forward by imparting the most essential wisdom I have gathered over the course of my life to my favorite online friends so you too can achieve some of what this momentary sense of nirvana feels like:

1. You can tell someone is a truly good friend when you don’t have to question his or her capacity for loyalty for even a second.

2. Nothing can benefit your life more than getting a good education – unless you can get sponsored by Peter Thiel, because that guy has your future covered so long as you never want that future to include a job at Gawker.

3. The people in your life you view as crazy are probably legitimately crazy and the lunacy they project daily as adults can likely be traced back to a very shitty day in middle school from which they have yet to recover.  Do not try to reason with these people.  In fact, it’s probably best not to look them directly in the eye or feed them after midnight either.

4. Most of the finest shows nowadays will never air on network television.  Basic and premium cable are your real friends and that means you should tune in to Lifetime for UnReal, USA for Mr. Robot, Showtime for The Girlfriend Experience, and Netflix for everything else.

5. When a man tells you that he almost gets into a fight every single time he enters a bar, he’s either lying or he’s psychotic – or he’s both, which makes him a lying psychopath who probably slumbers atop a bed made out of diaphanous red flags.

6. Layer cake tastes way better when it’s kept in the refrigerator.

7. Doing squats correctly hurts like a motherfucker.  Doing Pilates correctly hurts like a motherfucker who is going through heroin withdrawal.

8. Only tell the handful of people you really trust the whole truth and just smile affably at everyone else because those people don’t really care how you are or what you think.  Save your time and energy for the people who matter.

9. Try not to call a television show “preposterous” when speaking to the show’s producer.  

10. See Hamilton as soon as you possibly can.  Know how it’s been touted as being the single greatest thing ever to hit Broadway?  That hype is real.

11. Shrug off the inconsideration someone directs at you because you’re strong and you can handle it, but refuse to forgive someone for all of eternity if that inconsideration is aimed at a member of your family – at least if it's a member of your family you actually like.

12. The thread count of sheets matters tremendously.

13. If an opportunity presents itself that both excites and terrifies you, do it. You’ll figure it out as you go and really, as long as you appear confident, people will think you actually know what you’re doing.

14. Don’t even bother trying to straighten your hair when the humidity level hits 60% or higher.  Also, only date men who love their air conditioners as fervently as they love their mothers or their pets.

15. For the love of all that is fucking holy, don’t ever RSVP “yes” to a holiday party thrown by a Real Housewife.

 

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE

Let’s talk about Luann, shall we?  My dear internet friends, our favorite Countess appears to be smack dab in the midst of her own personal renaissance!  Gone are the days when she used to invite her daughter’s friends out for a festive afternoon of learning which fork to use while insisting that there’s nothing teenage girls enjoy more than brushing up on their etiquette.  That Luann is dead and the reincarnated version does shit like crawl home at dawn from some guy’s place before enjoying a breakfast laden with carbohydrates in her roommate’s kitchen while chortling about a brawl her friends caused at a party for a dry cleaner that was covered in the Post because it’s not like anything important such as genocide or terrifying elections are occurring these days.

I think it’s pretty undeniable that New Luann is far more fascinating than Old Luann. New Luann seems to be more of a person and less a bland prototype of what she once heard generic royalty is supposed to act like.  It would be hard, for instance, to imagine New Luann sliding into the backseat of a car and admonishing the friend sitting beside her for deigning to call her by her name when introducing her to the driver.  In fact, I’d like to think that New Luann would slap the shit out of the antiquated version of herself – or, at the very least, squirt all over herself in disgust.

PROTECTING THE FACIAL

PROTECTING THE FACIAL

During the years that our television screens – and our very lives – have been graced with the presence of The Real Housewives of New York, we have witnessed some truly batshit stuff.  Off the top of my head?  Well, we’ve watched Luann decide she’s a singer and then embrace her very own catchphrase, one she ironically doesn’t seem to realize has made her exponentially less cool.  We’ve watched Ramona doll herself up in a silk teddy to give her philandering husband a massage while Avery probably sat in another room and filled out papers that might lead to her emancipation.  We have seen Alex literally break out in a scarlet torrent of neck, chest, and face hives due to a confrontation she volunteered to have with Jill in an effort to spare a pregnant Bethenny from having to do it herself.  We’ve witnessed Dorinda mentally swerve from seemingly calm to downright maniacal in two drinks flat and we have, of course, watched Sonja claim the following is all true:

She used to be exceptionally close to John-John Kennedy.

She spent most of her seasons in Gstaad – except for all the time she spent on the private jet that whisked her away to that private island she has recently started to reference in her hallucinatory anecdotes about yesteryear.

She speaks often to the Saudi royal family.  (I believe her on this one.  Those guys call me every Thursday just to say hello and to tell me they really enjoy my recaps. Such sweet people…) 

She has an international lifestyle brand that is hugely successful and the fact that you can’t actually buy any of the clothing just means the demand for it has grown in imaginary leaps and bounds. 

She is very happy. 

Okay.  So on the one hand, I feel absolutely fine making fun of Sonja Morgan and the delusions she spews out along with her breath that I’m guessing smells like wine that’s been left out overnight on the kitchen counter without a cork.  She is a reality television star.  She has made the choice to live what’s either a genuine life or a somewhat fabricated life while being filmed constantly.  She has signed that Bravo contract year after year.  She's seen ample evidence that's proved the show's editors probably do not have her very best interests at heart.  She’s had viewers, fellow castmates, and Sir Andy Cohen himself directly ask if she really considers herself to be sane.  She could have walked away at any time and instead she chose to stay and to make Reality Televisionland her permanent dwelling, one I'm guessing she dolled up by hanging some counterfeit art on the metaphorical walls.  

MIRRORS, GLASS, & ESCORTS

MIRRORS, GLASS, & ESCORTS

My sister watches Days of Our Lives.  I feel like I need to be clear here:  she didn’t just start watching Days of Our Lives and she didn’t used to watch Days of Our Lives.  No, she has consistently watched Days of Our Lives since high school and she is in her forties now and I don’t believe she’s missed even one single day of the show.  Her commitment could be seen as impressive were it not so terrifying.

I used to watch that show, too.  I was such a fan while I was in college that I would organize my class schedule so as not to miss a minute of the dastardly goings-on in Salem, which were often far more interesting than the generic chaos happening on campus on a random Thursday.  That said, even as a Film major who learned early the concept of willfully suspending disbelief, I had a limit when it came to the patently ridiculous and it was the storyline that centered on Stefano living in the depths of Marlena’s closet and sneaking into her bedroom to open her soul every night that finally pushed me over the proverbial ledge. I’d already accepted demonic possessions and new actors appearing as longstanding characters out of nowhere and pregnancy scares and swamp girls turning into princesses; I had to draw the fucking line somewhere.  

The show is moronic, I told my sister over the phone as gently as I could.  I’m breaking up with it and, if you have any dignity, you will cut it out of your life as well.

I was, after all, only trying to be supportive of a family member.

Leigh did not break up with Marlena or John or Patch or Sammy.  She stuck with them and I was able to make a tremendous amount of fun of her for years and years about the bullshit programming she embraced as entertainment.  Me?  I got into different shows like Lost and Breaking Bad and The Wire and Dexter – you know, quality programming.  I would talk about those shows with friends and acquaintances and new men I met at bars.  (Nothing makes a man more excited than a girl in a tank top talking about Dexter.  Actually, if my cleavage could project Caddyshack on a nearby wall, that might beat the Dexter thing, but I’ve yet to figure out the technology behind that little skill.)  But privately?  Well, that was a different story because I also found myself falling into a ditch where only reality shows played on a loop and, even though I probably could have crawled out of that ditch without too much trouble, I chose to stay there and I installed a DVR.  I began watching The Real Housewives of Fucking Everywhere and Survivor and Vanderpump Rules and one season of America’s Next Top Model, though I completely blame a friend for pulling me into that one.  I tuned in to the first few seasons of American Idol – and I even voted once, which is on my Top 10 list of Biggest Personal Humiliations.  (It ranks higher than the time my left boob popped out of my bikini top on a date and sat there bobbing on the surface of the water for at least five minutes before I realized what was happening.)  And I became (oh God, the shame) a fan of Big Brother and watched every episode of that show – and lest you not realize how humungous (and tragic) a revelation I am making here, please know that show airs three times a week during the summer.

THERE'S NO HEAT OR HOT WATER IN THE LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE

THERE'S NO HEAT OR HOT WATER IN THE LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE

I’ve been thinking a great deal about Sonja Morgan lately. And what I’ve realized through countless hours of pondering the motivations of a rather loony woman is that she’s now fully bypassed the time in her life when she could just be classified as being amusingly batty.  Those days are dead.  She has since entered a new phase in which she spends her late afternoons and all those drunken evenings teetering on the precipice of total and complete clinical insanity.  Now, that’s a bold charge for a recapper to toss one’s way, so allow me for an instant to share with you the definition Psychology Today offers to explain the variables of such a sickness:  Clinical insanity is a mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior.  Sound about right?  

When she first appeared on this show, Sonja was a (somewhat) different person and it was a very different time. Bethenny hadn’t yet achieved gazillionaire status. Jill Zarin still believed she’d be relevant forever and enjoyed passing her days recording grievances against friends on index cards and posing for covers of books she deep down believed people would pay full price to read.  Alex and Simon pretended they did not decorate their home to resemble a cheap bordello that housed hookers recovering from chlamydia. (They also enjoyed pretending that Alex could legitimately become a model and that Simon was legitimately heterosexual.)  And Kelly Bensimon gnawed dreamily on gummy bears she was convinced had been grown organically on trees in a meadow where a sunny ball of LSD glowed majestically in the sky when she wasn’t running clear through oncoming traffic for her daily dose of cardio.  She also lost her sanity so completely that anyone who so much as stood in the same airspace appeared nothing but fully lucid in comparison.  Into that tumultuous environment did Sonja Morgan enter our lives.  She was vivacious.  She was funny.  She had a way of turning every third sentence she uttered into the kind of sexual innuendo only a real dame can spew out without appearing completely ridiculous.  She giggled and rooted for the best for everybody and appeared to not take herself all that seriously. 

I’m not quite sure where that loopy though mildly lucid version of Sonja has gone.  I can only guess that she hocked that part of herself in order to pay delinquent electricity bills or something, but the Sonja Morgan left in its place actually concerns me.  This devolved version of Sonja that appears (with her staunch consent) on our television screens is a Sonja who legitimately does not appear able to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s fantasy anymore.  There have, of course, been hints that this form of psychosis was upon us.  Remember when Sonja tried to insist that Madonna came to support her at her fashion show but nobody saw the illustrious Ms. Ciccone because she wasn’t able to get through security?  Recall the evening when Sonja screamed in Kristen’s face that Kristen should have known to tell a reporter some version of, “Sonja Morgan is far too important a human being to concentrate on a mere toaster when she is clearly blowing the international lifestyle brand game to smithereens with her business acumen that is both impressive and absolutely invisible to the naked eye.”  

 

THE TIPSY GIRL'S GOBLET OF DELUSION HAS RUNNETH OVER

THE TIPSY GIRL'S GOBLET OF DELUSION HAS RUNNETH OVER

Obviously, I want to begin this recap by throwing out the suggestion that we all band together by season’s end and form a vigilante group, one whose very specific mission is to free Dorinda from John and then cart her off to intensive inpatient therapy because it appears that she actually loves the fleshy-lipped pig – or we can just say “fuck it” and head en masse to the Bravo studios with torches – but I feel like I have to talk about the psychic first.  We’ll return later to my ideas about fundraising possibilities for our group.  I’m thinking of holding a bake sale or maybe doing the Housewives equivalent of the Guess-How-Many-Jelly-Beans-Are-in-the-Jar game, only our version will ask people to hypothesize about exactly how many dicks have been inside of any part of Sonja so far this year.  (My official guess is thirty-one.) We’ll also get to the discussion about whether or not we should use a straightjacket for Dorinda that has its very own detachable fur vest, but first we really need to tread through the Psychic Scene.

Before we go soaring off into the mystic with a mystic, let’s quickly check in with Sonja.  She was not invited to meet the psychic so she’s wiling away her day by getting a facial.  This facialist became part of a storyline at one point on this show when she was captured on camera gleefully proclaiming that Luann enjoys banging little French people. Now the facialist is back and she’s fighting like hell to stay relevant. In fact, she will hold up a golden apple in the opening credits of this show if it is the last fucking thing she does. Before I can fire off a threatening letter to Andy Cohen (Dear Andy, I have already put up with Aviva Drescher proclaiming that Truman Capote wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.  If you hire the gossipy facialist, I will destroy you. Love, Nell), Sonja’s brand new intern comes out to chat with her stem-celled-mask-covered boss about the RSVPs that are trickling in for Sonja’s next big event.  Even the facialist has scored an invite despite the fact that the party is so very exclusive. The official word is that the party is meant to celebrate Sonja’s birthday, but the evening will also be used to launch Sonja’s brand new alcohol line!  That’s right:  Sonja, who either has a huge drinking problem or becomes a huge problem when she’s drinking, is ready to head a brand new business because her wildly successful fashion line cannot possibly be improved upon.  I mean, once the public can purchase a jersey tunic that is shipped from a dilapidated townhouse because it’s not actually sold in any stores, what else is a savvy businesswoman to do?  What would Elon Musk do?  He probably wouldn’t team up with a guy who looks like the rodent in Charlotte’s Web to sell wine, but maybe it’s Sonja who really knows best.  She might not own a Tesla, but she’s been naked in one!  (The facialist told me so.) Anyway, the news about Sonja’s alcohol line will eventually be met with shock and derision from the people at the party who have some sense (and Ramona), as well as untainted raw fear when it's revealed that Sonja plans to call her brand Tipsy Girl, a prospect this bizarre amalgamation of a human lady actually believes will cause Bethenny to become dizzy with flattery and excitement.