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vanderpump rules

THE CATCH

THE CATCH

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.)

STASSI RISING

STASSI RISING

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

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

 

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.

 

 

RIDING THE FLUX CAPACITOR TO VANDERLAND

RIDING THE FLUX CAPACITOR TO VANDERLAND

I've always been kind of fascinated by the idea of time travel, but only in a theoretical and romantic kind of way because the actual science behind it makes my head hurt. I'm guessing it all started with wishing it were me getting into that DeLorean with Michael J. Fox, but then it progressed into an idea that I started to associate with second chances and who doesn't crave a few dozen of those? I know exactly the moments I'd return to and in some I'd say something different and in some I wouldn't say anything at all. Without question, all of my elective time traveling would involve me going back to the past and not hurtling forward into the future.  When it comes to the future, I just figure that I'll get there eventually.

It's probably regret mixed with the understanding that comes from retrospect that makes me daydream about getting a redo, another life, like I'm Mario trying to save the Princess. (Fun fact: when I was in the 9th grade, I could get the Princess with one life. I was in my gawky stage then. It was better for society in general that I stay indoors and I had to pass the time somehow.) Now I'd like that extra chance to go back to right some wrongs, in some cases against myself. I guess I just don't subscribe to the idea that negative experiences stem directly from fate. I think they begin with bad choices and I think I'd sleep better if I had the opportunity to correct a few. The time traveling me would be braver in some of the moments to which I returned. In others, I'd stop worrying about how I looked. I'd stay awake in a few. I'd never have entered the room in one.

Before the movie should have had a real effect on me, I loved Peggy Sue Got Married. I got shivers when Buddy Holly played over the credit sequence. I wanted to wear the silver fifties-style dress Peggy Sue wore to her prom to the mall. I managed to pretend that Nicolas Cage wasn't in the movie. And the line, "If I knew then what I know now, I'd do a lot of things differently," haunted me, even though I hadn’t lived nearly enough life yet to be haunted by anything. My biggest fear became that I would do life wrong, that the choices I would make would lead to roads I wouldn't get back from.  I became determined to at least think things through and try to meander down the right paths so course correcting would be less necessary in the future.

I'd be curious to know which moments of their lives the Vanderpump Rules cast would go back and correct, and I'd like to suggest a couple as a purely sweet gesture on my part. They don't have to take my advice; after all, it's their lives and their imaginary time travel, but if they get to a point where they're having some sort of inner conflict about deciding, maybe my ideas can push them over the edge. My perspective? Stassi should go back to that time she was in middle school so she could respond with anything but, "I want to be on a reality show!" as an answer to a question someone asked her about her long-term goals. Jax should have been severely punished for whatever was his first major offense against another person that I’m guessing the person instead allowed him to get away with, setting up a behavioral pattern that is antediluvian. Katie should have put down the orange hair dye she bought a few years ago and bought Pringles at that CVS instead. Kristen never should've broken the social media stalking seal on that long ago twilight when she first broke into her boyfriend's Myspace account and instantly memorized every feature on the face of every girl who messaged him so she knew for sure who she should scrawl on her newest hit list. And James? He should bypass his entire history and crawl back into his mother's uterus so that he can do the whole thing over again and maybe not end up a badly dressed evil troll. 

At any rate, I'm not crawling into a time machine with any of them. I call shotgun on that fucking DeLorean. They can call an Uber.

 

 

 

 

PLATO'S GOT A POINT

PLATO'S GOT A POINT

A few weeks ago, I was given the mindless task of proctoring a History exam during midterms and the test took place in a classroom I've never been inside of before. See, my room's on the top floor of the school and my heels are simply way too high for any aimless wandering to take place so the truth is that there are probably a lot of places in my school I've never been. On the day of the test, I did what I needed to do: I passed out booklets and paper to kids I'd never met so they could write some essays and then the time officially started and I realized that I was expected to stare at these strangers unflinchingly for the next two hours. I got tired of looking at them after five minutes; all they were doing was writing and stopping every few minutes to shake out hands that already appeared to be cramping. It was 7:30 in the morning and they were writing essays about Colonialism and, well, I just felt too badly for them to continue to stare. Instead, I started really looking around the room for the first time. Tests during midterms are held in random classrooms and I knew I wasn't in the room of a History teacher, but I wasn't actually sure just whose classroom I was in until I saw the person's name written in what looked like wite-out across a stapler. My first reaction was to roll my eyes and wonder who in the world would write her name on a stapler. My second reaction was to feel a wave of an understanding as to why my staplers always disappear.

What I liked immediately about the room were these gauzy curtains the teacher had draped near the windows along with a bunch of colorful paper lanterns that dangled down from the ceiling. The touches made the room feel homey and they managed to accomplish what I think they were meant to accomplish: to make every student in that room forget they were really there to learn math. Still, the curtain look was working for me and I started to contemplate that maybe I should hang some flowy curtains up in my own classroom and I started to seriously consider which color would best highlight the Taxi Driver, Fight Club, and Pulp Fiction posters on my wall. What hue of curtain goes best with the spatter of cinematic blood?

My minutes-long curtain fantasy faded once I realized that the chances were sky high that I'd never take them down to wash them and they'd probably just wind up gathering mountains of dust, causing students who sat near them to sneeze, blow their noses, and then toss those germ-filled wads of Kleenex into the garbage can that sits right beside my desk. Since I've decided that I'm allergic to other peoples' germs, I officially put the mental kibosh on the Curtain Plan and decided to pass the time instead by checking out the quotations emblazoned on every wall of the room. I'd been in a lot of classrooms that testing week; I'd become pretty accustomed to seeing breezy and optimistic proclamations decorating barren walls. It all made me realize at some point that I don't have any quotations on the walls of my own room and I was almost sure I should quickly scrawl, "And don't call me Shirley" on some construction paper, but I still wasn't a hundred percent sure because maybe I should use a quote from Primal Fear instead and, by the way, does anyone know where I can find some construction paper?

None of the quotes on this Math teacher's wall came from excellent movies, but they were all sweetly uplifting, especially the one by Plato: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." Plato has a very good point, I thought to myself – and I swear that I could almost feel a steel hardness inside of me instantly begin to grow soft as I began to consider how the paths we're all on are unfamiliar and difficult. But just when I was about to become someone my yoga teacher would be very proud of, my eyes flicked over to the next quote and my burgeoning kindness began to melt. 

The other quote actually said, "Life without geometry is pointless." Now, I'm somewhat positive that there's an adorable mathematical pun hidden in that quotation, but fuck if I get the joke. I've never been all that big on math humor and along with biblical allusions, those are the connections I probably understand the least. I did try for a moment to imagine what kind of roads I would have had to have taken in my life for that sign to ever hang anywhere on one of my walls, but just the symbolic journey got me immediately lost so I decided to start wondering instead about which Vanderpumper could most associate with the quotation’s meaning. (It's very worth explaining that I don't have these people invading my thoughts because they're fascinating. The reason I think about these people at all is because I write recaps and I've never been one to just bang out a "this happened and then this happened" kind of post since it's more fun for me to weave a little narrative. Also: proctoring is mind numbing and you've gotta think about something.) Anyway, the (maybe) hilarious geometry quote wasn't attributed to anybody – because that person is embarrassed – so I began to wonder if maybe James could have written it. Can't you just see it happening? Imagine James – obviously wearing a low-cut tank top – surveying the crowds of people dancing blandly to the beats he's created as the hemisphere's greatest living DJ and he has a moment of total clarity where he realizes that he's pathetic and maybe he should quit music and go to college for math. Or maybe it was Kristen who thought up the math message. Perhaps she was out on one of her frequent "walks" – the ones she goes on wearing all black creepy crawling clothing like she's a Manson Girl. Maybe one evening she was tucked in some nice shrubbery while she separated the bills she'd stolen from Sandoval's garbage cans and she was calculating how costly Ariana's life is and she decided right there in that bush that Ariana, like geometry, is pointless. Of course, it could have also been Jax who came up with the quotation, but I'm pretty sure he can't read or write.

 

 

THE CONTRITION TOUR

THE CONTRITION TOUR

There are some certainties one can always count on:  

• The parking lot outside of a gym will be absolutely packed during the second week in January – and then it will be half-empty (half-full?) during the second week in March because resolutions only really last for so long.  

• The very minute Christmas is over, those chalky sugar conversation hearts – the ones that used to have expressions like “Be Mine” but now have adorable sweet nothings like “Text Me” engraved in sugar across even more sugar – will appear on the shelves of drugstores nationwide. I will buy four bags and eat three before remembering that I hate them.

• One or more of the Kardashians (or those lucky enough to be Kardashian-adjacent) will experience some sort of monumental existential crisis every three weeks like fucking clockwork and that crisis will result in one of them deciding to host a brand new talk show because this family understands one simple fact better than you or I ever will:  an event is only meaningful if everybody on the planet knows it’s going down at the exact moment it’s happening.  

• The momentum inherent in the passage of time can turn a ravaged and stinging heart into one that quietly thuds with just a dull ache until eventually it doesn’t hurt at all anymore.  You will be able to slide what was once ragged with the edges of memory down your throat like it’s a perfect oyster – and you will do it in one little gulp and you won’t even need a chaser. 

Those of us who watch reality television and do not suffer from narcolepsy have become adept at picking up other patterns.  These thematic configurations reveal themselves almost cyclically over the passage of time.  We know, for example, that each season a different Real Housewife is given “the bitch edit” for probably no other reason than because she once showed up to Andy Cohen’s clambake late while hoisting a platter of cookies that contained gluten.  We realize that the least emotionally-balanced chick who competes on a season of The Bachelor will undoubtedly be hauled back during the summer to bawl her eyes out on Bachelor in Paradise where she will stand on a tropical beach and explain how destroyed she is that the guy she’s known for about an hour doesn’t see her for the person she is deep down and now all of her hopes for forever-love have been smashed into smithereens so small that she can’t even snort them.  We can be certain that there will always be another cheaply produced show upon which Farrah Abraham can appear so she can deny that she knowingly did porn. Should you flip to E! at any time of the day or night, you will be able to watch Kim or Khloe or Kendall or Kylie or Kill Me as they stare at their phones instead of saying anything of interest and you can feel free to go ahead and make a nice healthy wager about exactly which day it will be when my head finally explodes from not having a legitimate answer to the question, “Why are these people famous when they never even look up unless it’s to take a selfie?” 

But perhaps my favorite constant in the world of reality television is The Contrition Tour that some participants embark upon usually around year three in their involvement with a show they probably never should have appeared on in the first place.  The goal of setting sail on a Contrition Tour is to attempt to rehabilitate the reputation you essentially gave ratings-obsessed producers and underpaid editors carte blanche in crafting in exchange for an often paltry paycheck and the chance to either endorse some shitty wine nobody has ever heard of or to finally get the chance to record that dance single you and your tone-deaf heart have always dreamed of belting out to an unsuspecting world.  The journey towards The Contrition Tour begins soon after you allow yourself to realize that the attention you got for appearing on television was probably not worth the misery that has come with being known as a verbally-abusive monster or so fucking stupid that it almost defies comprehension.  Sure, you rode that wave of infamy for a little while – that wave made quick stops on The Wendy Williams Show and Watch What Happens Live so you could display even more of your flaws – but you eventually felt like you were caught in the funnel of a riptide and you could no longer see clearly and you couldn’t even breathe and you became furious that reality television did the opposite of showing the world “the real you” so you decided it was time to enlighten a mass audience who doesn’t actually care about you in the least and already made up its mind about you anyway.

Few people have aced The Contrition Tour, but Camille Grammer came off of hers like a fucking champ.  This woman spent the entire first season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills either gyrating against another woman’s husband, inviting bile-spewing psychics over for dinner, misusing words like “Machiavellian” and “pernicious” and pretending her marriage was just fine and that her husband hadn’t already left her.  I recall seeing magazine covers with photos of her huge eyes and her sneering mouth printed above headlines like, “The Most Hated Housewife?” and knowing – just knowing – that we would all see a very different Camille Grammer during season two of the show.  In fact, the Camille who showed up for the second season barely resembled the woman we’d met just a few scant months prior.  This lady appeared chastened and humbled.  She spoke about her life with a rueful smile on her lips.  She didn’t call Kyle pernicious even once.  And she often wore a white coat with long sleeves and it was probably to hide the IV that was pumping copious amounts of liquid tranquilizer directly into her bloodstream so she would make it to the end of the tour and take a victory lap at the Reunion.  Honestly?  Bravo, Camille – I’d buy a commemorative tee from your tour and I'd wear it without irony. 

Something tells me that the Contrition Tours won’t go nearly as well for the Vanderpumpers in our midst.  Camille Grammer spent the first season of her show projecting to the world that she was flat-out ridiculous, but we can work with ridiculous, right?  Can we – do we want to – work with the issues ailing Jax, Kristen, and Stassi?  Are we meant to pretend that Jax has seen the light and he’s no longer a piece of shit who is so stupid that he ought not to be permitted to procreate?  Should we make believe that Kristen’s brand of crazy is just dangerous to her and not a potential calamity that could impact all of humankind?  Can we believe that Stassi genuinely feels this badly about ditching a group of people who were kind of shitty friends to her anyway and that she is not just crawling back now so she can get herself back on television?  Can’t these legs of the tour just be cancelled?

 

 

 

 

THE FUTURE'S SO BRIGHT, JAX HAD TO STEAL SHADES

THE FUTURE'S SO BRIGHT, JAX HAD TO STEAL SHADES

Maybe the only that’s interesting to me about preparing for the onslaught of a blizzard is how it all starts to feel so primal.  Our basic wants morph almost instantaneously into what we manage to convince ourselves are desperate needs and those needs cannot possibly be quelled without making a frantic trip to a supermarket and posting at least three completely unoriginal messages on social media.  Me?  I did it all. That’s right – I turned into the girl who ran out to buy shit like egg whites and three different kinds of cheese and more fresh broccoli than anyone should ingest outside of a dare.  See, I recently began tracking everything I eat and I lost 8.6 pounds in only two weeks by scarfing down mostly seafood and vegetables and I wanted to make sure that turning briefly into a shut-in would not cause me to pile back on even a tenth of a pound because I’ve become mildly obsessive about what I’m eating and I’ve chosen to pretend that such an obsession is a positive thing and not the mark of a latent eating disorder.  But then I realized that I was going to have some company during the blizzard and I am nothing if not an excellent hostess.  And what do hostesses do? I thought to myself while coming to a dramatic standstill in the baking aisle of Stop and Shop. Hostesses bake brownies, dammit!  And kick-ass hostesses bake brownies that have chocolate chips mixed into the batter and then they top those already-decadent chocolate squares with marshmallows that are shoved for a second into a hot broiler so the marshmallows will melt slightly and turn the perfect shade of toasty brown!

Like Odysseus being beckoned by a bipolar Siren, I began to listen to the insane voice inside of my head and that voice screamed that cheese should never be served without some nice crunchy bread and that only a Neanderthal would not pick up gourmet olives and fresh shrimp and the next thing I knew, I had spent two hundred dollars on groceries and my oven was churning out something besides zucchini.  And since I was quite consciously ruining the excellent progress I’d recently made in terms of portion control and ass size, I decided to start sprinting about my home like a madwoman.  My goal? To plug every device I own into an outlet so everything would be fully charged come the storm.  This particular action – which I’ll consider both cardio and a core-based workout because it involved lots of bending – was dictated by some rather devastating past experiences when my power cut off the moment a swift wind blew through my town and I was left with only the fear and the fury that comes with having a phone that is rapidly losing battery power and the inability to watch even a bad movie.  Listen: I’ve been through blizzards and hurricanes and freakish random experiences like when the electricity in my entire community shut down for six hours one cold February evening for absolutely no good reason at all and I have learned some things, my friends!  Here’s what you must do to prepare for the likelihood of having everything spontaneously go dark:

1. Buy a jar of instant coffee.  Who cares if it sits unopened in your cabinet for a year straight?  If you have been blessed with a gas stove, you can heat up water and still get your coffee fix during a storm without resorting to shoving some coffee grinds under your gum like it’s tobacco, a real thing I did during Hurricane Sandy.

2. Shower the night before the storm, flatiron your hair until it’s straighter than it’s ever been, and refrain from tossing it up into a ponytail so it will continue to look pretty while you’re trapped inside of a house with way too many mirrors that you have to look at unless you’re playing a game that requires you be blindfolded.

3. Buy a blindfold.

4. Turn the temperature of the refrigerator as low as you can.  When your strawberries become so frozen that they can be used as weapons, that’s when it’s cold enough in there for your dairy products to withstand the potential loss of power headed their way.

5. Conversely, blast your heat until you can hardly take it anymore.  Think about it this way:  sure, you are sweating your ass off in the middle of January simply as a precaution – and you are probably spending a fortune to do it – but just try to recall how unpleasant it was to sleep in the frigid air when you had no power for four days during both the hurricane and the last huge snowfall.  Remember how your pinky toe almost snapped off even while swathed in four pairs of socks and you were lying beneath three comforters?  Throw on a tank top and some boy shorts and stop complaining.

6. Charge your current laptop, your gigantic ancient laptop that has the DVD player, your iPod, your iPad, and your phone.  Yes, eating brownies and having sex are lovely ways to pass the time, but so is checking email and watching a movie.  Think ahead!

I spent the night before the storm gathering candles and searching for flashlights and locating my lingerie so I wouldn’t have to eventually search for it in the pitch-black darkness.  I ran my dishwasher and did my laundry and made sure my extra blankets were easily accessible.  I sorted through the clothing people have bought for my puppy and pulled out her yellow fleece and her pink sweater so she could look stylish while feeling comfortably warm.  I backed my car in and popped up my windshield wipers so they wouldn’t freeze.  I located my shovel and leaned it against the wall in my foyer.  And then I got into bed and felt an exhaustion that was quite real spread through at least a third of my body and I realized that I had just allowed myself to feed into a frenzy that could and should have been totally avoidable.  Yes, there would be snow – a lot of it.  But I’d be stuck at home for a grand total of perhaps two days and that fear had caused me to spend and to consume and to prepare like the end of time was upon me?  That fear had caused me to make a platter of brownies topped with s’mores?

Yup, it sure did. 

Now sure, those brownies were unbefuckinglievable – but the storm passed and it’s time to hop back on the healthy eating track and try to forgive myself for falling victim to a desire that I allowed myself to believe was a pressing need.  And if I can learn to forgive myself for making the questionable choice of eating a few (okay, five) brownies during a brief environmental crisis, maybe that means I can forgive the Vanderpump Rules gang for their choices too!  After all, eating a marshmallow-topped brownie is right on par with stealing a pair of sunglasses or crawling with your bedazzled tail between your legs back to a group of people you swore you’d rather die than ever talk to again, right?  Aren’t we all just flawed creatures by nature?

 

 

FREE LALA'S NIPPLES!

FREE LALA'S NIPPLES!

Regrets are tough things to live with because they sting while they're happening, burn when they're swallowed, and they leave scars that no high-end BB cream can mask. Me? Oh, I've got a mess of regrets and they run the gamut from the utterly superficial to the psychologically damaging and can be empirically measured on a scale of zero to forever. Let's see: I regret that time I gave myself a bikini wax and all the years I roasted in the summer sun covered from head to toe with baby oil. I regret the freckles I could have avoided and the overuse of filters to mask them in pictures. I regret all the nights I was too worried about liking my outfit to concern myself with making memories that were not colored by the sepia tone of body dysmorphic disorder. I regret not spending more time with people I love and I regret the years I lived by the doctrine, "In the grand scheme of my life, this will not matter," because I was often very wrong. I regret going out on a few second dates and I really regret that time I went out on a twelfth date. I regret letting one guy sleep through the night in my bed without taking off his boxer briefs with my teeth. I mean, yeah, I did just that come the dawn, but I wish I'd done it in the darkness too because I was bored while he slept. Oh, and I guess I'm supposed to pretend to regret the fact that I sometimes lack any and all inhibition, but that regret would just be a total lie.  

The thing is, regrets are something most of us have in common. We don't always treat one another with kindness or compassion and sometimes our insecurities march like an army between ourselves and a far-off goal. I think you have to know yourself pretty damn well in order to recognize a pang of emotion as a twinge of regret and you have to be willing to go excavating through the clenching confines of your mind to dig out the source and origin of what caused the regret to transpire. It would probably be far easier to never take that hike inside of a dusty subconscious, but I still recommend doing so. Call it emotional cardio. 

I'm not sure some of the Vanderpumpers are able to recognize the feeling of regret because some of them probably think what they're experiencing is a pang of hunger or that itch they always feel around their nether regions after a bender, but I think maybe it's time for them to pay attention. Acknowledging regret smarts like a dumb motherfucker, but it can't possibly bring more pain than what the future will deliver to people who are making grave mistakes on television in exchange for a paycheck. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe being emotionally barren is the way to go. Maybe it takes someone ultra-evolved to prance around half-naked on basic cable and drink like a sloth suffering from acute alcoholism and steal sunglasses before, during, and after lying to your live-in girlfriend. Perhaps in the future, regret won't exist in the slightest and that will be the platform under which President Jax Taylor will have campaigned. Seriously, people – it could happen. Did anyone really believe Donald Trump would still be in the lead for the GOP?

 

PERMANENT BAD CHOICES

PERMANENT BAD CHOICES

As long as we’re on the subject (since I just brought it up), here are a few things I don’t miss in the slightest:

 

·      Those incessant blizzards that rocked the east coast last winter.  Yes, I realize that I might have just committed the weather equivalent of shouting, “Looks like a no-hitter!” during the ninth inning of a baseball game right before the batter smashes a grand slam homerun straight into the outfield bleachers, but should a month of continuous snowfall accompanied by ice thudding from the sky suddenly commence, please blame Mother Nature, not me.

·      Thinking that I have to say yes to everything I’m asked to do at work.  There were those early years when I tutored for the SAT and helped students write college essays and ran classes designed to get kids a better score on the Regents exam.  I was even suckered into being the advisor for the Trivia Team my first few years, an act that mandated that I accompany kids who loved shit like physics and trigonometry to academic decathlons where I had to read questions that I not only didn’t know the answer to, but often I couldn’t even pronounce half of the words in the question.  Even the time I dove into a pool and then unknowingly conducted an entire conversation with a guy I was interested in for fifteen minutes straight before realizing my left tit was hanging out did not make me feel as big a moron as I did when I went to those trivia competitions.  Finally recognizing that I was allowed to say, “fuck no!” to random requests at work changed my life.

·      In terms of technology, I do not mourn the commercial-crammed days when I lived without XM Radio, the dark ages when DVR was just a figment of an excellent idea in some madman’s mind, and the years my phone didn’t contain that beautiful “block” button that I’ve started to use pretty frequently.

·      I do not miss the days when I refrained from telling people in my life who were behaving like pathetic assholes that they were acting like pathetic assholes and I definitely don’t miss the nights I couldn’t sleep because I was far too consumed with running the imaginary conversations I should have had with them in my mind.  I also do not miss the years when my nearest and dearest were less than honest with me.  Maybe it’s a loss of patience or maybe it’s the gaining of patience or perhaps I’ve just formed an allergy to bullshit, but I’d much rather have the difficult conversation for real than perfect it a hundred times in my mind for imagination’s sake and nothing else.

·      I can’t even pretend to miss the dewy mornings when coffee didn’t spurt instantly from the Keurig that sits in a place of prominence on my kitchen counter, especially since I never properly learned how to make a pot of the stuff on a normal coffee machine and it turns out that exploding coffee grinds are a real pain in the ass to clean up.

·      I’ll never again long for the years when my salary was so low that I internally debated every now and again how maybe settling for a guy with money and not much else wouldn’t be the single worst choice I could possibly make – and that includes the time I got those terrible choppy side bangs that not even my closest friends could react to with anything but horror.

·      I was once certain that I would, but I do not miss those flavored ramen noodles that made my hair smell like chicken or that month when I went on an all-candy-corn diet (scoff all you want; it worked) or when I moved out for the first time and realized that it meant I could buy any kind of cereal I wanted – that it didn’t have to be one of the healthy kinds – and I truly began to believe that Apple Jacks tasted like a sugary form of freedom.  I mean, sure, it might have been the single most liberating experience I’ve ever had inside of a supermarket, but that doesn’t mean I miss that day.

·      I also don’t miss the banana clips that could never properly hold back my too-thick hair, the year everyone (including me) wore a tiny Prada backpack for no good reason at all, the nights I spoke to guys in bars who rocked fedoras completely without irony, the years I was convinced thongs had to be equivalent to having a perma-wedgie, and the money I spent on Juicy sweatpants because I managed to convince myself that my ass would look best in ridiculously overpriced aqua terrycloth.

·      And more than any of it, I do not miss Stassi Schroeder.

Yes, my dear friends, it looks like Stassi will soon be galloping back to Vanderland on a wounded pony and I for one could not be less excited to see her.  Her return feels the very opposite of triumphant; in fact, it strikes me as remarkably similar to the reaction I have when that one student who graduated five years ago continues to stop by every few months just to say hello.  “Time to move on!” I always consider bellowing his way, but I just keep the interaction to a swift, “Nice to see you,” before I go fleeing down the hallway and away from a kid who is perpetually ensconced in the dynamic that was high school.  I’d argue that Stassi continues to be stuck in a high school mentality too and that high school probably felt like her glory days when she ran that fucking cafeteria like an Adderall-guzzling Gestapo agent who inspired fear in her lowly minions with just a withering glance or a flick of her newly-dyed hair.  I cannot forget how, at the start of this series, Stassi would mandate who her “crew” were and were not allowed to speak with and how she would threaten minor punishments like castration done with a rusty chainsaw to anyone who dared violate a single one of her decrees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHANGES ARE AFOOT IN VANDERLAND

CHANGES ARE AFOOT IN VANDERLAND

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.