Small request: should your Thanksgiving not involve sitting around a table that’s topped with a platter upon which resides a chicken that has been shoved inside of a duck which has then been crammed inside of a turkey, can I please spend the holiday at your house? I’ll bring dessert.
See, my sister Amy insists upon making a turducken for Thanksgiving – and she then wraps that sucker in bacon because three animals apparently aren’t enough to consume in one bite so she tosses in some pig too. Having this monstrosity served to my family involves some careful strategizing. My sister Leigh, who eats no meat, must maneuver her way to a spot at the table that is in no way turducken-adjacent lest she vomit on the placemats. My mother needs a spot that’s near the kitchen because, even though we’re not at her house, she can’t stop herself from clearing the table while mentally calculating the carbohydrate intake just consumed by her nearest and dearest. When the staggering sum finally settles into her head – it takes her a little while to do the math – she locates a quiet place to quickly do some lunges. (She probably ate very little of the meal herself, but just being around such gluttony requires some immediate cardio. I try not to judge.) My brother-in-law likes to be near the soupy green bean casserole that has shriveled up onions on top. The entire dish looks like something the turducken might have puked up after a bender, but it makes him very happy. As for me, I’ve never been a big eater of the actual Thanksgiving meal. I like to use my calories on appetizers and cake, so I spend most of dinner trying to furtively remove items from my stepfather’s plate that I fear could immediately clog his arteries. Sometimes he catches me as I slip a hunk of duck into my napkin and his reaction depends on his mood. I’ve gotten, “I love you, sweetheart” as a response to stealing his food and once I was stabbed with a fork so you really never know.
In spite of Thanksgiving being a working holiday for me since I’m on the clock as Food Lieutenant, it’s always been one of my favorite days. I’m a part of one of those families where we go around and say what it is we’re grateful for and this year I’m grateful for the supportive people in my life; the opportunities that have come my way; my hair, which has been looking really good lately; Kim Richards being unceremoniously fired from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills; Springsteen’s upcoming appearance on Saturday Night Live; and that I finally know for sure what love feels like – and what it doesn’t feel like. And it is with my own generating gratitude list in mind that I have started to wonder what our favorite Vanderpumpers might thank the heavens for on this special day.
Lisa Vanderpump probably feels grateful for her family, all of her dogs, and for the purses she owns that are large enough to tote some of those furry friends around with her as they ride shotgun in her Rolls Royce Phantom. She probably also appreciates that she lives in a house guarded by swans who swim in a moat and that she somehow has the ability to still appear classy whilst starring on two reality shows that are populated by fucking heathens.
I saw a pack of Fruit Stripe gum in a random candy store last weekend and I was instantly transported back to the days when my clothing was always filthy from climbing trees and because I stabbed the Capri Sun package in the wrong place.
Sometimes I’d smell like fruit punch for weeks.
When I was a little girl, an artist friend of my parents painted a rainbow on my bedroom wall that I loved. I also had a round mirror framed by heavy yellow plastic that was the color of the mid-day sun. I remember that mirror perfectly – the shape of it and the size – but I don’t remember ever gazing into it. I slept in a twin bed back then and it was crammed with stuffed animals. There was my Cookie Monster, a bear I (for some reason) named Coca Cola, and my plush Chewbacca. I slept with them every single night and I vaguely recall how they would sometimes fall out of the bed and how that would cause me to wake up instantly. I only felt safe when I could feel them close and I used to keep two on one side of me and one on the other side of me like they were my very own furry Secret Service detail that worked for nothing and never wore wires in their ears.
I still have two of those dolls. Cookie lives in a closet in my house and Coca Cola resides in my mother’s basement, but I lost Chewbacca somewhere along the way – and I never really missed him. We’d shared a bond, sure, but other things just became more important for me to sleep with, like Carlin Ozzy, my Cabbage Patch Kid who wore a Member’s Only-style windbreaker, and eventually that guy with the scruff. Still, Chewbacca must have made some dent in my psyche because, so many decades later, I named my dog Wookie. At the time I chose the name, I had no idea that Chewbacca’s species was spelled with an extra E. I did it wrong, but I stand by my mistake; that additional vowel feels slightly ridiculous to me, though not as ridiculous as when the vet calls to confirm an appointment for “Wookie Kalter” and I shake my head and think, This must be why normal people name their dogs Sophie.
I can’t remember going to see Star Wars when it first came out. I was less than two years old then, but family folklore includes a sweet little tale about how I took one look at Darth Vader’s mask and cloak and heard just a single second of his labored breathing and I dove beneath the seat in the theatre utterly traumatized. I recollect not a second of this event and I therefore cannot be sure of its accuracy, but it makes sense. Darth Vader is fucking terrifying – and that’s even before he starts talking about shit like the Dark Side. Plus, from the very start of my exposure to movies, they impacted me so profoundly that I ended up making the exploration of how and why cinema resonates with us my career. But do I genuinely remember my first Star Wars experience? I do not.
Last week, before actually important news saturated the airways (I’m speaking, of course, of the atrocities aimed at innocent civilians in Paris that shocked everybody and Charlie Sheen’s tragic medical diagnosis that shocked nobody), Bravo updates were appearing in the press constantly. For a few days there it was impossible to go online and not see that two new Housewife shows are heading our way like an Earth-shattering comet and that Brooks, the smarmiest man ever to walk the streets of the OC, admitted to doctoring the documents he waved in front of cameras on his I Have Cancer press tour in a misguided effort to prove (through falsified medical records) that he indeed has been stricken with a deadly disease. But before anyone can say anything, let’s just all go ahead and accept that fine, Brooks might have fabricated those documents, but he’s totally not lying about anything else and he obviously has a disease (I think it must be the disease that causes his unceasing smirk that I’d love to kick off his face with a stiletto) and if you believe anything else, you’re just an asshole. Either that or you’ve got yourself some working synapses.
The thought of two new Bravo shows appearing on my television brought on a strange combination of excitement and terror and I think it’s because I’m starting to be aware of the lengths the participants of these shows are willing to go. In fact, I sat back and contemplated some of the craziest moments we’ve already been privy to and they include, but are obviously not limited to, the following:
o Kim Richards drunkenly proclaimed sobriety before being arrested – for public intoxication.
o The husband of one of the Housewives committed suicide and, before he was even embalmed, his wife wrote a book about the abuse he’d allegedly leveled her way before, during, and after production.
o A woman wearing a red sari crashed a White House dinner.
o An electronic-cigarette-puffing psychic sneered that she wouldn’t help someone locate an abducted child.
o A self-proclaimed MILF suggested that her son get a fellow Housewife “naked drunk” and then looked the other way while the two almost banged in a bathroom during a dinner party.
“You can’t say that,” she told me slowly, seriously.
“Why not?” I asked with more than a bit of a laugh catching in my throat.
“Because that’s mean and you’re not a mean person,” she responded.
She’s right, of course. I absolutely can’t say what it is I really want to say because, even though what I’ve got to unload in terms of comments strikes me as tremendously accurate and actually governed by a little bit of restraint, I’m also aware that those comments will undoubtedly come off as far more mean than I intend. Because here’s what I really want to say to one of my Facebook buddies:
1. Sweetheart? Your Facebook posts, while always slightly bizarre and glaringly transparent in your quest for neediness, have now veered into crazy person territory.
2. The more times you write an epic poem on social media about how you have lost yet another friend due to a disagreement the two of you had over social media, the more times I think that maybe you should be committed in a place that doesn’t have Wi-Fi.
About a week and a half ago, I received a text from someone I’m usually pretty happy to hear from – but this time, the message almost caused me to clutch the nearest wall for both emotional and physical support.
HIM: Have you heard? Vanderpump Rules is airing twice a week this season.
ME: No, only on Mondays.
HIM: There’s another show airing on Fridays.
ME: Please tell me you’re joking. Please tell me I will not be spending my Friday evenings writing about these dipshits after spending my Monday evenings doing just that.
HIM: I’m not joking.
ME: Fuck. Me.
After sliding down the wall I’d been clutching and yelling out a litany of profane words in the sweetest tone of voice I could muster whilst in the throes of an existential crisis caused by this news, I decided to fact check the information. I hopped onto Google and, with a shaking hand and a trembling heart, I typed “Vanderpump Rules Friday” into the search box. It was only after I confirmed that the Friday airing is an “after show” where the “stars” will appear in the hopes of gulping in some extra attention that’s been basted in fleeting fame and will surely lead to bloating that I calmed down.
Once upon a time, in a suburban home with a decent sized backyard but sadly no full-time maid, there lived a teenage girl. She had always been a somewhat happy child who had been reared on the mentality that nobody in the entire world could possibly be more fabulous and special than she was by a mother and a father who had neglected to take even a single parenting class about the dangers of inflating a child’s ego. When she walked into school each day, she could feel the envious eyes upon her. She knew their adoration was clearly due to how shiny her hair looked underneath the glow of the fluorescent lights in the cafeteria and so she would gaze out at her minions from beneath her lashes because they thought she was important and she knew it was true.
Back at home, she would climb the stairs to her bedroom and lie atop her probably-canopied bed and hold a pink pillow that had the word “DIVA” embroidered on it in rhinestones close to her heart and she would gaze up at the pictures on her wall that she’d carefully cut from the glossy pages of US Weekly. Like deities, Lauren and Heidi and Paris and Nicole hovered above her and she would lock eyes with all of them, especially with that one wonky eye of Paris Hilton’s, and she would sigh deeply and allow herself to think about her future.
One day, she swore to herself solemnly, I too will be famous for absolutely nothing at all. I will wear low-rise jeans and get photographed outside of a place like Hyde and maybe a Bling Ringer will even try to rob my home to steal my clothing and my blow. And no matter what happens, I will lean on my dear friends for emotional support and I will call every single one of them “slut” or “bitch” because that will illustrate my undying devotion to them and one day we will all star on a series together where we will destroy one another. One day…
What’s even left to say anymore?
That Brooks really has cancer or that he never had cancer?
That Shannon's marriage has legitimately been repaired or that it's currently being held together by a very loose Band-Aid with emotional puss threatening to leak out from all sides?
That Tamra is a reformed sinner or one just taking a break from sinning due to sheer exhaustion and the recommendation of a PR rep she met while standing on line at her local CVS buying generic antifungal cream?
That Heather might or might not petition the United States Postal Service to get her very own zip code for her behemoth of a home?
That Meghan believes that her terrifyingly chilly husband truly loves her or that she just got temporarily dazzled by a proximity to fame and ended up in over her head in a marriage that reads like a Grimm's cautionary fairytale about a once-blonde woman who was swept off her feet by a psychotic baseball player?
That Vicki is a pathetic asshole?
As we head into part fucking three of a Reunion that could have been covered in half the time if they’d just left out the colonic montage, what we do know for sure is that nothing will be resolved. The questions we have will never get answered despite my guess that every single one of these women will be back next season, even Vicki. It probably won't matter that there’s an epidemic of rumors floating around that the rest of the OC Housewives are threatening to refuse to film with her in the form of a reality TV fatwa or that she has been exposed to be foolish, hysterical, cunning and naïve (hard to pull off both at the same time, but then again, Vicki is special), friendless, and the kind of mother who chooses a man over her own kid. She'll still be back. She cannot stay away from any kind of attention. But it’s not her fault – God made her that way.
I own every single DVD from every single season, but despite its very positive attributes, I'm still pretty sure that Sex and the City might be more responsible for fucking up a woman's perception of what's real than any other show in the history of television – and I’m not just saying that because for a few months there, I thought it made perfect sense to pick up my dry cleaning while wearing a puffy pink tutu.
There was the time my mother watched me unwrap a birthday present and gazed at my puzzled face as I held up a long grey taffeta dress that was backless and had a plunging neckline that was designed to make nipples the outfit’s key accessory.
"I thought you could wear it to dinner when you go out with your friends," she said.
Those were the days when I spent most of my time in the city, arriving at my friend’s apartment lugging a bag crammed with a toothbrush, some makeup, about four pairs of shoes for one night, and my dog. She would stick her furry face out of the top of the carrier bag she'd been stuffed into for an hour and she would look entirely pissed off. There wasn’t even a smidgen of an expression of gratitude on her puppy face for the fact that I took her with me everywhere, but then again, Wookie has always been an animal who never warmed to a plush carrier, a carpeted crate stuffed with every squeak toy in the universe, or having bows stuck into her hair.
You’ve kind of got to respect her for all of that.
My friends and I went to great places, but I tried to imagine myself walking though Union Square in my birthday gown. I just couldn't see it happening.
It was probably somewhere around the fifth hour of watching the Senate hearing on Hillary Clinton’s role in the Benghazi attacks when a series of revelations began to sweep through my mind like a brushfire caused by an aerosol can of Resveratrol exploding inside the bidet of a marble bathroom that is Coto de Caza-adjacent:
1. There’s the ability some of us have to keep calm under pressure – and then there’s the way Hillary Clinton reacts under pressure. That woman did not so much as lightly perspire the entire time she was being grilled under hot television lights by political foes who would probably rejoice in literally roasting her over a bonfire like she was a rotisserie chicken. No matter what she was asked, her composure was nothing short of masterful.
2. And speaking of masterful, I want the name of Clinton’s makeup artist toot sweet and I’d like to buy stock in whatever company produces her matte face powder and blotting papers because – holy shit – those are clearly some excellent products and perhaps our greatest hope in the fight to make unintentionally shiny skin a thing of the past.
3. Anyone who can walk away from watching the coverage of these hearings without fully understanding the term “bipartisan” at this point is either an idiot or was too busy checking the US Weekly website so as not to miss the latest pearl of wisdom that has fallen from the inflated pout of young Kylie Jenner, a girl who now more closely resembles a blow-up sex doll than a human.
I’ve come to believe that watching Reunion episodes of The Real Housewives of Fucking Wherever is very similar to sleeping with a guy you promised yourself you’d never writhe beneath again before a cocktail of literal cocktails combined with the false notion that sex doesn’t have to mean anything settled first into your head and then gravitated quickly towards your waxed nether regions. What I mean here is that you think that you will get some satisfaction from the whole experience, but what you are really left with is a few hours lost from your life, a teensy bit of regret, and a wet spot that you could swear looks exactly like Vicki Gunvalson’s first face.
Just like sex with an ex, nothing that happens during a Reunion is brand new. Sure, maybe someone has a new outfit to show off or a tighter ass to wiggle or a point to make that’s said in a different manner than it’s ever been stated before (examples here might include “Here’s the newest reason I think Brooks is a liar” and “No, I’m staying on top”), but it all really comes down to the fact that, in both scenarios, nothing changes and nothing is truly gained and you probably could have achieved far greater happiness by eating a Snickers in a dark room where you could pretend to ignore the suggestion written on the wrapper of the King Size bar that a chocolate bar so humongous is really designed for sharing.
Fuck Snickers and whomever designed its packaging. Fuck the sharing of candy of any kind. And really fuck the OC Housewives who have done next to nothing all season long. Beverly Hills had a wineglass-heaving sociopath and an alcoholic who relapsed right there on camera. New Jersey boasts an incarcerated castmate who never completed the evolution cycle and a son-in-law who was rumored to have banged his wife’s mother. Atlanta has NeNe, the largest being ever measured by the naked eye that allegedly doesn’t contain some Sasquatch blood. And what does Orange County have? A whole lot of nothing.
