Friday, February 15, 2013

Housewives in Wonderland: A Very Un-Merry Tea Party


Cast
Brandi as Alice
Adrienne as The Mad Hatter
Lisa as The Queen of Hearts
Taylor as The Drunken Door Mouse
Camille as The White Rabbit
Kyle as A Card
Faye as That Dead Thing in the Corner

Ok folks, bear with me here, I’m super hung over and I think I broke a toe last night.
Kyle visits Lisa so they can rehash last season’s reunion because, although the horse has been beaten to a bloody pulp, we’re still beating it with a Louisville slugger like Franky beat Nicky Santoro and his brother in the middle of that cornfield (“Casino” reference, had to happen).
Lisa’s house is named, “Villa Rosa.”  Really?  I mean, I guess, but really?  Your house needs a name?  And a sign? 
After some small talk the two ladies go upstairs for a serious heart to heart.  Lisa feels like Kyle never defends her.  Well that’s valid, since Kyle never defends her.  Kyle doesn’t think Lisa needs defending and says that’s why she didn’t defend her.  Then Lisa tells Kyle to apologize again, and using Lisa’s own words she’s feeding her.  So basically this conversation is straight out of the third grade cafeteria.  Kyle says she won’t apologize like that, and I wonder why Lisa would want a manufactured apology.  You would think she had quickly ODed on those after Adrienne’s apology where she appeared to be in the middle of an enema squeaking out, “I-m so—rr—y, BUT YOUSHOULDBESORRYTOO!” over a glass of pinot grigio that was wondering to itself, “Which bad decision did I make in life that landed me here?”
Anyway, there was no resolve which is perfect because now in a couple weeks we can have this same fight.  Yayyy!  Which reminds me, I’m taking recommendations on what new show I should blog about because I’m THISCLOSE to being over this mess.
Brandi visits Yolanda at the stables while Yo’s daughter Bella practices riding.  Yolanda points out that it’s kind of sad for Bella because most of the girls she rides with have two or three horses, and she can only afford Bella the one.  I’ll wait while you wipe the tears from your eyes so you can continue reading.  Gawd, I love Yolanda so much.
Anyway, Brandi’s stressed out over the Maloof lawsuit.  Yolanda says, “Oh vou know, dant vorry about Adriennz Maloofz, who is she in diz vorld?”  Have I mentioned I love Yolanda?
Onto the Tea Party from Hell….
Alice, ahem, Brandi arrives first, I think, because she’s Lisa’s new bestie.  She’s really nervous since this will be the first on-field battle between her and The Maloof Hoof.  The Drunken Door Mouse, ahem, Taylor arrives and gifts Lisa with a vibrator because….we don’t really know why.  She says it’s because of Ken’s hip surgery and the subsequent wait time until two-person sex, but since it is Ken who has the case of the inside-pants jollies in that relationship I fail to see the point.  But when you’re a drunk you tend to make silly, fly by the night decisions like bringing a vibrator as a hostess gift to a Tea Party and, by the way, I’m throwing a Tea Party next week… *hint hint*
Brandi and Taylor get along swimmingly (because Taylor’s already tipsy) as Brandi gives Taylor a tour of the house, including Ken’s closet where they find pictures of a naked Lisa and realized they may have over-stepped their touring boundaries.   
Meanwhile, in a pink kitchen, The Queen of Hearts, ahem, Lisa explains to Lupe (Is it Lupe?  I can’t remember) how to arrange tiny sandwiches on a platter.
More guests arrive, and we meet two hunks of grade-A idiot beef from that filthy STD of a show “Vanderpump Rules.”  No offense to anyone who watches it, but tons of offense to those who are on it.
Oh wonderful, The Dead Thing in the Corner, ahem, Faye I’ll-do-anything-to-be-on-TV Resnick is joining us.  She, The Card, ahem, Kyle, and The Mad Hatter hop in a limo, have their obligatory “This is going to be awkward” conversation, and arrive to “Villa Rosa” to wreak havoc.
At some point, Kim calls Lisa on her bathroom phone (?) and explains why she cannot make it.
“Hiiiii Lisa, it’s Kiiiiiim.  I got hit in the face.  I got hit in the face.  I was on my way to your house when I got hit in the face.  By who?  Ummm, my dog.  Yep, the dog delivered a clean upper cut to my new nose while I was driving to the party.  I think I’ll need a new one again.  I’ll wait until my pain pill prescription for this one runs out, and then I’ll go get another one.”
I have a theory that Kim got this dog solely to provide her with a whole new litany of excuses.
“My dog ate my homework.  My dog ate my Lexipro.  He ate my valium too.  And my passport.  And he ate my Christmas bow shirt.  And he ate my goddamn house!”
The ladies mingle a bit, gathered around the bare chests of the SUR man-whores.  Marisa mentions again how she would absolutely luuuurve to have sex with someone other than her husband.  I wonder if this woman understands this is going to be on TV.  Adrienne completely ignores Brandi which she is probably ok with because Adrienne’s voice sounds like the lady from the anti-smoking commercial who unfortunately lives with a hole in her throat.
Alright so the ladies sit down, and Lisa has gifted them each with a robe.  I freaking luuuurve robes.  Everything is just beautiful.  And actually, everyone is getting along quite nicely.  But things get normal again when a drunken Taylor brings up the hypocrisy that is Adrienne threatening Brandi with a lawsuit after she and Russell were ostracized from the group last season for doing the same thing.
Lisa not so subtly asks Taylor and Brandi to help her with something in the kitchen.  As soon as they’re out of earshot, Lisa tells Taylor to cool it because she doesn’t want World War III to happen at her tea party.  Taylor is so hammered.  Her eyes are rolling from side to side, and she can’t focus on the words.  She slurs out, “Did she or did she not send the letter?” to Brandi and Brandi replies that indeed she did.  Taylor gives a mischievous nod, and we all know she has no intention of keeping her enormous mouth shut.
This is when shit gets weird.
Taylor confronts Adrienne again pretty much immediately after they sit back down and Adrienne actually denies her attorney ever sent Brandi’s attorney a letter.  She denies any threat of a lawsuit.  You can smell the desperation through the TV screen like a scratch and sniff sticker as Adrienne begins hurling random, “You tweeted!  That was mean what you tweeted!  You tweeted about Bernie and that’s mean and not true!” 
Brandi and Adrienne go back and forth with “Shame on you!” and “No, shame on YOU!” and it’s just the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever seen.  You can tell Brandi is genuinely exacerbated by Adrienne’s denials. 
So The Mad Hatter, ahem Adrienne, tries to convince the group that in fact she never intended on suing Brandi even though she literally said at Mauricio’s commercial taping, “She’s gonna get slapped with a fat ol’ lawsuit!”  It’s funny because it’s like, umm, did Camille nor Kyle nor Faye ever talk to you about how Brandi has been shouting this threatened lawsuit business from the rooftops because you’re acting like this is the first you’ve ever heard of this, and I know it’s not.  So I call BULLSHIT on Maloof hard.  As Phaedra says folks, “Something in the buttermilk ain’t clean.”
Side note:  Don’t you love when The White Rabbit, ahem, Camille gets passionate about something and her eyes bug out to the point where they resemble her bubbies?
I think we find out more in next week’s episode when the shit hits the fan at the White Party.  But then again, Bravo might just string us along until the end of the season and never give us an actual resolution because that way we can talk about this all next season too.
Now if you all will excuse me, I’m due for an Advil fix.
Until next week my friends…
XO,
Barbs

Friday, February 1, 2013

The Surrogacy Secret That Did Not Shock a Nation


I’ll probably get sued by The Maloof for that title. 
Try to contain your excitement.  I’m back.  I don’t have any notes and like five episodes have gone by since I last blogged, so I’m just generally commenting.  Let’s dive right in (no pun intended for those who saw Kim and Kyle on “Celebrity Dive: Stars in Danger”or whatever the hell that mess was called) …
When life hands Yolanda thirty-nine orchards full of lemons, she bakes seven soufflés to see which comes out best.  Yolanda has garnered mixed feelings from the general viewing audience.  They don’t want to hear any more about how wonderful her life is or how much she luuuuurves her husband.  I respectfully disagree.  I love Yolanda because she is exactly what this show was originally supposed to be about.  Rich people being all rich doing super rich people things that no one else can do because we don’t all have time to color-coordinate our fridges.  Give me Yo-Yo’s 1,000 Hermes belts, her white pants, her blunt tongue, her lemon grove, her husband-luuuurving.  I will take it, and I will soak it in like the Malibu sun because that woman really does live the good life.  When she used Seal and Heidi as an example of friends getting divorced??  I can’t.  It’s too adorable.
Alright, so you all know what’s going on with this show.  Too much, that’s what.  Let me start by saying for those of you who do not know, the big Maloof secret is that she used a surrogate to carry her twins.  Let me know when you’ve come to, because that shocking scandal of a secret is just too much to deal with fully conscious, I know.  Hopefully you’ll awaken from your shock and dismay coma momentarily so you can continue relishing my thoughts and opinions.
I liked Brandi last season, a lot.  As you all know, she’s got a dirty sense of humor and a mouth like a sailor just like me, so of course I would like her.  This season, she seems a little too desperate.  I mean, you already beat Dana/Pam for a permanent spot on the show Kitty Kat, pump the brakes.  Brandi’s thong is in a butt-bunch because Adrienne did some mean stuff to her during the interim between seasons.  It supposedly all started when Adrienne wanted Brandi to back her up in last season’s reunion when she went after Lisa for allegedly selling stories.  Brandi refused, called her out on it, and subsequently Adrienne put some unflattering stories out in the press including but not limited to Brandi having sex with someone in the bathroom at Kyle’s White Party which, as it turns out, did not happen.
So you all know what happens next, I don’t want to beat an already decomposed horse.  And now the entire season revolves around this outed secret, this torrid rumor that was sooooo juicy (it wasn’t) that Bravo couldn’t even air the secret because Adrienne threatened both Bravo and Brandi with Cease and Desist letters.  Which leads me to Adrienne…

Although I do think it was wrong of Brandi to out a private Maloof family secret, evidently this was no secret and also BITCH IS ON TV.  Pretty much everyone knew, they just weren’t allow to say it out loud.  Of course everyone else was fine with that, but you know Brandi.  Now, while Brandi was probably in the wrong here, she was less wrong than the other party, and I’ll tell you why.  Because Adrienne Maloof is an awful person who deserves everything she gets so get ‘er Brandi.  Adrienne I would have to present with the Queen of Hypocrisy crown for A) Threatening to sue a cast mate after ostracizing the Armstrongs for doing the EXACT same thing last season and B) claiming she’s super private and never talks to the press while simultaneously doing two spreads in two different tabloid mags talking about how the surrogacy rumor tore apart her family and it’s Brandi’s fault she and Paul divorced.  Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight Cray Cray.
Onto the next…
How about Marisa’s mom? 

That was crazy, eh?  First of all, arrest her friends who are telling her to keep her hair style, they’re unjustly mean.  Second, don’t you love how mothers do not hesitate to tell you when you look like shit?  Mine will definitely call me out when I’m not wearing mascara.  Marisa’s mom hates every single clothing item Marisa owns and is not afraid to tell her.  “Your wardrobe is ghastly, so can I come with you to Vegas?”  For the record, moms are the best.  Is it me or are the mothers of the housewives becoming more interesting than the housewives themselves? #mamaelsa
Can we talk about Faye Resnick?  Something in Faye Resnick’s face has died.  It bit the dust, rode its last pony, signed the eternal waiver.  She looks like she smells of carcass.  Does Faye not have the most annoying air of self-importance?  Or is it just me?  She feels she has the right to berate a perfect stranger at a dinner party because that stranger supposedly wronged, outside of Faye’s presence, someone who she is close to because her nephew once dated Adrienne’s favorite manicurist or something.  If I were at that table there would have been more done to shut this woman up.  Not murder or anything, you can’t murder the undead.  Faye is really one to talk about betraying a friend.  I won’t mention Faye’s book detailing the cocaine habits of her “best friend” after she was brutally murdered, or her spread in Playboy while riding the publicity wave that was her “best friend’s” murder.  I don’t want to be tawdry.
How about that Mmmmauricio?  Not so yummmmy when he’s yelling at a woman huh?  The thing about this whole mess is if these idiots would have just sat back and not been complete assholes all over the map, Brandi probably would have come out of this looking like the bad guy.  But instead, e’rybody on the show gettin’ messy.  You’ve got Faye and Mauricio seeing dinner parties as fit times to rip Brandi a new one in front of a bunch of people over a “secret” that wouldn’t have been a big deal if everyone would have shut the fuck up about it to begin with.  I mean, Jesus Christ on a cracker folks, Brandi said it once, everyone else has said it thirteen times per episode.  You’ve got Kyle having lunch with Faye to discuss it, now Faye’s in this shit pile right where she luuuurves to be.  You’ve got Mauricio making a huge deal out of it at a party where half the people have no idea what he’s talking about and now he’s just a grown man who is cool with scolding a grown woman like she’s his four year old who colored all over the TV.  “What were your intentions??”  Really?  Do better Mo. 
How about when Paul and Adrienne came out guns a’blazin’ at Mauricio’s real estate commercial party calling Brandi a drug-addicted terrible mother?  I believe it was Paul who repeatedly and loudly called Brandi and “bitch” in her face, while Adrienne pointed her witchy finger at her accusing her of “sleeping until 3pm” while on drugs.  That sounds more slanderous than saying someone used a surrogate, but hey, that’s just my opinion.  Did you notice how Adrienne repeated in that episode multiple times that Brandi was “lying, a liar, you’re lying, you’re a liar!!!”?  But she’s now done two spreads in two different magazines about how Brandi ruined her family by outing the TRUTH about the surrogacy.  Ms. Maloof: as if it was not after you publicly and falsely accused your estranged husband of physically abusing you and his own children, you’re credibility is rotting in hell.
Boy, Kyle is sure walking on egg shells this season, eh?  Is she even on this show for anything besides hosting Bash Brandi parties and being indifferent?
Taylor is a lamp post this season.  A drunk, crying mess of a lamp post.
Ok guys, I like Marisa.  I know there are many mixed feelings, but hear me out.  What I liked so much about Brandi last season was that she seemed more “real” than the others in that she wasn’t as worried about the way she was perceived as she was about being herself for the viewers, faults and all.  Well, this season she has moments of “realness” and “fun Brandi” but she is also hyper-defensive and frankly just too aggressive for me.  I mean, I got it when she freaked out on Game Night because she really was ganged up on, but when Mauricio was making a total asshole of himself, it would have been great if she could have just calmly stated, “I think it’s inappropriate that you are talking to me like this about something you don’t know firsthand,” instead of going straight to, “GO FUCK YOURSELF!”  I mean for crying out loud woman, you have to round second and third base, you don’t just run straight home.  What I like about Marisa is that she reminds me a lot of Brandi in her “realness.”  She doesn’t seem to try to pretend her marriage is all peaches and sunshine.  She doesn’t have fake bubbies, which in this crowd is CRAY.  She seems to say whatever is on her mind but doesn’t shove it down our throats.  I really liked how she attempted to stand up to Faye at Kyle’s first Brandi Bashing party even though she didn’t know her very well by simply stating that no one should be telling Brandi when and how to apologize to someone.  Mostly though, I luuuuuurve her husband who, after Mauricio and Brandi’s confrontation came to a head with Brandi shouting, “SHUT THE FUCK UP, GO FUCK YOURSELF!” asked the group flatly, “Well, who’s ready for dessert?”  You win Dean.  You win the whooooole game.

I saved the best for last.  Kim.  Shining Christmas bow-wearing, no-sense-making, always-picture-hanging light of my blog life.  Kim is just as awesome sober as she is all ten different kinds of drugged up.  I mean honestly.
“I went with my friend to a plastic surgeon and then I decided, you know what?  I want a change.  How about my eyes? No?  Ok how about my neck?  No?  Ok what if we do my left ear?  No?  Right ear?  No?  How about taking in my forehead?  Oh you don’t do that?  Ok what if we attach my teeth to my nipples?  No?  How about my nose?  Really?!  You would do that?  I mean, I’ve never thought I’ve needed a new nose before, but now that you mentioned it, that is just the PERFECT thing I can change that won’t be a big change but just like a little change that can change me a little to go with my change.  Well, I for one am excited for change.  What kind of meds to they prescribe for someone who’s changing?....”
Can we talk about the atrocity that is “Vanderpump Rules” for five seconds?  WTF is this show?  It’s like if “The Hills” and “Melrose Place” had a love child and then that child and “The Bachelor” had a love child, and then that child and “Bad Girls Club” had a love child and then that child smoked crack.

Alright, those are my little plastic thoughts.  I’m completely over this week, so please excuse any extra snark I’m throwing out.  It’s Friday, and mama needs a cocktail.  Hopefully it won’t take two months before gaining the patience to write about these wild hyenas again.
XO,
Barbs