Real Housewives of Orange County : A Transcontinental Leap

It is impossible to watch even one episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta without recalling the words of Miss Margaret Mitchell, and it will henceforth be impossible to read Miss Mitchell's words without recalling NeNe.:

"...But Atlanta was of her own generation, crude with the crudities of youth and
as headstrong and impetuous as herself..."

Thanks to the miracle of Dish Network's Tivoid, I was able to televiport directly from the Atlanta reunion show to the season premiere set in the SoCal enclave of Coto de Casas, and I enjoyed the immediacy of that transition.

Although I recognize that their own view would be very different, from my perspective, the Housewives of the various locations seem to have share much more than the relatively small if visible and entertaining cultural details, such as accents, that separate them, and the new season promises to reassure viewers who need it that little seems to have changed in the lives of the California hamsters.

These are, in the reality show universe, Old Money people, since they have had a lot of it for ten or twenty years, as opposed to the Atlanta cast, who just received theirs ten minutes ago, and while all the Housewives, regardless of location, are obviously selected for their strong drama potential, the OC hamster selection process seems to also cleave very closely to the SoCal enclave stereotype that has been presented to the world via a whole schedule full of other shows, and rightly so, as the world cannot seem to get enough of this remarkable subculture.

While the Atlanta bunch are still actively choosing how to spend their newly minted money, their SoCal counterparts have pretty much done that. Vicky, for example, has a "lake house" that is paid for, and which she plans to sell in order to purchase a million dollar pleasure yacht.

That the yacht contains household appliances is beyond anything she has ever imagined, she is surprised and delighted.

Lauri, over a breakfast of eggs and what appears to be rather revolting little nodules of some meat product, asks her recently acquired "multi-millionaire" husband George where they will go on their honeymoon.

Without hesitation, he replies "Dubai," which Lauri does not like, and indicates this by an insistent declaration that Dubai would be a good stopover, for shopping, she adds with a meaningful glance George-ward, but she wishes the honeymoon to take place on an island where they will be pampered.

It is as clear that Lauri has never even so much as talked to anyone who has visited Dubai, with the possible exception of George, and whose opinion on the subject does not interest her, as it is clear that Vicki has never set foot on a pleasure yacht of the type she had already determined to purchase.

George suggests, with resigned cheerfulness, that they ask a prominent billionaire for the loan of his private island. Lauri seems pleased enough with this.

Tamra's son is moving into a new apartment, and her segment consists almost entirely of the process of Ryan and Simon moving a large TV into the headstrong youth's new digs.

He has left his low-wage job at the car part place, and is now making what is considered at least an Orange County-style Living Wage of sorts at a construction company. What, if anything, he actually does is not clear.

Tamra's mother has decided to get a face lift, and while they are at the plastic surgeon's for her inistial consultation, Tamra announces that she wants to age gracefully and nestles back onto the examining table and has her lips injected.

Poor sad Jeana is still separated from her head-injured husband, Matt. Apparently still refusing treatment for the sequelae of a severe head injury some years ago, he has moved back into the house with Jeana. To cope with his presence, she plans to redecorate a couple of rooms.

Kara, who surprised many viewers last season by choosing to attend Berkely, has remained strong in her traditional SoCal enclave reality show values, and seems to be enjoying living in a different cultural milieu and cultivating contempt for her fellow Berkelians.

The older son, whose name escapes me which would probably please him, apparently does not want to be on the reality show any more, and Jeana was obliged to bribe him by hiring a chef to make a special breakfast in exchange for his appearance in a scene or two and uttering a couple of monosyllables.

All in all, despite the variological intrigue of the teleleap from Atlanta to SoCal, nothing much has happened in the enclave, and that's how they like it.

The biggest change, I guess, is the departure of Tammy? Or did she leave season before last? Whenever it was, it was obvious that she put the needs of her family before our entertainment, proof that she never really did fit in, anyway.

This season features the addition of two new hamsters. From only a couple of frames in the pre-show promos, I thought that Gretchen's fiance Jeff reminded me of a post-surgery Kenny Rogers, and apparently I'm not the only one, as within minutes of introducing the new couple, both Jeana and Gretchen mentioned seeing the same resemblance.

And that is about the extent of thoughts and comments that would be appropriate for me to share about Jeff and Gretchen.

Jeff has leukemia. I hope that he will beat the disease and regain his health, and keep him, and all who love him, in my prayers.

Lindsay Lohan Brings Colored Back: Politeness and The Power of Words

At first, I thought that the reason I reacted with such uncharacteristic annoyance to that story of Lindsay Lohan referring to an African-American politician as "colored," had to do with the lack of reaction I perceived on the part of other people.

Only TMZ seemed to have even noticed it, and all round the internets, the loyal brigade of sincere young girls who love "LiLo" seemed either unaware of it, or if they were aware of it, argued that their idol should be "given a pass" because she was probably just "out of touch" with the fact that it is not considered polite to refer to people as "colored." Hope is expressed that nobody will stoop so low as to suggest that she is a racist.

Now if we were talking about somebody who had just emerged from a lifetime spent in some isolated little Town That Time Forgot with little or no access to or interest in, media or the outside world in general, where the cutting edge of technology consists of the local diner's recent purchase of a microwave oven, and most people in the town have never heard of, just for an example, Lindsay Lohan, they might have an argument.

But we are talking about a girl whose entire life has been spent in Hollywood, who was processed through the Disney machine, complete with classes about How to Talk to the Press, and while I guess that you could argue that no one would have thought to mention, even as far back as those days of Lindsay's little girlhood, way back in the 1990s, that neither the "n-word" nor "colored" were good vocabulary choices when referring to people whose ancestors, or some of them, came from Africa.

The reason it is unlikely that such a thing would have come up is that it is not likely that anyone at Disney, which is, when it comes to grooming their little stars, pretty thorough, that it would be necessary to mention this particular fine point of conversational etiquette.

So, realizing that I leave myself open to charges of insensitivity to the very strong and very real feelings of her millions of very real fans, and without intending any disrespect for those feelings, Bzzzzzt! Wrong.

Lindsay said "colored" because that is the word she uses.

"But maybe it just slipped out."

Maybe it did, but things cannot "just slip out" if they are not there.

"You are saying she is a racist!"

I have no way of knowing whether she considers herself a racist. Whether she and I would agree on what constitutes being a racist is not, in my opinion, relevant.

"So you are saying she doesn't have the right to ---"

No. She has the right to use any words she wishes, and have any opinions, attitudes and beliefs that she has, and should anyone suggest otherwise, I would not hesitate to engage, and hard.

So what is it then?

That is what I have been obliged to ask myself, and in that process, because it is Lindsay Lohan, it has been impossible for me to fail to recall that this is the same young lady who not too long ago, passed an evening engaged in activities that had it been you, or I, would have resulted in charges of carjacking and hostage-taking, just for starters, but Lindsay "got a pass," and was charged with possessing cocaine.

"OK but you have to understand that she was under a lot of pressure, with her family problems, and her career, plus she was using drugs then, so..."

And the same could be said of many people who are currently serving double-digit, if not life, sentences for carjacking and hostage-taking.

I'll bet that almost every single one of those people was under a lot of pressure, with family problems, job and money problems, plus they were using drugs, so..."

So, while they rot in hellish prisons, Lindsay is free to go clubbing and party hearty and give interviews to Access Hollywood.

"Why do you hate Lindsay so much? Why do you want her to rot in a hellish prison?"

I don't. Hate is not something that has a place in my own personal emotional repertoire, and even if that were not the case, I don't know Lindsay, so how could I hate her?

Nor do I want anybody to rot in a hellish prison.

But I think that this is a road that no one would wish to go down, as it begs the question as to just why society "hates" all those people who committed carjackings and took hostages because they were under a lot of pressure and had problems and were using drugs so much that they want THEM to rot in prisons, not to mention why those prisons are hellish.

That is a whole nother show, a whole series, in fact, the one point that I am making here is that the "double standard" for the behavior of celebrities is such a deeply ingrained value, such a cherished belief, that it not only exists, but suggesting that it should not makes people angry.

"Um, OK, you lost me. You still haven't said why you are so angry at Lindsay."

That is because I am not angry with her. I may be, however, just a teensy bit angry with the power of words.

While many of my generation take serious umbrage at the "claiming" of the "n-word" that has taken place in recent years, as it has effortlessly found its way into everyday common usage by millions of African-American youth, not just in conversation, but in the lyrics to popular songs as well, I have occasioned my own share of outrage by taking no umbrage at all to speak of.

Frankly, it neither bothers me nor upsets me one bit to hear the word used by young people in casual conversation, nor in popular songs.

Used in its traditional way, however, and by people who do not identify themselves primarily according to their African heritage, I do find the term offensive, although at the same time, I acknowledge the right of those individuals who wish to use it to do so, and in fact, I appreciate it.

"Ew. Why would you appreciate somebody saying the n word?"

Because a racist who is upfront about it presents less of a danger to me than one who is not. Would you rather come across a rattlesnake, or a snake that looked just like one you could pick up and play with?

"Double EW! Snakes are totally gross!"

OK. Would you rather have someone leave a gun in your home that looked like a ball-point pen, or one that was obviously just a regular gun?

The power of words.

The last time anybody called me "colored," they were telling me I couldn't use the public restroom that had toilet tissue, sinks with running water, and paper towels. And it would have in fact been illegal for me to use that restroom, and illegal for that person to let me use it. We could have both ended up in a hellish prison.

The sign on the restroom that did not have any of those amenities did not say the "n-word." It said "colored," because "colored" back then, was the polite way to refer to people of color, specifically African-Americans, because in that time and in that place, most people were aware of only two different kinds of human being, white and black, or "colored."

The one question I do not have a good answer for is why the expression "people of color" is perfectly fine, and "colored" is not.

Why should two similar expressions be so different in meaning, in acceptability, politeness?

The power of words is the only thing I can come up with. I like words. I like putting them together and making sentences. Maybe that's it. Maybe I just want to be the one with the power over words, I don't want the words to have any power over me, so when something happens that demonstrates that I am no different from my contemporaries at whom I have rolled my eyes and pooh-poohed their outrage over their kids listening to songs whose lyrics include the "n-word," their daughters calling each other, and their friends "bitch" and "ho," it annoys me.

Turns out I am not immune to the power of words, after all.

"I'm confused, you said Lindsay was being polite, right?"

I am quite sure that that was her intention.

"OK, sorry. I thought you were trying to say, like, something bad about her. She really is always, like super-polite."

90210: Hit Me with Your Best Shot

Leave it to the 90210 producers to give us such gritty, no-holds-barred insight into how the recreational drug business doesn't work. Special Agent Kimberly does not waste any time. They tell her how many seconds she has to get West Beverly cleaned up and she does it!

I read somewhere that Jessica Walter will be leaving the show. After seeing her give us such a gritty, no-holds-barred bleating of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" against a backdrop of hot pink neon lights spelling out "Annie 16," it is clear to me that getting rid of granny would be series suicide.

The only thing I could not have predicted in this week's episode was the decision to follow the protocol established by One Tree Hill that teen drama long-lost brothers must be clad in a uniform indicating membership in some regime-sponsored armed group or other.

Absolutely every other second of the show had been foretold by previous episodes, right down to the porn producer's warm and loving Big Fat Iranian family, where every bullet of every teenager's list of Most Embarrassing Things My Family Could Possibly Do Or Say When My New Romance Comes Over was knocked down cleaner than a bowling ball in the path of a 90210 Wilson on Family night.

Adriana is turning her life around for sure. She appreciated all that warmth and caring so much she even still likes Navid even though it was his week to reveal that he is a virgin. Last week it was Silver. Next week, who knows? What's your guess? Maybe the season finale can be the First Ever West Beverly Purity Ball.

I was soooo hoping that Annie would throw Naomi down for a good, old-fashioned cat-fight. boo hiss, I mumbled in resigned and disappointed unison with my fellow viewers.

Real Housewives of Atlanta: "You don't know where the knives are"

Last week's show was All About Kim, but she gets very little face time this week, most of it at the beginning of the show, where she goes on a boat ride with Sheree and one non-Housewife friend each.

Kim's non-Housewife friend drives the boat, Kim speaks to her rudely, the friend leaves the boat turned on while the girls drink wine and sunbathe on an island, they have to be rescued, and Kim makes predictable comments when Sheree requests some sunscreen, evidently having made the wise decision to disregard the assertion of the sketchy botox vendor that people of color have some sort of immunity to the effects of today's ozone-free solar rays.

We hear no gloating about it from NeNe, but her Big Hat Brunch launching her Twisted Hearts foundation to aid abused women is a rousing success, raising twice the total of DeShawn's Diamond Gala Night of 1000 Stars to benefit her nebulous goal of helping young girls with their self-esteem.

A little backstory about the hat thing: When Vatican II removed the head-covering requirement for women attending mass, an overwhelming majority of US Catholics responded by shouting "Hallelujah!" and gleefully tossing hats, veils, mantillas, dupattas, and every imaginable form of head covering air-ward as if they were Mary Tyler Moore in downtown Minneapolis.

Protestant congregations, most of whom had never had any rules about women's headwear, were of course unaffected, and especially in the African-American community, the Sunday Hat tradition marched apace. If anything, the decades that followed saw even larger and more elaborate hats upon the heads of church-going ladies of all colors in the Protestant south, even unto successive generations as modern lifestyles also tended to include fewer occasions requiring millinery products.

As the years passed, and the cross-demographic general decrease in regular Sunday church-going removed, for many women, the last opportunity they had to rock wearable Head Art.

This is why NeNe's Big Hat Brunch was near-brilliant marketing, as it gave an outlet to this particular demographic sector - affluent and frustrated would-be hat-wearers, to whom for all their wealth, modern customs simply offered few opportunities to sport this particular accessory, although most had grown up in homes that whether rich or poor, almost always contained at least one or two hatboxes on a closet shelf, or perched on top of a chiffarobe, whose remarkable contents were lovingly taken out and applied to the proud heads of mothers and grandmothers and aunts, as all set off together on Sunday morning.

It is impossible to dislike NeNe. I have really tried, but whenever I think I am almost there, we get something like the scene where DeShawn says something about that she does know how to cut lemons, but - and NeNe finsishes her sentence: "But you don't know where the knives are." Impeccable. Chalk up a whole mess of snark-points for NeNe.

She manages to completely dominate this scene, though DeShawn gives it her best shot, simpering and hamming it up for the camera like Shirley Temple on crack. The setting is her breakfast nook. She has invited her good friend NeNe over to plan a sunset barbecue, so of course the nook contains no notepads or rolodexes, but two settings of ugly yellow-brown glazed earthenware, which appear to be intended to serve the function usually performed by charger plates, though few of us employ charger plates when sitting down with a good friend in our breakfast nook. There are things that DeShawn seems to see but through a very thick glass, and very darkly.

She wants her sunset barbecue to clear the air. She is a peacemaker, is our DeShawn, and so she calls both Sheree and Kim while NeNe sits right there, slicing the scene up and making it into sandwiches. She looks especially nice in a lavender dress with a higher neckline that she usually wears, her hair is flawless, and her eyeliner is perfect. For the first time, I realize that NeNe is actually a very pretty lady. She just happens to be a very pretty lady who should always, always remember to jack em up. Sadly, at her own elegant Big Hat Brunch, she failed to do so, and adorned the podium adorned by a good seven inches or so of "ghetto line."

Her bust has become the topic of lively discussion, as some photos have surfaced of her with a very small one, which even though bra-ed and covered, would clearly not be capable of producing even an inch of ghetto line, yet from the first episode of this series she appears with a most ample bosom.

One could conclude that she had, like Sheree, simply paid a visit to her local Boob-Mart, except that her ample bosom does not look boughten.

My speculation is that those small-busted photos being passed around from forum to forum are in fact more recent ones, and that since the show, NeNe has indeed paid a visit to Boob-Mart, but for the purposes of dropping off rather than acquiring.

But enough about NeNe's chest. It was a big week for the Atlanta elite. Sheree was planning an event, too - a launch party for her plans to "start a clothing line." Not the line itself, which does not yet exist. The party is just to announce that she plans to start one. She has hired someone to do the sketches, make the patterns and sew the clothes of the eponymous collection: "She by Sheree."

(Actually ShebaSheree would be a much better name, smoother alliteration, better overall aural aesthetics, and containing elements of Africa, classicism,and potential perception of "exotic" by the mainstream demographic, but she didn't ask me).

The clothes themselves look remarkably like things already ubiquitously available in every retail establishment that sells ladies ready-to-wear. Sheree says the clothes are intended for the masses, serenely disregarding, or perhaps unaware, that the masses already have them.

She is unhappy with the samples when they arrive. My impression is that the seamstresses made the clothing represented in the sketches, ready to be hung on racks from Tar-zhay to Macy's to Lord & Taylor, ready to wear. But Sheree, it seems, was expecting to receive couture samples.

Undeterred, she blows up her sketches and orders her ice sculpure and muscled male models upon whose skin she will cause to have painted her name, the name of the planned clothing line.

Until the line moves forward from the planning stages (and let us not get ahead of ourselves, the launch party to announce that it is going to be planned is barely underway) Sheree's current occupation consists of "efforting" to obtain a seven figure divorce settlement from her famous ball player ex-husband.

She is eager to show the world that she does not need him and that she can succeed all by herself, so she invites him to the launch party and poses with him for pictures for the media.

DeShawn and Lisa, both still married to their respective ball players, go shopping for expensive clothes for their children and discuss reproduction and the contract terms offered by companies who produce this flavor of ball throwing events as opposed to another flavor. Again, poor DeShawn tries and fails to be a face the camera loves. Somebody please get poor little Shirley off that awful crack!

Offline, I have been once again schooled on the nature of Lisa's hair. Previously, in the context of criticizing what appeared to me to be a faux Jheri-curl in one of her Video Diary scenes, I had opined that Lisa's head had been kissed harder by Asia than Africa, and was immediately corrected by several people, who were very definite in their assertions that this was a game that Africa had totally won, and when we see her with straight hair, it is because somebody has done some work.

A neighbor actually went so far as to freeze and blow up a computer image of her temple, so that I could see this truth writ large in the form of her baby hair.

So in case there are others of my fellow low vision afflictees who may have been laboring under the same misconception, Lisa's hair comes out of her head curly, and the Jheri curl scene was closer to her "real" hair than her usual straight do, although we can be sure that curly though it may be, it does not emerge from her scalp coated with quite so much product.

At the sunset barbecue, Lisa aligns herself with DeShawn as a peacemaker. She, too wishes to clear the air. But neither Kim nor Sheree shows up. They both have very busy lives, they explain when called on the telephone.

In a Flashback Plus (a previously aired scene plus Never Before Seen footage) we get to see a little more of NeNe getting her DNA test to find out whether the usually-absent gentleman whom NeNe has always thought of as her father actually provided any sperm on the occasion of her conception.

One of the things that happens is that the technician uses an extremely offensive term that I had not heard in years, and in the very distant past when I did hear it, it was invariably from the lips of southern white racists. Today the African-American Cheek-Scraping Technologist employs it jokingly, and NeNe, with surprising aplomb, just lets it slide, or, since she is much younger than I am, it is possible that she never heard it before and does not understand how offensive it is.

I thought about explaining more about it, and its usage, such as it was, nearly half a century ago, but decided it did not rate so many key-strokes. Suffice it to say that it is a compound term that contains the n-word, and it is a whole nother level of offensive, the n-word having become, though controversial, extremely common among African-American youth, even finding its way into popular music. But this term, not so much.

To return to our story, fast forward to the present, where the NeNe family is gathered round the dining room table, tastefully charger plate-free, for the Opening of the Envelope that contains the Truth about NeNe's parentage.

And so it is in this rather anti-climactic scene that we learn that Curtis is not her biodaddy. Gregg, NeNe's husband, characterizes the news as "devastating." "Then who is your father?" Brentt, whose name we may assume bears a second final and superfluous consonant in honor of his father's redunant "g," asks his mother.

NeNe doesn't know, though The Letter That Started It All made reference to at least one claimant. I wonder if she will request that the individual cited in The Letter will submit to a cheek-scrape, but nothing is said about it, at least in this episode.

Real Housewives of Atlanta: How you spell cat? K-A-T

Sheree is ready to get back into the dating scene, so she attends a pole dancing party, where she demonstrates surprising flexibility and extension capabilities. Watch out, dating scene! As soon as she gets that 7-figure settlement from her baller ex, she will be one pole dating force to be reckoned with.

Lisa shows up in her Sky Top, the Official Top of the Real Housewives, and says she won't participate, but after a few drinks, she tries her own luck on the pole. "Give her a couple of drinks, and the sex kitten comes out," says Sheree. "Women plus alcohol plus a pole equals a great time."

"In Atlanta, we pole completely different from the rest of the country," the instructor tells us, going on to explain that "Black women have booties and we shake them and we're proud." She vows to make sure that the ladies learn to shake their jelly.

"This is the best thing I ever did, was you," Kim tells Michael, her personal chef. She is getting ready for her first visit to the Voice Coach of the Stars, which has been arranged for her by Dallas Austin, who will be producing her hit song, one he wrote himself.

"When you run in elite circles, you meet producers, athletes, rock stars, you know, people of that nature," Kim tells us. Big Papa and Dallas know each other. (Big Papa is Kim's wealthy "patron." He wishes to remain anonymous. Dallas, Kim informs us, works with her whenever she is available.

Kim plays the song for Michael the chef and her daughter. Her voice, to use a southern colloquialism, as a nod to the show's location, sounds like a "dying calf in a rainstorm."

Nene tries to help her little boy with his homework, but is quickly stumped by a tricky math problem. Her husband is called in, and is quickly stumped by the tricky problem of helping Nene understand that a half is more than a third. He shows her drawings of two divided pies, side by side. "Would you rather have a third of something, or a half of something?" he asks. "It depends on what the something is," Nene answers. "Can we get a tutor?"

Eric gives DeShawn a chunky-looking silver Rolex for her birthday. She is delighted, but explains that of course she won't be able to wear it that evening, since she will be wearing gold. Eric seems disappointed, but accepts that his wife does not believe in mixing metals.

Nene and Lisa, with their husbands, join DeShawn for her birthday dinner. Nene gets a little tipsy, and starts talking trash about the absent Sheree, and shouts for more wine. "Waiter, waitress, scuse meeeee."

In the limo, Nene, who has a very nice singing voice, sings a few impromptu verses poking fun at Kim's musical ambitions. "Babe, stop singing," pleads Gregg.

Sheree accompanies Kim to her botox appointment. "Does a lot of your friends get botox?" Kim asks. Sheree says that none do. "Black doesn't crack," Kim chuckles. (Regular viewers will recall that last week Kim treated the public to an authentic "they don't show their age" declaration. Today she says that that all [i]her[/i] friends get it. "White cracks, sister." Apparently outside the show, all Kim's friends are white. She has been getting botox every 6 months since she was 24 because it helps with her migraines. "Is there something different in their skin versus mine?" she asks the doctor, gesturing at Sheree.

Dr Felicity does her bit to keep the skin cancer industry strong and growing by stating that people with darker skin types have a "natural protectant." I find myself hitting pause to see if there are any certificates up on the wall indicating that Dr Felicity has had any medical training.

Kim has her first meeting with Miss Jan, Vocal Coach to the Stars. "What does a vocal coach do?" she asks. Miss Jan tries Kim on some basic tone matching. "You kind of don't know what you're doing," says Miss Jan, pointing out that Kim has considerable difficulty singing any actual notes.

"Where does that come into play when you're singing in a studio?" Kim does not shy away from the hard questions.

"Being able to sing a tune," answers Miss Jan, who goes on to compare Kim to a house with a cracked foundation. Kim's voice, she continues, is not something she would want to record, because Kim is not yet ready.

"Jan is nitpicking me," Kim grumbles. "She's tellling me that I don't know the ABCs of music. I don't have to. I'm a singer."

Wow! Kim and I have something in common! I, too am a singer who just happens to not be a singer of actual notes.

Kim plays her song for Sheree, who thinks her voice is beautiful. A lot of people, Kim mentions, say she sounds like Cher. "This is my number one single," Kim confides. "All that beauty and talent," gushes Sheree.

Sheree, whom someone has told (in the strictest confidence) about Nene's impromptu limo performace, tells Kim about it.

At the lingerie store we learn that Sheree does not wear a bra and Kim does not wear panties unless she has to. Evidently she does have to wear them sometimes, as she informs the other ladies that Big Papa likes granny panties.

Nene and DeShawn arrive, and there is tension in the air. NeNe is sure that Sheree "manipulated Kim to the core, and pore little Kim, wig squeezin' her brain, she went for it."

Kim and Sheree leave and go to a Mexican restaurant. "I've never had guacamole," says Kim. "I've heard that about this restaurant - guacamole."

"What the hell is that you're using?" Kim asks the server, as he mixes her guacamole at the table in a molcajete. "A rock? to make my food?" Kim does not like the guacamole, which she refers to as "green garbage." "He just took a rock and mixed it up. That cannot be sanitary."

Dallas arrives, and Kim recounts her visit with Miss Jan, about being called a house with a cracked foundation, that she is not "knowledgeable on music."

"So I asked is that hard to learn and she said 'No. - When you were born - 'What's two plus two, Kim?' I said four. 'How do you spell cat?' I said 'K-A-T.' And she said, 'did you know that when you were two?'

Miss Jan, Kim tells Austin, believes that Kim can be successful but that she has some work to do.

Dallas makes a few polite remarks about the benefits of working with someone who can help you bring out what you are trying to do, and swiftly excuses himself.

DeShawn is concerned that the tension between NeNe and Kim is not "your typical characteristic of elite society," and tries to call Kim, but Kim, knowing that she is with NeNe, hangs up on her.

NeNe thinks it is unfortunate that "change something that is just pure innocent fun into drama."

Kim thinks that it is unfortunate that NeNe has been disrespectful because no one wants anybody to succeed. Sheree says that she wants Kim to succeed, and Kim explains that this is because Sheree is beautiful and has so much to offer the world. Both ladies agree that NeNe is miserable because she doesn't have as much to offer the world.

NeNe decides that she wants to have her own foundation like DeShawn does. She actually picks a damn good cause - women in abusive relationships, like NeNe herself once was. Her husband promises "his resources" and NeNe outlines the plans for the foundation's first event, quoting nearly verbatim what Dwight Eubanks said when he heard about DeShawn's fundraiser, namely that ain't nobody going to raise no million dollars leaving flyers next to cash registers at the mall and inviting a thousand people to come into your house and drink your liquor, to which sage advice NeNe responded, viewers will remember, with that prim-but-resolute little speech to the effect that she didn't know about all that, but she was going to support DeShawn all the way.

Although becoming a "top country singer" is Kim's lifeling dream, It turns out that Kim's first recording session is also the first time she has ever heard her voice. At least that is what she says, but she must have heard it when she played the song for Michael the chef and for Sheree. We sure did.

But whatever. To her credit, Kim does describe the experience as a "wake-up call." She does not want to keep listening to her playback, but Dallas, who either missed his calling as a diplomat, is being paid some really serious bucks by Big Papa, (he must really like seeing Kim in those granny panties) or both, patiently explains that this is how we learn what to work on - in her case just that nitpicky thing about hitting the notes. He sends her off with assurances that he will be there once she has ironed out that little glitch, and to the camera, acknowledges that to try to record anything now would be wasting everybody's time.

NeNe has chosen "Twisted Hearts" as the name for her foundation, with the motto "Battered but not Broken." The first event will be a big hat luncheon, there will be ticket sales in addition to solicitation of pledges and donations, and to give us an idea of just how elegant an affair we are talking about, there will be placecards!

Big hats are sent over, there is a frenzy of trying-on, with even Gregg getting into the fun, as NeNe explains to viewers that African-American women have a tradtion of wearing hats to church, and she now hopes to see women of all ethnicities wearing hats as part of the fund-raising activity for her foundation.

While that idea is a very appealing one, in and of itself, it is my duty as Debbie Downer, not to mention an involuntary reflex, to wonder how much each hat cost relative to a month's rent in a modest apartment for a poor woman for whom housing is one of the biggest obstacles to removing herself from an abusive relationship.

At the same time, glass-half-full people will point out that at least the donations, and possibly part of the proceeds of ticket sales, might indeed reach the hands of one of our sisters who needs it most, and that the decision to sell tickets is of itself an improvement over DeShawn's $30K Diamond Gala, and NeNe's cause definitely more definite than the rather vague notion of "helping young girls with self-esteem issues." I am still trying to find out if that tiny mountain village in Bhutan might contain any young girls who do NOT have self-esteem issues.

Sheree receives a call from an un-named friend that somebody is saying bad things about her. She has gotten lots of these calls, she says. She calls Kim, who has been getting these reports about NeNe saying bad things about her, too. Kim texts NeNe: "I can't believed the shit you talked about me. You have no class. You are so evil! Don't ever call me again! You are a low budget bitch!"

Nene calls her husband and says she knows "exactly where it's coming from - women who are mothers and wives, and they are starting shit like that. If I'm in a car singing a song and people want to pull it out of content and make it more than what it is."

NeNe says that Kim should grow up, and "there is no resolution to it. I'm done."

There will, however, be resolution of the question of NeNe's parentage. We are promised that next week, NeNe will finally get the results of her DNA back, and find out for once and for all whether Curtis is really her biodaddy.

Beverly Hills 90210: Reveal Night!

This week, I caught myself looking forward to this show.

It has been a slow process, but I am obliged to acknowledge that even Shenae Grimes' maddening expression of perpetual Concern is growing on me.

Accepting Gossip Girl as a cartoon show has helped pave the way, I think, and so I have now given myself permission to go ahead and embrace the new BH90210 as a Weekly Afterschool Special that just happens to sport a character or two from the jewel in the teen drama crown of the 90s. (Even though I only saw a couple of episodes in the 90s, and it was not until 2007 or so that I sat down and watched all seven hundred seasons of it in the course of about a week).

Oh, there is still work to be done. I can never remember the name of the pasteurized processed Jim and Cindy substitutes. Or even their last name. Oh! Somebody just said it - Wilson! Keeping that W alive.

This week, it's Reveal Night in the 90210!

Dad Wilson gets things started by revealing the existence of their previously-secret half-brother to the NotTwins, which means he also has to reveal his high school romance with Naomi of the Nostrils' mom. (Dad Wilson, like Kotter, has been welcomed back to his old hood back here where we need ya) They are, predictably, bummed. Annie is gosh-darn-head-shakingly pissed off, and of course, extremely Concerned. Dixon the Brandonesque Icon of All Things Wholesome is pensive, and neither Naomi nor her nostrils could give a shit.

Annie, in a fit of angst, buys expensive boots and sneaks out to go have a slumber party with Naomi and the baby Jackie had that time with David Silver's dad Mel, who used to be Erin, but now goes by Silver because she is a blogger. This new show is so 21st century. The reason Annie had to sneak out is because Dad got really mad at her about the boots, and got even madder when she threw his teen reproductive activity in his face. She is just acting out, says mom, and we see the girls over at Silver's, taking shots.

in a game of I Have Never, Silver reveals that she is a virgin, and Annie reveals that when her parents first adopted Dixon she wanted to mail him to Taiwan because she was afraid that NotJim and NotCindy would love him more.

Annie and Naomi engage in a drunken shirt exchange, echoing the leitmotif of teen girls in bras that look like outerwear, the boys walk in, and Dixon, and is traumatized with disgust at the sight of his sister in a bra, a sight which apparently he has never seen before. The Wilsons must be one modest family.

The producers reveal that they really intend to try to pass Naomi's detention buddy with whom she speaks barely recognizable Spanish as an actual Latin American named Julio, and I realize that the slight tremor I perceive are howls of derisive laughter exploding from a hundred million throats.

Adriana and the porn producer's son who has Loved Her All His Life From Afar make out in one darkened bedroom, until she reveals that since he got his dad to pay for her rehab she intends to pay him back with va-jay-jay time and he reveals that he is Not That Kind of Boy, and stalks off in an offended huff.

While Silver distracts Naomi, who can't stand the idea of her new friend dating her ex-boyfriend, thus obliging them to keep their budding romance "on the DL," until Naomi obtains a new boyfriend for herself and her nostrils, Annie and Ethan make out in another darkened bedroom, until Ethan goes to get Annie some water to help her stay awake because she has never been drunk before, and Naomi escapes from Silver and arrives (oh if she had come in one second sooner!) to bewail her unsuccessful attempt to hook up with Julio, who had bounced, but not before revealing to her that he did not like games.

Plus Annie had declined to hook up with his friend, as she was on her way, unbeknownst, of course, to Naomi, to make out with Ethan.

The Julio-Naomi-nostril scene was actually not that bad. "You're not like the other people at school," Naomi tells him. "I'm like a lot of people at school," replies Julio the Linguistically Impaired. "Just not people you hang out with." Oh snap!

As Annie and Naomi discuss their shared somewhere-out-there half brother, and just as Naomi is saying how she is sick of being lied to, Ethan appears in the doorway.

Annie catches up with him in the yard, and says she just can't sneak around to make out with him, reveals that she is not drunk, and then throws up.

By this time, the slumber party has morphed into a full-fledged raver, with the entire population of Beverly Hills in attendance, which naturally includes Kimberly the undercover narc, rocking earrings too large for her head size, and on the verge of Romance with the bumbling-but-boyish-charm-havin' teacher who almost or just a little bit hooked up with Kelly before she went to Colorado or somewhere to conduct a two-week Talk with Dylan, her putative babydaddy, talks we know will fail, now that Kimberly is on the case, and Kelly will return all Shattered, and Bumbling-But will be Torn, and Kimberly will flash her eyes and take off her earrings.

But tonight she is just floating around the party trying to get her narcage on, and getting hit on by a creepy looking dude who watches with a Sinister Look as she gets into Bumbling-But's car and drives off into the night.

The entire population of Beverly Hills also includes NotJim, who bursts angrily in to rescue his daughter from the Den of Iniquity, but melts with compassion when he finds her collapsed, and she reveals that she is angry that NotJim did not reveal his reproductive history when it was first revealed to him, and that she has vomited on the expensive boots.

The next day dawns and it is revealed that the creepy looking dude who tried to hit on Kimberly the Narc is a dumb jock who wishes to blackmail Bumblin-But with the threat of revealing that he saw him leave with Kimberly, who he believes to be a jailbait student.

NotJim sternly reveals that it is against school rules for teachers to be alone with students outside of school, and although technically Kimberly is not really a student, Bumblin-But used poor judgment and will be punished by exile to a leave of absence.

Adriana apologizes to the porn producer's son and reveals that she doesn't think he is That Kind of Boy and that she does Like Him Like That.

Annie re-reveals to Ethan that she does not like the DL and wants to reveal their love to Naomi and accept the consequences.

Naomi reveals to Julio that she does not want to play games, and he reveals his phone number, but just when she is calling him, her eyes are met by the revelation of Annie and Ethan making out, and she forgets about Julio, as well as the existence of caller ID, leaving him to repeat the word hello until she remembers to hang up.

Next week can't get here soon enough!

Gossip Girl: Xtra Cartoon Goodness!

What a dullard I am. Blame the Pills as usual, but it took me all this time to realize that the Aaron the Promising Young Artist is intended to look like Pete Wentz.

The real Pete Wentz, I guess, doesn't do prime time soap cameos any more now that he has moved on up to the big time and married a Simpson sister and won starring roles in Vote or Lose PSAs (Or maybe it is Choose or Lose. Whatever it is, it is no match for Chuy Can't Vote So We Will). 1TreeHill fans will remember his unforgettable portrayal of himself in season something or other as Peyton's short-lived rock star boyfriend.

But I've wised up now, so I was immediately able to recognize that Naughty Little Emma is supposed to look like Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Confidential to Lil'J: It's eyes OR lips, not eyes AND lips. You really should have paid more attention to those old Conjunction Junction reruns in Vanessa's Home Schooling Package.

Dr 90210 is All About Love

Watch out Megan! If Lindsey ("living in a sea of breasts," says Rey) is not your biological little sister - well, every family has its secrets. Whatever Mami told you, Megan. Stick with that. But watch your back, because Lindsey is about to fit in.

Belynda wishes to augment her Brazilian butt, although not Brazilian, apparently her butt is, and she wants it augmented, so it will be a J-Lo butt. J-Lo is not actually Brazilian either, but apparently her butt is. But alas! She is too thin, and must gain ten pounds so that the narcissistic Dr Matlock, restorer of used va-jay-jays, will have enough fat to augment her Brazilian butt. Her boyfriend is stoked. He likes him some Brazilian butt! Thanks to Dr M, Belynda will become, at long last, marriage material.

Rey wails about his made-for-TV marriage problems. "My marriage is on the rocks again!"

Kimberley the yoga instructor has Runaway Bride eyes, but she is going to Dr. Linda Li for a hand rejuvenation. Poor Dr Li! She sticks out like a sore thumb on this show. In fact, Li's entire family clearly took a wrong turn somewhere. They so don't belong on this show, on any reality show. There has been a terrible mistake. The whole bunch of them are jarring misfits, nice, pleasant people who might be your neighbors or your cousins. Can someone please help them? I think all they wanted to do was tour Universal, maybe get a cell phone pic of Suri or something.

Back in 90210, Megan's little sister loves her new boobs so much she has put blue streaks in her hair. Now she can fit in with her friends. "Lindsey, your boobs look so goog!" they tell her.

Belynda's friends sit in a row on her bed and admire her new Brazilian J-Lo butt. She goes to a party and shakes her new augmented Brazilian butt for the guests. At last her boyfriend can propose!

Rey has deep trust issues. Left over from being abandoned by his kindasorta Brazilian parents. He says he needs a break. The break will consist of taking the skeletal Hayley and his children to Utah, to visit the missionaries who rescued him from middle-class squalor of a nice neighborhood in Sao Paolo. The rescue consisted, according to his account, of the missionaries accepting him as a gift bestowed by his kindasorta Brazilian biodaddy, evidently with little or no protests from biomamma. The missionary family means so much to him. He asks them for help with his abandonment issues. He has not visited them for 32 years. They are very cordial, and say they enjoyed having him in their home. Rey takes Hayley and the kids outside to play in the snow and learns that it is all about love.

Gossip Girl: Is Lil'J Secretly Gossip Girl?

What a relief! Seeing Chuck throw out those little glimmers of Reform last week was disturbing, to say the least. If Chuck is going to Reform, he should not do so until at least around the end of season five, coast through six Doing Good, then have a Relapse at the beginning of season seven, not to Re-Reform again until the Series Finale at the end of season eight.

Poor Dan! Even when he sets out to do Evil, he does Good. His lame attempt at revenge consisted of giving Blair sounder advice than he had given her when he intended to help her!

I was thoroughly annoyed with Dan last night. After all the drama that ensued as a result of Serena's failure last season to sit Dan down and tell him The Whole Story, you would think that if either of them had learned anything, it would be Dan, right?

But Nooooo. Instead of sitting Serena down and telling her The Whole Story of Blair's anti-Vanessa operation, he tells her nothing about it, and then too little too late, and [i]then[/i] proceeds to not even tell her what his "sabotage" actually consisted of!

Instead, it is Serena the Troubled who points out that if they are going to have any kind of relationship at all, even a platonic one, communication will be a necessary requisite.

To which Dan the Clueless responds by failing to tell Serena that he is still in love with her, and does not wish her to date the artist she went to kid camp with, and probably imagines himself as Dan the Noble as he watches her walk away to pursue her budding interest in the Artist, even though we all know that she is still secretly in love with Dan the Impenetrable Skull Owner.

Nate's character is one of the most random elements of the show. There are people who don't like Vanessa, there are people who don't like Lil'J, but for me, if they were going to kill off a character, Nate the Bland would be my choice. Other than an essentially thrown-away swipe at illustrating the concept of Reversal of Fortune, the sole function of Nate the Odorless has been to serve as an alternative past or potential love interest for every female in the cast, with the two exceptions mzjones cites, and it would not astonish me should he hook up with one or both of them, just as utilitarianly as he has with all the others.

At least, until last night, when we see Nate the Boring suddenly catapulted into what could be some actual role in significant plot development....

We all saw that coming, remember like the first episode where Lil'J was dressed up in Serena's dress wearing those eye-masks that only on TV disguise peoples' identity, and Nate kissed her, thinking she was Serena?

Who can say that they did not get a kick out of Nate the Defender of Innocence riding in on his white horse to save Lil'J the Pure from that terrible den of iniquity, where there she was doing the unthinkable - dancing in her bra! Oh the horror of it all!

And the delicious mixed message of this occurring on the very heels of Lil'J the Child Warrior, with all that Gumption and Pluck, saving her Art, and thus herself, all by herself, from the Evil Eleanor!

Could that be a Sign that what we really saw was just another flash in the pan for Nate the Un-Needed After All, as Lil'J is quite capable of guarding - or not - her Honor from people like Max the Sketchy who would sully her by photographing her dancing with a fashion model, both scandalously and coincidentally wearing coordinating bras and tights.

Whoever it was who described her new look as a "racoon with a mullet" nailed it.

I still secretly suspect that Dorota is secretly Blair's biological mom, and Lil'J is secretly Gossip Girl.

Gossip Girl: The Cartoon Season!

I find the New Cartoon Version Gossip Girl very entertaining.

I do, however understand that especially for younger viewers, seeking refuge from all the vaguely ominous tectonic plate-shifting going on in the economy in escapist cartoon fiction about the decadence and depravities of fabulously wealthy people, that the presence of characters who are not fabulously wealthy, and in the case of Nate, even a classic Reversal of Fortune, might be a total buzzkill, but just as painters use contrasting colors and light and shadow to give life and depth to even the blandest still life, all that fabulous wealth and privilege would not glitter so brightly if it were not juxtaposed with characters who have jobs and bills and tiresome concerns that are unrelated to being Queen of the exclusive private school or personal vendettas - in fact even those Golden Ones, the story shows us, have their secret demons of growing up motherless, one way or another, which is the Tie That Binds Chuck and Serena, though neither are aware of it, at least not consciously and/or not yet.

And I suppose the moral of last night's episode is supposed to be that their particular shared malady can put even the most relentlessly superficial of uber-privileged scions and scionettes at risk of Reform.

Make no mistake. That glint in Chuck's glowerings was indeed the germ of Reform, as we see that even with Blair, he is after a declaration of the L-word now, no longer satisfied, nor can he even be placated with a simple romp in the V-word, going so far as to announce that he is cutting Blair off from his P-word unless she complies.

We are even encouraged to suppose that his interest in Vanessa is born of respect for her noble qualities, as he finds himself inexplicably and mysteriously drawn to these curious characters who, although they themselves have nothing, are putting forth all this effort to save a historic building in their seedy little hood.

Does Nate also suffer from Motherless Childhood Syndrome, then? Because last week we saw him dipping a hesitant toe into the austere waters of Reform, and this week we see him presented with a big platter of The Poor Who So Gladly Share What Little They Have.

Even those who groan inward and outwardly at this development will be obliged, on further reflection, to acknowledge that they would not really want to see poor Nate trying to maintain basic hygiene in public bathrooms once whatever is left in the mansion's pipes runs out, nor grubbing around leftovers on sidewalk cafes or worse, dumpster diving, where he might be seen by a proprietor who recognizes him, or seized by law enforcement.

Hmm, now that the Barty Bunch has experienced the Miracle of Instant Healing, it would not be unthinkable that they might take in the newly-urchinized Nate, so that his Reversal of Fortune will not have to suffer the added indignity of a reduction in bedsheet thread count.

We must remind ourselves again that this is the Cartoon Version, and it is only to be expected that the Theme so clumsily drummed out and manifest in the Message of Dan is that it is those trite and homely old values like family and friendship, kindness and True Love and all-around Other-Directedness that Really Matter, not Jewelry and glittering soirees and couture gowns (the bestest of which, we are also not-so-subtly instructed, are in fact the creation of one of the show's tiresome old poor people)

At least the writers had the presence of mind to reveal the mantra that unlocks the Secret of the show's True Meaning, if we we will only remember to bob our heads back and forth just a smoosh as we continuously chant it: Tights are not pants.

Dr 90210: Robert Rey Has His Cake and Bites It, Too

I don't think Robert realizes how good he's got it.

Hayley is willing to raise the kids and take care of the house all by herself, all he has to do is pay for it, and in return he gets the "wife and kids" that he feels he needs or ought to have, with none of the real responsibilities or sacrifices or impact on what he does with his time.

That is not to say that I think theirs is an ideal situation, or anything remotely related to my own ideas of marriage, family, etc but from everything that we have seen of them, and everything that they have told us of their relationship, from its inception, one thing, or value, or whatever you want to call it, that they share is that they both seem to have some basic concepts and values in common, Hayley wanted to be married to a wealthy doctor, and Robert felt that a wife and children were necessary accoutrement to the image, the lifestyle, or persona or whatever that he wanted to be.

So Hayley got her virtually limitless "ATM," and Robert got a wife with a particular look, he got children, so he gets to be a wealthy, in-demand plastic surgeon in the capital of the beauty-wealth-fame-glamor-boobs culture, he gets to "have" the tall, thin blonde wife, the children, the interesting exotic hobby, and even be a reality TV star, and now he even has his "own line of shapewear" that gives him even more camera time with his appearances on one of the Big Two shopping channels!

I do not pretend to understand their insistence on not having a nanny or a babysitter, I think Hayley has explained it saying that she does not want her kids raised by household staff like so many in their community are, and certainly any time that there are extended family members available to baby-sit, I don't think many people would argue that that is not preferable than having the job done by a professional service vendor, and at least from what we can see on the show, she has not really developed any close relationships, she doesn't seem to have a lot of friends that she spends time with, so it is more than understandable that she would welcome - even yearn for - human interaction with humans other than her kids, and living near her parents would unquestionably mean an improvement in her quality of life, if she could leave the kids with mom so easily maybe she would make friends.

Remember when she came back from Montreal she toyed with the idea of resuming her interest in acting, but apparently that was not something that Robert was comfortable with, since it would have required him to assume child-care duties for a few hours once or twice a week, so that was pretty much that.

From what they tell us, Robert leaves early in the morning and doesn't return until late at night, depending on how much time he spends on his martial arts hobby, which is how he prefers to spend his leisure time, and so for all practical purposes, Hayley is functioning as a single parent, and what single parent wouldn't rather have mom and dad right down the street?

I think we all strive to keep on the right side of that fine line, when engaging in the internationally popular passtime of thinking way too much about reality shows, between stating our opinions and "passing judgment" on them, and if in my endeavor to avoid the latter I have failed to be clear about the former, for the record, I have never been a big fan of Hayley. In fairness, when it comes to matters of such importance as reality show trainwrecks, I do tend to be something of a stickler for quality, and let's face it. Hayley is not and never will be a Mr Boston.

While there may be some avid Team Hayley viewers who truly believe that she may once have wanted him, in my increasingly dismally failing efforts to be sensitive to those whose interpretation of the "reality" in reality shows is much purer than my own, perhaps we can all agree that whatever her girlish illusions, if any, may have been, she has accepted, as it were, the "reality" of the situation, revised her desires accordingly, picked up her basket of lemons and here she is resolutely squeezing them into a big frosty pitcher.

Should Robert "have a say" in where they live?
I don't know whether or to what extent the cameras might have been a consideration in the way she chose to express it, if she wished to ensure that the scene had enough drama, on the one hand, or if she might have attempted to sound more tactful had she not been caught up in the moment and forgotten that they were there, but either way, she pretty much nailed it.

Viewers of previous seasons may remember a few episodes where Robert was going to try being a real part of the family, etc, and my assumption was that if that was done for the cameras, it was to help viewers understand just why that would not work.

Robert simply has more interest in other things, and some may even remember what I considered the low point of all things Rey: Robert spending "quality time" with his kids, every other word out of his mouth, it seemed, some little disparaging dig at their mother.**


Even if she did want him to "be around more" at one time, surely she now understands that
A) it ain't gonna happen, and
B) under the circumstances, and especially because there are kids involved, that is really a Good Thing (TM)

So if Hayley wants to move to Calabasas and live down the street from her parents, it is not because I agree philosophically with the Reys' arrangement, but a simple acknowledgement that these are the choices they made, this is the "reality" they have chosen that I am able to concur with Hayley's pragmaticism, shrug and declare in rare unison with her:
"Yeah Robert, just shut up and pay the bill!"

What are Robert's choices? California is a community property state, and they have two kids. It would cost him a lot more to divorce her than she will spend buying, even decorating, a house in Calabasas, and he would no longer technically "have" that wife and kids that he appears to consider necessary accessories for his persona, his "station in life."

He would be between a worse rock and a worse hard place - either pay for kids he no longer "has" living in his "home" - AND forfeit half his assets, or, since he is very wealthy, he could probably purchase sufficient lawyerage to get custody, which he would not want either.

In a divorce, Hayley would emerge the sure "winner," the only "weapon" Robert would have is that she has emotional issues and an eating disorder, and the only thing he could hope to get out of it would be custody, which he doesn't want, and might not get anyway, since the kids are so young, rightly or wrongly courts do favor mothers, her parents are right down the street and she would surely be getting "treatment" for all that by the time they got to that point.

So, to mercifully sum it all up, I am not a fan of either Rey, nor can I claim that the decisions and compromises and trade-offs they have made, the way they have chosen to live their lives, or at least the way they have chosen to present all that to the viewing public, would appeal to or agree with me, but then they might say the same thing about me!

As far as they (or any of their staff, representatives and service vendors of any kind) are concerned, I am just one more wacky viewer holding forth and opining based on footage that makes it out of the editing room, and as far as I am concerned, they are just a couple more reality show hamsters upon whom I opine, and that, at least, is exactly as it should be!

**And here we uncover one foetid side of the dual kernel of why I find the Reys among the creepiest and most viscerally repellent of all reality TV hamsters: No matter what issues they may have, illnesses and conditions that they choose not to treat, it is not the fault of the two children they chose to bring into the world. I remember expressing the hope on some blog or forum or other that they would not only get divorced, but no matter what they decided to do with their own selves, quickly while the children were still young enough to at least minimize the trauma, at least let the kids go to homes where they would have the benefit of a loving home, and parents who enjoy a loving, functional relationship.

The other side of that dual kernel is of course Robert's um, "bedside manner," with his patients, the politest way I can put it is to say that I find it distasteful, beyond the planet of inappropriate and well into the realm of creepy and viscerally repellent.

So much for this week's Armchair Rey Analysis, as always brought to you free of charge and worth every penny!

Dr 90210: Selective Perception

Selective Perception used to be a thing that got a lot of classroom discussion time in advertising classes. I don't know if it still does, and other than sending people off to the dictionary to look up the term itself, as well as its components separately, if needed, I don't really know a good way to explain it other than by giving an example, so Robert Rey's fans will please forgive me if - and note that I stress the if - they feel that it could be interpreted as casting him in a less positive light. It is only coincidence that the anecdote has anything to do with him at all.

He frequently makes a point of talking about the terrible poverty of his early life in Brazil, and if anyone has been to Brazil, you will know that there is indeed extreme poverty there, in fact Brazil is often cited as an object lesson in why some people are not enthusiastic about the transition of certain other countries to the "two-class" system.

Anyway, Rey has spoken extensively about the horrific conditions in which he lived, being obliged to sleep on a table, belonging to a "gang" of child thieves who stole candy to keep themselves alive, the squalid dump of a school, until one day when he is about eleven or so, his father gave him away to some missionaries from Utah, and they brought him back to Utah, where he went to school, learned English, etc.

So one day we have this episode where he goes back to Brazil, he's going to reconcile with his father, who is now old and sick, and supposedly filled with remorse for his part in making Rey's early life such a living hell, and Rey feels sorry for him, old and sick in all that terrible squalor and poverty, it's his father, after all.

Well, I'm sitting there, watching. I'm expecting Rey to take us to a lean-to in a favela, you know?

So imagine my surprise when we see the school, and it is pretty basic, but far from squalid, and then we get to the house - and it is not a favela shack, but a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and then - his dad speaks English with the accent of the Northeastern US! Dad was either born, or raised for most of his life in the US, or he is some kind of linguistic savant.

Now obviously, none of this means that his father did not do all kinds of awful things, maybe he did not provide for his children, maybe he did give little Rey away to "missionaries."

I always thought it was a little odd that Rey does not pronounce Portuguese words or phrases (the few we ever hear him utter) like someone whose first language was Portuguese. Usually, even if kids don't ever hear that first language, they will still retain some pronunciation basics, even if they are removed from that language long before eleven.

But the way people learn and remember languages is all over the place, and you could certainly argue that if his dad didn't take care of him, he probably didn't speak English to him either, so I guess that it would be theoretically possible for him to have had an English-speaking father, even a native speaker, who never used it, and that his own language skills might be so sketchy that even though he spoke only Portuguese until he was eleven, since he would have heard little if any of it in Utah, that his neural pathways could have paved over so hard that even his vowel sounds in that language today - oh, well.

What cannot be argued away is that neither the school nor Rey, Sr's home were squalid nor poverty-stricken. I have seen FAR "worse" homes - and worse schools in other places, including the US. In fact, in the US, the home where we found Rey, Sr would be considered at worst, solidly middle class. And again, those familiar with Latin America will recognize that people there who live in terrible poverty do not typically do so in homes that would be considered middle class in the US.

Now what you would expect from the fans of Rey, at least what I expected, were arguments that maybe Dad had made good during the intervening years, maybe there was some mix-up and that wasn't the favela shack, maybe the school had received some major remodeling and renovation grants.

But what really impressed me about the whole Rey back to Brazil episode was that Rey stood in the basic but clean little school and waved his arms and talked about how awful it was!

He made similar comments about the nice quiet street, etc.

And lo and behold, all over the internets the next day were people going on about how difficult it must have been for Rey to have to see his father living in such terrible squalid poverty!

Now I did not say all that out of a desire to start up a storm of Rey-bashing. It would be impolite to his fans, who have very strong and very real feelings about him, and I would certainly not want the Reyista vigilantes to come over here and bother Our Serene Management, who are also our Serene Benefactors and our hosts.

My point is not really even Rey-related, although the anecdote I am using to illustrate it does involve him.

My point is that if someone holds up a picture of a girl with messy hair, and says "What a neat, pulled-together hairstyle!" or even holds up a picture of a blue car and says "What a bright red car!" not everyone who sees the pictures will agree whether the hairstyle was messy.

And not everyone who saw the pictures will agree about what color the car was.

Just one of those Funny Things We Humans Do, that can sometimes make some people go "Hmmm."

Paris Hilton's New BFF: Just Pick Corrie Already

In the opening scenes of this episode, Kiki looked so over it, I was thinking she was going to do something like eliminate herself at the end. To me, she just seemed to have "don't wanna be here" oozing from her pores, as excited by the idea of a "who knows the most about Paris" game as I might be if someone called me up to inform me that "The Story of Bricks" would be starting in ten minutes on the Discovery channel.

But to my surprise, it was Kiki who WON the Paris Trivia Challenge. And off she goes to eat dinner with Paris. Her prize.

Paris gives current pet and fellow bigoted offal scrap Corrie the choice of who should be eliminated. I think Paris should eliminate all the rest of them and just declare Corrie the winner, on the basis of their shared values, and shared bigoted scrap of offalhood.

Corrie chooses Zui of course, who in fairness did once mention her desire to plunge a knife into Corrie, a classic and universal textbook example of a reality-show no-no, (and recalling a current thread in the beauty forum, a classic and universal textbook example of someone who should not have dyed their hair black at all, and certainly not with a dye that even people who were born with black hair should stay clear of) but I was really hoping she would choose one of the ones that I keep getting confused with her unless there is a label under their name, someone is addressing them by name, or of course, if Corrie is speaking.

"TTYN," Corrie sneers at Zui.

Then the girls are challenged with a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven with Dirt Nasty, and it is Natasha who gets sent home, as far as I could tell, because she already knew Dirt from back east.

Without Onch, this show is sinking fast.

One Tree Hill: Countdown to Sex Tape

My speculation is that the script for next week's episode will contain the term "sex tape."

Julian is obviously going to turn out to be a dalliance of Peyton's early, naive and lonely days in LA, and from which dalliance, being the good and sensible girl that she is, swiftly removed herself, but Julian, like that creepy dude in the late lamented and much loved by me show Dirt, had the habit of recording all his dalliances for posterity, and it was very probably the discovery of this custom that caused Peyton to terminate the association, but he of course still has the Tape, but it is not until now that he has any use for it...

The suspension of disbelief requirements of this show are skyrocketing.

First we are supposed to believe that any professional entity would hire a person who not only has a chronic back injury, but takes opiates for it, to go out on a basketball court where he could not only rack up the company's workman's comp rates, but cause injury to other players, incurring further costs, not to mention the loss of the use of said players.

Then we get Lucas, who though he may have made a hot mess of his personal life, has always been the wise and prudent one with the brain, who signs a contract on a pool table at the local bar with a dude who shows up and says he's a producer who will give Lucas $300,000 without even having his agent look it over, much less a lawyer.

So what I think is going to happen is, of course Peyton will be Torn.

Should she come clean, and tell Lucas that the Evil Julian is really a porn producer, and her own indiscretion, and the existence of the Tape, and risk Losing him, or should she keep her mouth shut in the hope that Julian will not throw her under the bus, even though having to watch Lucas' agony as he rails at his agent, and calls in lawyers now that the barn door is open and the horse is out, in a vain struggle to keep his beloved book, the story of his pure and sacred boyhood love, turned into a sleazy porno, which may or may not feature some choice footage of Peyton herself, as if she did not have enough to worry about already...

Dramatic, and it will surely shoot the ratings through the roof, but what Mr Puff and I have really been looking forward to is when Millicent, worried about Gigi, confides in Brooke, who gives her a makeover, which will mostly consist of taking off her glasses and giving her some really classy slutty lingerie, whereupon she will reveal both to Mouth and to us, that she is really a Hottie, and Mouth will fire Gigi, who will either have completed however many episodes she was signed up for, or move on to set her sights on Skills, whom she will try to convince that he should leave Deb because she is so old, maybe even forty, and is thus going to die before long anyway.

We have also been looking forward to learning more about Sam's parentage, and finding out whose long-lost sister she is, but we won't know that until she Reforms and we see with which character she falls in love and develops a deep romance, the consumation of which is repeatedly attempted but always interrupted or prevented at the last minute...

Real Housewives of Atlanta: Poison Means Fish in French

After that first little exchange about "poison means fish in French" with Kim and her friend at the restaurant, I was feeling kind of like I did after seeing the preview show for the New York Housewives: "Even I can't bring myself to make fun of these people. Shame on Bravo for exploiting them, and I'll take the high road and aim my snark at a a fair target like the people on My Big Redneck Wedding."

But by the time we got to Kim's "they don't show their age, you know" line, I was too busy spluttering "Uh-uh. She didn't just say that" to be troubled by such questions and was thus free to enjoy the rest of the show impeded only by a small bout of idly wondering if any teenaged girls - or boys - [i]without[/i] self-esteem issues had ever actually existed, or possibly still do, somewhere in a little mountain village in Bhutan, maybe. Even so, that's still one big mission.

DeShawn said she spent $30,000 on her party, and received $10,000 in donations, thus depriving "her girls" - and her husband of only $20,000. Kim said the bracelet she bought cost $14,000. Maybe they were getting only a percentage of diamond bracelet sales. Kim had to text Big Papa immediately to inform him of the purchase. I wonder what the cut-off is. I mean, does she have to tell him if she buys a $6.99 hair clip at CVS, like the one DeShawn was rocking right before the Night of a Thousand Stars Diamond Gala? What about $800 or so for a pair of Jimmy Choos? $39.95 for a new Dynel (TM) wig?

None of the guests were interested in paying $7500 to have dinner with LeBron James, and Kim called Big Papa again, complaining that she was bored and the wine was bad, then stuffed the black satin sausage casing into which she had stuffed most of herself, with the exception of her mammouth faux mammaries, back into her limo and bounced.

Sheree was too disgusted to even buy any diamond bracelets. "No coat check?" she sniffed. What am I supposed to do with my fur? Earlier that day, she had revealed to Kim that she has always been popular and beautiful. Kim admitted that she was not always beautiful, having been afflicted with naturally black hair.

All in all, a pretty sorry little episode, with only the briefest flash of NeNe getting swabbed down for her DNA test to find out whether Curtis is really her father. That was the storyline that had hooked me in last week.