Wednesday, November 5, 2008

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.

3 comments:

SGM said...

Love this show--great recap!

MangoNocturna said...

Oh WoW! Thank you so much!

I just started this as a sort of experiment, to dump ravings, I had no idea that anyone would actually read it, much less comment!

I am sort of thrilled now! Thanks again!

Anonymous said...

please do more recaps of atl, this is amazing

 

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