HunterHunted

I mentioned this on Reddit. The reason there is all of this produce sitting out is because the fridges and bilge are filled with processed food. She decorated the cake with whipped cream from a Reddi Whip can. Had she been making whipped cream, she'd have cartons of heavy cream that could be used for sweet and savory uses depending on her needs. However, the Reddi Whip can only be used for sweet dishes and then only as a garnish. So she has to stock both the Reddi Whip and heavy cream. It's the same thing with the salsa. If she makes her own, she simply has to use the ingredients that they already have stocked. If she uses salsa from a jar, they still have to stock onions, peppers, and tomatoes for every other dish that needs those ingredients. So it seems like they over-ordered, but really Mila ordered a bunk of shit that has no business being there.

There is also the infamous West Wing incident. http://bitchkittie.blogspot.com/2006/02/long-back-story-of-aaron-sorkin-west.html With Twitter, we don't see as much evidence that TPTB are lurking here, but they probably are. They are lurking here, Reddit, watching Twitter, reading TLo, Facebook, and whatever else. Bravo has always been on the forefront on using social media and fan spaces to gage their shows and make adjustments. Remember they bought TWoP. They'd sometimes re-edit episodes based on viewer comments. Not so much on Project Runway or Top Chef, but absolutely on Housewives shows. The first and second airing of some episodes were sometimes substantially different from subsequent airings. Scenes would be shortened. Other scenes would be lengthened. Sometimes new scenes would be inserted. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/business/06bravo.html

Luann kind of dragged Bethenny into this by calling her up and drunkenly begging Bethenny and/or Dennis loan her $6 million. Yes, Bethenny could have said no and left Luann to her own devices, but the only person in this group who is that callous is Luann. The irony. Everyone else would have asked what was going on and inquired if there was any other assistance they could provide, even Crazy Noodle who we've seen checking in on Bethenny, coaching Luann through apologies, and picking up on clues that the tour of that Morgan house was turning Sonja batty. Crazy Noodle who is openly rude and hostile to Barbara. But Luann is right there with the other women chastising Barbara for her bad energy. I have every confidence that had the shoes been on the other foot, Luann would have said good luck and walked away.

I don't think he respects her at all either. I never got the sense that he had a hate on for her in his recaps. He even has a one man show about his own issues with drugs, alcohol, and overspending and how those issues led him to theft, fraud, prostitution, and rehab. It seems like he'd be sympathetic towards Luann, but at the Halloween performance he seemed pretty blase about how bad of an environment for Lu's sobriety. Someone in the episode thread mentioned that Heather said Luann was incapable of introspection. You can't get her to think about her life, her patterns, and her choices. I suspect that Ben realized this too and just continued to work because Lu's going to Lu. I don't think Luann is especially proud of the cabaret show because she achieved it independently. Luann just likes people paying attention to her. When they were at the sandbar in Miami and those guys came by playing one of her songs, she lit up and started yelling about how "they knew her music." One of the few times Luann was shook was when they were at Birdland and Billy Stritch was playing. Mario sang a song to the love of his life, Ramona. Hahahahahaha! This probably filmed around the time when Kasey had to get an abortion because Mario knocked her up. Heather had to get up a sing because Luann wouldn't sing. I think Luann refused to sing because she would have needed 3 weeks prep. Luann has no issues with being entirely supported by men. That has never been an issue with her. Within weeks of meeting Tom, she moved into Tom's apartment and had him pay to remodel her kitchen in her Sag Harbor house. She shoved it everyone's face that she had a man. She bragged that Alex was going to walk her down the aisle when she married Tom. This didn't happen. Alex never came to the wedding. It's pretty clear Luann needs the cabaret money. I think Bethenny would have been sympathetic about Lu leaving rehab and needing to work had Bethenny not been present during Luann's relapse. Many of us assumed that it was a relapse in name only and Luann was hiding from the press and skipping the reunion. But Bethenny's description was bonkers. If half of it is true, Luann should have stayed in. If it's all true, Luann needed to stay in rehab. Her health should mean more than the couple thousand dollars she would have made with 2 or 3 performances. All of the women have problematic drinking habits, but the 3 with the most problematic drinking issues have had serious consequences. Dorinda stabs herself with a knife. Sonja slips and nearly does a header into the table. Luann gets blitzed and has the police called on her twice. This is serious shit. Luann has no coping mechanisms to deal with challenges. She's never developed them because her previous strategy for dealing with problems was having a rich guy fix her problem. During that weekend, not only was a rich guy not going to help her out, he (Alex) was part of the problem as Alex and the kids were suing her. Luann needs a ton of therapy and treatment. In the therapeutic and disability world, we talk about rehab and hab. Rehab is to improve functioning to some prior level, but it assumes you had some prior higher level of function in the past. Hab (habilitation) is to teach you skills or functioning that you never had. Luann has a whole host of skills that she never learned and we're seeing what happens when you expect things out of a person lacking those skills.

They are wealthy white people who own homes there. Wealthy people and wealthy white people are given so many passes.* I believe that the cops were called; Luann might have even been cuffed. Bethenny probably called the attorneys and started her mile a minute monologue about what was happening in Luann's life and gave a promise that Luann would go back to rehab. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that the rehab facility informed the Sag Harbor police that Luann had been admitted. Matter dealt with. * The D Magazine piece on the "affluenza" kid is illuminating. Teachers, social workers, and police had a ton of opportunities to intervene and they didn't. We see colleges bend over backwards to cover up the actions of athletes; it's not entirely surprising that a couple of individuals who owned multiple multi-million dollar homes in the area could talk the police out of arresting their friend. I went to school with these kids whose family had billions. I happened to be at some charity event with the grandmother. I told her that I was going to law school. She said that the family always needed lawyers in case someone gets into trouble. She started pantomiming all the types of trouble they get into. I had known these people for more than a decade. There was not a single person in that family who had been arrested in that time. And that's the point.

They really do sound similar. These songs are great for drag queens because Lu's voice is so deep that a drag queen wouldn't even have to lip sync. A drag queen could just sing live and sound 100% better than Luann. In the preview for next week, Ben is absolutely gleeful watching Luann's strangled moose calls that she thinks of as singing. It actually makes me dislike Ben a little because Luann is too dumLUsional to be in on the joke. Jeez Ben can you reserve your very obvious delight at her awfulness until she leaves the room.

Ageless by Ramona obviously!

This is no better than La Piscine. That really says something.

I don't like Rinna. I know Rinna is manipulative and kinda the worst, but I'm not going to excoriate her for failing to remember her experiences in that moment. I'm not Marilu Henner. Sometimes shit slips my mind depending on the day, the context in which it was discussed, or whatever. I imagine the same has happened to Rinna too. Have I been harassed during job interviews? Yes, but I don't always mention it. Have I twice had men try to abduct me from public spaces when I was in my early teens? Yes, but I don't always mention it. Have I been groped in public by strangers? Yes, but I don't always mention it. Have I had an actor who has been in a recent film that earned more than a billion dollars grope me while I was in my teens, he wasn't in his, and we only had a professional relationship? Yes, I have. I don't always mention it. Shit slips people's minds when it is far too regular. Also double fuck you to the fan who "asked her (Rinna) if she’s ever reported sexual harassment, adding that she is part of the problem if she never reported it." This "fan" is a piece of fucking shit. It's on the victim to stop the perpetrator? Take a long walk off a short pier.

Most of the press still mentions the show in reviews and pieces about some of the more successful Project Runway contestants. This is actually true for most of the more successful Top Chef contestants and winners. However, there is a much more pervasive culture of "selling out" in the restaurant business. It helps that the first big wave of this predated Top Chef. That first wave was chefs like Emeril and Wolfgang Puck having cooking shows on TV and selling cookbooks, knives, cookery, spice blends, and what have you. When Top Chef premiered, there were derisive comments about a chef game show. I think a handful of things helped cement the show's semi-prestigious reputation: 1. Tom's very vocal willingness to get rid of Cliff, Elia, Ilan, and Sam in season 2 after they assaulted Marcel (there are very few competition shows that are willing to tank the show on a matter of principle), 2. the fact that the contestants disproportionately have worked in Michelin starred restaurants or are James Beard nominees and winners, and 3. that the show can still get culinary luminaries as guest judges. I think there is such a huge amount of delusional snobbery in the fashion industry and press. No one wants to admit that ready to wear isn't particularly profitable and is largely a loss leader for the things that actually make money like cosmetics, perfume, accessories, and bridge and diffusion lines. It's only because some of the more candid folks like Michael Kors and Isaac Mizrahi have talked about the realities of the business that we know this. Couture is a straight up loss. It's always been obvious how hard Viktor & Rolf and Proenza Schouler were grinding until they were deemed worthy of creating perfumes and accessories. I think the fashion press and industry aren't willing to shine a light on how broken the industry is. Those invested in the brokenness are quick to deride competitive fashion shows, fast fashion, direct sale sites like etsy, and collaborations with mass market retailers until they discover all of this shit themselves and Missoni for Target in 2011 is suddenly brilliant. I also think how Project Runway kept chasing diminishing returns with weirder challenges that had nothing to do with fashion and mostly to do with money, weaker guest judges as the show's reputation declined, and just atrocious casting that seemed to be more about story than skill (there were far too many conceptual and performance artists who happen to use textiles cast) meant that talented former contestants who wanted to move beyond the show never could because there was this shitshow that reminded critics, journalists, and buyers that you were an exception rather than the rule.

The "old boy's club" didn't ignore Christian when he won. Christian is a talented interesting designer, but his real brilliance was how well he understood the business side of the fashion industry. He hit the ground running when he won in 2008. He did the interviews and the press. He also did a couple of capsule collections. The first was for Puma. It gave him some quick cash, kept his name in the press, and helped him gain more connections to companies that could manufacture the clothing. The second was for Payless. They would produce his runway shoes and they'd sell slightly stripped down version in their stores. Christian got a cut. Christian was announced as the winner in March 2008. He had a full collection ready to show at fashion week in September 2008. He also has the means to manufacture and sell the clothes too. He had a fair number of celebrities in the front row, but he also a number of editors and fashion writers too. That's the difference between Christian and a lot of the other winners, he was paying attention and was able to leverage every last cent and connection to turn this into a sustainable business. Christian has continued to show at fashion week and he continued to get pretty good reviews. He has continued to build his business steadily. He was never going to have the meteoric rise like a prince of Manhattan like Zac Posen. Zac Posen is another precociously successful designer. However, Zac's family has money and connections. People first took notice of Zac in his teens when he made a dress for a friend of his, who is Julian Schnabel's daughter. Come the fuck on. And really they're both kind of remarkable because for the last 20 or 30 years, the most notable designers with eponymous labels have done a stint as the head designer of some other label like Chanel, Dior, Chloe, Fendi, Gucci, or Louis Vuitton before starting their own labels.

Honestly, this was very necessary for Christian to say. Every bit of that trip to Mood is time a designer cannot work on their designs. I'm not sure of the distance between their workspace and Mood, I think we could comfortably estimate anywhere from 90 minutes to 2 hours wasted on a trip to Mood with driving time, time to set up the cameras, and the "shopping time." Sebastian needed a big old klaxon saying "You're wasting 2 hours on thread!!!!!! Do you not have any other thread that might work?" And Tim Gunn has said nearly the same thing many times over.

Hester's esthetic isn't really my bag, but it was a very well done cohesive collection that communicated her ethos very well. I liked Sebastian's more because it's more my style. They both were really good. Marni saved Garo's collection. You can see that when he was doin the model fittings, Garo was planning on matchy formal pumps for every look. It was just a series of dresses. Even Rami and Christopher Palu managed to make pants and a couple of separates. I think Marni's suggestions made his stuff look more cohesive and punky than they really were. All around it was welcome return to form after wallowing in dreck on Lifetime for years. Bravo Bravo!

Anyone following the story of the transphobic and homophobic pastor? https://www.buzzfeed.com/laraparker/this-pastor-who-has-made-transphobic-and-racist-remarks If I watch next season, I'm pretty sure I'm going to skip the Pride episode and the wedding episode. I can't reward their shittiness and hypocrisy.

I think we've just figured out how to keep Luann sober. Luann is the 6th kid out of 7. They are all pretty close in age. I suspect during one of those childhood stages of personality development that Luann got lost in the shuffle. Plus her childhood home burning down and them being transient for a period almost certainly contributed to making her very selfish. Usually they are producers and production assistants. People with eagle eyes spotted Todd in the background of a number of restaurant scenes before he and Kandi (RHoA) started dating.