film noire

Poor Luann. Her eggs actually did end up a la francaise.

Thanks to American Girl dolls (a wholesome brand) we can dive a little deeper into this particular grassy knoll - let's get to work, people! Was it: ...Or was it.... ...both seem completely plausible to me!

I think Jen's mangled point was more like “Live by the dictates of your conscience instead of racist assumptions." And (just in terms of the conversation ) Mary was the housewife Divine God who invoked a global Black reaction ("Because to this day, I mean it! All Black people--") not Jen: Jen pointed out that Mary was a member of the group she was stereotyping & insulting. I dislike both women, but Mary's comments - ghetto, hoodlum, fleeing a 7/11 if Black people are present - those seem much more messily mired in race than Jen reminding Mary she herself is Black (and therefore a member of "All Black people--") The second data point for me re; Mary is that when Heather confronted her, Mary did not throw "ghetto" or "hoodlum" at Heather as an insult; she called her two-faced. So Mary's insults are (for Mary herself) clearly race-based, not race-blind. eta: Both women do share one thing, imo; the ability to exhaust me while watching them "discuss" matters of enormous importance, on a low rent reality TV show completely unequipped to have this kind of crucial conversation. LOL!

I really like Heather; she seems to have a healthy attitude towards her ex, normal kids, and no insane (and unnecessary) emotional displays. Her talking heads aren't glib insults or invented beef, but issues she's genuinely facing. (Talking about never having been in love? My god. That was heartbreaking). And yet, no self pity; she's not a whiner. How refreshing. Her presence actually feels - dare I say it?! - real. And (for me) all of those everyday elements + living in a tight-knit religious community where divorce can shatter your emotional, social, and spiritual life = an interesting journey. I think if Bravo got rid of Thing One and Thing Two (the lookalike brunettes) kept MaryJen as side dishes (not the main course) and focused on Heather as the heart of the group, the show might stand a chance of becoming something special.

Yes - and right before Jen cut her off, Mary said this: "But when asked why she would say something like that, Mary exclaims, "Because to this day, I mean it! All Black people —" And I will never forgive Jen for interrupting Mary and not letting her finish that sentence..." https://ew.com/tv/recaps/real-housewives-season-1-episode-5/?amp=true I found P/Asstor Mary's comments repugnant (especially coming from a so-called woman of god) but to be fair, I researched and did find dangerous Black people lurking in convenience stores: RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!

LOL "Hello, PornHub Award Delivery Man" (bom chicka wah wah) "I just happen to be naked on my doorstep! I totes do this all the time: pool parties with Tiki torches, Russian baths offering substandard hygiene and borscht (bom chicka wah wah) You know, all the standard naked shit? I wasn't expecting this delivery today, I was taking a bath and sorting through my housewives (bom chicka wah wah) Dorinda is vamoose - staked my claim to the wrong gold mine, there! (bom chicka wah wah) and Luann - jesus, her body is so on point I was tempted to trash her next season, but then I decided a heavy-handed & totally uncomfortable flirtation scene would be better (bom chicka wah wah) but don't tell Luann and Sonja is a frickin lost puppy drinking water from a bidet, so I'm left with Ramona as my best target because she reminds me of my mother, Bunny - who eats only vegetables and grain-based roughage - and I have all sorts of issues with her? - like, she told me she didn't like me as much as my sister! - wait, why are you running from me, PornHub Delivery Man? Am I not HOT??? MY LABIA IS TATTOED!"

.....nothing says "private & precious moment with my daughter" like posting that moment to Twitter! As several people tweeted to Frankel: Who took the photo of this supposedly private moment? It's not a selfie, so it wasn't spontaneous and in the moment; these aren't on-the-fly photos she took herself and just had to share with the world. These photos had to be staged, and then posted to social media. And why these photos? Never mind famous parents, professionals warn all parents (known or unknown) to be careful about posting public images of their children on line - why does Bethenny feel the need to slap what should be a private moment onto her Twitter feed with the caption "Love is in the air..and in the bed". If she's still taunting Jason (re: his custody demand that Bryn be kept off social media) she's weaponizing her own daughter to do it.

I agree it's a troubling image, @Ms Blue Jay, but as someone who battled an eating disorder, I've become very cynical about Frankel's motives. She posted that same photo to Facebook/Twitter/ Instagram, so ten to one she's hoping to incite enough "eat some turkey" comments to create a sound-bitey podcast (more likely a self-righteous body-shaming rant that erases her own participation in a skinny-is-all beauty myth that kills a woman every fifty-two minutes due to disordered eating.) I wish the Frankel who admitted she once had eating issues had chosen to pursue that complicated & necessary discussion instead of posting these kinds of photos to social media every couple of years. She could have such positive impact doing that in an honest, open manner. Mention it all, Bethenny; for once, truly mention it all.

A 38 percent drop in ratings since it began - my god! - but it was worth it all just to watch her and David Sedaris crack up over her "angry merriment". That was a fun interview; seemed like he'd finally met somebody even odder than his own family ; )

...Emmeline, you are thinking like a real person with real smarts. That won't fly. You gotta think like Frankelstein does. Assume "lunch meat" is one of Bethenny's "metaphors" and it all makes sense: you down some liquor, reach for the lunch meat in a pair of jeans (while taking a vitamin to give you the energy to ride the sexy-time rodeo) and then you grab Sonja's dishwasher-cleaned sex toy, and suddenly, the whole mess is TOTALLY on brand!

Good thoughts & cyber-hugs coming your way, @Jextella. Sonja looks massive beside Ramona - what the hell? (It's like when you're a kid and you mix up all the old manger sets and hide different-sized Baby Jesuses in the cotton batting snow so you can yell "The Blessed Virgin had triplets!" on Christmas Day. Not that there are any virgins in this photo ; ) I think I like Ramona's hair with a less deep side part.

Sounds like Mary is running a truly repugnant god-scam (for once, Bravo's cameras might be on the side of right revealing that) and her holy transformation has been... well, not just internal! She's been blinded by the laser light! From the link MrsWitter posted: "Mary looks NOTHING like she did just a few short years ago. Her and bishop disappeared from the church for almost 3 years. All the time while they were gone, Bishop was calling into the church during church meetings, saying she was in New York in the hospital on her death bed with the same kind of huge boils that afflicted her grandmother and that they needed hundreds of thousands of dollars to perform the life saving surgeries she had so she wouldn't die. Finally, after those 3 years of further draining their congregation on their money, Mary showed up at the church with half the nose she had before, twice the cheeks, brand new eye lids, half the skin, a completely different rack of teeth, looking 100 shades lighter and had blonde hair. All the while she forbids her female followers from having blonde hair cause she says that it's a sin to try and look white. She claims that she had no work done and that she's been illuminated by God." "..the smell of hospitals as I suffered through the deep darkness of one elective cosmetic surgery after another!"

Amen & praise the prophet, Sister Jel! (My god, guys, this show is bonkers - it's like a dramatization of lost Penthouse Letters: Dear Penthouse, I'm a Step-Grandpa-fucker as decreed in a will - should this granddaughter-wife wear his blood pressure cuff as a sexy-time garter? Dear Penthouse: My Ain't Gettin'-Any Hubby Works Outta State so I have a Husband-Son taking me to parties - is that super-weird? Dear Penthouse: My Pastor friend disrespected my Mommy-Aunt! Should I cut a holy bitch?) WTF? Who are these people? Heavens to Betsy and carrot salad and no caffeine drinks and Sacred Underwear (#ShitILearnedWatchingBigLove) does anybody in Salt Lake City have an un-hyphenated relationship?

...she helped create generations of Trekkies and Trebekkies ; )

She's like a human daisy, dancing in the wind, turning her face to the sun - leave Drew's petals alone, cruel world! And (for me) this bonkers show is completely on trend for 2020: crazy as fuck, full of random info (products! crafts! celebs! more products!) but since all of is presented with such a hopeful heart - and so much goodwill it might break my screen - I can't stop watching. It's like a cult hit cable access show with 2000 fans that suddenly got a real network (Brini Maxwell, anyone?) and you gotta watch because there is nothing Q rating normal about what she's doing. It's like a kid's show for adults on methadone replacement therapy (which, you know, is exactly how this year feels, so...) eta: link to Brini (prepare to 'deep dive' - per Drew's phrase - into Ms Maxwell's work..)

Cuz Bethenny's up here (hand gesture) and we're down here (hand gesture). ~“i haven’t been sitting around talking about how much anxiety i have...i’ve been using this time to make smart moves" frankel on how much better she handled covid than the rest of us anxious bitches.

Very longstanding - and before he began his career in the U.S., he hosted a quiz show in Canada (starting in the sixties) for high school students called "Reach For The Top". He's in his twenties here: Trebek's favourite parody was Eugene Levy's, which riffs on his time hosting Reach For The Top: Farewell, Alex. You made the world a better place.

The first discussion of red/blue states happened in the '76 election, but until election night 2000 (when red and blue were set in stone as to party) red might equal Democrat, and blue might equal Republican, and vice versa: "...viewers switching between channels might see Reagan's landslide turning the landscape blue on NBC and CBS, but red on ABC." https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363762677/the-color-of-politics-how-did-red-and-blue-states-come-to-be

Oh, I saw the initial post all right, but I think it's beyond ridiculous that Bethenny Frankel thinks she can tsk-tsk anyone else for tone deaf displays of wealth, since Frankel has never shied away from doing the same, including during the pandemic. And (imo) anyone with that kind of lifestyle (expensive jewelry, high end cars, designer clothes, endless travel, three exclusive home$, bragging about 100 million deals, etc) deserves to be mocked for presuming to be a comic moral corrective. As is she were a spartan saint herself. And god forbid anybody call her on her own hypocrisy: .... how about not doing it at all, a$$hole? Nobody needs you throwing grandiose side eye in the Virtue Olympics. Totally agree, Ms. Blue Jay. And if Bethenny had mocked Kim K for something like performative quarantining, even I'd give Frankel props for that - but this? Who the fuck has time for one rich idiot slagging on another rich idiot? (Especially since it's all done as an attempt to polish a non-existent halo). Get off my jock, Frankel ; )

WTF? How is sitting on your high-end kitchen i$land, in front of your top-of-the line fridge$, in your second (!) home, located in one of the most privileged and monied zip code$ in the world (beside a child who enjoys all the percs of a one-percenter life$tyle, a child living safely outside the new poverty created for millions of kids by Covid) how is that any fucking way to point out how blind to her own wealth and privilege Kim Kardashian is? Shut up and take a seat, Frankel. You humble-brag about being successful all the time, and posted the photo below less than a month ago during the second wave (when millions upon millions were once again facing being potentially trapped inside small homes and apartments, not living the high life in a green-acred mansion with plenty of expen$ive toys and built-in diversions. Your version of lockdown was most people's fantasy - hours spent in a gorgeous home, or poolside, or at the beach, or on a boat lounging with a cocktail and a beloved family member - so spare me the moral superiority.)

Bethenny is now offering further twitter-guidance as to how we should all behave in this troubled world: "It’s ok to have differing opinions. It’s important to communicate those differences in a constructive manner. The world is in a state of fear, anxiety, and anger and our actions and words have consequences. I come from #APlaceofYES, not a place of hate." Let's all line up, children, as one of the most toxic mouths to ever grace reality tv teaches us how best to live! Get out there tomorrow, and make sure you come from a Place of Yes: Call women sluts and whores for being sexually active. Come from love, not hate, by describing a woman's vagina as a "three car garage". Call women grappling with disordered eating "just nuts" for how they handle food in front of you. Savage a woman about 'cheater brands' until her face is burning with shame and shock. #BLikeBethenny! And let's do our best to sow racial harmony as well, the Place Of Yes way! As a white woman, I'm going to make sure I tell every Black woman I meet that I feel a sense of kinship with her because I'm "also really loud". And I promise I will move through my day being constructive - mocking cashiers, trying to get Uber drivers fired, throwing water in the face of strangers - and I will be especially constructive with the most innocent among us (sick dogs and little girls without the ability to consent to being publicly displayed to sell lingerie). To all of it, I say yes yes yes - let's come from a place of yes! - until (just like Frankel) we're yessing down the legs of every single person we meet.

Saw a rerun of the Australian couple moving to Da Nang, so the husband could start a fashion business. They picked the apartment with the gigantic windowed bathroom wall: the toilet was across from the bed through the uncurtained glass window. I'm not super-squeamish, but even some kind of privacy element would not fix that for me (knowing my husband was facing me, even behind curtains, as he went about his (non-fashion!) business....) They just had a baby (and moved!) while in lockdown in Vietnam, and seem pretty happy:

I remember hearing about that intially - Frankel made it sound like Cookie was locked up in a dark two-by-four closet with no food or water, for hours and hours. Turned out to be a large climate controlled closet - with her bowl and doggy bed - kinda what I had to do with my sweetie last week, when maintenance spent all day fixing a leaky pipe (except in my case, it was a tiny bathroom with a blanket and a chew toy : ) And given what Frankel did to Cookie only a few years later (the whole ugly Instagramming of Cookie seizing) a comfy closet looks tame compared to that, imo. They bought the apartment a year after they were married. Frankel had her lawyer set up a trust for the apartment, but when the marriage dissolved, she sued her lawyer for fraud, malpractice, fiduciary negligence, etc. She claimed to have signed the trust document without having read any part of it. She also claimed that at no point - prior to signing - had her lawyers discussed the terms of the trust with her, or asked for any direction from her, or reviewed the terms of the agreement with her, or advised her of any potential risks. (Sure, Jan.) The trust was declared null and void (as I understand it, the two biggest issues re: potential legal fraud were that the lawyer who witnessed their signatures did not do so in the presence of Jason or Bethenny, and Jason's mom was licensed only in Pennsylvania). Jason and Frankel eventually settled out of court. Frankel and the lawyer were supposed to face off in court last December - not sure if they settled or not. More info here - seems like a decent legal examination of the facts: https://allaboutthetea.com/2015/05/21/bethenny-frankel-get-her-tribeca-pad-back-after-judge-rules-trust-used-to-purchase-property-is-invalid/ Is it possible Carol Hoppy masterminded a massive legal fraud involving an expensive NYC attorney looking to ruin his reputation for absolutely no financial gain? I....guess so? But given how previously shady Frankel has been with money after having signed a contract (her attempt to defraud her manager/talent agency of millions of dollars comes to mind) I think it's likelier she read every section, signed off on it happily, and then when she decided to dump Jason, went nuclear on his ass. I also don't believe a control freak like Frankel would ignore any detail in a trust involving a five million dollar asset, or sign a doc she'd never read, so....

....don't blame yourself, HooDooz. Bethenny was engaged to a dead man, after all, and time passes on The Other Side very differently ; )

...yes yes yes - and the rest of that exchange is just as tone deaf: “When I told Bethenny how scared I was to be alone, she said, ‘Don’t be scared. I’m alone.’ ” Jill adds. “I said, ‘Yeah, but you have your daughter. My daughter grew up. You still have your baby.’ ” “And then Bethenny said, ‘Well, Bobby is with Cookie now. Bobby can take care of Cookie." https://people.com/tv/jill-zarin-bethenny-frankel-reunite-bobby-funeral/ Jesus, the one-upmanship. Yes, Widow Zarin, you may have lost your husband after a brutal battle with cancer, but Bethenny (aka Mrs Jason Hoppy) is alone due to a (not-yet) divorce (which is totes! comparable to going on, alone, after the man you loved endured grueling treatments, only to face his death with enormous grace). And yes, Jill, you may not have a young child to give you a sense of loving purpose in moving through your grief (or not-yet divorce!) but let's not forget that Bethenny's dog died (after she showed him seizing on camera) so when it comes to the Grief Games, SHE WINS EVERYTHING and if you keep on talking about your grief, she'll keep spotlighting herself until she's crying about coming from nothing, raised by wolves who never gave her a single birthday party or a family trip (photos of birthday parties, Christmas holidays, and trips to Europe with Mom aside) so step back, Jilll Zarin, your need to grieve your husband is not the focus here, because Mrs Jason Hoppy has all the sads today.