Mondrianyone

It's understandable that she'd become upset. I mean, Aviva is such a nutjob that my first response to an accusation from someone like her that I didn't really do my own work would be just to laugh and walk away, but I get that there's a range of possible responses. What makes no sense to me is for Carole to be so outraged at such a cruel assault on her career and her credentials as a genuine writer and then go on to seem to want to prove that everything Aviva accused her of was true. She couldn't do a better job of that than act the way she has been this season. Blowing off deadlines, not knowing she even had contractual deadlines, acting like a teenage stoner. It's a complete 180 from the professionalism she was defending so self-righteously last year. I seriously don't get it. Maybe after the Widow's Guide didn't set the world on fire, she decided she doesn't really want to be a writer, that it's just too hard, and this is how she's acting out that change of plan. Beats me.

The assumption is that everyone who's not a writer and comes out with a memoir has had it ghostwritten. And people who are too famous and too busy being famous to write their own books. They "have people" for that sort of thing. I can vouch for that from years of professional experience. But when the person publishing the memoir has experience as a writer--as a TV reporter writing her own copy and as a producer presumably writing copy for Peter Jennings--and isn't particularly famous, it's not an assumption that's automatically made. The assumption usually made in that situation is that the TV writer is making the transition into another area of writing. I worked on a memoir by someone who had a pretty similar job at ABC News, and no one ever felt compelled to mention that he didn't have a ghostwriter. It was just assumed that he didn't. (And in fact he didn't.) So I'm going to stick with it strikes me as an odd thing to mention. It never occurred to me to think she had a ghost for her first book. But the combination of her reaction to the accusation, which seemed strangely over the top, and her new incarnation this year as a girl who prefers not to work and who can't be bothered to fulfill the terms of her contract or even to know what those terms are--it all really does make me wonder. I know lots of writers, and that persona doesn't comport with what I know. If she didn't want to give credibility to the accusation and if she really is sincere about having a career as a writer (and not just one fairly well-received book), she's going about it in a very peculiar way.

Doesn't that strike you as odd, though? That the disclaimer was made, in print, two years before Aviva's accusation? It would never occur to me, if I were writing a profile of someone, especially someone who'd presented herself as a writer, to add in a disclaimer like that unless maybe some rumor was already afloat somewhere in the world. Like, who would write, "And this year Joan Didion will publish her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking--which by the way wasn't ghostwritten"? It wouldn't even be in the consciousness of the profiler. Unless for some reason it was. This kind of leads me to suspect that Aviva wasn't the first person making that allegation. Just because it's such a weird thing to say about a writer's memoir.

I like Lara more than not. She obviously has a personal interest in flea markets/yard sales/antiques/refurbishing/decorating (she's published at least one book on the subject). Plenty of times she's managed to talk some team of idiots out of completely destroying a beautiful old piece of furniture by cutting it up or sponge painting it or committing some other atrocity. Not often enough, but she clearly is in this for more than just another hosting job.

I enjoy a lot about this show. Every once in a while, a team will do something really creative, and that's fun to watch. It does bug me when they talk about "reupholstering" a piece when what they actually mean is putting new fabric on it. I took many sessions of upholstery classes in adult ed, and what these people do isn't reupholstering. They definitely must film multiple episodes at each flea market. It wouldn't make financial sense for them not to. It has occurred to me more than once that if a team is open to cheating, they could easily have a friend or family member show up and spend $500 on some hideous creation and then pay it back out of the $5K they win. That's the only explanation I can come up with for some of the things I've seen purchased for the crazy amounts they get (or for any amount at all). But I like seeing things like old farm implements or industrial equipment and learning what it was for. And I like seeing the haggling process, when it's done well--which it isn't always. I guess I just like vicarious flea-ing.

This really was off topic when we originally talked about it, and it still is, so I won't dwell on it any more than to say this: The acceptance rate for the College hovers around 6%. The acceptance rate for GS is 34%. So the level of selectivity is just different, no way around it. Theoretically (not my personal experience, so theoretically), all you have to do is wait a year after graduating from high school to apply, and you can get into Columbia University much more easily, a 1-in-3 chance rather than a 6-in-100 chance. It wasn't my intention to offend you or your degree, and I apologize if my post did that. It was my intention to offend Kelly. Sorry also for boring everybody else with this crap. I'm done now.

Kelly may come by her loon qualifications honestly, but she didn't really graduate from Columbia. She essentially slipped in through the back door by going to the School of General Studies, not to Columbia College. GS is kind of like the community-college branch of the university. It was set up so that nontraditional students--people working full-time, adults going back to get an education--had someplace to study. But a GS degree isn't anything like a degree from the college, and neither are the entrance requirements. She isn't outright lying when she says she went to Columbia, but she isn't telling the whole truth either. Aviva's a loon, too, but she isn't stupid.

Assuming PhD stands for "Phuck'Dup," then that would be a yes. If I heard (and remember) correctly, she didn't say she made them, she said, "I brought you some eggs. Scrambled. À la française." I think what made them "à la française" is that LuAnn brought them.

I agree with all of this. Except for the part where you're a monster and maybe the part where Carole could've written them some better dialogue. I felt like I was watching the world's worst double audition for The Young and the Tearless (more tearless than young). Two women desperately fake-crying and speaking lines out of one of those Roy Lichtenstein parodies of the old romance comic strips. The only good part is you get to sit there and laugh your head off at somebody else's "pain," guilt-free.

McPherson flitted through my mind briefly as well. Also Agatha Christie. Because, as you say, Amelia Earhart seemed so obvious. But she was my answer, because of the year and the "heroine" description. And then I was inspired to go look up the dates for the other two's disappearances. Seems as if 1926 was a banner year for famous women faking their own kidnappings or whatever. I can think of a few celebrities I wish would do that right now. And stay lost. ;o)

This article says she's from Yorkshire, so I guess that's probably it. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2731554/Hairstylist-Krystina-Butel-spent-130-000-plastic-surgery-look-like-caricature-drawing.html It also says she's only about 30 years old and that she owns a hairdressing salon. Both very had to believe from the looks of things, but apparently true. Go figure.

Unless she just had odd penmanship, Shayna misspelled it as well--DeClerk. I hope they edited something out, because I thought Alex was almost rudely abrupt with her after the candlestick story.

Boy, am I slow-witted today. Stupid jokes about sucking those shoes through my TV screen aside (although they were gorgeous, and I would've if I could've), how is it that Kristen, the uber-Elvis fan of all time, to hear her tell it, did not at least try on a pair of freakin' Blue Suede Shoes?!? They were practically pulsing and throbbing their Blue Suede-ness right behind her head. I've been feeling sorry for her because . . . I dunno, underdog, I guess. And if Bethenny wants her gone, I want the opposite. But seriously? She probably should just go away if she can't jump on her own damn narrative when it's right there biting her on the nose.

She couldn't try them on. They were frozen somewhere in the space-time continuum by my mighty efforts to mind-suck them through my TV screen and into my living room.

That's what I thought they were expecting also, though it obviously isn't the only possibility. I found this at phrases.org.uk: The first documented occurrence of the two terms [the two terms being "nest" for groups of villainous people and "vipers" as an insult for those of poisonous intent] combined to form 'a nest of vipers' was in 1644, when a pamphlet that criticised a group of plotters who were planning treason against the English Parliament was titled A Nest of Perfidious Vipers.

That bolded part is what particularly impresses me. I wonder how many other Housewife businesses can make the same claim. Good for LuAnn.

Close enough. ;o)

I used to live one neighborhood over from Corona, so when I first saw that establishing shot of the Sunnyside sign, I was thinking, whaaaa . . . ? But my best guess about why they used that? Okay, two guesses. First, I can't think of anything similar in Corona that actually says "Corona." Apparently they assume we need every location spelled out. Which is why the Las Vegas sign is the most photographed feature in that whole city. And since facts don't matter all that much at old Bravo . . . But also, the Sunnyside sign is all sorts of showy and lit up, and I'm assuming that's what they think is the Italo-American aesthetic. (There's a word for it that was used when I was a kid, but I'm not going near that one.) Their idea of what looks authentically Italian is probably the San Gennaro Festival. And also discounting the fact that Corona is almost entirely Latino now. So it didn't fit their biases. Enter Sunnyside. Or maybe the film crew just ran out of gas before they got to Corona.

It said YOU HAD ME AT MERLOT.

I think the difference is that when Kyle said that something was "on fleek," she was quoting her own teenage girls, and she had the sense to say it self-mockingly and laugh at the very fact that she was saying it at all. I don't have a problem with people updating their language a little, just to keep from seeming like some kind of fossil stuck in amber in a particular decade. But there's never any excuse for "thot." Or maybe I should say "Ain't nobody got time for thot." ;o)

Hi, BSH forum. I've been watching and lurking since the beginning but I'm finally getting around to posting at the end. And about the pettiest thing possible. Am I alone in thinking that Geneva's tears during her post-arrest TH were the fake stage kind? They looked super-abundant and really shiny, the way synthetic tears always do, and there was one big drippy track, like a snail trail, all down her neck into her cleavage. So I'm wondering how do you apply phony tears when there's a whole camera and sound crew there filming you? Excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and come back out fake-sobbing and covered in wet? I seem to be more curious about the strategy than the fakery. 'Cause I'm positive they were fake, I guess. People who are fake-crying and covered in ersatz tears never wipe them away like you do if you're pumping out real tears, because the tears are there to be seen. I obviously need a hobby.

I think Orangina's the one! If they knew how much of our attention they're getting, maybe they could negotiate a better deal for themselves.

I've got a sneaking suspicion that Carole has other ways of relaxing herself that can even get her over the Bethenny hump. So to speak.

I'm going to take a guess at what happened in that bizarre little conversation. Carole mentions the sex dream, and then instead of saying "Did we go down on each other?" Bethenny has to be cute and tragically "hep" and say "Did we go downtown on each other?" Which still legitimately means did they have oral sex. But then she has to throw in every bit of accessory jargon from the '80s and not settle for just "downtown"--it has to be "Downtown Julie Brown." Which then both makes no sense but also makes her look like a raving lunatic who speaks only in prepackaged phrase-bits that lost any meaning thirty years ago. Now, if she'd said something like "So did we go Downton Abbey and get all grabby with each other?" that would at least have been more current and still give you the rhyme. I have no idea what it means, but I kept typing "Downton" when I wanted to type "Downtown," so I thought I'd throw it in as an option. As one does. Or as Bethenny does.

Ouch! I could practically feel you bursting my bubble, stewedsquash! Next time warn me first. I've never seen Helmet Head wear glasses, so I was sure that Googly Eyes was the one whose glasses glow green in the camera light. Drat. So do you all have a name for Ghost Glasses? I want to be on board with this. There are also two blond women who usually, but not always, sit together. Kind of East Coast, "we like to go sailing" preppy look, long blond hair. And a woman in her late forties, maybe, with fried-looking blond hair (not Side Bun, who doesn't fool me with that bun). Fried Hair reminds me of one of the contestants on that defunct reality show Chef Academy (jeez, I watch a lot of crap!). I can't picture the guy you describe, but there's another guy who looks maybe Indian or Pakistani who sits up front on the plaintiff side. The thing is, all of these people look like they could have better jobs than this. It's puzzling.