RHONY: The Face Plant of Perfection

I wonder how it feels to have a smear campaign blow up in your face. What’s it like to treat people like shit and get away with it for years, only to have it all come crashing down on you in such a short period of time? Do you cry? Do you re-evaluate your life and make changes? Nope, you fall on your face for the entire world to enjoy.

Bravo, Bravo TV! I asked and you delivered! I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but we’ll get to that later. First we have to finish what was started in St. John and then see Kelly deliver her version of things to the harpies left out of the loop in New York. Girl still needs help, that is for damn sure. In this episode I almost expected men in white coats to be chasing her jogging ass down the street with giant butterfly nets.

In St. John, the crazy has finally left the building. If Alex’s blog is to be believed, Kelly was asked to vacate the premises and return to New York where lunatics like her are a dime a dozen. I choose to believe her because I doubt that Miss Andy wants the liability of something physical transpiring. It just wouldn’t be responsible and as boring as that sounds, I’m glad they made her leave. Just looking at all that candy was giving me queasy overindulged Halloween flash-backs.

The remaining girls gather for another breakfast of recovery. On vacation, you or I might be nursing a hangover over our cottage cheese and mango. These women are nursing combat wounds from the terrible smomp attack of 2009. They’re bonded together for life, like Band of Brothers or the teens from I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Without the satisfaction of actually getting to kill anybody.

Years into the future there will be a reunion on Bravo with a rosacea riddled Miss Andy asking the fashionably grey little old housewives what it was like to survive the Battle of the Lollipops and the siege at Gummy Berry Ridge. I hope they at least got some medals or something. THESE are the women that should get invited to the White House, not those gatecrashers from last fall.

Ramona shares the note that Kelly left her which says that she left to be with her girls. Accurate to be sure but not exactly authentic, no? More like Kellamity spin control but who cares at this point? She has lost every shred of viewer credulity that might be left and it’s hard to kick anyone when they are down and hanging by a thread, so they allow themselves a moment to reflect and move on.

Now let the real vacation start, right? The snorkeling, the yoga, the massages, and Sonja arranged mani-pedis for everyone. Undeniably, they all could use the down time. Everyone looks relaxed and like they’re feeling safe, letting their guard down for the first time since they landed.

Trauma is a bitch and it’s important to decompress for a while, recharge those batteries which is what vacations are all about in the first place. Ramona tells the women that she’s touched that they all did stuff especially for her when this was meant to be her gift to them. She gets teary and tells them that she feels loved.

They lean back in their cushy chairs, breathe in the tangy salt air and feel the island for the first time in all it’s beauty and positive energy. I was just thinking how lovely it would be to maybe take a trip to admire the local flora and fauna, which is what Mr. McSlore and I would do, when a nasal shriek fills the air. Is this one of the Magnificent Frigates that pepper the skies above the island? A Mangrove Cuckoo perhaps?
Why no, it’s the Underwhelming Meddling Macaw!

Sadly, not on the endangered species list.

aw, FUCK. You can see the disappointment on their faces. Jill’s shrill “Hiiiiiiiiiii, surprise!!” fills the warm air and she saunters onto the patio less like a prodigal friend and more like the Balrog at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring. That, and my loud Italian aunt that used to set off all the key ring locators in the house with her high pitched cackle.

No Lie. After Christmas that year, people in a five mile radius found keys that had been missing for months. I had to take the batteries out of mine while she was there, and here I go aging myself again. It was 1983 when we actually thought those things were amazing and the latest in technology.

Reactions- Ramona is speechless. Sonja looks shocked like she just offered to blow a waiter and got denied, Alex immediately goes into Harpy induced hives and Bethenny pulls down the blinds and goes to her happy place. Thank God for sunglasses. The rest of them should take after her and pull their shades down too. Maybe they can channel the little kid from Big Daddy this time.

“Shhh, she can’t see us with our shades on. Maybe she’ll get confused and go away.”

No such luck. “Ramona, Ramona, I came to see you. Sur-priiiiize!” and then Ramona very quietly asks, “Why?”

Bawby chimes in and says that they were on their way to St. Barths and thought it would be fun to take a little detour to see them. Poor Bawby. He just doesn’t know, does he? He just blew a huge wad of cash so his wife could live out her dream to crash Ramona’s party, and he stands there guilty by association as his wife continues to alienate every last Bravo viewer left on the planet.

It’s like Jill expects everyone to think, ‘Oh, look what she did for us! She went out of her way to come see everyone. Isn’t she super?’ and then she says “You invited us to come, remember?” If you have to say that, well, maybe you should rethink how welcome you might actually be.

Alex says she’s floored to see her since Jill spent a good amount of time pooh-poohing the trip before everyone left, even going so far as to try to get all the ladies to ditch Ramona and accompany her on a trip that SHE arranged. Vile, people. So wrong.

I have to admit to having a horrible flashback when I read that Jill did that. I’ve only had two or three people try to stir shit up in my life and one of them involved a jealous bitch trying to blackball a party I was throwing. I had zero intention of inviting her because of something she did to my brother, and then found out that she was speaking to everyone I had invited and trying to get them to cancel and attend another event.

What did I do? I smoothed over our recent disagreements and smiled whenever she was around until after the party. When it was over, the gloves came off. We had a little meeting where I told her exactly what I really thought of her and she never came within five feet of me or my family again.

The thing about people like her and Jill is that you have to realize that eventually their behavior does them in. You don’t actually have to lift a finger or waste one moment of time figuring out how to get vengeance. They do all the work for you! It’s great, like seeing Jill’s ‘gotcha’ face turn into a shell-shocked frown of her own.

She says hello to Bethenny who also very quietly says hello, and Ramona asks again what the hell she’s doing there, not allowing Jill to railroad everyone and act like nothing’s wrong. She spews more of the detour story, more Allison college preparation excuses, and then acts outraged and hurt because she wasn’t welcomed with open arms.

“What, you’re not happy to see me? I brought gifts! Shit I got for free but still…gifts!”

I don’t know what’s worse, Jill showing up or the fact that she saw Leather through her window at the airport and didn’t check to see if she was okay. I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised but Jill needs to keep her stories straight and consistent. Don’t say that you’re worried about someone and then do nothing at all to try to help. It kinda looks bad.

Jill says hello to everyone except Alex, keeps going on about her surprise and when the women remain silent she starts to gawk at her surroundings in an effort to dilute the air of rejection that is permeating the patio around her.

“Oh, look. A Brown Booby. Huh? I thought Kelly was gone.”

She and Bawby actually planned on spending the night at the villa with the women! What the fuck is SHE on? When she sees that that is not going to happen she mumbles that they don’t have a plane waiting and asks if Ramona wants her to leave. Gee, let me check.

How about you, Alex? Feel like partying with Jill today?

I pity Alex. She’s in her chair shaking and turning red and she finally calms herself down long enough to say to no one in particular that this is the first time she’s been away from Simon and the boys and there’s been enough drama. That’s all she said but Jill turns it into an excuse for her to blame Alex for not being asked to stay.

Finally, Jill says that she just wanted to see Bethenny before the holidays, she didn’t mean to cause all this drama and she turns around and leaves.

Don’t let the karma hit you on the ass on your way out!

You know what? We should feel some compassion for Jill right now. She came to St. John with an open heart and got it shat upon. They kicked her out, HER, Queen Jill Zarin! Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

It’s oddly satisfying, and I hate to admit it but seeing this happen makes me feel that all is right in the world. It reaffirms my sense of fairness and justice. Rare is the moment when what you hoped would happen, happens in spades!

Don’t mistake what I’m saying for gloating over Jill’s misery. Well, maybe just a little.
It’s more about restoring the balance which I’ve spoken about before in reference to Alex finally sticking up for herself. Seeing things play out like this has a calming effect on me, much like the relief I felt after we finally got through those bad storms on our drive home from Michigan on Monday, or feeling that shot slide down my throat when LuLu’s grey dress shows up on screen.

Small consolation for Alex, who is still shaking and looking like she needs a good cry. Ramona comforts her along with Sonja. Alex says that Jill’s visit would have been okay with her if Jill had shown some humility when she showed up, but that would be like Sonja ignoring a hot ski instructor or LuLu buying a round of drinks. Ain’t gonna happen.

The only real change we’ve seen from anyone this season is Ramona. She likes Alex, she stopped trashing Simon and she treats sanity like a friend and not the Arizona border jumper it’s been to her for the last two years. She even forgives Jill immediately for ambushing her bachelorette weekend.

Jill still doesn’t get it and she’s sitting in her car saying that Ramona chose Alex over her. I wonder if she watches this and realizes how emotionally stunted that makes her look. She has more jealousy at her core than ten Wanda Holloways at a cheerleader convention in Texas.

Watch out for hit men in parking lots, Ramona. You’ve been warned.

She’s bitching to Ramona about how much money Bawby spent to get them there, bummer, you should have called, and starts with the whole martyr mantra of “I thought we were friends,” and fishing for reassurances with that, “I guess I was wrong and we’re not,” boo hoo bullshit.

How does Ramona put up with this crap and how can she still be friends with Jill after everything she’s done? I’ll bet that the full brunt of what’s transpired still hadn’t hit yet in the Caribbean. Now that she’s had a chance to see everything that we’ve seen, I’m curious to find out if she’ll still love her friend Jill forever or if she’s finally gone too far.

Jill’s still harping over Alex and asks if she’s Ramona’s new best friend. No, Ramona just likes her. Jill says that she did too until Alex went psychotic on her. Ramona rolls her eyes and interviews that Jill likes to twist things and her thinking isn’t based in reality because she’s been hanging out with Leather too much.

Oh, that’s where I heard it! I disagree, as you know. Jill was always like that. She just got away with it when we all didn’t know her as well and took what she said at face value. Once upon a time she was popular and all her manipulations flew right over most of our heads, that was a whole year ago and it seems like eons. Weird.

Bawby is still on the patio speaking to Bethenny. He doesn’t see his wife like everyone else does. She only shows him her good side, and that’s to be expected. He’s a sweet kindly ATM to her. Why would she fuck that up and lose that Diamond Saks card she didn’t work so hard to get?

I shouldn’t say that. Jill works VERY hard. Nobody puts more effort into alienating people and self promotion that her. That was very rude and gauche of me. My sincerest apologies and kisses all around. They are all invited to cocktails on me at the super exclusive and tony TGIFridays in University Heights. Why, I’ll even pay with my generic Chase Visa card! I’ll even whip it out with a flourish worthy of bought and paid royalty and wear my bestest suede boots!

Ramona kisses Jill goodbye and excuses herself to rejoin her guests. I thought she behaved with remarkable diplomacy. Guess who doesn’t concur? Why, Jill! She interviews that Ramona threw her out on her Queenly ass. Jesus! Now she’s blaming Ramona for the situation SHE put her in to begin with!

Poor thing. Bawby comes out to console her and Jill cries to him about how mean they all are to her, and how does he know any different? Do you think that he knows now? There is a long and storied tradition of reality divorces. It wouldn’t shock me in the least if he left her for a nice young secretary. Maybe he’ll enlist the help of Patti Stanger.

It might be cheaper than that Saks card too.

That would be rich, to say the least.

And Bethenny’s right. Jill didn’t stop by to have lunch or catch up with everyone or have an overnighter in too-good-for-bawby nighties in bed. She was there because she wanted to make a grand entrance and get the skinny on everything she’d been missing. Too bad about that huge wall of revulsion she ran into. Bit of a buzz kill, if you ask me.

Oh, and I just read that damn TV Guide interview. It didn’t disappoint. Nothing has changed and it probably never will. I did get one huge chuckle and that was from one commenter’s observation that Queen Jill sits on a throne of lies. I’d buy that mug or t-shirt. Any artists out there? Make it happen! Maybe Slurry’s Picasso daughter could whip up a prototype and make a fortune so they can move back to Laguna. It’s a bit much to slap on a stoner cuff but I have an idea for that too.
TEAM KILL on Jill’s face. Once again, my photoshop skills are worse than baby Brynns, so no visuals. Sowwy.

Is Jill related to any Flanagans? Did her parents force her to attend Pathological Liars Anonymous meetings with cousin Tommy when she was younger? She’s like a drug addict that has to hit rock bottom and until she does, she just gets worse and worse.

What an idiot, and I love how she pulls out the “I have a terrible memory” card when it’s convenient. She’s known Ramona for 15 years yet she doesn’t remember that she doesn’t like surprises?

The Alex lies are the worst and then there’s the fabrication about Bawby having a hotel room all set up because Jill never planned to have him stay there. If that were true then why did he tell her that he called and the plane was waiting? Wouldn’t they have just gone to the hotel room that he already paid for? She bitched about all the money he spent getting them there. I find it hard to swallow that he’d want to waste any more hard earned fabric moolah.

You know, you have to wonder. When do all the fibs and falsehoods and outright prevarications finally end up in one huge slab of slander? Certainly if you added it all up she’d be the Baron Munchausen of our times. Maybe she should form a book club with James Frey or get Stephen Glass to write her life story for Strange Horizons’ next issue. It would be right at home next to articles on vampires and requiems for tooth fairies.

Okay, I’ve rambled enough. Back to fantasy Island where Sonja remarks that they just threw out a friend. To you and Ramona maybe, not to Alex and Bethenny. Meanwhile Jill is still blaming Alex for everything in her chat with Bawby in the car. As if anyone who ever knew anything about her would believe it. Her honor and forthrightness are almost as striking as her pale skin.

It just goes to show you how out of touch with reality Jill is. Do you think she’d be this way if she had a real job and concerns about keeping food on the table like most human beings? Ah, who am I kidding. Of course she would. She’d be blaming the anti-semitic neighbors in the subdivision for her fall on the ice and the mailman for Ginger’s farts.

It’s the last night on the island and the first real evening of fun since dancing on the dock under the light of the pale Klingon moon. They are all ecstatic to be among friends instead of dodging increasingly insane non sequiturs from the Bensimoron.

Bethenny is finally seeing her bump. How exciting is that? She says that back home with Jason she would strip down to nothing but her tennis shoes and ask Jason if he could see anything, nope, nothing at all. She might as well have been invisible.

“Nope. But then again I was standing sideways.”

Sonja talks about how cool it is to see your first child in a sonogram and Ramona starts choking on a piece of shellfish that went down the wrong pipe.

Honey, metaphorically the pipe goes INTO the fish, not the other way around. Didn’t Mario tell you?

Sonja brings up her Heimlich maneuver, not surprising since she worked in restaurants, and the fact that she even had to perform one on her pet poodle. Aw geez, the thought of her doing that leads my twisted mind down all sorts of baaaaad avenues.

“I was already behind Fido, anyhoo. That way you can’t get pregnant, you know.”

I’m sorry, but her whole schtick is being a horny old cougar. I couldn’t help it.

I had to do the Heimlich once. I was babysitting a two your old and her five year old sister, we were giggling about something and the spaghetti-os went down the two year’s old windpipe. I immediately popped her on her diaphragm and the noodles flew across the room and hit the window on the other side of the table.

They couldn’t wait to tell their parents when they got home and they thought it was so cool that they kept asking for Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee and trying to choke so I would perform my little trick. I threatened to puree all their food until they finally stopped. That, and confiscating all their Colorforms. Remember those? Those kids had millions. They were stuck to practically everything.

Sex talk comes up and Sonja tells the group that she’s dated all kinds, races and nationalities. She’s practically a one woman United Nations Encyclopedia Poontangica.

Bethenny asks her that age old question about the correlation of penis size and race and Sonja answers that it doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t hurt. I’m with you, sister. I like a little extra but I don’t want to be reamed by Harry Reems, if you know what i mean, even if we do share the same birthdate.

I’m not a size queen or anything (oh shit, I just told a little white Jill) I’m just not a complete believer in the whole “it’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean,” cliche that Alex spouts. If your hotdog is less Johnsonville Brat and more Vienna Sausage, there’s gonna be issues, to say the least.

Then Sonja says that bald guys with big ears have the biggest wangs, but who wants to fuck Ross Perot? Patrick Stewart MAYBE, but overall I’d rather put my cootchie in a jar in my booze cupboard. After all, cases of Pinot Grigio is what it would take for me to give it up to some guy with Gollum ears. That’s where it would be handiest.

It’s time for Alex’s big surprise and it’s a sexual themed bridal shower! Not just for Ramona’s Renewed nuptuals but for Bethenny as well. Finally, a NICE surprise. Well, unless Simon jumps out of a cake in a red leather banana hammock or something.

First up- pearl handcuffs. Naughty! That’s different.

I prefer my pearls necklace-style but that’s just me.

Ramona tries hers on but they’d really be more appropriate on Sonja after her little run-in in the Hamptons recently. I know, I know. That wasn’t nice, but neither is drunk driving. Sorry, it’s a sore subject with me right now. The only other joke I had involved the fact that it combines two things that she loves- getting spooged on and being behind bars, but that’s how she probably got into this mess in the first place.

Out come Swarovski crystal bedpost ties that are simply lovely. Ramona is acting all prudish again and so what if she’s a little vanilla in the bedroom? Not everybody wants to hang from the ceiling in a leather harness. Only a select few get off from having chihuahuas suck their toes while their mensch ties them to the bed with swaths of Zarin Fabric as they orgasm under piles of free swag and 5 star reviews from Amazon.com.
Let’s be real here.

The party winds down with the girls T-Ping gowns onto Ramona and Bethenny. It’s too bad that Leather missed this part. it would have made her feel right at home, all together Gasmii, cuz it’s like being IN THE FOURTH GRADE.

She coulda left some penis shaped lollipops behind too, ya know. THOSE these women would probably like.

Back in Manhattan, it’s time for another meal of gossip catch-up. How is this one going to get paid for? Is LuLu planning on conjuring up some kind of unforgivable slight, like when the waiter mistakes her for a man again? By the way, everybody drink!

BOOTS!

This particular meal of mingy mendacity starts out with Jill telling LuLu that her holiday party invites are ready and it’s too bad that the single isn’t out yet so she can give them away in the gift bags. LuLu’s reply? “We can’t just GIVE them away, My Love.”

“These are CDs, My Sweet, not my virtue!”

Jen arrives and I sure hope that she’s prepared to be ignored. Did she realize when she signed on to appear on this show, that the mean girls would treat her as Alex 2.0? Oh well, at least she has a fabulously voluminous pewter silk blouse on, unlike LuLu and her endless boring sheaths and clunky necklaces.

This is how clueless Jill is- she says to LuLu, “You’ve met before, right?” completely forgetting Jen’s cocktail party the month before. Understandable, since she spent the entire time looking at soup cans and rice-a-roni in Ms. Gilbert’s pantry.

They rehash what they’ve heard about the trip they all missed in the crackerjack caribbean and then Jill tries to fish for sympathy for being thrown out on her ass. I about fell over when she said that she tried to show some empathy.

Does she even know what that means? Maybe she got the word confused with ‘enmity.’ That’s the only explaination that I could come up with.

LuLu is a bit aghast that they would have thrown her out but she says that she understands why they did it, and Jill admits that she could have handled it better. The subject of Kelly’s breakdown comes up and Jen can’t get a word in edgewise. I think I heard her say that she got texts from Kelly too. How odd. Kelly barely knows the woman, right?

Good old Leather picks this moment to arrive and she tells everyone that she’s doing great. She’s back in the arms of her candy, or her mads or her meth or whatever, and she’s back to smomping around Manhattan without bags under her eyes and skinny chefs threatening her tenuous hold on reality.

I sit and listen to her describe all the horrible things that the women supposedly put her through, and it quickly dawns on me that everything she is describing, is exactly what SHE did to THEM! The gossip, the meanness, the attacks.

“I couldn’t even smomp, you guys. It was creepy, just creepy. So, anybody got any meth?”

Jill wants specifics. I bet she does. She’s got her hands under the table, notepad and pencil sharpened and at the ready. There aren’t any, of course because she’s lying. Her little brain is conjuring up a whopper but it isn’t quite ready yet. Instead she goes on about how much she hates gossip and LuLu flat-out says that that is why she has no girl friends.

Nice insult, etique-twit.

I’m leaning towards the autism explaination with Kelly. She only seems truly comfortable around animals and children. She’s got a freaking life size horse in her living room and talks in imagery better suited to a nine year old’s diary or dream book.

I would not be surprised if her fave hang out is FAO Schwartz and her most prized possessions are her horses on Long Island and a unicorn Beanie Baby she kept because she couldn’t bear to part with it and give it to Sea for her birthday.

The whole ‘ho-bag’ conversation comes up next and LuLu says that they probably just thought that she might be looking to get laid, not a long term relationship. Honey, nobody asked about YOU yet. Zip it, and we’re back to that tired ass bullshit about whether Bethenny is an actual chef.

Everyone at the table knows someone that has hired Bethenny. Everyone, including Jen, the event planner. I don’t know what more she could ask for. I think she finally realizes that none of them is falling for her lies and she pulls out a whopper, saying that Bethenny admitted that she went out of her way to generate a smear campaign against her.

What? Is she referring to the apology Miss B gave her at the end of the meltdown dinner? GOd, she’s nuts. LuLu looks confused, Jill looks hella disappointed that her spy on the trip is off her rocker and Jen has the facial expression of a person that wishes she had arranged one of those emergency getaway phone calls that you have your friend do for you when you need an excuse to ditch a blind date.

Fuck! Why did I turn off my phone?

Clearly, CLEARLY this girl is not all there. She rambles on about needing her candy and having to police all the ho-bags when Jill interrupts to say, “or they’ll eat your jellybeans?” and laughs at her with LuLu. Wow. So, Bethenny’s a bad person for calling her Madonna under her breath but it’s okay for Jill to make fun of her unhinged mind right to her face. Okay. Glad we cleared that up.

They fixate on the fact that it is not okay to call anyone a ho-bag (so freaking what!) and then Jennifer reminds them that there are three sides to every story- yours, mine, and the truth. Yay! Another trip to the cliche factory! At least she’s right about it, and at least we all can drink again.

BOOTS!

It’s time to have fun again at Sonja’s house. She’s throwing another one of those parties she loves to host and who can blame her? I would to, if I were her. She doesn’t have to troll any bars or get gravel stuck in her skinned knees in any parking lots in Southhampton like LuLu does. The men come to her!

She’s wearing a cute red halter dress and the party she’s hosting is for a young artist named Brian Farrel. Oh wait, a young hot emerging artist named Brian Farrel.

Not to be confused with all the hot merging they’ll be doing later.

Simon and Alex arrive, and for a second I mistook them for Goopy Gwyneth Paltrow and her fashion challenged husband Chris Martin. Simon seems to have stolen one of his old Coldplay marching band stage costumes and Alex is wearing an inexplicably shapeless gold lame dress.

I pinch my arm and give myself a nice little reprimand since of course it isn’t them! Gwyneth is Kelly’s friend, silly! They have a long shared history of gummy berries and rainbows and severed heads in boxes, not to mention dressing in man drag.

The party is in full swing with everyone seemingly wearing either red, gold or black. Guess who didn’t come? Jill and Leather! Yay!

Everybody kisses everybody and then LuLu asks them about their trip. Bethenny tells her that she missed a beautiful trip with psychotic drama which she calls “Terror on the High Seas.” The way she puts it makes it sound like Jack Sparrow was there and Kelly was a one-woman cursed undead crew.

LuLu listens and then gives them Kelly’s version of events with everyone nodding and smiling, not seeming to care whether they set her right or not. She’s just going to run and blab to Jill, after all.

It’s all good, because Sonja spots a cute waiter and, oopsy! her dress comes undone. LuLu says that it’s a little early for that and Sonja replies that her dress is so well trained that it knows to come off at this time when she’s usually upstairs in her boudoir entertaining football teams and small European countries.

You gotta hand it to her. She brings a much needed touch of frivolity and raunch to this tired and argumentative show. Casting her was the smartest thing that Miss Andy has done in a long time. It almost makes up for that Gawd awful mallard Mouth over on the O.C. version.

LuLu goes back to asking if it’s true that Leather had a nervous breakdown from all their animosity towards her, Alex starts explaining that it was the other way around and Kelly was the one doing the provoking, and then Ramona arrives so they take their conversation upstairs.

They sit at Sonja’s dining room table and explain to LuLu that Kelly lives in Opposite Land and take whatever she says, flip it, and there you will find something more closely resembling the truth. It wasn’t four against one, no one attacked Kelly, she would insult people and then accuse THEM of attacking HER.

They all believed that she might need to check herself into a facilty of some kind and LuLu is convinced. She should be. She saw it with her own eyes at lunch.

Sonja interrupts to remind them that there are other people there and this is a party they need to rejoin pronto. There’s art to bid on and an opera singer to swoon over. Time to get back downstairs and stop acting like they always do, running off to gossip in corners and dishing the dirt over dinner table to the exclusion of real life happening right around the corner.

Figaro, Figaro, Finger a ho!

Sowwy!

Sorry again for being obnoxious, but did you see Sonja’s face while she and Alex stood and listened to the tenor sing? You could tell that she wanted to climb right up onto that piano and feel the man’s vibrato for herself, if you know what I mean.

Oopsy! I think somebody’s dress is coming loose again…..

Our vignette this week is all about paying the bills, My Loves. You don’t think that LuLu gets to stay in the penthouse of the Thompson Hotel just by jacking off bellhops, now do you? She has to plug the joint on TV, My Darlings!

She shows the place off to Victoria and Noel, who can’t stop playing with the remote that moves the blinds around. I wonder if he ever got to take a gander at Bawby’s Playboys in Queens or if he’s carrying on the fine tradition of sneaking out at night in the Hamptons like his sister.

Who knows? Kids these days. I’m sure he’ll grow up to be a lovely young man, almost as lovely as it was to see LuLu hit her head on the lamp by the couch. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time she’s hit her head on something when she’s stood up too fast.

It’s just usually the bottom of the cocktail glass her blow-ees forgot to set down, or the door frame of her French boyfriend’s sporty Renault after a frisky al fresco game of cherche le femme.

I miss Jill. I really, really do. Let’s hop on over to her holiday skating party at Wollman rink, shall we?

Wait, what? It’s not at Wollman Rink, you say? How can that be? Donald Trump is a part of Jill’s fabulous circle of imaginary friends, she said so! I heard her!

I’m just joshing her. The party is at Bryant Park and it’s perfectly lovely with the beautiful blue of the wintry night sky and golden flickering twinkle lights in every corner. Jennifer is doing the best that she can with the crap that Jill has provided for the goodie bags. All I saw were those chintzy decorated wine corks nobody uses and marshmallow cocoa packets that you put in a cupboard and forget about until five months later when they have the consistency of a rock.

We finally get to hear from Jennifer Gilbert and how she loves to throw a party. She also loves one hit wonders from the 80s since she appears to have named her son Sexton after one. Kelly arrives with her girls and she ooohs and awwws over the little tyke.

Beat’s So Lonely, just ask Leather’s ex.

Jill misses Bethenny. This party just isn’t the same without her old pal and all the famous people her presence would have attracted. That old ‘step and repeat’ isn’t the same when all you got is LuLu’s goofy music producer and your nobody upholsterer friends, no matter how fabulous they are.

She takes Lisa aside to ask if she should call Miss B and ask her out to lunch to talk things over. I love how she says that she doesn’t want to rehash things and that she’s past all the stuff that caused their rift in the first place. How convenient.

Lisa points out that she should be prepared for rejection because Bethenny might not be in the same place yet. I don’t know about you, Gasmii but this whole conversation stuck in my craw a bit. There’s still something superior about the way they both approach the subject of Bethenny, as if to say that Jill’s so mature and adult, she’s beyond those petty little disagreement and she’s just waiting for Bethenny to catch up.

Lisa does tell her that she should have apologised and then asks her what she wants to do. Jill wants to pretend like nothing ever happened.

Maybe she IS hanging out with Leather too much.

Do people actually think that you can go through life like that, causing terrible anguish for others and then asking the victims of their shitty behaviour to forget it ever took place? What do you call that? What does that remind you of? She should be a freaking politician.

Jill calls Bethenny and she agrees to see her. Now Jill feels all better and can go on with the show and give us the moment we’ve all been waiting for, the moment of divine retribution that we’ve earned through loyally tuning into a show starring an evil narcissist and her trampy hypocrite sidekick.

Jill changes into a lovely pink skating costume, and yes, Jill. You are the only idiot dressed like Tonya Harding crossed with an Russian Wolfhound.

Somebody call Putin. One of his Borzois got loose again.

She’s already starting with the excuses and she’s not even on the ice yet. It’s too cold. Yeah, ice has a tendency to be like that. Here’s hoping that it’s also extra, extra hard.

Her skates are too tight. Oh no, her feet have grown and nobody anywhere on the planet had any pairs in her size to replace them. Bawby sent a private plane with a search and rescue team and everything!

But she soldiers on, Gasmii, she soldiers on. She’s a real trouper and she hands off her coat to her assistant, I hold my hands together squeezing ever so slightly in anticipation of the triple lutz or flying V that’s sure to follow and….

The heavens open up, a chorus of angels fills my living room and their voices are as exquisite as every priceless painting in the Met is beautiful. A divine feeling starts at the bottom of my feet and doesn’t stop it’s rapid ascent until every flaxen hair on my tingling scalp is rising in time with the mirth tickling the back of my throat. I give you, MY Loves, the Zarin Face Plant:

If only that cone was really up her ass.

Sigh.

My mother told me there’d be days like this, happy, happy days. The birth of a child, your first taste of love, sapphires at below wholesale prices, but this was just resplendent. Nothing can spoil it, not even another of Jill’s excuses.

She said that she fell because she was trying to do something difficult. She was going forward! All of the special needs kids at the Heights Rec Center can do that! Who does she think she’s fooling?

She does a couple of spins and all her minions start clapping. I’m not sure if it’s because they feel sorry for her or if they just enjoyed it as much as I did, and honestly, what does it matter? They could end the whole season right here and now and I would be perfectly happy and feel like everything that needed to be resolved, was.

We just have a little bit of unfinished business when Ramona arrives. She hugs Leather and wants to share some photos from the trip with her but Leather is too hell bent on rewriting the past and getting it on camera.

We saw what happened, Kelly. Nobody nailed you against a wall for no reason. Take what Ramona said about acting odd because you’re allergic to alcohol and run with it. It’s the only out you are likely to get.

“Kelly. Do you even understand that now YOU are the crazy one on the show?”

Once again, Ramona lets her speak, says she’s sorry that she felt hurt, thanks her for being there, hugs her and moves on. Who knew Ramona was so sensible and selflessly compassionate? Everything is backwards this year. Did Superman reverse the orbit of the Earth again and not tell anybody? I’m confused.

Jill’s speech is all about thanking Jen and being so grateful for this small gathering of her closest friends. Yeah, right! You know damn well that she wishes there were ten times as many people there! Fabulous famous friends of hers like Jon Gosselin and Dina Lohan.

She then approaches ramona and says that she would like to speak with her, weapons down. Who says that? I have never in my entire life EVER said that to a friend, and I don’t exactly lead a sheltered existence. I’m not Leather. I have shitloads of girlfriends, most of them are gay men, but you get my drift.

Ramona did another nice thing and sent Jill a card that said that she’d love her and be friends with her forever, no matter what. Do you think they made a pact before they signed up for this show that they’d remain friends come hell or high water? I bet they did.

Jill shuts her big fat mouth for a change and lets Ramona explain to her why she wasn’t welcome in St. John. She didn’t try to diffuse the situation with humor, she ignored the obvious and refused to recognize what any of the women might be feeling at that time.

Jill says that she was scared, Ramona apologizes AGAIN and they hug. Their truly is a strange relationship. They’re all freaking nuts. It is the holiday season, though and why not let things slide a bit, at least until after the new year? We’ll see if it lasts.

“Oh, Ramona. You look so lovely with that knife in your back. Really”

Okay, Gasmii! Next time join me for the big finale of renewal and refusal! I love it. A divorce and a wedding, all in one show! I feel like Hugh Grant, just without the penis and the hooker. We’ll leave all that tripe in the past, just like out NYC gals.

Love and Kisses,
Twunty McSlore