Well hello hi yes hi hello there yes hi hello welcome back! It’s been a minute, hasn’t it! I have been so busy during this little Housewives hiatus, I can’t even tell you!
The biggest thing I accomplished is that I have become literally agoraphobic about getting a haircut (many epidemiologists say it is more dangerous than air travel never touch me again goodbye!), which led me to start reading a book about ~*astrology*~ because if my hair is going to be down to my waist, I might as well just lean in and go full Weird Gay Witch™ who practices a ~*spiritual discipline*~ while wearing flowy linen tunics with no underpants🎉🎉🎉 So that is what I am doing! Thus far I have learned that as a Sagittarius my ~*purpose*~ is to ~*uplift*~ and ~*inspire*~ which LOL, I hope writing dumb shit about Housewives counts because otherwise my main skillset lies in rage and hatred so!
But it hasn’t been all horoscopes and freeballing over here. I have also been reading Ibram X Kendi’s Stamped From the Beginning, which is about the history of European and American white supremacy as well as racism itself, and I cannot reco it enough. (It’s free on Spotify if you are of the audiobook persuashe!) Did you know the country name Ethiopia comes from the ancient Greek term Aethiope, which means “burnt face”? Now That’s What I Call Racism Vol. 1! Another fun fact: Africans invented inoculation by poking thorns into smallpox and then poking the thorn into each other and then that Jenner guy just stole their entire shit and took all the credit. LOL whites are a scourge hurl us all into the sea!
But the biggest news I have to share is that I have started watching episodes of “Supermarket Sweep” from 1991 on Netflix and have been uncontrollably fartlaughing for 36 hrs over this idiot woman with a mullet who called Newman’s Own Spaghetti Sauce “Paul Newman’s Rigatooney Sauce,” which is a thing that doesn’t even exist within another thing that doesn’t even exist! Wow!!!
Look how proud of herself she is have you ever seen anything funnier in your life?! Just SWELLED with pride as she says the stupidest fucking thing to ever come out of a human mouth, which, as a reminder, was “Paul Newman’s Rigatooney Sauce”! I will never recover from this. Photo via my friend Melissa’s (hey girl!) Instagram story whompst also had an aneurysm over this mere hours after I did, because our spirits are linked on another astral plane. (I told you I was a weird gay freeballing witch now.) And that’s on what? RIGATOONEY!
But you are not here to listen to anecdotes about erroneous pasta names, you are here to talk about The Real Housewives of New York! I will admit I’m kind of stalling a bit because our first episode back was kind of dumb and boring! But, you know, I must ~*uplift*~ and ~*inspire*~ per the mystical guidance of the cosmos so let’s get to work.
First of all, now that Tinsley has moved to the Michigan Avenue Cheesecake Factory as discussed last time (you can find all past recaps here), I guess we’re just treating this as a new show because these women all have new taglines? They’re all dumb and terrible and don’t bear discussing except, once again, Luann’s, whose is a direct rip-off of Real Housewives of Atlanta’s Kandi Burruss’s seminal urban pop hit “Fly Above.” Granted, “I rise above the drama” is technically distinct from Kandi’s “I fly above all the drama,” but Luann knows what she’s doing, don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining RUN KANDI HER CHECK YOU SNAKE.
Another new thing is that we’ve officially come to the point where coronavirus has begun to impact legacy television, a truly macabre pandemic metric if there ever was one! Ladies and, like, two men as far as I know whompst read these recaps: We’re doing at-home testimonials!
This shit looks like a high school YouTuber doing a Demi Lovato reaction video and it has made me so sad. When will Trump finally DO SOMETHING about this pandemic?! I cannot live like this but more importantly I WON’T live like this. I know we’re a banana republic now and all but C’MAHN! I’m gonna use this joke again so buckle in MY GRANDFATHER DID NOT FIGHT HIROHITO’S ARMY FOR ME TO WATCH LEAH DO INTERVIEWS LIT BY THE FLASHLIGHT ON HER CELLPHONE. I just… what have we become?
But the testimonials (like most things) get even worse when Luann does them.
Listen as a rapidly decaying fleshheap whose face is plummeting toward my bitch-tits faster than Cop Rock fell in the 1990 Nielsens (that is a very obscure deep-cut joke about one of the biggest television flops of all time that maybe 2 people will get thank you for supporting my ~*art*~!!!) I understand the allure of a high camera angle—I basically have my head flipped over onto my shoulder blades like a Pez dispenser in all my Insta stories, I get it—but I mean, WTF, Lu. Why not just tie a string around the damn thing and hoist it from your fucking chandelier at this point! Commit to the bit and stop wasting my time!
But what’s REALLY shocking about Lu’s testimonials is that the audio is terrible and she is SCREAMING and it’s so tinny and echo-y I hurled my headphones off my head and yelled at my computer. You could get better sound on the mic on the iPhone earbuds cord! I mean Jesus Christ do I need to take the film school degree I DON’T HAVE because I DROPPED OUT and DO EVERYTHING???
Anyway, I could easily write an entire recap of these terrible testimonials but I won’t. Let’s get to the plot: It is Hallowe’en, and Luann, Leah and Dorinda are at a costume shop shitting on Ramona.
The ladies, you see, have had quite enough of Ramona’s social climbing and phoniness, and it’s starting to come to a head. Lu even calls Ramona a narcissist which, you know, game recognize game!
Dorinda goes on to say that you must read between the lines of everything Ramona says cuz she stay lying, but, of course, she does it in her Dorinda way that doesn't make any sense: “You've got to watch what she's saying and listen with a different ear.” Oh okay, of course, sure, I guess we have to lip-read Ramona while listening with, IDK, the ears in our hearts or something? I mean as a newly minted ~*spiritual seeker*~ I know exactly what she means but it’s probably confusing to all of you who haven’t yet begun unlocking the mysteries of the universe so I would just say like ~*look inward*~ for the meaning? Namaste.
Anyway I’m sorry but we need to talk about these at-home testimonials again look at this shit.
First of all why is there a shower curtain just hanging in the background is this a Bed Bath & Beyond I reject this but B of all Bravo really should’ve told these women to just deliver straight to camera because all these eyelines are awks AF. You can tell they’ve been told to pretend they’re talking to a producer like usual but, like, you can tell they’re just looking at a wall and doing the best they can and look, these women are ~*artists*~ and I won’t hear a word against them (LOL yes I will) but can we send them down to the Stella Adler for an on-camera master class or something because this ain’t it! They don’t have ~*the range*~ Honestly FIX THIS FUCKNG PANDEMIC I CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH.
Anyway we live in hell, which means Ramona’s going to a fucking matchmaker.
We love this matchmaker, though, because she is out-the-gate not here for Ramona’s shit. She’s like, “Do you want love or money,” and Ramona’s like, “I want a best friend,” and Matchmaker is like okay cool and Ramona’s like, “to summer in Europe with me and take me to Aspen,” and Matchmaker is like DID I FUCKING STUTTER.
Then Ramona launches into this diatribe about how contra to how we met her in Episode 1, CATERWAULING in public in re being lonely, she’s actually really happy being single now and OKAY GREAT THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE RUINING THIS PERFECTLY NICE MATCHMAKER’S DAY. This woman.
Anyway I bet you’re wondering what Ramona’s testimonials look like well guess what they’re terrible and she looks completely and utterly insane.
The wild-eyed Ramona stare! The angle! The head tilt! It looks like her jaw is about to unhinge like Geena Davis did in that one part of Beetlejuice when she and Alec Baldwin were trying to make themselves look scary. NO RAMONA ONLY ZUUL. I am UNNERVED. Points for good lighting and the lack of a fucking shower curtain in the background though I’ll tell you what!
Now we're on to Sonja for whompst the shady editors give us this glorious intro.
And she’s having dinner with Elyse (UGH, Elyse). Oh! But! Elyse has finally come to work, it seems! She has ALSO had it with Ramona and is ALSO shitting on her for being a social climber and only caring about Elyse, her friend of over 20 years, when she needs something. And then she just DRAGS her.
Well! Looks like someone took the notes and said, “How can I grow from this? How can I not only do but be better?”! DRAG HER ELYSE!!!
In any case, this show is really working overtime to build this Phony Ramony narrative (I just made that up as I was typing can you believe IDK how I do this shit I think it comes from getting in touch with the ~*wisdom of the cosmos*~) and I’m really hoping it turns out like what happened on Beverly Hills where everyone FINALLY decided they don’t fuck with Lisa Vanderpump anymore and then Rinna and Kyle and Dorit just DESTROYED HER ENTIRE SHIT ON NATIONAL TELEVISION and she quit the show. Although Ramona has a good heart underneath it all so maybe she doesn’t deserve all that. I am a very ~*spiritual person*~ now so I need to give more thought to the kinds of things I am ~*manifesting*~ for ~*others*~ so.
Anyway I’ll do that later. Now we're on to Dorinda and her daughter Hannah and they're going to this disgusting greasy spoon for cheeseburgers and man oh man Dorinda is that bitch.
WE👏STAN👏A PROBLEMATIC👏SKRASKRILLIONAIRE👏WITH A TASTE👏FOR👏JIMBO’S👏HAMBURGER👏PLACE👏
God what a dream. Dorinda says Hannah once asked her what her desert island luxury item would be and she said Hellmann's mayonnaise, which she calls “MAY-a-NAYS” instead of “mannays” like we do in the Midwest and look Dorinda is my mom now, that’s it.
SHE’S MY SOULMATE! And a note to any of you screwing up your face because you think mayonnaise is gross BLOCK YOURSELF. I am so fucking sick of ppl saying they hate mayonnaise when did this shit start?! The Venn diagram of ppl who quote-unquote “hate mayonnaise” and the people who quote-unquote “hate the word moist” is a single, overlapping circle and the common bond you all share is that every goddamn one of you arrived at these proclivities by the same route which is thirst for internet clout. NOBODY HAD A PROBLEM WITH “MOIST” OR MAYONNAISE FOR THE ENTIRETY OF HUMAN EXISTENCE UNTIL SOCIAL MEDIA CAME ALONG AND OFFERED YOU PPL A MEANS OF GETTING ATTENTION FOR HATING MAYONNAISE AND THE WORD MOIST AND I DON'T BELIEVE ***ANY OF YOU*** STFU AND GO EAT AN ENTIRE JAR OF MUSTARD YOU IDIOT PRICKFUCK DOLTS.
I am so tired of being alive.
Anyway Dorinda says she “cannot eat something without sauces” and MY QUEEN.
As my dearly departed best friend used to say, “I would bathe in ranch if it were socially acceptable,” and he was never more unwrong in his entire life. I love a ranch, I love a barbecue, I love an aioli. I make a Thai peanut sauce out of natural peanut butter and this ginger sesame salad dressing that batshit company Bragg who makes apple cider vinegar and puts Bible verses on the label makes (syntax!) and it's good on literally ANYTHING including fucking potato chips. Don’t question me!
OMG you know what's a fucking baller burger sauce? This fuckshit I made the other day that was mayonnaise, dijon mustard, Frank’s Redhot, Valentina hot sauce and Worcestershire (this is another thing I’m mad about, this word isn’t hard to say if you just fucking LISTEN, it’s WISTERSHUR and it’s NOT HARD but y’all gotta get your fucking CLOUT don’t you you all make me sick). I just threw all that shit together like a child playing in the kitchen and stirred it with a fork and was like IDK man I bet this shit sucks ass but here goes and as soon as I tasted it I immediately pumped my underwear full of a gallon of piping hot semen (*Samantha Jones voice* SPEAKing of SAUces) because it was so good.
Anyway sauces make being alive worthwhile is the point. And then just when I didn't think I could love Dorinda more she went off on Russian dressing!
How was that for a segue back to the topic at hand! Don’t get comfortable because I am still going to talk more about sauces!
Bitch RUSSIAN DRESSING!!! I used to work at a place what had Russian dressing and I ate so much of that shit it oozed from my pores like zit pus. Sauces! I mean! Honestly I might fuck around and pivot this newsletter to being about sauces and I'm not even kidding, delete your recurring Patreon donations now you’ve been warned.
Anyway after Hannah and Dorinda’s lunch we cut to Chinatown with Leah and Rob and their daughter talking about Leah’s difficult relationship with her mom again and honestly who cares LOOK AT HOT ASS ROB UGH.
YES YOU CAN HAVE A BEER DADDY AND THEN YOU CAN SLIT MY THROAT WITH THE BOTTLE FUCK. This dude has so much swag and Big Dick Energy I can’t stand it. I want him to do this to every bone in my skeleton.
Anyway, Luann is throwing a very extravagant voodoo-themed Hallowe’en party and I have notes.
There is a such thing as committing too deeply to a theme! Actual severed animal heads as centerpieces is some fucked up Satanic bullshit and I need to go speak in tongues real quick. This reminds me of the Nine Inch Nails “Closer” video which scared the hell out of me as a kid because it had so much Big Satan Energy and I thought it would make me possessed by demons anyway I had a very normal childhood goodbye!!!
Next we go to Dorinda, Sonja and Elyse (UGH, Elyse) in the car in on their way to the party and, surprise, it’s 7:30pm and Sonja is already a slurring shitstorm. They start shit-talking Ramona again, but this time it’s Sonja who’s pissed and she starts going off, but in that drunk Sonja way that makes very little sense.
And we get another classic driver who is contemplating driving into a bridge abutment if it will make these women stop screaming in his ear moment.
A Hallowe’en blessing! They get to the party and this is apropos of nothing but it’s too wonderful not to share, Sonja’s drunk ass bellows about seafood for no reason.
AND THEN!!!!!! We go over to Luann’s hotel suite where she’s prepping for the party and RHONY devotees, bless up: JILL ZARIN SHOWS UP AND I SCREAMED INTO THE NIGHT!
Back at the party, Sonja is on the war path and tries to start shit with Ramona with a voodoo doll…
…but falls on her nonsensical face because she’s too drunk. So Elyse (UGH, Elyse) tags in. She goes in on Ramona again, this time to her face, for being a phony, and says that Ramona has two kinds of friends—her real friends, and her social climber friends—and demands to know which type of friend Ramona considers her to be. And Ramona, of course, won’t answer.
Until, in the best icy, shady Housewives fashion possible, she does.
And then Ramona just leaves! But Elyse gets the last word: she says that Ramona has always been an asshole, but she’s always been “my asshole.” And then:
And listen, in the grand scheme of things, this is junior varsity-level shade, but the IMPROVEMENT! The GROWTH! Finally, after eleven episodes of being a boring ghoul who appears out of nowhere in some JCPenney juniors-section bullshit once per episode to do absolutely nothing, Elyse is now shit-stirring on this program! Someone did the homework over hiatus! She’s giving us PLOT, henny! She’s giving us STAKES, m’maaa!
Anyway, Leah and Rob show up and ROB UPDATE: He is MINISCULE. Look at this!
He is wee! Now tell me true, when’s the last time you met a tiny wee man with so much swag? I’m telling you the dick is 18 feet long if it’s an inch goddammit Rob kick a steel-toed boot clean through my face until my brains shoot out the back of my head then ram a fucking anvil up my ass and hurl me into the Hudson never to be heard from again I swear to almighty God.
But lemme tittyfuck this douche’s pecs first, whoever he is.
Sauces and my sexual proclivities, that's the new focus here on the ol’ Substack, you did this to yourselves.
Anyway, things are getting heated at this party. Now it’s Dorinda who’s trying to roast Ramona. First she drags her for trying to sleep with this 25-year-old dude William who shows up now and then and is visibly uninterested in her.
Look how mad she is!!!
Then Luann tries to give a toast—you know, since it’s her party and all—but Dorinda hijacks that shit and starts talking about how Ramona is a classless, phony drunk.
Which, you know, is rich coming from Dorinda but she’s sober tonight so we’re giving her a pass! But honestly who does this? At the same time, though, this is the kind of petty to which I aspire. Whompst among us hasn’t fantasized about doing this kind of shit at a party to some asshole who deserves it. The stuff of dreams! But most of us are just not quiiiiiiiite sufficiently out of fucks to actually do it. Dorinda is though! An iconoclast!
Anyway, Dorinda keeps going, now pivoting to how mean Ramona is to Sonja.
And Sonja moves on to our favorite Sonja trick: drunk-fighting while shoveling food in her face.
And then Jill Zarin’s all, just like old times!
Ramona is FURIOUS about all of this and goes into it all—Sonja, Dorinda and Elyse— in her testimonial, and then the most wonderful thing happens: Ramona’s daughter Avery interrupts her and just fucking DRAGS HER for loving the drama while pretending to be hurt.
I GASPED. They grow up so fast!!!
Anyway, back at the party, Sonja is unfazed by all this drama.
And just for fun here is another classic image of Sonja drunk-eating, just moments away from blacking out atop her plate.
An artist.
So that’s basically it, except for Leah playing us out with the moment we’ve all been waiting for (we meaning me): confirming our (my) suspicions about Rob.
I told you!!!
Here’s to you, Rob!!! (Sonja is me.)
So that’s it! That’s the episode. They didn’t even do anything with Jill Zarin! The incompetence! This is a piss-poor return from hiatus and I’m lodging a complaint.
However! Perhaps it’s for the best because it allowed us to rest up for tonight’s episode which is *trumpet fanfare* BERSERKSHIRES 2020!!!
For the uninitiated, “Berserkshires” is the annual RHONY trip to Dorinda’s mansion in the Berkshires where they all get drunk and fight like rabid dogs for four consecutive days while breaking everything in Dorinda’s house. It is the highlight of the season! It is the ne plus ultra of RHONY shenanigans! It is the origin of Dorinda’s most famous catchphrase!
So there you have it. Welcome back, I missed you! Please like and subscribe and share and Patreon and all of the things and stay hydrated and keep fighting white supremacy in the world and in yourself and keep keeping hope alive that dumbdumb Biden will win in November and maybe we can get back to some semblance of normalcy and then continue burning everything down and build something better! Also please wear your goddamn mask please! Ok get out of here leave me alone bye!
That’s supposed to read-god!!!!!! I love you! 😘
Gooood!!!!! I love you!!!