The Real Housewives of Anywhere

My Bravo TV fast has not begun and probably never will, as long as Kyle and Kim and Teresa and Caroline are on TV.   I can not get enough of these catty gals and I'm not sure what the draw is for me. But I believe it's for these following reasons.
The Fighting. I read somewhere that these shows do for women, what wrestling does for men.  I can see the correlation, just take the Gorga Baptism episode. Teresa and her brother put on a good, good show. We  all know when Teresa walked over to congratulate Joe, that all hell was about to break loose. If I were a man, would I yell at the TV and chant "Teresa, Teresa"? - probably.
 The Clothes:  The Beverly Hills group favor Louboutins and they will wear them with everything from a cocktail dress to a bikini. These shoes provide for real edge-of your-seat entertainment, especially when Adrienne walks down a flight of stairs. She looks like she will topple over at any moment. Kyle and Taylor sport a lot of resort looks, like white jeans, billowy tops and over sized floppy hats, emoting the feel of the perpetual vacation. And while I openly disdain the tacky RH of NJ,  I secretly believe it would be fun to always wear sparkles from head to toe. Sparkles, especially on my work out gear, would inspire me to exercise in the morning and cook pasta at night.
The Gossip: I envy the oodles and oodles  of time these gals have to gab just like I did in high school.   I need to ask  Kyle how she finds the time to raise four kids, including a two year old. How does she grocery shop, potty train, help with homework, clean up toys, and go over to Lisa's house to discuss Brandi's son peeing on the lawn, all within 24 hours?
The Houses (and what's in them).  While I'm impressed by Adrienne's indoor spa, I'm way more impressed by her framed wedding dress. Questions that keep me up way past the show are:  How does Teresa still live in that big house when she is so broke? How does Melissa  live in such a big house when she is so young? Does Villa Blanca really pay the mortgage for Lisa's mini mansion?  And doesn't it suck that Camille has to sell her Beaver Creek pad?

There was a brief moment when I considered ditching the RH series. This is when Kyle revealed that there is a make up team behind the camera. She  started to say "I was getting my makeup done," and then corrected herself and said, "I was doing my makeup." I gasped, horrified to discover that she didn't do her own makeup before Camille's dinner party. But  I chose to move on and watch the rest of the episode. I need my fix. 

What's emerging this season, as with every show, is how horrible everyone is. The housewives behavior gets more and more deranged until they can't get anymore disgusting and implode into a ball of smoke. Or rather, until Andy Cohen fires them.

What's also emerging is that my brain cells are disappearing or evaporating. If I continue down this path I will not be able to hold a conversation by spring.  I wait for Monday nights, remote in one hand, raw cashews in an other. As  a side note,  I'm trying to be a vegan and cashews seem like the right snack.Don't you think?

GOOP - Gwenny who are you?

I subscribe to GOOP, Gweneth Paltrow's lifestyle blog. She gives advice on everything from perfume to meditation. Gwenny, as I fondly call her, knows about a lot of things. I eat up her stories about personal training sessions and diligently take notes about house guest etiquette. Though sometimes, her blog posts about building a wood burning oven in her back yard, (the best thing she ever did as a cook) or dinners with close friend Mario Batali, make me feel like I'm missing out.  I thought an amazing day started with buying boots for 20% off at Macy's and ending with Max going to bed at exactly 8pm. But let's be honest here, amazing is that picture of Gwenny on a dock in Venice, the sun setting over her golden tresses. In the beginning days of GOOP, I  was a fan.  But these days  I find myself emailing her blog post to my cousin, a fan of GOOP too, with the subject line, "What planet do you live on Gweneth?" and I can answer that: Planet Perfect. At the end of every post Gweneth signs off  to us, the reader, "Love GP", like she is a personal friend. But her anecdotes about cheese  plates and famous designer friends, let me know that we are not good friends.  We have nothing in common, except  that our dads are Jewish. But while her dad taught her how to cook and flew her to Paris on a daddy and me vacation. My dad loved to re-heat fish fingers and boil hot dogs when Mom was a way, so our similarities end right there (although shout out to dad for the best home  made pizza ever, and from an indoor oven!) Sometimes, I suspect that Gwenny thinks that we, who follow her blog, have never been inside a museum before. Basically she is evolved and we are cavemen.

This month, Gwenny writes about collecting contemporary art. Last month she shared her "scrapbook" at the Emmy's, where she humbly starts off with how she's surprised that she won a Creative Arts Emmy. The rest of her blog is a photo montage of an hourly, play by play of her getting ready at the Montage Hotel....sigh (blogger  loves this stuff) The month before, she touted her favorite flower shop in London. Every now and then she'll throw her readers a "down-to earth" curve ball, like writing about her favorite restaurants in Chicago. Surprise, surprise, Gwenny wasn't in Spain that week.

Unlike most celebrities, she looks totally comfortable in her couture clothes and hanging with her famous friends in even more fabulous locations. It's hard to find anything remotely wrong with her, she's the kind of pretty that will age gracefully, she can act, sing,  and read from a teleprompter and actually make people laugh. She's skinny, and toned and she is a mom to an adorable family. Furthermore, her husband wrote the song that I played on repeat for the entire year of 2003. Gwenny calls a homemade roasted chicken, "fast food", and she even shops for organic produce on a whim (I saw the video)   At this point in my life I know that we all have our issues and problems and there's no such thing as  perfect.  But GOOP might be a window into a truly perfect world..maybe perfect does exist after all. Or maybe GP is an alien from another planet called Hollywood.