Author Archives: annie christian x

Apropos Of Nothing: I Like My Bon Mots Shaken, Not Stirred

It should all be about whose nuke button is bigger these days.
And whose hands are thankfully smaller.
Thus, I should be writing to you from the (highly probable) end of the world, like Pablo Neruda. Instead, I’ll write you long time about petty and juvenile things that got my striped tail ruffled. I’ll write to you about kerfuffles–one of my favorite toppings, so spare me the nuts with the sprinkles on top.

It’s been forever and a day and a half.
But it’s 10:00 p.m. and do you know where my bon mots are?
Without giving any of it away, let me just say that imitation is the greatest form of pilfering. As if as if, in the great scheme of new things?! Hmmm.

To one of my fave recappers–who shall remain Dameless–my words are meant to be shaken, not stirred.

If the other one of you two see any of these running amok anywhere else in the vast and shallowest end of the internets, please return them to yours truly:

1. As two of you may know
2. Apropos of nothing
3. Continue-to-continue
4. Sucks a hard boiled egg through a straw (TM/LOL)
5. Back in the day when we had more days (TM/LOL)
6. Easy breezing (Cover Girling)
7. HoWos (housewives)
8. Loathe/hate others more than ourselves for loving them (usually referring to Housewives–Real or imagined)
9. Instituents (Hapless addicts who choose to mainline deadly Bravo TV shows on the steps of a fictitious Institute dedicated to this type of sociopathic anthropological loitering–and loathe others more than themselves for loving it. Note: Yours truly not only fits that coveted red soled shoe, but is teetering on the edge of perdition in it, while chewing gum. Here’s looking at you, Mike Pence! Wish you were here with Chump and the ghost of Gerald Ford).
10. If as if
10.5 As if as if
11. Tenebrous (although I didn’t coin it, all Instituents know that I own it as Lisar only could wish and fucking dream of truly owning any goddamned thing in this bankrupt world made for people with teeny tiny hands and simple girls with butt-implant-dreams in this more cruel and punishing Joan Riverless world,sigh ).
12. Uncle Pa (a litmus test meant to identify those whose hands are teeniest, generationally speaking).
13. Yikes squared
14. Mainlining (can be substituted for “It’s raining men” or “Fetch is never going to happen”, in hapless situations. Other than that, it should be strictly used to describe an uncontrollable urge to watch depraved Bravo TV while distractedly fiddling or going to the fridge as Rome burns, so to speak).
15. Real Housewives Of All Perdition (the pettiest of Pettyfleurs that bring us all here and for whom we loathe others more than our Soggy Flicking selves for loving, mmk?!).
15.5. You can find my trademark slogans and original emoticon writing out there in the shallowest depths of the tundras or in the booniest backwater outbacks where only the tumbleweeds and the best of the HoWos blow.
15.75. Imitation is the greatest form of pilfering.

“And that is a fact. And that is that.”

I did learn from the best: Mr. Bowie, for whom I and all the Stars remain ever different each and every mournful day…
Here are my faves–still untoppable:

1. Leper Messiah (taught me Everything about Every Thing literally, literarily, figuratively, unilaterally, perpendicularly, elliptically, isosceles or merely imagined).
2. The shrieking of nothing was killing me (made me runaway to join a circus that still claims me–music–and never lets go. Fuck you Trump and your little hands, too! Have not written anything since this fascist Uncle Pa has taken our world hostage. So fuck you and the white supremacist horse of the apocalypse you ride on, you misogynist pig, you!).

3. Just pictures of Jap girls in synthesis

4. Paris or maybe hell (I’m waiting)….

5. I bless you madly, sadly as I tie my shoes

6. The entire lyrics to the song Aladdin Sane (as I just discovered yesterday to be the source of all literary aspirational pilfering and envy–or just merely wanting to ponder if any writer can challenge one’s humble self to graze such grace and effortless brilliance, where that bar is raised as high as the firmament. Pondering that, while I ask myself am I a two-bit writer worthy of pilfering? And why does it piss me off, instead of flatter me as I strive to graze this high? Without drugs, ’cause I was always persnicketily averse to them!? And where did it get me? Hahahaha.

I’d also like to thank the inimitable Mr. Salinger for teaching me the unrepentant joy of Italicizing half a word–a lowest-down honor reserved for the most pompously vapid, shallowest characters (the kind that may otherwise find reason to whine between syllables if not sternly made to sit in a corner without their cell phone, instead). And least but never last, I’d like to thank Mr. Richard Lawson for the most sublime yet triumphantly literary, inspiring, wistful and legendary Real Housewives Of All Perdition Recap endings of ye olde Gawker dayes of yore. And I’d like to thank the up and coming somebody who thankfully saw fit to follow that lead in print and not let them die with Gawker’s demise.

Aladdin Sane
By David Bowie:

Watching him dash away, swinging an old bouquet (dead roses)
Sake and strange divine Uh-h-h-uh-h-uh you’ll make it
Passionate bright young things, takes him away to war (don’t fake it)
Sadden glissando strings
Uh-h-h-uh-h-uh, you’ll make it

Who’ll love Aladdin Sane
Battle cries and champagne just in time for sunrise
Who’ll love Aladdin Sane

Motor sensational, Paris or maybe hell (I’m waiting)
Clutches of sad remains
Waits for Aladdin Sane you’ll make it

Who’ll love Aladdin Sane
Millions weep a fountain, just in case of sunrise
Who’ll love Aladdin Sane

We’ll love Aladdin Sane
Love Aladdin Sane

Who’ll love Aladdin Sane
Millions weep a fountain, just in case of sunrise
Who’ll love Aladdin Sane

We’ll love Aladdin Sane
We’ll love Aladdin Sane

Songwriters: David Bowie
Aladdin Sane lyrics © BMG Rights Management US, LLC, Tintoretto Music

The artist formerly known as Yours Truly takes her no longer ruffled, striped tail in her paw and bows deeply, madly, as she ties her imaginary red-soled shoes. I’ve been nowhere, she tells you. And you know. And it’s all merely words now. If as if themz was not fightin’ words, Uncle Pa.

All About Erika’s Jayne

Never made it past Erika’s speaking voice (and what’s there to take one’s ear past her singing voice that doesn’t scream for snorkels and shouldn’t be played on an endless loop underwater at the Swim With The Fishes suite in the Hotel Dubai?–Just wishing). I once wrote about an imminently IT Georgie Girl easy-breezing, cover-girling about London town and it was all about Sophie of Ladies of Luncheon, thus I said what should have been said about a truly IT girl–and Erika just ain’t dat. Besides, this dog and miniature pony show is clearly not the right one anymore, long having become a draconian bore way past its Topanga Canyon Standard time.

So, what else can be added about a denuded 40+++ Barbie Girl living in a dystopian TomHell-O-World calculatedly flashing her heart-shaped box for power plays on Toms, Dicks and Dorits for all the live long days and this season’s shizz and giggles? Yes, wildly creative, beautiful fellow Instituents, we’ve answered the question of where Ms. Jaynardi’s heart is located and more importantly, in that commandoed fell swoop, we find what most makes it tick.

It does delight my bad self that she does talk as if she’s being written in a Barbara Stanwick film noir–or ombre–an even cheaper celluloid stock. I’m queasily unsure if this is the place to tell you more about my disdain for Erika and Jayne and their collective jayne, after all, I too, worship at the HoWo Institute’s faux marble alter and have but great regard for our beloved President and Dame Moylan, but it should be shouted from the rooftops that all the love in the world would be trampled by this cheap tricked, weird side pony girl (I’m looking at you, Jaynardi, in your seriously silly from zero to 13 in less than 60 confessional get-up, so-fire-your-glam-squad-last-Tuesday, already!).

What more can be said in warning to Dame Moylan that his heart wouldn’t be trampled and served on a platter a la Eileen’s at Ms.Jaynardi’s next disco balled party where she decides to have a side dish to go with the soggy cake (that, incidentally, might well be the same cake Richard Harris stupidly left out in the rain back in 69? That’s how long these chicks have gone without cake at these Trumped up rodeos mistaken for barbeques at their Pasadena backyard Versailles (just saying–and wishing and hoping and praying and raining on this caked-on, coked-out chit chow).

And can they all be permanently relocated to Dubai–in the under water suite, coz’ how can anyone, except the producers, give more than zero fucks about episode seventeen in season seven, if there’s not a glimmer of a takedown in the back of a limo between two veritable Whatever Happened To Baby Jaynes fixing to feud about who Stole MyGoddamnedHouse–and my dignity, and my pill stash on the way to the next party–as it may have gone down endless times, just that same way in chariots of past, on the way to the forum?!

Yes, wildly creative, beautiful people could it be–should it be– said that it’s as bad as even coming close to thinking that the Romans ran out of lions and here we are now, stuck with these Puritanical spectacles that aim at drawing blood, yet only end up flashing at a saggy, wilted, all-custard-layers-replaced-by-edamame-and-tofu trifle that is P.K., peeking at the heart of the matter of this sad show, bringing us back to where both Erika’s and Jayne’s closed and scared heart truly lies.

As for Dorit–she’s no Sophie It Girl, ‘coz she’s just another Jayne, like Erika –selling her youth, her soul and her jayne short to the old, dog eared, pruney, yet almighty dollar (so take that and sleep with it on those long, long, nights at the proverbial end of the day. Can I hate that trademark HoWos saying any more than need be? I’m trying, OK?!). Neither of these Jaynes are wearing pink hats with ears–as all women of true power–and the men that are big enough to love them, ought to– in this truly scary new world order, now. Just saying–and wishing and sighing.

Our Ladies of Luncheon–I Mean London–and Their Little Snake, Too

Cheers for the Ladies of Luncheon–I mean London! What’s not to love? Besides that Prairie Homely Companion, Juliet. I’d have to say nyet, nyet, nyet to her as fashion maving, blogging, clogging and fogging about on the “East Side” of London. What a silly, sad sod without a screw, a vowel, a compass or a clue!

And what about our Julie Not-To-The-Manor-Born? Here’s what first came to mind, a season ago and still holds true to this day: That expat Julie Lady who pratfalls on air bubbles really does resemble Gena Rowlands in “A Woman Under the Influence” and let’s hope that it’s just a mere resemblance-coincidence and not more, ’cause have you SEEN the film? Without blowing the plot away–that the title alone couldn’t–let’s just say that it may explain why we seem to pick up that cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof, uber-nervous, frayed and frazzled to that very last nerve’s edge vibe about her…

As for Caroline Fleming: is she a hoot or the very best thing about a holler? What’s not to adore? And isn’t there the coolest Pippi Longstockings vibe about her? A gone worldly and blonde, gorgeously, effortlessly chic, unfreckled, bare legged Pippi vibe about her–or whatever thing that made Pippi the magical, quirky girl you wanted to hang with–if you were not daring enough to want to be her– even in your dreams?!

And Sophie–she’s the reason for the season and everything one dreams London would have to be if it could come to life as an up-to-this-minute Georgie Girl with better than Pantene hair. She’s that Prell Girl a-go-go. Imagine her in the heart of the 70s in stark Mary Quant, or Yves Saint Laurent Moroccanly haute caftans, or vintage far-out duds from Granny Takes A Trip. Easy-breezing, Cover-Girling–or better yet–Yardleying–while free spiriting and frolicking about in a decade that might have been a perfect match to her true spirit, dangled on a rock star’s arm, having songs like “Angie” or “Dandelion” written about her-only it would have to have been someone cooler than Mick penning and torch singing them–someone as cool as Bowie.

Yeah, a very much alive Bowie, making that half exception for a white chick, while still married to Angie (O.K: Here I’m going to allow myself to laugh in order to stop crying. It’s been a year. A brutal, gone to h-e-double-hockey-sticks in a hand-basket year that ushered-in-the-beast of a year! A 666 of a year. O.K?). I do see Sophie in the free spirited, swinging 70s, dancing on tables as the reason for quite a few seasons. She is the essence of the breezy elan of this fabulous show. And a nice person, to boot.

And a truly nice person on these chit-chows seems even more miraculous now, after a beast of a year that offed everyone who was a Hero-of-all-Heroes–a Would Be King! (that reassured us the very power of love would crown us all Kings or Queens, be it just for one day–a singular, transcendent day worth dying for) a Prince, a Princess, her Mother! or countless Legends that made Art-As-Magic on this planet, and in galaxies, far, far away. After such a beast of a year that brought us Brexit, and crashed that fascist global tide wave across the pond, hitting us hardest, bringing to light the crazy hatred that was always there in that vast space between our shores–what can I say but this is not my America, so fuck you, new U.S.of A. and your Trumpy dog, too–and don’t we desperately need Sophie putting some elan in a Bravo show, now more than ever?! And don’t we need to look deep within ourselves to find more reason for using perfectly unused, beautiful words like elan now?

So, now that the party’s over and Caroline Ssss has stopped farting rainbows in bubble baths because this show is no longer about her and her having to go to a literally manmade, true fart city like Dubai and nobody seems to care enough to trip over themselves to give her ponies and fare-thee-well wild seventies orgies and parties and gift baskets and libraries and…

Too bad it’s all blown up in her face since she’s iced the cool girls and has to settle to be seen with the likes of a same old, shrieking-at-nothing, stupid-is-as-pointlessly-mean-does cast member in weird prairie frocks bobbing for fashion’s gaffes and guffaws.

Too bad that it’s as saggy and sorry as having to take a dingy to a party on a sandbar in Dubai, but so it goes when it’s never too soon to have to say goodbye on your way to some buttfuck place like Dubai. Isn’t this how it should go when you underestimate that the real coolness of resfreshingly humane girls like Adela and Sophie could possibly be picked up by the TV-Eye and audience alike, and you’re made to watch them get out from under your frostbitten thumb to steal the show from under you? Too bad for you and your little snake, too, Carline. Oops, I mean, Caroline. Now, that’s a typo worth printing and worth way much more than anything I could have pulled from under my hat.

Oh, did I forget to mention Marissa?
Cricket. Cricket. Fart. Fart. Poofy. Fart. Cloud.

Sky Full of Fans: Social Media Fuels the Advent of Common Kings’ Rule

You were there, lighting the path. Under a sky full of stars, they saw you, breathing the air that was electrically charged with all your great expectations. In a wrap-around line leading to San Diego’s House of Blues, on Sunday, November 9, they saw you as an indelible light in a sky full of stars.

And you didn’t care to be anywhere else in the semblance of real time, but shimmering in this technological fairy tale that you helped spin out of millions of YouTube views and Facebook likes–each cumulatively ensuring your chosen band, the Common Kings, that elusively sought-after, social-media-driven jettison to the stars.

And just as in that exuberant Coldplay love song you can’t get out of your head, ultimately, in a sky full of stars, this is about you–a determinedly influential and avowed fan–and the fabulous and highly laudable Common Kings. For what impossible Universe would allow one without the other? Isn’t fandom a universally relatable and most importantly ,reciprocal, experience? One neither fan nor artist can live without.

Is it an island thing? In the uncommonly thrilling shared experience of catching the Common Kings fresh off their head-spinning Australian and New Zealand leg of the Justin Timberlake tour, you should know, in your heart of given hearts, that although not physically, you were spiritually there as well, as part of that preternatural force that catapulted them onto that all-enviable world stage–playing arenas–so why not wear that plumeria or hibiscus blossom in your hair–whether you’re Polynesian or just play one on TV?

It is an island thing. One that was demographically waiting to happen, but, ultimately, one to be shared by everyone as The Common Kings are on the cusp of going internationally viral, taking the world stage by storm now, so stop fretting and enjoy the show.
And a great, supercharged, beat driven, sold out show it was. Just as you dreamed. As part of a standing room crowd, you swayed to Hawaii’s own Maoli, as Tennelle drove the performance to a charged-up level worthy of mention for a stand-out, opening act. But as the Common Kings took the stage, they had your heart aflutter as it was already given to them. And they were exhilaratingly on fire. And didn’t the House of Blues turn into that proverbial house without a roof?

Seeing the internationally rising stars, the uncommonly thrilling Common Kings, comprised of bassist Lui Kirimaua (Ivan), lead singer Sasualei Maliga (Junyer), drummer Jerome Taito (Rome), and lead guitarist Taumata Grey (Mata), proved to be its own irrefutable reward. Being able to sing the lyrics to their rock, reggae, and R&B fusion driven hits “Alcoholic”, “Wade In Your Water”, “Fly” and “No Other Love”, with them took you to another level–the one where both you and the band exchange music as oxygen and where musicians and fans recognize each other as being mutually indispensable.

Backstage, they would have told you that. Affably and incredibly humble, bordering on contagiously jovial, the band remains accessible and playful. Citing their shared passion for their art, confirming their chosen name as bearing tribute to their Polynesian roots, waxing poetic about their collective collaborative and how to maintain their childhood friendship during this wild trajectory from Costa Mesa–in the improbable O.C.–to a world stage.
Yes, they obviously have people from Fiji, Tonga, Hawaii and Samoa in the O.C as evidenced by each member. But, most importantly, if your name was Annie, rest assured that they’d regale you with an impromptu chorus “Of It’s A Hard Knock Life” in which you’d join in, giddily off key and deeply moved.

In this Cinderella story of a band with a debut album still awaiting its January release, we come to the conclusion that the same internet that Kim Kardashian unceremoniously professes to want to break–by sitting on it?–can ultimately be utilized to make and take a music career to nearly unprecedented nose-bleed heights. But it couldn’t have happened without you. As you gaze expectantly upon your heroes teetering on the verge of that world stage, each Common King wants you to know that in this shared sky full of stars, they saw you, too, and from their vantage point, you’re such a heavenly view.

Season 9 of the Real Housewives Orange County Premiered: Did Tamra Judge Not Know a Plumeria from an STD?

(Here’s a word from one of our sponsors: No, No, No, No, No, No! This isn’t the new one as that, along with visions of sugar plum fairies, is yet to come–and it will! I’m just uploading my articles onto this blog–but, seriously, who could ever tell the difference? Meghan, mayhaps?)

What is there to say by now about this soggy fruit salad that’s the Real OC? Mr. Cohen’s very first, remains my least favorite of The Real Housewives Franchise. Don’t know about you, but I wasn’t riveted last night, although I remain compelled to at least pretend-watch while polishing my nails after biting them first. I feel that there’s no need to expand on that, as we can agree to hold this truth to be self-evident, while I tell you about Heather and her new abode, instead.

We find our miss Uber-Prissess (that’s a made up word I just concocted to fool myself into staying awake) praising the quaintness of her temporary rental house because it’s nothing like a bone chilling mausoleum nor the Louvre, as that was her old house which they sold for a killing. Of course, this being in the post-Mc-Mansion-era, she and her brow beaten hubby are building a Double-Whopper-with-Cheese-Whiz, instead. Nuf-said, as NeNe might chime in to our rescue with a decidedly conclusive “plop” sound.

I can’t tell you enough how I abhor all the faux Tuscany decor, faux boobs, faux tans, faux orchids in speckled-faux-plastic-china pots and all the unpardonable faux pas of the over-bleached straw extensions in both texture and color that are signature trademark of—and all so enviable within— this bunch. Yet, somehow, I must find the strength. How else can I continue to reveal that in Heather’s soon-to-be Faux Modern Museum of Horrors, she wants a beauty salon and a Scooby Doo Room? That’s a room with a mysterious, hidden door to the unknown. I know our determinate Uberprissess will succeed, because she wears the smarty pants in the family, so let’s sincerely hope that she mistakes one room for the other and ends up with an 80’s perm headed for a galaxy far, far away.

Before we tune out, let’s mention in mere passing—or jest— new Housefrau Shannon, of the Defunct I Magnins of County Corck-It, that she and I fondly recollect. I once had a coveted olive green Jackie-Before-The-O raw silk suit that just screamed for a pill box hat that I scored in a thrift shop in Reseda back in ’88 that was an I Magnin original. Like Shannon, I still mourn that now Defunct I Magnin suit stuff.

But that isn’t all we share. It worries me to admit, that we share another common bond and that is the fact that the we can only speak into our cell phone from the safety of another room while wearing a Hazmet suit, because we “don’t want to radiate our brains out”, as Shannon so poetically describes.

There’s another housewife whose existence entirely escapes me and a premature chick-trip to Hawaii where nothing worth mentioning happens except that one of our brainy Femmebots—-was it Vicky of The Horton-Hears-A-Woo-Whos or Tamra of the Tammie-Tell-Me-Nots—- might have implied that she didn’t know a plumeria from an STD. And that, my duhhlings, announces that we’re overdo for a run out the door to catch the total eclipse of the moon, instead, and file this boo-boo in that overstuffed folder of wasted hours we can never get back.

Postcards from the Champagne O’Clock: Real Housewives Foibles from my Vulture Vault

Here are some of my random meanderings on the Real Housewives of All Perdition of seasons past, brought to you by my mainlining on Vulture magazine boards and a word from one of our sponsors: “Depends”.

These ramblings took place in a world where Bowie and Prince were still among us. Needless to say, it was the best of times on an entirely magical, other planet where we thought we could stay forever-ever-ever-ever-ever…

What was I thinking in those days of wine and roses–and two supernovas burning to extinction under the Milky Way those nights–about Kim Richards, whose unhinged drug problem was stupidly being masked as the worst kept secret in Real Housewives history? And what of those other Housewives from the fabled Hills of Beverly and their real or much imagined betrayals, cloying ploys and kerfuffles? What of they, of silly tempests in petal pink tea cups the very lofty Lisa Vanderpump might have had Rocio serve to us on a diamante studded, silver platter–with tea roses–in her opulent, shrill-pinks-to-purple, ultra sheeny closet that would still be haunted by the ghosts of Liberace or Prince–had it not burned down? Let’s have a gander.

This is beyond awful and unforgivable–but it is, after all, why I’m here, so, has anybody wondered why Kim figures so significantly with people that are faced with serious ailments in their lives? Don’t they have strong pills? There was mention of the fact that Kim took care of her dying mother in the desert. (OK, I’m going to leave that sentence as it sounds ‘coz it makes me laugh and I’m beyond help today). That might not have been the genesis, but could it be the revolving pinnacle of her addiction, no?

Also, along with the great Dame Brian Moylen’s magical and literary heart-wrenching tail-end spins on the Vulture recaps and a fresh faced, dewy take from Bravo editing, Kim does emanate the most relatable humanity of them all this season. That, in and of itself, should be cause for great alarm for not only the other cast members, but the collective state of the world population at large.

As for another tenebrous and twisted aside, metaphorically speaking, it seems that Kim has been riding Disney ponies all her life–with Yolanda’s flatulent white horse in front of her, through one too many meandering Malibu canyons only to late-crash yet another rodeo, or mistime Wassailing on Halloween while bobbing for clowns.

As for the ever reigning Queen Bee, Lisa Vanderpump, what can I say? Go for it LVP! Scorch that earth and throw salt on it, for good measure. Who doesn’t remember the coup on Isla Perdida, aka Portovarta? Thanks for that one, Mumbles (Kim Richards). It will perpetually stick in my geographically altered mindscape where Puerto Rico can no longer be, thanks to this here great shared experience at the Real Housewives’ Institute of Wee Willie Wankery and Waffle House.

So, who can fault LVP for keeping it real, reigning it in and continuing-to-continue to be be the Uber-Reticent queen bee with that quick Brit wit and IQ that easily blows dust in the rest of the cast’s surgically deformed cat faces? Not I, beautiful people! And although our beloved Dame Moylen has helped us all don rose-tinted shades where Kim is concerned, she’s still a sputtering mess and a tad of an imbecile. As Judge Judy so philosophically waxed poetically–and with whom I so heartlessly and gleefully concur–stupid is forever. And wouldn’t LVP be stupid to forget all the insults-to-injury that this nest of vipers sharing-one-reptilian-brain tried to obliterate her with?

YoFo (Yolanda-Hadid-Foster-Once-Removed-And-Perpetually-Insufferable) was one of the unpardonable offenders. And Kyle–Et tu, Kyle? Always! Brandi: what can I say about her without resorting to a NeNe-ism: “Trashbox! Plop!”

Sorry this is not just off topic, but self revealingly juvenile: I just can’t help inserting an image of Lisar’s (Lisa Rinna) ostrich looking face–albeit a strangely gleeful and endearing ostrich face, that is–at the mere mention of the word “Depends”. Let that be that word from our sponsor brought to you, once again, by Bravo TV right here and now–unless you all prefer “Troutsnatch” which is better slated for a Real Housewives of New York days-of- future-past episode where Sonja’s weirdo gyno is looking for her withered sexy “J” with a mini-scud-missile-probe up her twat.

If as if one has to take a slow nacht–a non yacht–to Mallorca to find bootleg Chanel!? Oofff, already, Kyle. Poor, squat, little wannabe-rich-bitch, Kyle! Et Tu, Always, Kyle, with that obsessive knack–on and off that nacth–screaming to channel the sublime Elizabeth Taylor, Puerto Vallarta, circa 1973, with your diaphenously gaudy caftans, only to hit the mark with the daffy Mrs. Roper, circa 1981, instead.

And if as if we’d wanna sail at all with Kyle, all the live long days in that azure lull of the Mediterranean sea on The Champagne O’Clock!? I’d forgotten the cringeworthy name of the nacht. How could I? Isn’t that what stereotypical, chain smoking Eurotrash would think that Americans–particularly from land locked states–would find refined–or precious? I’m offending myself from both sides of the pond now–and it’s a good thing that Martha Stewart can’t hold against me.

As no guffaw is sacred, let’s mention in passing, or mere jest, Gigi (Hadid) who looks exclusively like a Guess jeans model that is storing a whole bunch more assorted nuts than the controversial two-almonds-once-daily quota–in her cheeks for the winter and away from YoFo’s scrutiny. These Guess girls don’t easily cross over (sans YoFo’s Kardashian-world-domination-plot, sans MoMo (Mohammed Hadid)’s self-rising, crusty dough, and least of all, sans Bravo TVEye-ya-yay!) into the ethereally and other worldly realm that can walk an Armani or Karl Largerfeld runway. Especally Karl’s! He’s got a laser eye for strange and utterly demanding perfection, made all the worse by his maintained weight loss and the fact that he no longer looks like he’s hiding the sweet and iconic Andre Leon Tally under his coat.

It’s no secret I’ve been known to throw away all dignity in exchange for a cheap joke, and I’m chasing myself into a figure eight from a dichotomy to an oxymoron all across this forum. As for MoMo (Mohammed Hadid), I do think he can build rather massive, and massively missive, ornate Turkish bath houses. And as for models and their intellectual properties–well, it’s back to that figure eight, all over again.

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, in the state of New Jersey and denial, sequined orange leopard is the new black for Teresa Giudice.

Yolanda’s fridge is Carmen Miranda’s final resting place and Mumbles may be an imbecile, but she’s not a recovering one! Just saying.

Meow.

‘Tis a Pity These Bitches Are Hoes

I knew that one day the seemingly irreconcilable worlds of my mainlining Real Housewives and that of the Big Top, otherwise known as Music, would have to collide simply because I share a starved, near exhausting, yet unrepentant passion for both. Still, why did it have to take none other than the shocking death of David Bowie to make this otherwise inconceivable thing happen ever at all?

Two months later, while I remain yet inconsolable, on this immensely bluer and unspeakably flat-lined planet Earth now, without Mr. Bowie, I must say, I was the last to have seen it coming. But as so many truly terrifying, unwelcome, paradigm shifting events in the brief history of time and particularly that of our strange existence, this one snuck up and hit like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and made way for our species to theoretically and hypothetically evolve–depending on which way you view such a disposable spectacle as the Grammys.

This tenuous chasm, then brings us to this debatable point of why this mash-up and little tempest in one of Lisa Vanderpump’s gilded, petal pink tea pots should be dragged on a stage where Intel sponsored a Grammy tribute to an artist as vastly influential and as great as a veritable modern day Mozart. Yes, beautiful people, take heart in your time of darkness, in knowing that you have lived in an era where David Bowie also graced our planet. So let’s get that established and out of the way, while I go about shaping this little ditty that could be written in the stars already, somewhere in the relative and unphathomable recesses of-space-time .

It starts with a title for an article that screams to be born (“Tis a Pity These Bitches Are Hoes”) after which I will take my striped tail in my paw and bow profoundly to the late and truly great Mr. Bowie–because, let’s face it, after that Oompa-Loompa-as-Elvis, Grammys debacle that Lady GaGa delivered as tribute to the inimitable Starman-now-returned-to-the-stars–how could I have anything else on my aghast mind–still?!

I know it came from a good place (a tequila fueled Tuesday karaoke night at Andale’s in Puerto Vallarta) and I know she’s one of the millions of circus acts in music who pledge their entire career to him–as they should!–but what in this world, where Adrienne Maloof is nuthin’ but a nobody, would I expect from a cheesy award show that squanders gramaphone statuettes on the likes of Meghan Trainor–the veritable Anna Kendrick of music!–instead of handing them to the more deserving winner of this year’s talent show at your local junior high?

All I wanna say is that I should have known not to expect anything profound nor moving from the Grammys, and I should have saved whatever tears I continue to shed for the late, great genius I can’t help but know is nowhere to be found in this sorry world where Adrienne Maloof is but a nobody and YoFo (Yolanda Foster Hadid) should be made to ride behind Kimbecile’s (Kim Richard’s) flatulant Disney ponies through meandering Malibu canyons, in perpetuity, for being a persnickety, insufferable, tick bitten bitch.

Sooo, how did I veer off into GaGa doing a cheap Elvis for Bowie? I’ve got that title stuck in my mind for a Real Housewives ditty and it, like many magical, wildly beautiful and often, imperceptible, yet nonetheless shimmering things that have been gifted to us on this planet, it, too, came from the Starman-now-returned-to-the-stars.

“‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” is the title of a song from Mr. Bowie’s last and miraculous album, “Blackstar” (conceived as he was dying!) and inspired from an obscure English play of days of yore. I think it’s a great title to tweak just enough to fit in with our Real HoWos (Housewives) we hate others more than ourselves for loving. As for the Grammys–that soggy cake that Richard Harris left out in the rain back in ’69 and that Milli Vinnilli made us eat up in 1990–I hate them vehemently more and more each year. As much as Brandi Glanville can hate this stupider, bluer planet now, in which she’s a knock-kneed has-been and wherein Adrienne Maloof should have been never, all of these years.

As two of you may know, I used to do my most emphatic writing via Vulture posts. But now, I’ve taken to ranting on Spacebook, instead. Considering I’ve not written much lately, due to grief, I’ll take it wherever I can get it out of me.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I miss Mr. Bowie. It’s unending. He was my hero of all heroes. Paradoxically, the finality of his death just swims in a luminous, dream-like-lack-of-substance. January proved beyond brutal and February was no better as these awful corporate wiener roasts–I’m looking at you, too, Superbowl Half-Time-Tin-Tinny-Show!–are garish and not even campy ghoulish. Just frigging garish. As much as the frigging, glaringly garish, shrieking at nothing that the Real Screech Owls and Howler Monkeys of the O.C. can summon, dressed in their ill-remembered 80s dayglo, lace gloves and single earring at a Bunco party gone to h-e-double-hockey-sticks in a hand-basket in less time than it takes to collectively weed out the need for a word like porte a cochere.

As for Meghan Trainor–she’s one step below the bleachers at the junior high talent show. I do guffaw to my bad self when I call her the Anna Kendrick of music–and please imagine Anna’s pinched face as being frozen, thus unable to have ever delivered a single note with it–and please don’t let me say rodent face, for Jimmy Crackcorn’s sake!, as that may be cruel, still, neither of us really cares.

Oh, and as for Taylor Swift getting her billionth Grammy–oh-why-oh-why wasn’t she made to have received it outside in the Staples Center’s parking lot this time?! And where was Kanye when I needed him most this year to help show her the way?

As the Austrian Emperor declared to a bewildered Mozart after his sublime “The Abduction at the Serraglio” opera’s premiere in “Amadeus,” “Too many notes” and not ever enough dignity–especially where a smidge of such should have been summoned, for an artist as singularly influential and as fiercely original as Mr. Bowie. But alas, it proved impossible to ask of people who hear music the way that most patients in insane asylums laugh at Three Stooges skits after their thorazine’s kicked in.

With all due respect to Ms. GaGa who is an ardent Bowie fan and performed from her heart and not her nose, I’m sure, I have to insist both she and the iconic Thin White Duke would have been better served by the Mother of Monsters if she’d just settled down and did one or two of his beautiful songs, while Intel did whatever the fuck they thought the sheeple and the Corporate Grammys agreed the rest of us deserved–no?!

In the beginning, where GaGa lent her likely brokenhearted face, like a canvas that was morphing into liquid colors that Intel used to paint on holographically ethereal, iconically other-worldly Bowie personae we’ve all come to know–and through which he changed our entire species–throughout his brilliant career, well,that made me cry–but I continued to cry from sheer and unbelieving shame as it all devolved into an Adderal fueled, third rate, two-bit, off the strip, cheap Vegas act. It was beyond hideous and simply grotesque. Bordering on unwittingly offensive, even.

There are countless, profoundly grieving and fiercely impacted music artists that don’t fit into the teeny, commercialized, corporate box that Intel and the Grammys try to pass off–or genuinely wouldn’t know–as original art, that would have done this fiercely original modern day Mozart wondrous and solemn justice as tribute to his passing, but alas, the Grammys and the music world at large, has no ear and wouldn’t know a Mozart if one fell to Earth to completely and forever change it during his 69 years of borrowed time here.

In whatever constitutes this perceived, yet forever altered reality now, how can I be sunnily disposed after witnessing both the Superbowl and the Grammys on a planet where no one could do half of the audacious and truly magical things that Bowie did for 40 years –some of them in his sleep, even? Sigh. The stars really do look very different today. What more can I say? ‘Tis A Pity These Bitches Are Corporate Hoes and that Time–The Mother Of All Bitches and Hoes–is the biggest of them all. Yet, Time is also the Great Equalizer, so stay tuned for how profound and truly worthy of a tribute it’ll exultantly pay to the late and truly great David Bowie. A tribute like none of us mere mortals could have dreamed to bestow, least of all, dared imagine.

One Eleven

I awoke yesterday to my computer strangely and erroneously displaying a January 11 date which caused me to hustle and pay my credit card bill SAP. This odd 11th day continued with me clueless– although feeling amiss in it. An impossibly nuanced, ever so imperceptible paradigm shift was changing the world around me.

I was reading a novel I wrote and saw fit not to hawk when I was young. As usual, there was music coming from my son’s room. His own gorgeous music (that you should hear soon) he creates and produces prolifically, emphatically. I lost myself in the pages of a book I thought might see the light of day, after all, strangely, and I became 21 again. Time was showing itself for what it truly is–nonlinear and impossible for us to harness, let alone comprehend.

At night, my son and I watched Kendrick Lamar on Youtube. A PBS broadcast of Austin City Limits. The iconic show that predates the frenzied orgy of media we now can access at our fingertips’ whim. With a keypad’s caress. Mr. Lamar was in his element; his audience at one with his incendiary brilliance. He was free of the palpable conflict and profound ambivalence borne of such a thing I can ask you to imagine as too much–although every bit of it deserved–critical acclaim. He seemed happy.

Time strung me along at its own volition as I spun off into a loop-dee-loop of Grimes’ brilliant new album and random tracks of hers that I let the computer choose for me. I was in sublime abandon. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I wanted to post in one of the Spacebook (FB) groups that someone had invited me to join a month or so ago.

I posted a photo and captioned it “Achingly young Bowie.” The photo uploaded and I felt twelve again–the very age I first heard Mr. Bowie and the very age I thought he might very well be in the photo himself. Instantly and peripherally, I caught the surreal words from a friends’ post as it flashed on the bottom left corner of my screen: David Bowie, dead at 69…

Words can’t express how much of a hero he was and remains in and outside of time and me in this unimaginable new now…

Why I’ve Remained Anonymous

(The following contains a retrospective recounting of the once notes-in-progress of my aborted first novel, “Bohemian Beatsters,” an undertaking so ill fated that it single-handedly caused the unmaking of my writing career and provides a clear explanation for the above title. Once again, the notes recount the project while it was still in the making.)

Notes for my novel, “Bohemian Beatsters”, a tale of one city and many complex, often sullen, artistically inclined characters within its parameters and seasonal fogs. To be subtitled: “And What Of The Albatross–Another Metaphor For The Useless?”

Introduction to Andrew (main character, artistically inclined and unquestionably sullen rock star): A man who survives–and thus becomes a cult hero in–the post punk era of modern music to sit atop the roof of a skyscraper in Tokyo, snapping pictures of streets, signs, buildings, island clusters, other rooftops and his right thumb with an unloaded Nikon camera as the sun proceeds to set on Japan, which lies in a direction thought to be (by the rest of the major characters in the book, along with some minor, unnamed members of the Rockettes, also appearing marginally in same book) generally opposite from that of the British Empire, which is where Andrew hails from.

An exceedingly handsome, jet-setting ex-Londoner, tall, slender, restless by nature and ash blond by L’Oreal, Andrew sulks in his immense fame which he’s quick to admit would be better appreciated by anyone anonymous.

“I’m a travelog”, he tells himself aboard a bullet train. His words exiting at speeds that cause him to momentarily suspect if he’s not being written in the past tense–an effect which has been known to strike main characters in other novels, similarly talking to themselves while riding bullet trains.

Flirtatiously gazing at his reflection in the blackened train windows, Andrew ponders the quality of his highly praised work, the meaning of his existence and his inability to get off at the right stop.

The One City (not just a mere environmental container for the characters, but rather, a place where most can visit Andrew and attend the frequent parties that he’s prone to give where everyone can show off their latest Zhandra Rhodes apparel and their unwillingness to smile in a social situation):

Milan, Italy, 1985 (Andrew was right–he is being written in the past tense. I must remember to somehow also justify the inexistence of bullet trains in Milan and hope that Andrew does not move elsewhere as a result. Though this could give the book a rather curious, existential edge–so many characters coming together for the climactic scene in Milan for no apparent reason–I must not, for the most part, be tempted to such levels of experimentation which could be so easily misconstrued as self indulgence. I must, instead, describe the scene in Chapter 31 which finds Andrew married to an Englishwoman named Lana whom he proposed to and wed in Japan, as soon as he stopped riding the bullet train.

“She’s the only person that understands me” Andrew explained to Japanese reporters through an interpreter (Note of interest: The fact that Andrew is married is of crucial importance because it clearly indicates that he has succeeded in getting over his sel-addiction, which immediately set in after he successfully overcame his sexual addiction that caused him much grief and explains why there are so many characters named Bambi and Mistress Helga in the preceding chapters of the book. Ditto for the marginal appearance of those unnamed Rockettes–a result of a one night stand).

No comment about Milan, dubbed The One City in the book, should be made (other than the fact that it is Andrew’s place of residence so chosen due to a mishap involving Andrew prematurely deboarding his plane at Milan’s Malpensa airport during a change-over flight destined for Heathrow. “I couldn’t tell the difference due to the fog” Andrew explained to a perplexed world press. When asked why he since went on choosing Milan over London as his place of residence, he cited the same reason as being greatly influential in his making that difficult decision) since we are so eager to get to Chapter 31.

Chapter 31 (though this book contains a lot of dialog, it is not to be confused with a play since there are no characters named Stella or Stanley in it):

Milan, Italy, 1985. Scene at Andrew’s house following a party.
“Do you know why I cried earlier this evening when I was putting perfume behind your knees?”, Andrew asked Lana. They were sitting poolside. It was 4:00 a.m. Lana had kicked off her shoes and had placed feet onto his lap. They were sitting facing each other and drinking tea (note: Everyone that knows Andrew by now, knows that it is malva tea that they’re drinking so it need not be mentioned).

“You cried because the alcohol content of the perfume stung your eyes”, Lana answered. This caused Andrew to wince since it was the correct answer, but he was hoping she’d opt for a more nebulous, and therefore, romantic sounding guess, amking him appear ever sensitive, enigmatic and perpetually misunderstood–a plight of the consummate artist.

“Hardly”, he lied. “I think it’s truly a beautiful fragrance. Smells nothing of alcohol.”
“I agree”, Lana concurred, adding to the lie.
A very terse sense of alienation settled over them which caused both to look expectantly into the night skies for further signs of what to say next.

“Tell me about your past”, Lana asked abruptly, an hour later, breaking the trance.
“I am very reserved when it comes to opening up about myself”, Andrew warned.
“Why is that?”, Lana persisted.
He took a deep breath, then began, “Because my past is checkered by all sorts of axe murders, gang rapes and random acts of mayhem–sprinkled with the occasional UFO sightings which were always more frequent on leap year. My family was so poor, they couldn’t afford rubbers, so I was born, highly unwanted and had to be raised by a pack of wolves, then found by restaurant gypsies.

“When I was eleven, of course, I ran away to the city where I sold my body to off- duty hookers, American sailors and androgynous looking commoners. The off-duty hookers taught me everything about sex, though we never enjoyed a moment of it because our meters were always ticking.

“Then, when I was thirteen, I rode a box car to France, where I painted my very first tableau. I painted it green to match my chairs. My French was very crude, so I took poetic license with the afore mentioned”, Andrew paused. Lana was laughing hysterically. He took a sip from his tea cup then continued, undaunted, figuring she’d soon stop as the story was about to get more tragic.

“I became obsessed with painting and started living a very bohemian life–despite the fact that it was no longer the twenties. I took a room at the C.D. Pensione, which is a baser word for hotel, and began painting self-portraits of other people. Soon, I became very depressed and seriously contemplated cutting off my hair.

“I told my friend Andre about it over a meager dinner at the Bistro Royale and he smiled his benevolent smile and called me a goofball. ‘Serious painters cut off their ears, instead’ he said in his inimitable, tremulous voice and dismissed my remark with a theatrical wave of his hand.

“He was ninety years old and was very well known for his cubist portraits of Gertrude Stein which had so revolutionized the art world in the early twenties. When i asked him how he’d come to develop that style, he looked very puzzled.
‘What style?’ he queried.
‘Cubism…the cubist portraits of Gertrude Stein…you were a pioneer in the cubist movement’ I said.
‘Nonsense! There was no such movement! It was all a rumor, started by Gertrude herself because she couldn’t accept the fact that that was the way she really looked!”

“He became very huffy and agitated. When the waiter came back with the check, he refused to pay on the grounds that they always served the potato soup too cold. I ended up doing dishes all night, which cut my art career short. So I became a musician, instead. And when I cut my first record, at the impressionable age of fifteen, I deeply regretted not having cut off my ears. I was awful! You should have heard it! It almost made me want to go back to selling my body for a living.

“But, as all over the hill, ex-hookers, I had to resign to the ravages of time with realism and amazing grace. I knew I could never hook again”, Andrew concluded, sighing in resignation. Lana had continued to laugh. When he asked why she was being so insensitive by laughing at his painful revelations, as so many others had–the list of which was topped by his analyst–Lana forced herself to regain enough composure to admit that her past was exactly the same, with the one omission of the UFO sightings and the fact that she’d opted to paint her chairs red instead of green to also complement her first tableau in France.

The couple then embraced joyfully and realized that they were in fact soul mates by the Cosmos destined to have come together, and by no man, nor aspiring writer, ever to be parted. They then set out to move to Southern California in relentless pursuit of Shirley MacClaine, leaving the music and art world, The One City and the rest of the major characters behind.

Postscript:
Their conspicuous absence from the subsequent pages and chapters of the book forced me, its author, to seriously stop writing about such volatile characters. It also left me with an abundance of yet unnamed, undeveloped, complex and artistically inclined peripheral characters growing increasingly more sullen and with a propensity to whine between syllables, even. This and unforseen, other complications–by me solely unimaginable–forced the incompletion of this book, resulting in my wanting to reconsider a shepherding career, instead.