Tag Archives: Andy Cohen

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

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(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.

The Rise of Andy Cohen and the Real Housewives of All Perdition

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At first I was afraid—I was petrified— to even glimpse into the worlds of such unabashed fabulousity that would make me drool and want to ditch my simple life without an alternative place to go. No money, no go. No, woman, no cry! Kind of stuff that would make me pity myself to oblivion and beyond. I was intimidated by the worlds of the Real Housewives of any city. Yet, somehow, I got over myself. I tuned in and worse than a strung-out hippie from the sixties, I cannot tune out. I am deliciously, lasciviously and unapologetically addicted.

I gleefully watch and anticipate the shows, collectively, repeatedly, read sublimely written recap blogs and announce to my unbelieving friends that I find them to be beyond mere guilty pleasure and more so on the line of an anthropological study that I must partake in or else my real life would be lessened, somehow. How else would I ever learn the art of flipping a table, spin-twirl an exit and declare, with much unabashed aplomb, “Who gonna check me, boo?”

I’ve watched Andy Cohen rise from his humble roots, broadcasting Watch What Happens Live from what deceptively appeared to have been his parents’ basement a’ la Wayne’s World and foresaw, somehow, that he was indeed the one to watch. I’ve called his ascent into the Ubersphere of TV-land back from the day when he was seemingly just shooting the breeze about his creations—the brilliant The Real Housewives franchise. I thought he wasn’t kidding. I thought he would become Mr. Bravo TV. I thought one day he’d have superstars like Oprah, Cher, Gaga, clamoring to be in his kitschy Clubhouse, falling over their Le Boutins, phoning in from their compounds in Malibu or yachts on the Amalfi Coast—just as riveted and strung out as myself on my Craigslist sofa. I thought—get this!—that Camille Paglia would one day comment on it. And it’s come to pass.

My one regret, that time and reality itself cannot allow, is that the two Andys—Cohen and Warhol— can never be. How fabulous would it have been to have just seen the monosyllabic Andy Warhol at the Clubhouse? Warhol, who in the sixties, thankfully, coined the prophetic phrase that’s now become the cultural phenomenon of the ultimate surreality: In the future everyone shall be famous for 15 minutes. Mr. Cohen makes sure that those 15 minutes are forever caught on camera by following fame-hungry, well heeled and red soled women teetering on the edge of their mid-life crises in selectively privileged enclaves of American society. Ah, the two Andys—together—at the Clubhouse. Just how fabuliscious would that have been?