For the love of all that is holy, can these women please stop throwing dinner parties? A plodding exercise in both pure futility and vicious verbal brutality, The Dinner Party scenes on The Real Housewives of Wherever always seem like they should be accompanied by ominous studio scoring. Nobody at the dinner will eat a thing. Not one person will be understood better than she was before she walked in the door and planted two fake kisses on her hostess’ cheeks. No woman at that table will suddenly shout, “Eureka!” as she instantaneously decides that you were right and she was wrong during the soup course. Accept it, ladies: the evening will be a long and twisted nightmare from which you cannot awake. You probably won’t even be able to escape quickly because your car isn’t there since there’s apparently a clause in the Housewives contract that requires that you carpool to all events with the person whose name you plucked from one of Kyle’s Chanel caps. (Shhhh: the hat is as fake as its … Continue reading →

Oh, Kim Richards. She’s kind of a living and breathing version of that creaky wooden rocking chair that sits on the porch of that nice madwoman who lives down the street, the one who maybe keeps a family of four chained in her basement. Like that chair, Kim’s sort of falling apart. Someone once tried to mend her with a little bit of spit and some scotch tape, but she will undoubtedly cause pain to whomever foolishly chooses to straddle her. Still–splinters aside–I’d rather spend f*cking eternity sprawled across that chair than ever be stuck in the same time zone as one of the vilest Housewives of them all.

Now sure, I understand that Kim Richards is an addict. I also understand that the only reason she appears on this show at all anymore is for a paycheck. I suppose I used to feel kind of badly for her that her options were so limited that she was forced to pimp out her own questionable sobriety for profit, but the reality is that she’s such … Continue reading →

It occurred to me recently that there are entire stores dedicated to helping human beings try to outsmart dogs. Seriously, walk into Petco or whatever establishment wants to charge you money for rawhide and just wander around for a while. There are aisles and aisles filled with products and, regardless of their lovely packaging, the subtext for most of them is TAKE BACK CONTROL FROM THE ANIMAL YOU ALLOW TO LIVE IN YOUR HOUSE AND SLEEP IN YOUR BED, THE ONE YOU INSIST UPON DRESSING IN SWEATERS OR IN A NICE FLEECE WHEN IT GETS CHILLY. I was at one of those stores last month for the third time in one week and I stood looking for a moment at the array of items in my cart that I’d soon pay for and then lug home:

There was a plastic square designed to hold a wee wee pad in place. I needed this item so my dog might stop ripping her pad to shreds before swan-diving into the pile of crumpled wee wee pad she … Continue reading →