Real Housewives of Miami: Welcome to the New Nightmare

Housewives! At every turn! Wherever you look: housewives. Under that rock: housewives! In the trees: housewives! Hiding under your front stoop: housewives! They're inescapable, they're everywhere!

Indeed, another gaggle of screaming ladies has birthed, fully formed out of Andy Cohen's head like so many be-boobed Athenas. I have to admit, I was a little skeptical about a Miami season when I first heard about it, since I feel like Miami as a reality show archetype has kind of been done to death. But! I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. These bitches crazy! Or at the very least, they promise to be entertaining TV, and I'm excited. Since the first episode was basically getting to meet everyone more than any kind of narrative drama, for this recap I'll just introduce our new gang of tropical harpies. Let's begin.

Lea
Lea is the Jill Zarin of this group. She's brassy, older, (possibly) Jewish. She’s also kind of a Vicki Gunvalson type too. She owns some sort of public relations business or event planning or something, it wasn't really clear. Point being, she throws parties for a living, and is VERY IMPORTANT. She kinda seems like a clinical narcissist to me. Well, I mean, all the various housewives are clinical narcissists to a certain extent, but Lea seems especially so, always talking about needing to be around important people and big movers and shakers and stuff and how she can smell money and status like it’s blood in the water (maybe she didn’t say that last part). There's also something a bit unstable about her that I can't put my finger on. Maybe it's the frazzled hair, or slightly over-applied make-up, but she seems like the type to have a psychotic break some day and burn down her house or something.

Other than that though! Lea seems to have pretty normal family life: husband who seems to be the same age as her, and normal-seeming son, although maybe not that normal, since they had a portrait commissioned off him and hung above the pool (?). And actually, no, she's not that normal at all! She met her husband when she was a juror and he was a lawyer in a trial in the 80's. So no, that's weird. She's a weirdo, just maybe hides it a bit better than other people.

Larsa
Larsa is made of noodles and covered in gravy. She is also married to Scottie Pippen, so she is probably loaded. That seems to be the major identifier of her, since other than that so far she’s pretty meh. She's got 4 kids, lives in Ft. Lauderdale (CHEATER! THAT IS NOT MIAMI! GET OFF THIS SHOW! CHEATER!), blah blah boring boring. At one point she shot guns with her brother and sister, so that was you know, something that happened. I dunno, right now I'm not into her. She seems boring and also maybe secretly mean in that passive-aggressive pretty girl way. Right now I'm not into her. We'll see though! Maybe she'll turn into a table-flipping mosnter, who knows!

Cristy
Cristy sucks. She just has that mean girl lilt in her voice that screams "I'm a bitch!" you know? Like she thinks she is amazing and the funniest and prettiest and best person ever, but she’s not. She's obviously going to be the one that stirs all the shit this season but not in a fun organic way. In an intentional way.

She was married to some sports star once, a while ago, and that seems to be all she's done so far. I don't think she works? Though I don't remember, she might have some sort of bullshit job. Mainly she sits around and bitchily sips mojitos with her friends and says backhanded statements while looking like a cut-rate Mary Louise Parker. Overall, I say blech, Cristy. Blech!

Alexia
Alexia describes herself as Barbie, but with a brain. She said something about how Barbie doesn't have a voice, but she has a voice, so she looks like Barbie, but you know, she's not ACTUALLY Barbie. It was kind of rambling, but yes, Alexia looks like a Barbie kinda. She is very fit and blonde and Cuban and owns some sort of Spanish-language lifestyle magazine or something. She has an older husband but is TOTALLY not self-conscious about it. Nope! Not at all! Some people might say that you know, she's a certain way because she looks a certain way, and her husband looks a certain way, but you know, she's not that certain way! Basically, she wants to say that she may seem like a gold digger, but she is so NOT a gold digger. Between the Barbie defense and the gold digger defense, Alexia seems a wee bit insecure, don't you think?

Let's see, Alexia also has two sons who she seems to have a pretty laissez-faire attitude towards. Her younger son seems ok, maybe a little aloof, but it's clear that her older 17 year old son is an idiot. (At one point he asks her what "grass fed" means.) He also wants to be a model/actor (of course he does), so Alexia lectures him about how he needs to eat well and work out compulsively and make sure to do his daily barfing exercises.

He also mentions drinking and getting bottle service at a club (again, he’s 17). Alexia does her best Amy Poehler in Mean Girls and is all "Well you know, Miami is a very international city, so kids drink here. I'd rather I know about it than not." She's also letting him go on a cruise with his girlfriend? That's weird right? I mean, look, far be it from me to judge peoples' parenting tactics, but maybe that's the point when one's mothering is a bit TOO loose, ya know? When your drink-loving son goes on a sexy cruise with his underage girlfriend, it’s maybe time to pull in the reins a little bit. So yeah, that was the main gist of Alexia.

Marysol
Whoo! Marysol has quite a face on her, doesn’t she? Everything all plumped and pulled and buffed and botoxed. She’s one of those ladies whose lips are so big that they hinder her ability to properly enunciate, though not quite as extreme as her mother (more on her in a minute). Like Lea, Marysol also owns some sort of PR-ish company in Miami, staffed entirely by young college-y girls who look like they stepped into PR after watching too many reality shows and episodes of Sex and the City. Marysol interviews that she is Miami through and through, and came up during the fabulous years, when Versace and Madonna lived there, and she “ran with that crowd” and it was fabulous. Why do I get the feeling that if you asked Madonna or Gianni Versace’s fabulous ghost who this big-lipped lady was they’d have no idea what you were talking about?

Anyway, Marysol is going through a big How Stella Got Her Groove Back phase after her husband left her a few years back, and now she dates all kinds of young menz. Right now she’s bonin’ some French dude named Jean Jacques Jorge or something and having herself a TIME. You go gurrrrrrl! Marysol is having so much fun getting her muthafuckin’ GROOVE on with her fine-ass French piece, she decides to go talk to her momma about it.

And, well let’s just get right to it. Marysol’s mother is a terrifying wine-swilling booze Jabba who lives in a boxy house that appears to be on the side of an interstate. Seriously, the woman looks nuts, all gigantic plastic surgery face with piercing beady owl eyes, swirling wine around and speaking crazyisms in her thick Cuban accent. I don’t really recall too much of what they talked about, since I was so transfixed by how insane the lady looked, but I think it was about Marysol’s sex life and how she should bring her French loverboy over because Marysol’s mother needs to feed on his lifeforce or something, I don’t know. Also, in a later episode she admits to being a witch (Or rather, “a weesh” as she says in her thick big lipped accent.) In short: I am obsessed. I DEMAND A SPINOFF!

Adriana
Last but not least, the greatest thing about this show: Adriana. Sure, I know it might not be a popular opinion, people might prefer some of the more boring cast members, or the more ogrish mothers, but to me it’s all about Adriana. Full disclosure: I sort of have a thing for Brazilians on reality TV. Marcia from Rock of Love: Bus, Rodiney from The A List, Camilla Alves, I just love them! Something about their cartoonish sexuality and equally cartoonish accents just makes me squeal with joy. So, that being said, Adriana is the best Brazilian person on TV ever. How do I even start? So she lives in a fabulous seaside palace with her boyfriend (?) and her son, eating fabulous hardboiled eggs and drinking fabulous orange juice, and just fabulousing all the goddamned time..

However! Lest you think her life is all fabulous egg-eating, she also owns an art gallery (YES). Apparently she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and then went to law school, and then realized that she loves art. So yeah, she owns an art gallery, which I like to think is full of only soft focus photos of herself nude. Makes sense, right?

But yeah, it’s really not even any one thing that makes her great, it’s more her joie de vivre, her childlike joy with which she approaches everything in her life. Like when she goes to the fashion show with Larsa and Cristy, and she’s all “WOOOOOW!” and “OH MAH GAAAAAH!” and “LOOOK AT HEEEEM!” at all the male models, like each one is something new and exciting that she hasn’t seen. If only we could all be as joyful as Adriana, the world would be a better place, don’t you think?


So yeah, that’s about it for the ladies. Other stuff happened, they had a dinner party and lazily cooked things, Adriana sexy danced with two guys, you know, the usual. I’m excited though! This season looks very bitchy, which is always a good descriptor for these broads. Although, it looks like at one point everyone gangs up on Adriana, so I may have to stop watching if that happens. It will be too painful. Nobody will hurt my delicate Amazon rose! NOBODY!

"Thinner," or "How Road Head Made Me Kill a Gypsy and Ruin My Life."

Hey, guys! Remember me? That guy who used to post semi-regularly about terrible women shrieking at each other? No? Ok, well anyway, after a prolonged hiatus working on other mysterious, sinister projects, I've made a triumphant return to this little dog and pony show a new man. Well actually, the exact same horrible person I've always been. But the former sounded better.

What inspired me to come back, you ask? (no you don't) Why, only my having seen one of the GREATEST MOVIES EVER MADE. And by that I'm referring to "Thinner," Tom Holland's 1996 "horror" masterpiece based on a novel by Steven King about an obese man who runs over a gypsy while getting road head from his wife, and as a result gets a gypsy curse where he gets skinny. Yeah, I know. So as you can see, a movie like this deserves a revisiting 15 years after it's released, don't you think?

Anyway, as mentioned above, Thinner is the story of Billy Haleck, a morbidly obese lawyer living the high life defending Joe Mantegna from racketeering charges and eating whole pies in suburban Connecticut. Billy's got a beautiful (and skinny!) wife and a precocious daughter, and things couldn't get any better. That is, until trouble comes to his sleepy hometown in the form of a traveling gypsy carnival. Who HASN'T heard of this scourge laying waste to New England, right? Gypsy carnivals, terrorizing the Eastern Seaboard with their sinister ferris wheels, rigged carnival games, and comely lasses ready to lift their skirts for anyone with a few coins to spare (seriously, this happens at one point).

"This is my sexy face!"

So, the filthy gypsies set up their dark-sided filth carnival, and Billy tries to stay clear of the whole mess because they are bad news and don't have any pies for him to swallow whole like a goose. He's largely successful in avoiding the gyppos. That is, until one fateful night when he runs one over while getting road head from his skinnywife. Whoopsies! To make things worse, the old broad turns out to be the daughter of the KING OF THE GYPSIES, and who is not happy about it! He expresses his displeasure in the murdering of his bizarrely old daughter by touching Billy's face and saying "Thinnerrrrrrrr."

"But I'm so young!"

Billy's all "Weird!" but doesn't think much of it until he starts RAPIDLY LOSING WEIGHT (that's a problem?). At first Billy thinks it's great, and there's lots of comical scenes of him eating more pies and whole chickens and stuff, but eventually he starts to get TOO THIN (still don't see the problem). It's at this point that Billy starts to get worried. He tries to find comfort with his two best friends, but WHOOPS they're cursed too! You see his buddies are the judge and the police chief, both of whom helped him escape getting convicted for vehicular gypsyslaughter. Gypsy King doesn't much like that, so he makes the judge grow scales and the police chief look like the worst Proactiv before picture ever. So yeah, they're both miserable and kill themselves. NO HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS, SKELETONFACE, TRY AGAIN!

Now Billy starts to get really frustrated (a chicken carcass is hurled at one point). Apparently, the only one who can remove the curse is the Gypsy King himself, so Billy decides to recruit Joe Mantegna to...pursuade him. First he poisons all the gypsy dogs and leaves a hilarious sign that says "WHITE MAN FROM TOWN SAYS TAKE IT OFF." Sexxxy. (Also, aren't the gypsies white too? Unless you're a Nazi?). Nice try, but that just pisses off the gypsies more. Back to the drawing board. Next, he shoots up the gypsy camp with a machine gun, killing a couple of them. This time, the gypsies are shaken up, but still no dice. Curse stays.

FINALLY, mafia Joe Mantegna kidnaps the comely skirt-lifting gypsy lass from earlier. This turns out to be the gypsy weakness (take note: if ever cursed by a gypsy, kidnap the sluttiest person in the camp. It's a sure-fire cure.). So anyway, with the kidnapping of the gypsy slut, the leader finally agrees to meet with Billy and take the curse off. But there's a catch! A curse can't be removed, only transferred. So Gypsy King transfers the curse to a strawberry pie (?) by pouring some of Billy's blood into it (??? Also, ew.). He then says that whoever eats the cursed bloodpie will die a horrible death, and if Billy had any dignity he'd eat the pie himself.

"Nope! That is one pie I WON'T EAT!"

Billy's decides to feed the pie to his wife instead. Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you, Billy thinks his wife is boning the town doctor, so he's mad at her. So, he goes home and leaves the pie out on the counter for her to eat and then goes to bed. He awakes the next morning, giddy as a child about to see what Santa left him ("Please let it be my dead wife, Santa!"). He bounds downstairs, only to discover that HIS DAUGHTER ATE THE PIE! Bam! Whole family dead from a cursed bloodpie! In your face!

So naturally, Billy's super bummed about poisoning his daughter with a cursed gypsy pie, so he decides to eat it too. But just as he's about to take his first bite, the doorbell rings! It's the home-wrecking doctor! So, seeing a perfect opportunity, Billy invites Dr. Wifefucker in to share a slice of pie. DEATH BY GYPSYPIE! The end!

So, that's Thinner. It's, perhaps, the most ridiculous movie ever to have been made. First of all, the premise is not remotely scary, like, at all. How is a man rapidly losing weight considered a horror movie? Even at his thinnest, Billy looks, at worst, like Michael Stipe. You're just like "Aw, yeah, he's pretty thin. That's not good." Also, the makeup in this movie is awesomely terrible. Billy's fatty suit in the beginning of the movie is the best to ever grace celluloid, and the hag makeup on the gypsy king looks like a cut-rate version of Billy Crystal's in The Princess Bride.

Whoever greenlit this masterpiece deserves a medal. Hat's off to you! So yeah, if you haven't seen this movie, you should. In fact, I suggest you make it a drinking game, and do a shot every time someone says "gypsy curse." You will die of alcohol poisoning 30 minutes in. Cheers!

Screenshots via the amazing Movie Screenshots