The news that broke this week was staggering. And no, I’m not talking about how we learned Matt Lauer’s desk at NBC was outfitted with a nifty little locking device so just a mere flick of his wrist was all that was needed to keep young women from fleeing out the door and away from what should have been a safe work environment. I’m also not talking about how the President tweeted some hideously racist videos that earned him the immediate praise of David Duke. All of that was surprising – well, sort of – but the really stunning news came from MTV when they revealed the original stars of Jersey Shore would soon be crawling back to our airwaves in a brand new series wherein they’ll once again reside inside of a house together…only this time, THEY ARE BRINGING THEIR CHILDREN.
If some small (and definitely misguided) part of you believed Kortni couldn’t possibly come off any worse than she appeared in the premiere episode of MTV Floribama Shore when she pissed all over her roommate’s bed: wait. She begins episode two by crawling out of Jeremiah’s room dressed in a giraffe onesie, her hair in a rumpled ball on top of her still spinning head. She sort of looks like something a hungover giraffe recently coughed up – and if you think I’m being rude by saying such a thing, you should know Gus greets her by announcing, “You look like shit.” It’s okay, though. Kortni doesn’t remember getting into Jeremiah’s bed in the first place, so chances are she won’t recall this kitchen insult either. And there’s probably an excellent chance she won’t remember most of what transpires this entire season, but at least there will be a ton of footage to eventually provide her with both receipts and lifelong regrets.
There are a few television shows I’ve never seen and I have pretty decent reasons for missing them. After all, I have important things to do in my life, like go to work or giggle at people heaving Keurig machines off balconies; I don’t have time to watch everything. But when I realize I’ve skipped a show that made an indelible mark on the cultural landscape – whether that mark was positive or positively tragic – I can’t help but feel left out. That’s how I felt back in the day when I was the only person on the planet who never watched Jersey Shore. That’s right…I have never seen a full episode of Jersey Shore. I turned it on once and saw a girl who looked weirdly like a foot get punched in the face by some guy in a bar and the visual was so staggeringly unpleasant that I never tuned back in. But even though I didn’t watch the show, I do still live in this world. The cast became so infamous that I eventually knew all their names and which product each endorsed. I hear about them still. In fact, one of them just got the cast together to celebrate both her wedding and her brand new face! I guess what I’m trying to say here is twofold:
As someone who has always believed heartily in the concept of evolution – you know, since I value shit like logic and I wasn’t raised a Duggar – I find it fascinating sometimes to trace how one moment in life can directly lead to the next. It’s not always possible, of course. The passage of time and the slugging down of wine can blur those once clear linear patterns, but one thing I know for sure is that writing recaps of reality shows caused one of my sweet readers to recommend to Kate Casey that I appear on her podcast. For those of you who have yet to hear of Casey, she’s a phenomenal interviewer who manages to snag every single reality participant you have ever heard of (including those, like Spencer Pratt, you are trying desperately to forget) and then she pounds them with direct and probing questions People and US Weekly would never even think about asking because Casey’s legitimate inquiries in no way involve how Kylie Jenner’s lips might change due to her unplanned pregnancy.
The very first time we spoke long into the night, I dragged a blanket into my closet and huddled beneath it next to the pile of shoes from J. Crew, the last shoes I ever owned that didn’t have a heel. I wore skirts mostly, even back then, and the bottoms of the longer ones grazed my arms as our conversation became animated, as I gestured with my hands to make a point. While my earliest anxiety-ridden phone calls with short middle school boys had taken place with me shutting myself in the downstairs bathroom for privacy, the long telephone cord stretching taut from the kitchen as I stared at my face in the mirror – I’d hope beyond hope that I would instantly become prettier by the attention I was getting, that the impact of a boy calling would be similar to the effect of the sun changing the color of my skin – that time, the time with him, was the only time in my life that I took refuge inside of my bedroom closet.
In the densest layers of the muck-and-scum-filled reality television ecosystem, a few Bravolebrities have risen like deranged phoenixes to the tippy top. They bob there proudly upon the fungus-ridden slimy surface and take comfort in the asinine belief that the only thing that matters is that strangers know their name. The creatures currently crowding that swamp include:
I was just fourteen when Twin Peaks premiered on ABC, but I see that show – my exposure to it and my eventual obsession with it – as defining. It was prime-time event television so profoundly scarring that it beckoned me to forevermore embark on journeys down symbolic narrow hallways that were too long and lined with too many doorways and crowded by the thickest of shadows that could still barely hide my increasing fondness for the wicked.
The earliest commercials for the show seemed longer than what was typical for TV back then, and I thought about that a bunch of years later when I heard Paramount was allowing Forrest Gump commercials to stretch for more seconds than was customary in order for the scope of the film to be properly communicated. Had ABC given that same approval for Twin Peaks, a show so surreal that selling it as a straight murder mystery could almost be considered an act of fraud? I have no idea, but what I do know is how strongly those initial images hooked me in, how I became a fan before even a second of the actual show flickered into the darkness of my bedroom. I became someone willing to accept stories about characters who wandered around town holding logs like babies, characters who danced away their sanities in a Red Room with moves so fitful and jerky, it was as though the show had veered briefly into the world of German Expressionism but nobody even thought of whispering this news to the viewer.
The scent of peppermint now wafts through every single room of my house. Courtesy of a essential oil diffuser I bought late one night on Amazon, the steady stream of minty wonder has grown so enticing that yesterday I contemplated licking the wall – you know, snozzberry-style.
Everyone’s got an opinion about my new aromatherapy habit:
You know, peppermint is an energizing scent, said the person I call My Most Informed Friend because she knows pretty much everything about anything. This pumping of peppermint could explain why you don’t sleep so well.
Your house smells like a spa, one guy told me – and I had to inform him the only massage that would be forthcoming was the one he was about to give me.
I’m not sure I can ever go back. Logic and emotion have finally teamed up – they’ve formed a no-nonsense coalition in the anti-bullshit portion of my soul – and together they've managed to pry open my eyes and pound the message into even the farthest recesses of my brain, a message that assures me that my decision to not write weekly recaps of The Real Housewives of New York City this season was the wisest choice I’ve made since I’ve gone full-Paleo.
I took my puppy for a walk yesterday as the dusk fell behind cherry trees so swollen with blossoms that the outside of my home currently looks like a land formed out of fragrant pink cotton candy. There are times when the air manages to feel almost mystical, and I looked up at the flowers through the squint of the last sun flares of the day and I could hear the tinkling bells of the ice cream man in the distance and I said to the person walking beside me – the one holding the leash – Tonight smells like camp.
A friend at work recently told me that she’s vacillating about sending her young son to camp for three days a week this coming summer. She feels guilty about it, about not spending every single minute she can with her child. My guess is all the horseshit people post constantly on Facebook and Instagram has finally succeeded in driving her from somewhat-mad to completely-over-the-edge mad in the manner that too much exposure to sanitized social media is wont to do. You know the posts I’m talking about, right? You’ve seen all those parents writing epic poems about how they cannot fathom why anyone could possibly complain during a snow-day because what could be more blissful than an entire day spent stuck indoors with children? I see those posts and I giggle and my empty uterus does also. My very best friend – a mother of two children who are absolutely beautiful and never ever shut the fuck up, not even while they’re sleeping because they’ve been blessed with chatty night terrors – called my house during the last snow-day of the winter because she needed to talk to someone whose ass she never once had to diaper, not even on a twenty-first birthday that was basically sponsored by whichever maniac came up with a drink called The Cement Mixer. I picked up the phone and she didn’t even say hello. Instead, through clenched teeth, she spoke this sentence: “I hate snow-days even more than I hate my bitch of a grandmother,” and I laughed and I could hear her children arguing over a broken plastic truck in the background and I kindly asked if I could call her back after my mid-morning nap. “You’re an asshole,” she responded and I laughed again.
While I’ve never once heard my work friend call her children “monsters” the way my best friend does triweekly, I could still see that the Parent Propaganda she’s being exposed to on a daily basis is sinking in deep and fast. I tried to explain that all those people who boast that the finest twenty-four hours are twenty-four hours spent in the company of tiny beings who pull on you to open up yet another package of Goldfish crackers and never allow you to pee with the door closed are most likely the same people who scream into a pillow during hour twenty-five of that never-ending pretend-perfect day. I told her the people who post pictures of silent snuggly children also have pictures of those same kids mid-tantrum, their mouths wide open while they scream bloody murder because they were informed they can’t keep the ripped balloon they found in the Target parking lot forever, but nobody posts the negative stuff and what that means is she’s not getting the whole story from anyone and therefore she shouldn’t allow these mommy phantoms to judge anything she does with her child, including the way he spends his summers. Besides, I explained, being at camp is amazing! Who doesn’t want to be in a place where a bugle moves you from activity to activity and you’re constantly surrounded by rope so you’re always prepared for a throwdown round of Tug of War? Camp is not a punishment; it’s eight weeks of fucking joy that comes with a parting gift of rope burn!
