Well, I admit it: I was wrong about Heather. She’s not so bad. There, I said it! How many Yummie Tummie tanks do I win?
I knew that my hatred of Heather was mostly superficial — her slang is abhorrent and, to be completely honest (though I’m not proud to admit this), I’m not crazy about her face. But last night’s episode of The Real Housewives of New York City proved what some commenters have been trying to convince me for weeks: Heather ain’t terrible. Not relatively. And what relatives!
Last night was mostly about Heather dealing with Sonja, who decided she wanted a new logo for her toaster/catering/burlesque business, Sonja in the City. So, a couple of episodes ago, Sonja recruited Heather and her professional-seeming, put-upon straight person graphic design friend to help her out. Heather and her put-upon straight person arrived at Sonja’s to find Ramona there, wearing a shiny purple shirt and a look of pure disdain, as if she were Prince just then discovering that not all people view the world as very sexy.
Then, things got annoying. You see, Heather and the P-U SP were under the impression that Sonja had agreed on the new logo they pitched her, but it turns out Sonja hated it because the J in her name was neither playful nor flashy enough for her liking. Meanwhile, Ramona, whose very presence there was an affront to Heather’s dislike of being professionally ambushed, spent a lot of time talking about how she liked the first figure in the piece of paper that had a lot of figures drawn on it and otherwise being obnoxious. Then, the P-U SP presented an idea where a hunk would be holding a toaster oven, only it was a microwave in his mock-up, and that idea seemed good enough, except to Ramona, who called the torso a “Frickin’ Naked Guy” whom, she surmised, might distract the Abercrombie & Fitch crowd from buying her friend’s three-rack toaster. Whatever. Soon Ramona got a call on her BlackBerry and disappeared in a cloud of horrible jewelry.
That very cloud of awful baubles settled around her neck for the next scene, which took place at Le Cirque, the site of the no-food lunch between Bethenny and Jill from what seems like ages ago. Remember? They ordered water and Jill tried her best to apologize, but it was too late? Good times, great oldies. Anyway, last night, Le Cirque hosted Ramona — who wore a necklace I’m confident I once flushed a miniature version of after deciding my Barbie “wasn’t that kind of girl.” She and Mario had a dinner there because they wanted to serve a bottle of expensive wine to everybody on the show besides Heather. Ramona said something about how she wanted to prove to people she knew stuff about wine, but really it just seemed like an excuse to throw money at fancily plated asparagus in front of rolling cameras.
The two things that happened at that dinner were that LuAnn did that hand-over-the-mouth “Indian” thing, which embarrassed Carole, who was in a kicky updo, and Mario confronted Jacques about the “Let’s fool Ramona with her own piss — I mean wine” trick. In the first instance, LuAnn self-identified her heritage as “American Indian,” which, Carole pointed out from beneath a smoky eye was politically incorrect, to which LuAnn responded by being even more offensive, with the aforementioned stunt. Frankly, I’m not really into either side of this fiasco, being as I hate it when people correct others about what is or isn’t the correct thing to say or what you can or can’t joke about, especially when you’re technically part of the ethnic group about which you’re joking — even marginally. On the other hand, I also hate it when people are gross racists.
After the Native American Incident, Mario took advantage of the buzz he was getting off that pricy joy juice and told Jacques that he had really screwed the pooch when he and Lu-Lu pulled the wool over his ball and chain’s peepers. He didn’t say it in those terms exactly, but he might as well have, based on Jacques’s non-reaction. Do you think he fully understood Mario? Or was he just like, “Oh, look — a talking dog! How funny.” And truly, how often does Mario take a stand on anything? This was sort of a half-hearted (out of character, perhaps?) display of braggadocio on his part, right? And meanwhile, LuAnn and Sonja had scuttled off to the loo, LuAnn taking the opportunity to point at one of her giant Aztec earrings to Carole in the process, just to remind her once more that she is descended from one of the QVC tribes.
Then Aviva finally introduced us, the RHONYC-viewing audience, to her ex-husband Harry, the man whose penis at least three cast members have seen. What did you guys think of the big Harry Dubin reveal? Was it a letdown after all that buildup, like when we met Wallace Shawn’s character in Manhattan? Or did you feel a vague stirring in your nethers after you saw Harry from the non-bald spot side of his body? I must admit, dear readers — I was intrigued when I was introduced to Harry! And then I met Poopy the Pig.
Can we talk about Poopy the Pig for a while? How about for the rest of our lives, over and over again until we die? What if I got a tattoo of Poopy the Pig? What if I commissioned a statue of his likeness after giving a large grant to a respected learning institution? What if I AM Poopy the Pig and “Julie Klausner” is just a pseudonym? What if we’re all Poopy the Pigs and life is just a gigantic illusion? Who is Poopy the Pig?
Well, for starters, Poopy the Pig is a character that Harry Dubin came up with after he farted on his money one day. Poopy the Pig is a cartoon pig. He moves his butt around. And Poopy the Pig is voiced by an actor forced to wear a T-shirt bearing the likeness of the pig he gives life to, even while his own, irrelevant face is obscured. Nobody is sure what Poopy the Pig sells or whether he is the star of a TV show Harry is looking to pitch, but the fact remains that Poopy the Pig exists, and lots of other things do not. Universal health care, the cure for cancer — arguably, God.
A few more things about Poopy the Pig before I move on. I’m joking! I’ll get back to him soon/later/forever.
After the indelible Poopy/Harry excursion, LuAnn met up with Sonja to confide in her that she wants to have a baby with Jacques. And Sonja, either to her credit or because she is an emotional tumbleweed, didn’t blink an eyelash. She asked LuAnn if she wanted a baby to keep Jacques, and LuAnn was like “yes!” But to be fair, I think LuAnn wants a baby because babies are squishy and less obnoxious than teenagers, and also to feel young.
Then we followed Sonja to another meeting with Heather and her P-U SP, and you knew that Heather was serious about the meeting because she wore her Serious Glasses to it.
The Countess was there as well, though I’m not exactly sure why. She was wearing a necklace made out of seven hundred bison teeth.
This became a stressful scene during which Heather and the P-U SP confronted Sonja about bringing Ramona to their last meeting. Then Heather tried to quit, but Sonja wouldn’t have any of it. And there was some talk of Sonja thinking she was Heather’s client, when in fact Heather was really doing her a favor, giving her advice for free, then debating after the fact. Though in Sonja’s (lame) defense, she did give Heather feedback — it was just a meeting too late. And finally, after LuAnn came over to the conference table for no good reason, the meeting wound down because everybody was exhausted. Heather and her P-U SP decided to give the baby her bottle — let Sonja take some hunk-less photos with her toaster after they did a photo shoot with her, a hunk, and her toaster. Then they all split up to take benzos and cabs home.
Oh, and there was also an interstitial where we learned Carole takes her coffee with two Splendazzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Finally, we followed LuAnn to a Life & Style party/coat drive, where it was Christmas, and people wore deeley-boppers on their heads and the atmosphere of the air was so festive, you just expected Poopy the Pig to appear at any moment and undulate his buttocks to and fro, right after he donated his Poopy coat to the poor.
LuAnn asked Ramona about Mario confronting Jacques at dinner, and Ramona gave the Countess a veiled explanation of her reaction to the Pinot Trick, because Ramona can only be vague about feelings that are not “anger.” She said that originally she wasn’t offended, but then she learned that she should be offended, so now she’s not NOT offended, and finally she just kept saying she was going to “take the fifth” over and over again when LuAnn asked if she was still mad. It’s a real shame that these women can’t communicate or have appropriate feelings in response to things, because if they could, Ramona could have said “That thing you did was mean” and LuAnn could have said “I’m sorry.” But as we’ve discussed, Ramona would rather wear something that isn’t shiny and blue than say to anybody “You hurt my feelings,” because it transmits vulnerability, and LuAnn — well, I guess LuAnn is just stubborn and bananas. Why wouldn’t she just apologize? Good Lord, these women are absolutely so fucking opaque and feline. You know who is neither? Poopy the Pig. He says whatever’s on his mind!
After that non-frontation, Sonja, Carole, and Aviva arrived, tailing a few Mohawked schmucks that claimed to be the band LuAnn hired for the event. They looked like Patti Stanger’s new bonehead assistants — I’ll call them the Mighty Mighty Assholes.
Once those ska-diots were inside, Sonja took it upon herself to get as drunk as possible and start throwing words at Jacques about how Jews want babies. And again, here Heather behaved nobly — listening to Sonja, not making fun of her, and trying as hard as she could to be helpful to the hot mess her “client” had become. Sonja’s point, made to a man whose in-question grasp of English has only served him well, was that Jacques should marry LuAnn already. And her tipsy insistence was perplexing to the ladies and spouses who sat on either side of Drunk Sonja. Was Sonja going to reveal how LuAnn had told her she wanted a baby? Was she about to reveal the reason, which LuAnn had told her in confidence? Was she going to puke on her own tits?
Everything was sort of suspenseful until Sonja burst into tears and everybody realized — oh — Sonja was just upset because she was thinking about herself. And that was really sad. Technically, what Sonja said at the table was something like “I love LuAnn and I don’t want her to be hurt like I was” but what she really meant was “I am so lonely and it’s Christmas.”
Somehow, after that, the other Housewives managed to pile Sonja onto the stage for the Jingle Bells finale, and it’s a good thing they did because how else would they get the exact sound of “dying alley cats with sirens in the background, underwater AND somehow on fire” without Ms. Morgan’s mezzo soprano? Christ on a Cracker, those chickens made some lousy singing sounds with their noise-holes, Y/Y?
And finally, that dumb band took the stage, tuba and all, and the lead singer of the Mighty Mighty Assholes sang into a megaphone, INTO A MICROPHONE, “I want to fuck you in the ass.”
It was pretty funny. Guests reacted accordingly — Ramona gasped; LuAnn flailed her arms before requesting “Christmas Songs Only!”; dowagers fainted; members of the landed gentry popped their monacles out of their eye sockets in disgust; and, of course, Cool Carole liked it. She’s cool, you know. I’M NOT SURE YOU’VE HEARD.
And not to dwell, but I have a feeling I know of somebody else who would have liked that band. Somebody who wasn’t invited to the party but would have had a good time at it if he were there. Somebody with cool dance moves and a rude attitude. Somebody who really understands the meaning of holiday spirit. What’s that? His name? One Poopy the Pig.
Merry Christmas, everybody! Please leave your comments below and be sure to tell me which moments or details I missed in my recap. xo