Joe, we’ll need photos of all our Christmas presents so we can put them on eBay tomorrow
And I thought General Hospital could milk a storyline.
A few years ago, the 12 hour Hostage Crisis at the MetroCourt Hotel dragged on, in a lower budgeted Port Charles does Jack Bauer’s 24 backwards-time-line kind of way, for over a week. A new television record! But good luck holding onto that title through 2011, GH. Fun while it lasted. Take off that tiara, because The Real Housewives of New Jersey just stretched the Baby Jesus’s Birthday into a 3 week Bravopalooza.
What started out last month as some over the top planning sessions to see who could outdo who with cold cut platters and red sauce, rounded the corner on week #3 still full steam ahead. This hot mess New Jersey Metro, which from now to Infinity and Beyond I will always refer to as The Polar Excess, could level any other train that dares cross its tracks, warning signal or no warning signal. Out of my way, Bitches.
Having survived the $50K Holiday buffet at Melissa and Joe’s, the Housewives had to immediately run home, change outfits without smudging their make up or flattening their Jersey poofs, and get to the Christmas Eve drama. Their DVRs must be set for the month, because no one is gonna be home soon.
First up, Teresa and the other Joe had their usual Christmas Eve get together with 14 or so additional Italians named Joe and their wives. Teresa is still not feeling the love from her brother Joe. (Man, it must be so easy to buy monogrammed sweaters in Little Italy.)
After duking it out last week over who was dressed more inappropriately, Teresa and Melissa spent most of the evening looking for their children. I swear that if Teresa spent half as much time writing mortgage checks as she does looking for her daughters Sonia, Slavonia and Macedonia, (whatev…I’m bad with names) she might not have to be hailing a cab to bankruptcy court next Monday. Melissa’s son has still not gotten to the age, whatever that is in Italian families, where he is allowed on furniture, so he spent another episode rolling on the floor or getting spun around in his little handle carrier.
With his little hat on, he looked exactly like a Burberry version of those stuffed fabric snake things that you put at the bottom of the door crack to keep the draft out in the winter. Melissa should rent him out during the cold weather. I’m thinking he’d be the only Gorga with a real job.
Caroline, who is experiencing an obsessive, enabling kind of Empty Nest Syndrome though all her children are within a two mile radius of the Brownstone Restaurant, had designed special presents for everyone in her family. They all received matching GPS tracking devices, disguised as diamond and onyx bracelets, so she could always find them with her Blackberry home screen. It was a little creepy, all in the name of Family.
I’m assuming that Bravo nixed her idea of shaving the sides of their heads and implanting Star Trek Borg brain chips, so they came to some kind of contract agreement and settled for lousy Tiffany boxes. We Are The Manzos. You Will Be Assimilated.
Cousin Kathy got her 15 in again this week. Props to Bravo for working so hard to get a storyline out of her. Caroline could learn a few things about keeping the Family close by from this girl. Not only do her kids have to sign multiple Cult of Kathy contracts for drinking and doing the nasty, they had to write another thesis on Mom’s Christmas present before it was handed over. Turns out the two kids pooled their allowances together to buy her a laptop to start her own Food Network baking catering something something. I lost track of exactly what was going on somewhere around the time when I did the math and realized that some snot nosed little 14 year old had enough allowance money for a laptop. I know, right? How many lawns do you think that boy actually mowed in his Ralph Lauren polo with the popped collar? Seriously?
Kathy’s sister got her weekly episode walk-on, this time dressed as a some kind of East Village chef. I’m starting to think she won an online trivia prize contest and gets to be on the show each week.
But the highlight had to be Christmas morning at Teresa’s. After rambling on for weeks about how they are cutting back on presents in order to give Catalonia and her sisters a better grip on the true meaning of the holidays, which after all the build up turned out to just be “Mom does all the work, not Santa,” Teresa and one of the Joes woke up to a mansion full of kiddy sized Mercedes and anything else they could get on their Amex before Monday. Joe is an even bigger Dbag than OK Magazine lets on. He seems to pride himself on being able to function in a constant waking fog, similar to when you are just coming out of the anesthesia after surgery, but really shouldn’t be left alone yet.
After barely getting his substantial girth out of bed, Joe spread his junk out over the couch like a bad Playgirl photo shoot. That is, if Playgirl actually took photos of greasy weightlifters wearing temporary Ed Hardy tattoos and actually had an Annual Past Their Prime Issue.
Teresa ran around taking pictures in total denial. Patagonia was throwing up in one of the 7 bathrooms. The other girls sat wrapped in more hair bows and tulle, again, than any lead Swan Lake ballerina while Teresa reloaded another 4G card in the camera and went on like nothing was wrong with her life. Holidays are great, because the banks aren’t open.
The whole thing was just one big gift to me. Topped with a bigger bow than Glaucoma and her sisters could ever stick on their melons. And I’m proud to re-gift it right away.
My gift to you. The Real Housewives of New Jersey.
I cut the tag off already, so we are stuck with this one.
