No. For the millionth time, it’s not “Team Edward or Jacob.” It’s “Team Jacquie.” Were you even listening to me?
And I didn’t text anything bad. Just a sideways kitty face and some LOLs, so back that thing up outta my face.
You know that every time Nora hears a cell phone beep she thinks it’s an Alien Mothership. You’re just being mean.
Seriously. Do we have enough pink sequins left to spell out “Team Shut The F*** Up, Bitch?”
I find that if you Biff ‘em in the Gob with a rolling pin, they shut up and go back to their crafting. It’s a Goombalicious good thing.
Hey, Baby.
Who’s yer Daddy?
Trust me on this one. Those are words that you never want to hear spoken by any male cast member from The Jersey Shore, or by anyone employed at a maximum security penitentiary. Both will send you back home feeling kind of dirty and bummed out.
This week Mob Wives: Chicago was all about Family Issues.
Daddy Issues. Mommy Issues. Brothers & Sisters who dump dead bodies off at a cemetery Issues. The usual.
And the list went on and on. Some of the issues were seriously raw and touching.
Some…not so much. But regardless of the level of sensitivity, they were all handled in perfect ChiTown style.
First off, we headed to the local Bead & Sequin Emporium for something shiny.
As you will recall, Leah‘s Mom Jacquie had been diagnosed with cancer and just recently begun treatment. So sad for anyone…no jokes allowed in this paragraph. The girls were all going to participate in a Walk to raise awareness, so Leah and Christina were scooping up sparkly stuff to BeDazzle their pink team tee shirts. Some of the most touching moments in any of those Walks are always the homemade signs and tee shirts proudly remembering both those who survived and those who lost their fight, so I was really hoping they would max out that credit card on Bling.
We love Jacquie and her sassy Golden Girls attitude. If the rigatoni sauce ain’t spicy enough, just have Mom stick her finger in the pot and you won’t be able to feel your tongue in the morning.
And you don’t need to waste your time on a DNA test to prove she is Leah’s Mom, either. All Jacquie has to do is open her mouth and you have proof that would probably hold up in any court. So if anyone deserves a tee shirt that can be seen from Space, it’s Jacquie. You go, girl.
Christina was going to host the Crafting Night at her house, so she and Leah needed to make sure there were plenty of supplies on hand, knowing full well that if all the girls were going to get together under one roof it was inevitable that at least one bowl of Swarovski crystals would get hurled at someone’s head, and those things are impossible to find in the carpet.
Leah had also decided to invite Nora to participate in the Walk and zazzle up her own tee shirt, more likely out of pity than with the outside chance that she would somehow suddenly become the life of the party. Ever since Renee unleashed all that ‘Roid Rage Barbie on Nora’s face a few weeks back, Leah had been straddling the fence on the whole issue. She doesn’t support most of Nora’s decisions, or even support Nora opening her mouth if at possible, but she also doesn’t support half of Chicago ganging up on a woman-child who still thinks hair extensions come from unicorn tails.
While Leah and Christina stocked up on enough epoxy and cubic zirconium to easily enter Nora into any Toddlers & Tiaras Glitz Pageant (…And how amazing would that episode be? Ladies and Gentlemen–Noraaaaaaaaah. She likes spinning in circles and seeing own her reflection in soup spoons… ) there was a different kind of family drama brewing down the road.
Renee’s daughter Giana was getting ready to go visit her incarcerated Dad and it was giving her some anxiety. And we all know that nothing takes the edge off a stressful day like really soaping up your puppy.
(Whoa. I know what you probably thought I just said since you were skimming this post. Slow down and read the thing. You might like it, and not jump to such racy conclusions.)
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I just don’t get these Take Your Dog To The DogWash Store places. We’ve all seen Renee’s house. She has a sink. And a tub, I assume, to wash off all that lavender eye makeup and body bronzer. The dog is a whole 5 pounds if that…even a quick toilet dunk would hose him off. Granted, as we learned later on in the episode he can dump on a dining room floor like a St. Bernard that’s been holding it in all week, but he’s pretty much a big purse puppy.
But whatever. Giana took dirty tiny Blue to the DogWash Store, accompanied by that kid Marco who we all assume by now is her token Whacky Sidekick, styling in his skinny jeans and Club Kid haircut. Marco is nice enough, but he’s the one who always gets really pink cheeks when he’s flustered or faced with awkward situations.
So you can imagine what the combination of Giana’s impending prison visit did to his complexion when compounded by having to soap up some Blue nibblies.
(I couldn’t say it. I was dying to say it, but it was just too easy. You fill in the blank….Blue ____s …and let the hilarity ensue.)
The more Giana thought about the last few years, and the more she scrubbed on those little blue things, the more she realized that some pieces of Renee’s Daddy stories weren’t making sense.
Renee had always explained to Giana that her father never came to see her when she was young, and yet Dad’s story was a completely different version. He claimed that Renee kept him from seeing his daughter. Hmmm.
Giana just shook her head, Blue shook off his suds, and they all went home to pack for their trip.
Meanwhile, now that Nora had finally sorted out the phonetic differences between Resume and Exhume, she met with a lawyer to figure out her next step in resuming the exhuming of her Dad’s body.
As Lawyer Man Michael nervously spun his pen between his hands like an Amish furniture maker turning a full set of table legs, Nora rambled on about Frank “The German’s” ORTopsy and what steps needed to be taken in order that she could finally have his body dug up and then tossed back into the ocean.
Hopefully there will be a cremation somewhere in between those two scenarios, because otherwise I can just see him floating back up on shore and we’d have to go through this all over again next season.
After Michael had spun his pen into a toothpick, he sent Nora on her way to meet with a Funeral Director.
Then he changed the locks on his office door.
Since we all know that Mob Wives need to eat, next it was time for some munchies.
Pia had been invited to meet up with Leah and Golden Girl Jacquie. Pia had never met Leah’s Mom, and since her own Mom was a Survivor, Leah thought it would be good for the three of them to get together to hear Pia’s insights on how to deal with what they were facing.
The scene itself was pretty heartfelt, interspersed with just enough Leah (bleeps) to keep it from being a Lifetime Movie.
Wearing basically the same over-sized spherical earrings that Chinese people hammer gong right before they go to war or do a Dragon Dance, Leah introduced the two women and then just sat back and watched the show. It turned out that Pia’s Mom and Leah’s Mom knew a lot of the same Mob people in the neighborhood from back in the day, so the whole lunch turned into what I can only imagine it sounds like when two crazy women hang out of their windows in Little Italy flashing gang signs.
“I was with the Goombalotto family. My Mom was with the Giambalugas. OMG you know Tony Pepperoni, too? And Tony Bologna? And how sexy was he when he chewed gum?”
I need to watch that scene again it was so endearing. Jacquie’s totally gonna beat this thing, because the world needs more women hanging out the window. Capisce?
Since Pia did so much talking at lunch, she was still hungry so she and daughter Bella hit up the yogurt shop.
Now that Mom’s stripping days were almost behind her, they needed to figure out their next step. Mom wanted to make sure that Bella knew she would be taken care of and they would be just fine, even if they had to cut corners for awhile.
Bella just wanted to know how they were gonna buy stuff. Period. From the mouths of babes. Gotta love 15 year old kids. Before you unstraddle that pole, you better make sure I still have cable in my bedroom. Facebook doesn’t update itself, lady.
But the kids actually get all the props this week. Both Bella and Giana proved that they are pretty wise beyond their years, and extremely level headed for being raised in what some would consider a less than stable environment. There seemed to be some underlying hurt that was undeniable, but they both seemed to have their shizzle together, all things considered.
As Giana, Marco and his skinny jeans all headed to Terre Haute for some quality prison time, Leah and Christina took it in a lighter direction and went for some ice cream.
Beyond just reaping the calcium benefits of Fudge Ripple, Christina also needed to fill Leah in on something that had gone down between herself and Renee and Pia. Turned out that the other night she had met up with the girls, and somewhere along the line Pia had dragged Christina out of the room just long enough for Renee to text Nora.
From Christina’s phone. Oh. Hell. No. She. Din’t.
Before we go any further, it should be noted that Leah has THE best Oprah Face when it comes to listening to all this nonsense. For realz. She squints and tilts and leans like she’s talking to the freakin’ President every time one of the women barfs up their drama.
Love. Her.
Anyway.
Even though Renee had brushed the whole thing off as a joke, Christina had begun to feel that Pia and Renee are somehow in cahoots as they say in ChiTown, and she wasn’t liking it.
She promised to stay cool when they all got together for Craft Night, much the same way I promised to stop bringing up the whole Pia and the Kia incident every week.
…and you know how well that worked out, as witnessed by some delightfully misspelled hate mail stuck sideways up my inbox. Conjunction Junction, What’s Your Function?
Schoolhouse Rock. Google it, kids.
So the only way to see if Christina would keep her promise was to get right to the arts & crafts. Bring on the BeDazzling.
Nora didn’t show up to play because she didn’t trust Renee with a hot glue gun, but everyone else was there and…try to act surprised…before they even got the word “TEAM” stuck to the front of their tee shirts Renee popped her cork.
Christina felt violated by anyone touching her phone. Renee thought it was a hoot. Rinse & Repeat. About 32 times.
The whole thing turned into another round of screaming and (bleeping) and accusing and yelling and basically not glueing anything to tee shirts.
Raise your BeDazzler if you didn’t see that one coming. Anyone?
Finally, Leah Winfrey got up and slapped everyone back into Sweat Shop mode and the tee shirt assembly line was back in bidnezz.
The Daddy issues hung on right up until the very end as Nora met up with a second Funeral Director who reminded her that Frank had been in the ground for quite some time now, and might not be in perfect factory condition if they ever get approval to open the lid again. That one didn’t really seem to register with Schweihs Spice, even though she vowed to be there for the unveiling even if she was too medicated to operate heavy machinery.
Yeah. Until all the other family members sign on the dotted line, the jury is still out on this one.
Just remember Geraldo Rivera‘s face when they finally opened the Titanic safe.
Since maximum security prisons are not big on VH1 cameras in the commissary, we didn’t actually get to witness Giana’s reunion with her Dad. We did get a quick glimpse of his mug shot, which kind of looked like he could have been the Dad of one of those One Direction dudes, and a quick recap of his murder rap.
Convicted murderer or not, he was still Giana’s Dad, and she loved him and missed him.
Tag. You’re it. I’m not even going near that one.
Giana cried. And then cried some more. She also began to believe her Dad’s side of the story and not what Renee had led her to believe her entire life. It might be time to confront her Mom.
Yeah. Renee.
That realization made Marco’s cheeks as pink as those BeDazzled tee shirts.
Get well soon, Jacquie.
