And then she wrote “I’m going to live with Dad, and white iPhones are for Eurotrash and the Shahs of Sunset.”
Somewhere around the second bottle of Percocet was when I started hanging out with Manti Te’o and his nice girlfriend.
Whoa. Whoa. Slow down there with all the indictments, Slick. I’m running out of ink here.
Trust me. Those things were so small I couldn’t have shot ‘em with a (bleepin’) laser scope.
I’m dying. I can’t live my life surrounded by this Douche Bag Darkness anymore.
You can’t change the Devil, Renee. Come with us and you’ll live forever.
Hope you packed your overnight bag and had the Staten Island Post Office hold all your mail, because the Mob Wives were putting on some frequent flyer miles this week.
With Buffalo, Pennsylvania and Florida all mapped out on their AAA TripTicks, Renee and Drita crisscrossed the East Coast while the remaining Wives stayed home and ate their way around the city. It was an adventure no matter where you turned.
Think Dora the Explorer: Gangland Edition.
The journey started out locally as Drita, Carla and Big Ang hit the downtown nail salon scene for a Buff & Bitch session, where Ang got to show off her new temporary curls and Carla got to slam Renee a few more times.
Despite going through the hassle of changing the house locks and installing a new state of the art security system to replace the previous state of the art system that had worked so very well, Renee had decided that she could no longer live in an environment that reeked of RatSnitch and Eau de Home Invasion and recently moved into new digs just around the corner from Carla.
You heard me. Out of the entire city, Renee ended up with a crib in the same ‘hood, and Carla was not down with the vibe, yo.
As the nail techs all pretended to not speak English while actually memorizing every word of the gossip for later that evening (…”she in salon today, and they huuuuuge“…) the Wives discussed Renee’s decision to enter rehab and compared notes on other famous rehabbers.
Big Ang’s sanitation worker husband Neil had done 28 days for drinking beer, while her son AJ was currently 5 months into his spin-off series court ordered cleanse. Drita and Ang fully supported Renee’s decision to leave for Florida, while Carla was just happy to have her out of the neighborhood for a month.
Next summer’s block party should be a hoot.
While Carla was slapping on a few coats of sparkle polish and top coat, husband Joe Ferragamo was across town getting ready to slap her with some not so sparkly divorce papers.
Now that he was out of prison and had somehow miraculously found enough cash for a new three story home, Joe was looking to finally cut himself loose from Carla and begin his life with girlfriend Raquel. And the easiest way to do that was to meet up with his lawyer at some diner, because public places are always the best spots to draw up legal documents and get waffles.
As long as we’re talking shop, I’m just going to go on legal record and say that I hope Lawyer Dude’s cases are tighter than his tie knots, because that was the loosest, sloppiest example of a Half Windsor I’ve ever seen. It was like that tie you had in high school that you only wore once a year to the prom that you kept hanging in your closet, already looped up and ready to go, and just pulled it over your head because you’d never remember how to tie it a second time. It was like that. But for grown ups.
And on top of his bad tie, the poor guy’s food was getting cold as he scrambled to write down every indictment that the courts had thrown at Joe over the years. Seems as though Joe got “pinched” quite a few times, and Lawyer Dude was having a hard time keeping up with the checklist. This whole process could take awhile.
They called it “unfinished business.” Check, please.
Next, it was off to Florida.
As the other AJ and his girlfriend Sydney tried to lasso his Mom and trick her into getting in the car like you do when it’s Vet Day and your dog is spazzing out, Renee was already melting down and she hadn’t even made it out the front door yet.
Karen and Ramona were accompanying her to the airport, and since they were 47 seconds late, Renee was losing her marbles. Not one by one. The whole bag. All at once. And some had rolled under the refrigerator, never to be seen again.
Did you ever see that famous I Love Lucy scene where everyone is trying to get out of the house when Lucy goes into labor with Little Ricky? Suitcases flying everywhere, people bumping into each other and everyone freaking out? Remember that one?
It was like that, but with waaay more F Bombs and Newport Lights.
And for some reason, when you are going to rehab they don’t really approve of you taking pills before you get there, so Renee was having a rough time getting out the door before Karen and Ramona finally showed up, looking like Secret Service agents arriving to escort the First Lady to her limo.
There was some additional drama trying to get the Nissan hatch closed, a few more nasty F Bombs and then one last swift kick to AJ’s butt before they finally pulled away from the curb.
I’m not sure I would have put Renee behind the wheel in her present mental state, but I guess that guaranteed she wouldn’t jump out the window and run off into the woods before they got to JFK. Somehow they made it to the airport in one piece, said their goodbyes, and Renee and AJ jetted off to Florida.
Speaking of losing a few marbles…two, to be exact…
Over at Karen’s apartment, my exceptionally bosomy new Mob girlfriend Love Majewski showed up to practice her makeup magic and drop a few bombshells at the same time.
After a little ManBashing between the two women, Love let us know that back in the day her ex-fiancé Ray Merolle had been arrested in Arizona, which was kind of ironic considering that Karen’s (..ex?…) boyfriend Dave was currently squatting in her house in that same state.
When Love found out that Ray had cheated on her, she took a 9 millimeter gun and shot him. Or more accurately, around him. She made him think that she was aiming for his marbles, but she only shot around him to prove that she still loved him.
Don’t even try to process that one. Just go with it.
But now Love was starting to regret not picking off those two jawbreakers like tin cans under a post, because she had just found out that Ray had been hiding 3 year old twins somewhere, which were products of a little sumthin sumthin he stashed away before going off to prison.
I know, right? When Suze Orman says get your affairs in order, she ain’t kidding. I always thought she meant find your proof of jury duty letter and put it in a box, but she meant freeze your boys.
And it appears that Ray froze them in two different Tupperware containers, because now there were two baby mamas running around out there with Ray #1 and Ray #2.
I’m not really sure how twins ended up with two different baby mamas, because she didn’t really get into it before finishing Karen’s eyeliner. Plus, I was so surprised that they actually let you Ice, Ice Your Babies in prison that by the time I realized how odd the whole story was, we were already over at Drita’s place.
The day was finally here. It was time for Drita and her two daughters to go see Daddy Lee in prison, and everyone was having their own I Love Lucy moment as they dragged pillows and stuffed animals into the car like they were going to a sleepover.
I’m not saying that crime pays, but it sure seemed as though bank fraud might be an easier, faster way to get into that prison than actually driving there.
It took them For. Ever.
And that was just to get to the hotel.
As the gang registered at Heritage Suites for the night, Renee was finally at Transitions for the introductory Freshman Hazing portion of her own check-in.
One by one the counselors and doctors grilled her on subjects ranging from remembering the extensive list of drugs in her system to über personal information that I would have just lied about. It was pretty intense, and made you realize that rehab is the real deal.
Right about now was when the producers must have realized they had forgotten Carla, because all of the sudden we got to see her walk her dog.
Exciting stuff.
Then it was back to Drita as she and the girls all piled into what looked like one of President Obama‘s bullet proof vans for the long drive to the Pennsylvania prison.
For. Ever.
One. Was that suitcase full of the dollar bills and quarters that she had mentioned she was bringing to Lee for the prison vending machines? Why else would they need to bring a suitcase for a 5 hour visit when they would be turning around and going right back to the hotel? I know Lee said he needed underwear. But that would have been a ton o’ Hanes.
Two. That little pipsqueak Gizelle is so freaking cute that I just want to slap something. I mean, redoinkulously cute. I wanted to rescue her from the “Lifestyle” and ship her to TLC for a pageant. She’s already got the hair accessories.
Redoinkulous.
Back home, Karen and Ramona managed to find the noisiest restaurant on the entire Island to meet for lunch.
Karen had just received a text from her daughter Karina, who announced that she was staying in AZ with Dave. Karina also asked her Mom to not confront Dave on why and how a random thong had ended up on her bedroom floor.
Eeew. Just the thought of her Dad doing the Nasty with his new girlfriend in his tweenage daughter’s bedroom.
And then imagine them going at it while Justin Bieber watched from a Tiger Beat poster taped on the wall with hearts and unicorn stickers.
Double Eeew.
Ramona’s answer to every problem is usually to hurt something or somebody, so you already knew her response to all that mess.
Then it was back to Pennsylvania. Five hours later.
The visit with Lee went amazeballs, and Drita and the girls couldn’t have been happier. During a pit stop at Kelly’s Diner, Drita hit Big Ang up on her Sidekick and rambled on and on about the day like she was in a Lifetime movie. They even had the same music.
And yes, I got all excited thinking they were at the same Kelly’s Diner that’s in Port Charles, but then I remembered that General Hospital isn’t real.
Bummer.
Back home, again, my girl Love dropped by Big Ang’s house for no reason other than to let us see she really is crazycakes, and that Ang was rocking a very on-trend side part.
Fashion tips, too. You’re welcome.
You knew Karen wasn’t going to be able to just sit back and go with the Dave Flow, so she got him on the phone and confronted him about his new girlfriend. Every single conversation that she has with Dave starts and ends the same, so you didn’t really miss anything if you walked away for a moment. She did say that she had always been the “Most Loyalest Person” which kind of made my head hurt, and then I don’t remember much after that. She likes to dramatically throw her phone into the pillow after she hangs up. I noticed that last time, too.
Since the visit with Lee had gone so well, Drita couldn’t keep her head screwed on straight now. She loved him. She hated that she loved him. She loved the old Lee, not the new Lee. But what about the jail-free future Lee?
Oy vey.
We finished off back in Florida with Renee’s first group therapy field trip, where everyone sat on a picnic table and tried to shake off their personal demons in the woods.
Once everyone got past the hideous tie the group leader was wearing (…not a good week for neckwear…) they stood Renee up against a tree in front of them and ran an impromptu mini Redneck Intervention.
Carla wasn’t a douche bag. She was the Devil. And you can’t change the Devil.
Cast her evil powers away. Begone, Bitch.
OhNoTheyDin’t. They went there.
…27 days, and counting.
