Pretty On The Outside

Ramona properly thanks Aviva's husband.

This is a very messy drawing after a very messy episode of the RHONYC. To backtrack a moment.... I may not be in St Barths but I made a tropical-ish summer cocktail tonight: muddled watermelon (which just means you smash the melon with a w

ooden spoon), the juice of a whole lime, and then a ton of vodka. I sipped my drink and watched as Aviva and her husband Reid arrived in St Barths with tons of emotional baggage, displaced anger, and just plain self-involved nutbag-ery. "I went to lawyer school, Vassar, I speak several languages and I see everything." She clearly couldn't see she was being an asshole. In an interview scene Ramona wondered what she'd have to do to make it up to Aviva for not having rolled out the red carpet for her and her husband's arrival...... carve "Thank You Reid" across her forehead. In my tipsy state that seemed like something fun to draw. 
Ink and marker on paper. :)

Luann in St Barths

Here's the Countess Luann from The Real Housewives of NYC on vacation in St Barths and perhaps she took a vacation from her boyfriend? If we believe those clever editers at Bravo, then it certainly appears that Luann boned that french dude who looks like Johnny Depp and tried to cover it up by saying she brought a bunch of Italian friends to the house the Housewives were sharing. If you haven't done something regrettable while on vaca, then dare I say you haven't fully vaca'ed.

The Real Housewives of NYC. Painted.

Hello again!  I know I've been away for a bit, but hopefully like a good friend who you haven't spoken with in a while--- the love is still there and we can pick up where we left off.  :)  I fortunately got busy with a number of body paint jobs and being summer..... outdoor fun won out over on-line fun.  So what's new?  Are you liking the new NYC gals?  I wasn't so sure at first but I'm definitely warming to them and enjoy the way they make the returning women behave.  

Ramona is crazier than ever.  Seriously.  Her crazy is multiplying and I love that new cast member Heather is driving her over a crazy cliff (a short ride actually.)  I love that Heather's Larry King-ish smile causes Ramona's eyes to triple in size and her body to spastically twitch like she's being stung by bees.  It's my favorite part of this new season.  Hey, maybe Ramona's allergic to Heather?  I think that makes sense!  She's so freaked out by Heather that it's actually making her befriend Luann.  Oh good stuff.  Good good stuff!  

Gonna keep this short as I'm out of practice but I hope you'll enjoy my painting of Aviva, Ramona, and Heather (and her smile).  It's ink, pen, and gouache on 12" x 9" paper and it's available for purchase if interested.

xoxo

Hurricane Sonja Morgan

The wifi in my home is out so I'm sitting in a Starbucks typing this.  I'd written out an entire posting, hit publish, and then a home screen for accepting Starbuck's wifi reappeared.  Huh?!?!  What the Starf*ck?  My whole posting is gone and my laptop battery is about to die.  AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!  NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!  I'm about to have a venti meltdown!  I've got about 10 minutes of battery life left and I type slowly so here are a couple quick things I think I remember from my now-lost posting......  And please pardon my spelling as I don't think there will be time for spell check.

Episode two and we are still getting to know the three new gals who all seem to be proceeding rather cautiously.  Who will lose it first?  Any bets?  I believe Aviva will be the first and I suspect it will be towards Luann.  Or will Heather (who seems kinda amped) go off on Ramona?  Hmmmmmmm....... Carole I guess will make it til the very end of the season and quite profoundly level one of her cast mates.  We shall see.  The returning champs are basically caricatures of themselves at this point: Luann a haughty snob, Ramona a bit-shit crazy tasmanian devil, and Sonja a ravenous cougar.

Speak of the Cougar, Hurricane Irene caused some water damage to Sonja's upper east side townhouse so she sought the service of a male contarctor.  Key word: male.  Actually he's a drip pattern expert if you can belief that.  Who knew that was a profession?  Anyway as he surveyed the damage caused by the hurricane, Sonja started to form her own drip pattern.  Her frozen forehead began to bead with sweat, her breasts heaved, we heaved, and her lady bits demanded attention.  As the handyman looked for the nearest exit, Sonja ran her fingers through her hair, squeezed her thighs together like she had to pee, and screamed, "Snake my drain you f**ker!"  :)  Here's the veteran cougar during that exchange:

God bless Hurricane BravoCougarSonjaMorgan!

My battery is going to die in a minute so super quick........  The other thing that caught my attention was the dinner with Aviva, Heather, and their husbands.  This is just an observation but did anyone get a vibe form Aviva's husband?  Like perhaps his loafers might be a little light?  I'm not making any kind of pronouncement but perhaps the real reason Aviva didn't buy that vintage leopard-print jumpsuit is that she could never get her husband out of it.  Again, this is just a silly observation.  :)

Ok, my battery is dieing so I must go.

Drawings of Sonja completed with pencil and pen on paper with digital color.

Ramona, Ramona, Ramona. It's all and always about Ramona Singer.

The Real Housewives of NYC returned this week which means there are three, thREE, THREE installments of that franchise currently airing: Jersey, OC, and now NYC.  Lordy, that's a ton of housewife action.  I'm far from complaining it's just that well, it's a lot to handle.  If you follow the NYC show then you know half the crew got the ax: Jill, Kelly, and Alex which means new cast members!  Joining the veteran cougar Sonja, the hunky Countess, and the bat-shit crazy Ramona are three new gals.  I was wondering if Bravo could possibly find an odder bird than Ramona, a more condescending and self-gratifying half indian from Connecticut who married someone with a title than Luann, or a more oddly-confident escort-hirer than Sonja?  To Bravo's credit, they seemingly went the opposite direction and cast three rather seemingly upstanding and seemingly interesting women.  Or did they?  At first glance the new women are pretty likable..... We have Aviva and based on the name alone I like her.  I enjoy that Aviva spelled forward or backwards is exactly the same.  She appears to be really level-headed, well spoken, interested and interesting.  We learned she lost her left foot as a child and later had more of the leg removed up to close to the knee.  Aviva seems to have it together and I give her a thumbs up.  Viva Aviva!

Next we have Caroline who's an accomplished writer and she seems pretty awesome.  I like her biting wit and I really appreciated the scene where she went to Glamor magazine in order to get prepped on having to write a fluff piece on the f**king Kardashian monsters and it was such a real moment.  Caroline's penned a New York Times best-seller seller about the loss of her husband and now she has to write about those sisters who.... who... who are famous for no good reason.  Caroline crafted a great book, Kim Kardashian was in a lame sextape catapulting her generous ass to fame, and the now Caroline with have to interview her on... ????..... dating as many people as possible?  Enough about the Kardashians, Caroline is going to be the new Bethenny.  Thumbs up.

Lastly we have Heather and she is the only one who could possibly be a little wacky.  She has a line of shape wear called Yummie Tummie or something thereabouts and is obviously on the show to push, promote that stuff.  Heather is aggressively friendly and the owner of a large grin and she makes Ramona nervous so I must give her a thumbs up too.  Welcome new gals.

The returning champs Luann, Ramona, and Sonja all seem to be becoming caricatures of themselves.  Luann is alpha-ing out of control, Sonja is cougar-ing and toaster oven cooking while barking orders at her unpaid help, and Ramona is flat out bonkers and constantly spewing her "I'm a successful business woman" mantra all while looking like a flare gun went off inside in ass.  Here's Ramona at virtually every moment during the show.

What Ramona lacks in size, she makes up for in crazy. Do you think that first thing in the morning she rolls over, shakes the shit out of Mario, and launches into a monologue about being a successful business woman?  I do. :)  Welcome back Ramona, Luann, and Sonja, I give you all a thumbs up too.  Let's hope this will be a good season.

Ramona drawing completed with ink and pen on paper.

I'm on Bravo's website! You'll find my gallery on the Watch What Happens L!ve page.

Oh my goodness gracious.........  Bravo has given me my own gallery with 44 images of my drawn and painted Bravo-lebrities.  Please click here to have a look.  I'm having a hard time finding the right words to express my overwhelming gratitude......  I'll simply say thank you to Bravo and all those involved in making this happen.  I feel like I should be wearing a crown, clutching a bouquet of red roses, and waving as I walk to end of a stage while mascara-soaked tears stream down my face.  That might happen later this afternoon.  :) 

Thank you again Bravo! 

Oh, one other thing..... I have a facebook page if you'd like to like it please go here.  :)

Pink slips for some of the NYC gals.

I got home from work early today and did a quick check of my favorite pop culture site to see what was happening out there in the blogosphere.  Well, if you suffered through the last season of the NYC Real Housewives and especially the two excruciating reunion shows then you surely knew a re-casting, re-structuring, re-thinking of that whole line-up was in order.  Apparently it was just announced that Jill, Kelly, Alex, and Cindy are getting the Bravo boot.  Personally, I'm fine with them all going with the exception of Alex as I did enjoy the way she freaked out the other gals.  Here's hoping Bravo can find four new gals just as wacked out as Luann and Ramona.  Is that even possible? 

I'm including a quick graphic I made as I watched the last of the two horrifying reunion shows.  After I created the below image, I wanted to taser myself for spending time on that stupidity and never posted it.  Seems appropriate to air it now..........  Sadly I do like watching cosmetically-altered "classy" entitled-nutbags fighting but this past season and reunion shows were too too too much to bare.  Hopefully next season will be better.  Make it work Bravo!

The Real Housewives of NYC. Do we like?

Hello there!  Thanks to a lovely link from OC housewife Tamra Barney's blog, I know there's quite a few new people having a look at my site.  Welcome!  For those of you who are new here, I just want to take a quick moment and explain what's up.  I've been at these opinion driven recaps accompanied with typically quickly drawn thingamajigs from the beginning of this whole franchise .....  One day, about four years ago, while innocently flipping thru the channels I came across a cosmetically-enhanced and slightly sun-damaged middle-aged Orange County woman droning on about some dull grievance.  I hit pause on my tivo remote, did about a 5 minute drawing, and then posted it here.  Ever since then, I've been doing 5 to 30 minute drawings of whichever person or persons grab my attention and well, now you're all caught up.  Also, and I have to apologize, but I'm a little inconsistant here and there with my updates.  There I said it.  :)  I've been away from home the last few days and I tried going on hulu to watch this week's episode and I couldn't find it.  I was just on Bravo's website and there's only a couple super short clips which I watched as well as flipping thru the collection of still photos from Thursday's show.  So.... I haven't seen the show but I'll chat about what I saw.....

First I'm just going to guess Alex fought with someone.  Am I right?  She's grown a pair of King Kong sized balls and nothing is going to slow her down.  She's all sound and fury signifying a desire to be on next season and at this rate, I think it's guaranteed.  She's taken on Sonja and Jill, and it's just a matter of time til she tramples over Luann, Kelly, Ramona, and the new lady.  What's the new ladies name again?  Anyway, the first clip I watched was Ramona's triumphant (?) return to the catwalk.

I have to hand it to Ramona for getting back up on the saddle.  That previous runway definitely bucked her off ......  It's like Kelly going back to Scary Island with Bethenny.  So the big question would be if Ramona could pull off a runway stroll that partially resembled something a model would do or would she again look like she'd been struck by lightning at a surprise birthday party?  Well...... she didn't look quite as insane as before but she didn't look quite like the other models either.  Maybe like someone pulled her hair and then stuck a finger in her nose.  I did a quick doodle of supermodel Ramona and as I'm not at home, I couldn't scan it into my computer as I usually do.  So I snapped a photo with my phone while taking the liberty of fingering her snout.  :)

So the other video I watched was Kelly during what I gathered must have been a speed date, meaning she was on speed.  Or valium. Or meth. Or coke.  Or an entire Rite Aid shelf of cold medicine.  The brief yet fully awkward clip showed Kelly with a guy who graduated from Juilliard so she thought he must be a dancer.  No, he's an actor which meant Kelly wanted to know which instrument he played.  Because most actors play drums, right?  I think she was going to remain only 25% focused on the dates until she heard one say he's a pharmacist cause god knows she needs some sort of pill cocktail. I did a quick doodle of her and as I snapped it I had the wonderful vision of that Juilliard graduate sliding off his shoe, slipping outta his sock, and just before she asked him to reenact some scene from a movie she'd seen the night before, he'd press his sweaty, stinky, funky foot right in her face.  Sadly she'd probably ask if he studied giving pedicures at Juilliard.

So that's all I know of what happened this week.  As always, feel free to comment away below.  Here's a quick tour of some of my illustrations from the previous seasons.  Click to enlarge.  Here goes....

 

Thanks!

The RHONYC reunion show episode 2 was on fire!

Two reunion shows down, one more to go.  And I have to say that these have been actually better than the series.  How's that?  Well in an unprecedented three-parter we've gotten a rather authentic look at those gals removed from any of the goofy scenarios we've seen during the season.  Awkward to watch at times definitely but what we get is these ladies being honest, accessible, and dare I say it, they are being "real".  Weird, huh?  I thought the Sonja Morgan section was a needed calmness after the Bethenny/ Jill drama and right before the Kelly insanity.  Sonja's definitely emerged as my favorite--- funny, self-deprecating, horny, and rather normal.  On the other couch and at the opposite end of the normal scale we have bat shit crazy Kelly Bensimon.  When it was her turn to weigh in on what happened on "Scary Island" she took the oddest counter attack by saying she'd been the victim of systematic bullying and was forced by Bravo to go on that trip. Andy Cohen's calm attempts to tell her that wasn't true made zero impact.  There's no way she came up with that bullying notion on her own.  Picture it--

Kelly's in her downtown NYC apartment doing cartwheels in front of that fiberglass horse she stole from The Met while eating a handful of jelly beans.  There's a knock at the door.  Who could it be?  Al Sharpton?  Bethenny Franklin?  Gwenneth Paltrow, Madonna?  The tooth fairy?  No, it's a Bravo!!!!  Bravo showed up at the door with orders to abduct her.  Kelly flings open the door with a "Hiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee" just as Bravo fires a stun gun at her wonky left boob then throws a giant net on top of her.  Down she goes all 6' 10" of her.  Bravo put her in a cab bound for the airport and the next thing she knows, Kelly's in a jeep on St Johns demanding unprocessed foods like gummy bears and blow pops.  Bravo also kidnapped her children and told her that she doesn't go along with the trip that she'll never see those kids again.  Or worse, Bravo will force Kelly to wear knee-length shorts.  The horror!  That's probably how it went down, right?

Back to the show, Kelly went on and on about how she was systematically bullied and as the others called bullshit on her, Kelly got up and cat-walked off the set.  Cue the Godfather music.  I thought the whole place was going to go up in flames as Kelly tried to argue her unarguable point.

Round two ended with Kelly fleeing the evil Bravo's set.  Wow!  Just wow.  Can episode three top this?  Somehow I imagine it will will as we haven't seen hot-flashing Ramona unleashed yet.  Thursday it is......

In other housewives news, I watched the first ten minutes of The New Jersey show and turned it off.  I don't care.  Danielle and her back-having goons make my skin crawl.... I don't know if I can watch this show anymore.  I'll try and give it another try later if I can stomach it.

Lastly, I know my comment section has been feisty lately.  I don't monitor your remarks- you're free to say what you like but all I ask is that you be respectful to each other.    These reality TV postings poke fun at the antics of attention-starved celebrity wannabes.  I want EVERYONE to feel free to comment and not feel discouraged like their views or opinions will get clobbered.  I'm so thrilled each and every time a comment is left here.  I want the comment section to be lively and fun, not a hate-fest. That's not what I want this site to be.  Satchels of Gold!

Thanks!

The Real Housewives of NYC. Sort of.

This fall Logo will be introducing us to an all-gay version of The Real Housewives called The A List.  Can you imagine?  

They're shooting in NYC over the summer and I can safely say this will be my new favorite show.  The lineup features six attention-starved cuties, five of which have modeled at some point.  I'm cringing yet eagerly anticipating this tsunami of shamelessness.  Certainly it's going to be the best/ worst thing ever.  Logo is notoriously cheap so hopefully this show won't be stuck using Rupaul's Drag Race's hand-me-down blurry cameras.  These guys need to be seen in hi-def.  Most definitely!  Especially Reichen's boyfriend Rodiney who I would like to call perfect.  Or Perifect.  Meet the cast at Gawker.  And thank you Logo in advance.

In other Housewives news...... thanks to all of you who've sent me links to RHONYC's Sonja Morgan's DUI arrest and mug shot.  She is "the straw that stirs the drink" after all and apparently she stirred and swallowed a few too many the other night.  I would have drawn up my own version of her mugshot, but to be honest..... she's completely grown on me.  Sonja likes younger men of color and booze which are my two favorite things.  Truly.  I figured a Pinot Grigio-soaked Ramona would have been the one getting arrested this weekend, not Sonja.

Speaking of arrests..... can I just say that Danielle, the ex-con, is a fucking demented freakshow.  It's been awkward enough watching her emerge as a stage mom but when she assembled a posse of rejects from Bon Jovi's road crew and a number of Hell's Angels to escort her to a benefit for a child with cancer and made the whole thing about herself--- I lost whatever sliver of fondness I had for her last season.  I enjoy a good harmless nut case on these shows: SheRee, Kim, Luann, Alexis Bellino, and definitely Danielle would have been high on that list.  But not anymore.  She was going to a banquet hall cancer benefit, not to a Taliban training camp.  That idiot doesn't need someone to have "her back" she needs a mood stabilizer and a slice of humble pie.  And what in the hell was that seemingly normal older woman Kim G (?) thinking when she decided to be a part of Danielle's back-having mob?  Hopefully she was mortified after she watched Monday's show.  If Kim wasn't, then she deserves Danielle.

I've been working on a project this week which is why posting has been light so far.  Back soon though.  And I really do thank you all for sending those links!