Lately, NYC feels like dinner theater in Oyster Bay rather than sexy, shiny

23 Ski-don’t

..Broadway.

Am I the only one who is feeling completely underwhelmed by the Big Apple these days?

No,  I don’t miss the nights when NYC was the ashtray for bottle service loving money boys but I do miss something.

My doldrums were confirmed when I went to a sample sale being held at Limelight. Not as disastrous as the Palladium being turned into NYU dorms but close.

It’s as if the entire city is in mourning for its lost pizzazz and sizzle.

This is not to say that the usual suspects that provide excitement (i.e. parties, restaurants, gossip, celebrity, fashion) aren’t trying their damnedest to keep up the pretense but something is decidely off.

Yes, we are in a recession and budget cuts are looming but what about that New Yorker vibe of  I’m going to have a good time anyway?

For the longest time, I’ve allowed myself to believe that New York City could weather anything as long as it had mystery.    The possibility of every night being the night you met a new best friend or your next enemy, whether or not you had the drink tickets .  That mystery is what pushed me out the door so many nights  when I knew I should have stayed at home with a good book.

That Los Angeles and Las Vegas had willingly sold their souls (ha ha!)  to the highest bidder to be associated with the flavor of the month for pick up on TMZ.  And why shouldn’t they?  They  didn’t have what we had.  If you go out in those cities, you know who’s selling and buying at all times.

But now, we are in the same boat.   Calling  marketing events FUN.  Seeing the same faces over and over and over in the party photos. Anointing of the dull as stylemaker because well, who else is there?

No matter how much the various factions crow about what and who’s next, I have that sickening feeling in my stomach that it just won’t matter.

I will be stuck watching Guys & Dolls while having the surf  & turf entree, pretending everything is just fine.

Pic via.

Today’s epiphany….

The future Spencer and Heidi

The entire Bravo Real Housewives oeuvre is the future version of MTV’s The Hills.  I was watching an episode of The Real Housewives of New York and it came to me, amidst the faux fighting over stupid things and the convenient delusion of the middle aged version of Spencer and Heidi, Simon and Alex.

Watching Simon and Alex brag about their inflatable pool in the backyard of their busted Brooklyn brownstone (but if you ask these two, it’s the Palace of Versailles) proves how far they will go to convince viewers (but more importantly themselves) that they are living the glamourous life.  To view this type of delusion makes me wonder if these two have ever been around real people.

And The Countess!

Her obsession with class doesn’t seem to take into account that appearing on a reality show kinda discounts her in that category.   LuAnn, accusing her castmate Ramona of being rude for highlighting the age difference between The Countess and The Count, offered up a  histrionic over the top performance to keep all eyes on her classy self.

I’m just saying you don’t see Caroline Kennedy traipsing around on a reality show.

So I hope the denizens of The Hills are watching and taking notes.

If I were Oprah Winfrey, I would weigh 200 pounds too.

If I were Oprah Winfrey….

I would hire the Magnolia Bakery owner to bake treats for me 24 hours a day.

I would fund a news program that debunked every single lie that slithered out of sewage spewing mouths of Sean Hannity,  Rush Limbaugh and Mike Huckabee  The program would also highlight the incestuous connections that poison mainstream media.

I would give Joe Lieberman and Governor Hot Rod millions to retire.  Just go away!

I would make Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart have dinner with me once a month because no one says no to me.  They would have to dress up and perform skits written by me!

I would play passive aggressive practical jokes on  Rupert Murdoch, Tina Brown, Arianna Huffington and Jann Wenner.  Just because.

I would build a separate house and hire  a full-time dog walker  for my dog, Morpheus.

I would make Ben Silverman create a show around the Midwest Teen Sex Show.

I would find a way to have Donald Trump deported to Zimbabwe.  Ha ha Mugabe, he’s your problem now!

I would have Joe Conason read me bedtime stories.

I would have Grace Jones perform for me on my birthday.

I would buy a private island, rename it Oprahphenia and have people perform interpretative dances to win an invitation to be considered for a visit.

I would pay the following ‘actresses’ to stop ‘acting’:  Jessica Biel, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton.  They can do ad campaigns and show up to nightclubs instead.

I would kill anyone who airs The Hills.  Not maim. Not blind with acid.  K-I-L-L. And most likely feed their body to Morpheus.

I would build a house with indoor plumbing, cable and the Internet here.

And I would have  fried chicken, chocolate cupcake and champagne for dinner every night!

Photo via american-buddha.com

Prediction…

One of those trolls from The HIlls is going to do a guest shot on Gossip Girl.

Let’s say my cocktail shaker told me.

The antidote to ‘The Hills’.*

Summer Heights High is a satirical take on high school and every show ever made about high school.

I can’t wait.

*To me, The Hills is all about high school.

Whenever I read about Heidi from ‘The Hills’ being treated like garbage by her ‘boyfriend’ Spencer…

it makes me happy.  McCain supporters don’t deserve happy relationships, I say.

The New York Times recently called Heidi Montag a “feminist hero” for standing up to beau Spencer Pratt, but the Hills star, 21, isn’t backing Hillary Clinton for president.

“I’m voting for John McCain,” she tells Us Weekly in its latest issue, on newsstands now.

“I’m a Republican and McCain has a lot of experience,” she explains.

The Hills: Spencer Continues To Be A Complete Asshole To Heidi’s Family [Jezebel]

Two useless dolts headed to Iraq. Please Allah let them stay there.

“Hills” Stars Headed to Iraq [The Celebrity Cafe]

Random Notes, June 6th

• Where are the gays on The Hills? All these girls on the show have fashion lines (admittedly horrible) but there’s not one gay person in fashion that could be on the show as a semi-regular?

• What is the fitting punishment for your child when you find out that your precious little spawn has been plotting to murder you?

• This is not going to happen.

• The best dressed attendees at a funeral. I think Yves Saint Laurent would have been pleased.

• Okay, this review of Zohan is making me curious.

Although I do hope Gossip Girl garners better ratings than The Hills this week…

Nate getting with Vanessa make Blair unhappy this week.

…I understand if it doesn’t.

Last week, The Hills‘ attracted 3.75 million idiots with syphilis compared to Gossip Girl’s 2.5 discriminating, adorable, probably read a lot of Jane Austen viewers.

But Tallulah has a theory on why this is happening.

You see, the life and goals of the marginally retarded cast of The Hills to a majority of the
f**kwits who watch it seems attainable.

To a lot of people, MTV could come to their town or they could go to some countdown taping
and they could be selected out of the crowd to be anointed as worthy of a camera following them while they live their life.

it seems within reach and possible to have Heidi Montag’s dumb-ass life of creating product (album, clothes) that should be marketed as toxic waste instead of something anyone would purchase with real money.

And Gossip Girl?
No matter what viewers do …

whether they live in Aliceville, Kansas or Cameron Park, Montana or Beaver County, Pennsylvania or Staten Island, New York…

they are not going to be rolling financially like the fictional characters Blair, Serena, Nate and Chuck (I will say that Dan and his thieving little sister are the closest to the reality of most viewers)

simply because a MTV producer is burnt out and over the job anyway.

It’s okay though…the wannabes can have The Hills.  Me and the Gossip are doing fine without them.

Gossip Girl is Loved From Soho to Singapore; Does It Matter? (TV By The Numbers)

Ginia Bellafante is an ass if she thinks that goat Heidi Montag is a feminist hero…

Harriet Tubman and Margaret Sanger must be so  proud.

no wonder Hillary Clinton is losing if Heidi’s the new face of feminism.

The pseudo-improvised reality series “The Hills,” as it plays out beyond MTV, on tabloid covers and in nearly every other byway of the modern media, is above all a vicious decimator of hope. It mocks our hearts; it plays with our allegiances, and we welcome the abuse.

During its third season, which picks up again on Monday after a three-month hiatus, “The Hills,” set among young aspirants

(The Times says aspirants; Tallulah says spoiled, privileged white women…do these girls know any women who do not look like them? Umm do they?)

of the Hollywood Hills’ music and fashion industries, has continued to track the emotional warfare between former best friends Lauren and Heidi, while delving more deeply into the twistedness, gaslighting and superficiality of the boyfriends who ensure that the tortured rivals treat each other like Crips and Bloods.

(Ummm Ginia…has not Margaret Seltzer’s egregious lies taught you anything about comparing petty suburban angst to gang warfare? Ginia, watch The Wire again!)

The show that looked, in all of its Antonioni-esque plotlessness and dreamy cinematography, at the ignominies of youthful friendship has turned toward the more conventional cruelties that good-looking playboys perpetrate on (STUPID, CONTEMPTIBLE) young women who wear low-rise pants and put on boots in warm weather.

Defying our expectations, Heidi has emerged as a kind of feminist hero this season, climbing her way to a bigger position at the event-planning company where she orchestrates Nascar

(YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! I HAVE USED TAMPONS THAT COULD PLAN NASCAR PARTIES!)

parties, and refusing to acquiesce to the demands of her fiancé, Spencer, that she get herself home on time. Her career-mindedness sets their relationship off course. Heidi identifies the problem with no name: a boyfriend who sits around an apartment decorated to look like an ’80s video arcade while trying to deny Heidi a real wedding with the glory of registering. Her groundswell of self-assertion begins when he insists on eloping, prompting Heidi to declare, “This isn’t, like, Spencer’s relationship and you decide what we do.”

The full-on joyous Oprah-fication of Heidi culminates with the show’s return and gives “The Hills” a new momentum. After taking a break from Spencer at her parents’ modest house in Crested Butte, Colo., Heidi returns to Los Angeles to kick him out and chastises him for taking her flat-screen TV with him. How proud Gloria Allred would be. (LAME. LAME. LAME)

And oh, what Lauren, her vulnerability hidden beneath her baroque moralism, could learn from Heidi right now. Lauren is pining for Brody, who, she has confessed, never makes her feel good enough. (Although we are led to believe that she could still have a chance with him, Us magazine has already told us no — reality squelching the suspense of mock reality.)

The theme of ambition permeates the new season, although it detracts not at all from the show’s canny sense that there’s no such thing as postadolescence: you’re a teenager until you start having biopsies and paying a mortgage. Lauren’s close friend and colleague Whitney, until now perhaps the best approximation of a Shakespearean mute that reality TV has ever produced, wants more out of life than serving as an assistant at Teen Vogue. She wants to be a stylist, and her boss, Lisa, helps her get a new job. (Lisa is the West Coast editor of Teen Vogue and the show’s most enigmatic figure because she allows herself to be shot close-up, her craggy skin contrasted with all those unspoiled 21-year-old complexions.)

By showing one short job interview Whitney has with the owner of a fashion-publicity company called People’s Revolution, “The Hills” captures the delusional self-seriousness of the fashion business better than any episode of “Project Runway.” “You’ll give up your life,” the owner tells her. Of course Whitney, Lauren and Heidi already have, and America has shown its gratitude.

STFU, GINIA, STFU.

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