Homesick followed by home, sick…
Believe it or not, Hawaiian survived his 30th birthday and is, in fact, still alive, if not entirely well.
And if there’s any real lesson to come out of the past few weeks it’s that when driving cross-country, one must carefully plan ahead in order to not be victimized by the early start to primetime in the Central and Mountain time zones. Otherwise, you might find yourself killing time in a wretched mall restaurant in Phoenix only to avoid spending another hour in a wretched hotel room in Phoenix only to eventually find that you suffered through the sights and sounds of a Rainforest Cafe when you could have been on a hard mattress suffering through the sights and sounds of last week’s episode of American Idol. This is particularly poignant since that’s one less Mandisa performance that I got to see, and given my slight crush’s deep love for her amazing thickness, I’m afraid he might ditch me on Idol nights now, which means her early departure could put a damper on my already stagnant social life.
But maybe some alone time would be good right now. To be honest, I’m still not even close to being recovered from spending four days driving through the middle of nowhere. And yes, most of the country can be aptly described as “nowhere”. My only joy was looking for horrific billboards and praying for some kind of wifi at night so I could blindly stare at perezhilton while watching reruns of House Hunters. Perez and I have the same birthday season and a similar love of young and whorish women, so it felt like I had a partner in crime along the way. This is actually the third time I’ve taken this trip, and each time has been with the same friend,and I’m hoping, really, truly hoping, that this time was the absolute last. Because frankly, TiVo or not, I’m really just too old to spend that much time away from my own TV.
And as much as I missed my own bed, my own car, and my own bathroom, the thing I missed most might have been the
Real Housewives of Orange County
You see, the real proof that the middle of the country is, in fact, the middle of nowhere (aside from billboards with messages like “Hell is Real”) is that none of the hotels there had Bravo. Now I know that it’s sort of a joke that Bravo is a gay network, but if the red states are taking a stand against diversity on television when it comes to determining their cable packages, they’re making themselves miss out on a lot of good TV.
In fairness, I can’t say that I actually love the Real Housewives of Orange County, but I can say that I missed it. Deeply. I needed to see if Shane would accept his place in the MLB draft and maintain the family tradition. I wanted to badly to see how Laurie’s kid got busted for pot and ended up in Juvenile Hall. I really, really had to see if six year-old Travis would hit himself in the forehead out of frustration again while being dragged around by his mother and sister. I find myself a little bit amazed that in a show that’s supposed to be about the ladies of the house, all I really care about are the kids. Will Kara find a way to get her father’s attention? Will Lauri realize that her daughter is just a younger version of herself? Does Vicki understand the horrible mistake she made by having a son who shares her cheekbones?
These are the questions that really kept me on at night on the drive, and they keep me awake even still. I can only hope that some of you are also experiencing this same sort of sleeplessness. My favorite line from this week came not from one of the housewives, but from one of her friends, when series star(and my personal favorite) Kimberly expressed concern about her husband’s reaction to seeing her dance with a young Puerto Rican kid while off for a weekend of fun with her other married friends. (For those who don’t know, Kimberly is a blonde in her mid 40′ with slightly leathery skin, a devoted husband, two well-behaved kids, a personal Pilates instructor, and a pair of fake D-cup breasts). Kimberly’s friend said simply “You’ve already danced with a midget and a guy in a wheelchair. The Puerto Rican was definitely a step up.”
Comments like that one make me think that if I ever had to spend the night in Orange County, I probably wouldn’t get Bravo in my hotel room there either.