the ocean

Yesterday I went with my sister's family to the pool and the batting cage. And also to Chili's, but for once this isn't a post about Chili's. (The skillet queso remains my passion.) It was a hot day and nice to be in the water but apparently a lot of people felt that way so there wasn't an empty lounge chair anywhere in sight. And my spray-on sunscreen had some weird reaction with the water and ended up curling up into sticky little balls all over my skin, which seemed less than ideal. I've sort of realized that pools aren't really that much fun as an adult without alcohol, which to be fair can be said about a lot of things.

The batting cage was actually fairly great, despite the creeping realization that I had no idea who else had worn that batting helmet or what might have been going on with their hair. At first I was absolute shit out there, even at the "slow baseball" setting, but I slowly got into the swing of things, pun 100% intended. By the time we left I had successfully socked a few dingers, which made me feel good about myself. My niece had an existential crisis about her future in tee ball, but I think we managed to work through that with promises of Chili's. (Damn, I guess maybe this IS a post about Chili's.)

Today I had a brunch with some friends and am now puttering about the house. Yes, puttering. I'm very concerned about our plants in this heat wave. 

After nearly a decade of refusing to watch Summer House, Ian and I finally broke down and have now completed season one. And, God help me, it's kind of amazing.

My initial resistance was based largely on an aversion to Kyle, who I though was a douchebag and not actually all that attractive. But when he appeared on The Traitors, I realized that he was a douchebag and not that attractive, but also kind of ridiculous and pathetic. So I figured I could live with him. I was also against the Wirkus twins, as in general I find it suspicious for people to resemble one another and moreover, I did sort of feel they looked like the white chicks from White Chicks. That also hasn't changed, but we really needed something light and ridiculous for a summer watch and, well, this checked those boxes.

Like many Bravo shows, Summer House is a meticulous examination of the toxic behavior of attractive straight men and the delusional self-sabotage of the women who surround them. Kyle spends the entire first season telling Amanda (to whom we know is he now married) that he wants to be single and indeed catalogues to her a roster of his (relatively unimpressive) summer conquests, but she doubles down on the relationship. Carl essentially wears a T-shirt that says "I'm not that interested in you, Lauren" and, in response, Lauren decides it is Cristina's fault that things "cooled off" with him and screams at her before getting back in bed with him. Lindsay engages in weekly screaming matches with a man who flees the house to sleep in a bed with five other people and then decides to move in with him. This is all a horrific mirror on society and yet unbelievably watchable.

Cristina herself is an incredibly distinctive character in that, despite being generally in the right about everything in the house, she is still somehow really unlikable. I don't even know why. Maybe its the incredibly lousy job she does of trying to act like a casual, chill girl when she's obviously drowning in insecurities. Maybe it's her truly inartful pot stirring. Or maybe it's just her face. But when everyone turned on her for essentially no reason and she left the house early, all I could think about was how lame her exit speech was. You're burning these bridges and you can't even articulate any of the at least three dozen insults for your fellow cast members that I've come up with in my head? Please.

Anyway, this is happening. Or, rather, it happened in 2017. But we're in it now. Be afraid.

A podcast Ian listens to gave him the idea that we should give a watch to the 2007 Bravo series "Hey Paula," which, according to IMDb, "follows the personal and professional lives of Paula Abdul." (It also gives it a rating of 3.5 stars out of 10.) I was skeptical, but given that it was only seven twenty-two minute episodes, I figured there was little risk involved. Needless to say, it ended up being a rich emotional journey. 

First and foremost, the series makes it appear that Paula is deeply unwell. I don't know her in real life and it would be unfair of me to speculate, but I will note that she says more than once on the show that she doesn't take "recreational" drugs, which seems to me to be an interesting choice of modifier. Regardless, pretty much every episode features Paula saying that she is hungry and/or exhausted while jetting back and forth from, say, being honored as the Las Vegas Ballet's Woman of the Year (note that it is not all of Nevada or even all of ballet involved) and promoting her jewelry collection on QVC while women with questionable accents call in to tell her she inspires them. Invariably, though, Paula decides to forego sleeping to, like, stop at a Starbucks in the dead of night and sign autographs for people who did not request them. A lot of this is very stressful. For me, I mean.

Then there are the professional travails that seem to plague Paula. There is an ugly incident where we learn Paula has designed costumes for a Bratz movie that I am surprised to learn actually came out, but the producers have informed her those "looks" will not be seeing the light of day. (This may be the occasion that causes here to say she is "tired of not being treated like the gift that she is," although it is hard to keep track.) There is another crisis when her QVC jewelry partner fails to hold back product for her to give away to the "Idol kids" (her term) as she had requested, and Paula must go out of pocket for the jewelry (as opposed to just forgetting about it altogether, as I am confident everyone else already had). Also, Paula does a series of loopy TV interviews and is accused by of being drunk by a magazine your aunt Cheryl reads. I guess I had just kind of assumed that was her brand, but apparently she does not care for it.

Oh, and the rental house drama. Paula decides to remodel her house and rents a house to live in while that happens. She then hires a designer to furnish it for her, but never meets or even speaks to that person, instead sending her hairdresser (natch) who tosses out a lot of word salad centered on Paula's "femininity" and calls it a day. Then, once the entire house has been furnished and she's supposed to move in, Paula decides she hates the design (which does admittedly contain an antique birdcage) and screams at the designer on the phone as her hairdresser attempts to recede into the nearest wall. At the end of the day, Paula changes her mind about remodeling.

Did I mention that one episode is just a "clip show" that consists of footage for plotlines they apparently decided weren't interesting enough to include in the other six episodes? Including a surprise party thrown for Paula by a boyfriend we didn't even know she had from the rest of the series? It's all very much worth a look; the perfect televised companion for our nation's gradual descent into madness.